Chapter Four #2
She stood and turned away from him, avoiding Falcon, who had remained in the room but stood against the opposite wall.
Every single word Wilder uttered felt like a punch in the gut.
Walking to the window, she stared out into her garden.
The views from each room were spectacular.
She was an avid gardener, and the buds on her flowers, trees and bushes were beginning to open, creating a stunning visual effect, one that usually brought her serenity but failed to do so now.
“They both know I don’t want them here, Wilder.
I made it clear I would turn them away.” If that really happened, if her parents showed up and she turned them away, her father would make her look like the most ungrateful daughter on the planet.
He would do everything in his power to ruin her reputation and destroy her relationship with the galleries displaying her photographs.
He was mean and vindictive to his enemies, all the while smiling at them smugly.
“You know that won’t stop him when things get worse.
He has a pattern, Harlow. He falls back on it whenever things get tough.
He portrays himself as the quintessential family man.
He needs you to do that. His beautiful daughter, the nurse who put herself through school.
He’ll use you to dangle in front of his constituents, proving to them that his family is perfect and he would never hurt a woman when he has a daughter and wife he loves. ”
That was exactly how her father would think.
If Wilder was right and more charges were brought against the senator, he would fall back on his lifelong scheming tactics to show the world he was a family man and loved his wife and daughter.
To him, that would mean no one would believe the allegations against him.
She pressed her forehead against the windowpane.
When she sat on her porch and thought a storm was coming a couple of weeks earlier, she hadn’t known just how bad it was going to get in so short a time.
Friends dying, her father and mother finally facing justice, death threats, and all playing out in front of the one man she actually had feelings for.
Her emotions might be suppressed; she was smart enough to know nothing could ever come of a relationship with Wilder, but she still wanted to appear to be confident and composed.
“Babe, come back here.”
She heard Wilder pat the bed and glanced over her shoulder. Falcon was bent over, examining him. Listening to his heart, his lungs, going over his body meticulously. Wilder ignored him as if he weren’t there.
The command had been soft. Not an entreaty.
Not a plea. A velvet command. He was well aware that when he used that tone, Harlow normally did as he said.
This time, it wasn’t going to work. She felt totally humiliated.
The worst was this was her home. She couldn’t retreat when it had been invaded with her consent.
But she had the studio, and she could retreat to that part of the property.
The studio was separate from the house and she could put up a do not disturb sign.
“Harlow.” Now there was a warning in his voice. “If you’re over there, I can’t comfort you.”
She spun around to glare at him. “I don’t need comfort. I need to be alone for a little while.”
He shook his head and indicated for Falcon to move back. “That’s the last thing you need. Have you ever heard the old quote, ‘no man is an island’? You try to be, but you have that soft spot that needs protecting.”
“If I do, it isn’t your business or Rainier’s.” She tacked on Rainier at the last minute so it wouldn’t seem as if she was singling him out. “I’ve been on my own a long time, Wilder. I appreciate your concern, but I’m just fine.”
He threw back the covers. “No, you’re not. The rest of the world might not see it, but I can, and I’m making it my business.”
“What are you doing?” Harlow was horrified.
Wilder ignored Falcon’s warning and turned so he could drop both feet onto the floor.
“You’re impossible.” She hissed it at him and glared at Falcon as she stormed across the room to put a restraining hand on Wilder’s chest. “What use are you if you can’t control your patient? ” she asked.
Wilder’s hand clamped over hers, holding her palm to his heart as he settled back against the pillows.
“He’s all yours,” Falcon said. “I’m tired of babysitting. You can deal with his tantrums. His chart is on the wall, although he gets up regularly and messes with it.”
Wilder gave him the middle finger as the other man walked out, leaving Harlow alone with him. Satisfaction gleamed in his crystalline eyes for just a moment.
Harlow took a deep breath and let it out.
Wilder had such a way of throwing her off-balance.
“You have got to stop getting up and down like a crazy person, Wilder. You know better. You might not be a medical doctor, but you’re highly intelligent and have enough knowledge to know that you need a little healing time before you start PT or moving around to the point you undo all the internal work the surgeons did on you. ”
She swept a hand through her hair, betraying her agitation. He was looking at her so intently, as if he was hanging on every word, but she wasn’t certain he was actually hearing what she was saying.
“You’re a grown man. You’re intelligent. Why would you risk your life like this?”
He caught her hand again and pulled it to his chest, his thumb sliding over the sensitive skin of her inner wrist. “You have a point, Harlow, a good one. I am intelligent, just as you are. I am grown-up, just as you are. So I’m asking you the same question.
Why would you risk your life like you do? ”
Her heart dropped as his piercing gaze met hers.
Hawkin Wilder wasn’t a man to challenge to a verbal match.
He would win every time, at least with her.
She should have known he would ask the hard questions she had refused to think about.
Denying his accusation was useless, and she wasn’t a coward.
If she wanted him to face truths, she had to do the same.
“I suppose I never looked at it that way. I run. I’ve been running all of my life.
When I climb, my mind doesn’t think about the things I know my father has done and my mother has covered up.
I don’t have to think that I should have tried harder to get someone to believe me when I told people about him.
If I had, maybe this young woman who disappeared would still be alive.
Maybe any other girl he touched without their consent wouldn’t be a weight on my shoulders.
And the death threats? Maybe I think I deserve them as much as the ones my parents receive. ”
All the while she spoke, the pad of his thumb gently glided back and forth over her inner wrist. His touch felt far too intimate, creating a bond between them that wasn’t really there.
Couldn’t ever be there. She tugged on her hand to get it back, but his fingers curled around her wrist like a shackle, holding her clenched fist against his heart.
“Thank you for telling me the truth,” he said.
“I wasn’t throwing a tantrum to get my way because I’m tired of being in this bed the way Falcon or even Rainier and obviously you believe.
You were missing. You’ve been avoiding me since I came to you for help.
I wasn’t able to talk to you or see that you were okay with the danger I was clearly bringing to you.
Then, when Rainier found that threat in your mailbox and no one could find you, I had to find you myself.
That’s what I do best. I track people. I’m not losing you. ”
She found herself frowning. When she did, he immediately rubbed at her lower lip with his finger. Again, his touch and the gesture were far too intimate.
“I don’t understand.”
“You don’t want to understand. We’ve been dancing around each other for a long time, Harlow.
It took me a little time to realize you weren’t going to stand still and let me catch you.
You weren’t playing games; you simply weren’t going to allow yourself to be in a relationship.
It took me far too long to realize the truth, and when I did, I had to figure out how best to handle the situation. ”
“The situation?” she echoed faintly. He was so intense. She couldn’t do intense. A part of her knew where he was going, but most of her rejected even the possibility.
“When I call you mon rêve, that’s what you are to me: my dream. The only dream I’ve ever had. The only one I will ever have.”
She was shaking her head again, something she found she often did around him. He made no sense. “I’m no one’s dream, Wilder. Nightmare, maybe, but not dream. You may think you have an idea what my family is like, but my father’s a monster. That’s what I come from.”
His thumb slid gently from her bottom lip to her chin. “He may be one, Harlow. There are many monsters in this world. I grew up with one as well. The things I saw as a child, the things I was forced to do, losing my mother and brother the way I did, all of that shaped me into a monster.”
Her treacherous heart wept for him. How had he lost his mother?
His brother? She couldn’t have said anything, even if she tried.
The last thing she expected was for him to open up to her.
Wilder had a reputation even among Rainier’s security force.
From the beginning, when he’d first come onto her radar, she felt the darkness in him.
It was rumored he was a little crazy, a wild card, yet he appeared to be close with Sam, Zale and Rainier.
They were very good judges of character.