Page 45 of Undoing His Innocent Enemy (Hot Winter Escapes)

Cara’s gaze connected with his at last. But the moment of relief, because she had looked at him again, was quickly destroyed when the shadow of sympathy darkened her eyes to a rich emerald.

She placed her spoon in her bowl and reached across to cover the fist he had clenched on the table with her hand.

‘I’m so sorry, Logan,’ she said softly. ‘That must have been very traumatic. You don’t have to talk about it, if you don’t want to.’

He dragged his hand free. And stared out of the window—but instead of seeing the brilliant white landscape all he could see was that grey alley behind the theatre, and the man with the gun shouting. And the weight on his back, as he lay broken and scared, too terrified to move.

He didn’t want to talk about this, about any of it. He had never even confided in his grandfather, when the old man had asked about the nightmares, which had finally faded over time. Nightmares he had deserved. But after the way he had overreacted yesterday, freaking out when she had chosen to leave the house, he realised he owed her this much.

He forced himself to look at her again, to absorb the compassion in her gaze.

While a part of him wanted to bask in the tenderness he could see in her eyes, another part of him was terrified of needing it. Of taking another treacherous step out of the isolation that had protected him for so long... But somehow the truth spilled out regardless.

‘The man with the gun was shouting, telling me to come with him.’ He stumbled through the memories, thrown back to the night he had avoided for so long. ‘But I couldn’t move. I was hiding behind my father. My mother was screaming and then...’ He sucked in a breath, hearing the pops, feeling the impact as his father’s body slammed into him, the dead weight crushing him as he lay on the pavement. ‘I couldn’t breathe.’ He drew in a harsh breath, his lungs tightening up again. How could the suffocating fear still be so vivid? ‘Not for a long time.’ He stared at her, willing her to understand. ‘Not until my grandfather brought me here.’

But as she looked back at him, her eyes deep pools of emotion, it occurred to him that he’d never felt so much. Not through all the years of isolation. Not until he’d met her.

The panic was swift and unequivocal, forcing him to acknowledge a truth he had never faced until this moment.

‘Maybe if I had done what that man asked, they might still be alive.’

Instead of the contempt he expected to see in her face though, the contempt he felt for himself, all he saw was compassion.

‘Oh, Logan, that’s madness,’ she said so simply he wanted to believe her. ‘Surely you must know you had no part in their deaths.’

He shook his head, scared to believe her now, because it only made him feel more defenceless, more exposed.

‘Is that why you’ve been alone here for so long?’ she asked, gently. ‘Because you’re punishing yourself for something that happened to you as a boy that you had no control over? Can’t you see how wrong that is?’

The words struck his chest, piercing the armour-plating he had built with a lifetime of solitude. Of abstinence. Armour-plating that had numbed his pain for so many years but had never been able to protect him from the yearning, the wanting, when it came to her. He clenched his fists, rose abruptly from his chair, his legs weak, his body shaky. He hated that boy who had been treated like a victim by the media swarms, and she saw as a victim too. Because that boy had lain on the broken pavement, suffocated by fear and the sharp metallic scent of his father’s blood and been too scared to move, too scared to get help. But what he hated more was the thought of becoming that boy again.

Confused, terrified, defenceless.

She stood too, and came to stand in front of him, her eyes brimming with tears. Tears he was sure now he did not deserve.

‘Logan, please don’t be scared,’ she said, her voice breaking as she touched his cheek. ‘But I think I’ve fallen in love with you.’

He jerked his head back, the leap in his heart at her words swiftly followed by that crippling fear. Visions swirled into his mind, so close to the surface now he couldn’t control them at all any more... The sweet, sickening aroma of death and day-old garbage, the violent shouts, the pounding rain, the cold weight of his father’s body.

‘I have to work,’ he said, his voice barely audible, the present and the past combining as the suffocating feeling pressed in on him, like cold water closing over his head.

He walked out, aware of her standing alone in the kitchen.

He stayed all day in the workshop, working on the eagle, determined to close himself off, to rebuild the wall he had relied on for so long, so he would never have to remember that night again, and his part in his parents’ deaths.

But when he found her in his bed, after a day spent trying to contain the fear, control the yearning, she responded to his touch with fierce passion, gave herself up to the driving need with unquestioning generosity. And he knew there would be no going back to that time when he had been able to protect himself from the broken parts of himself with denial.

So he took what she offered, and tried to convince himself he could keep her, as long as he never let her see the broken boy again, who he was terrified now would always lurk inside the man.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CARACLUNGTOLogan as the snowmobile trundled over the packed snow. She had to keep her head tucked into his spine, the icy wind biting the few spots of exposed skin. And keep her eyes firmly closed, so as not to encourage the tears that had been locked inside her heart for the past two days.

She’d told him she was falling in love with him. And he’d walked away from her.

She’d spooked him. In fact, he’d barely spoken to her since that morning.

She shouldn’t have blurted it out like that. Shouldn’t have burdened him with her feelings. Especially as it was obvious now he did not share them.

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