Page 75 of Worth Risking It

Wyatt clucked his teeth and scooped her off the floor, carrying her to the sofa closest the hearth. “She’s not going to tell anyone. She’s my lover.”

She choked on a gasp, her eyes bulging. Her sight darting back and forth between us, she shook her head some more. “No, no! They’ll kill you both. You can’t. You gotta stop it, now!”

I sat beside her while he pulled the coffee table closer and sat on it. “Too late for that,” I whispered, casting him a sideways glance.

“It’s not too late. Chazzy, he will kill you.”

Pursing my lips, I shrugged my shoulders and arched my brows. “He’s worth it.”

Another sharp gasp, her spine snapping straight. “Oh, my god, you’re in love with him.”

I chewed the corner of my bottom lip, flitting my focus to him. “Yes,” I whispered, my heart racing.

She sank into the cushions, curling her legs to her chest. “You have no idea what you’re tempting here.”

An image of the night at the club in Florida flickered in my thoughts and I grimaced, looking over the back of the sofa at the stairs. I wish I didn’t know.

A thud and scratching butted through the tense moment, drawing our attention to the hallway. Wyatt groaned and stood. Pointing at her, he grumbled, “Calm her down. I’ll take care of the rodent.”

When we were alone, she gripped my hand and whispered, “Are you sure you want to take this risk?”

“I don’t really have much of a choice.” Propping my elbow on the cushion, I rested my temple to my fist, ogling her for a moment. “Why didn’t you cut it off with Meyers? Why did you even start to begin with?”

She sighed, a somewhat whimsical look crossing her features. “I found my heart in him. For years, I’d been dead inside, miserable as Jack’s wife, going through one plastic surgery after another to please him, and…” She twisted her mouth and shrugged. “Nothing was ever good enough.”

Twirling a lock of her jagged, frizzed, bleached hair, she cast her focus toward the windows that overlooked the river a few yards away. When she spoke, her voice was soft but distant, her eyes glossing.

“One day, last winter, I had enough,” she muttered. “Meyers came home unexpectedly to get something for Jack and found me on the beach, walking into the water.”

My heart sank, my blood freezing. Slowly sitting up, my hand fell over my chest.

“He ran down the steps as fast as he could, shouting my name.” Her throat constricted, her arms curling over her stomach. A thick tear rolled down her cheek and she sniffled. “I ignored him and kept walking into that icy water wearing a wool trench coat.”

In disbelief, I shook my head. I had never met someone who was so sad and dismal, they thought suicide was the best option.

“Naturally, once that coat got wet, it was like a weight. I sank to the bottom.”

Coughing, she rubbed at the tip of her nose. “Meyers dove in after me, dragged me back to the beach, and just held me while I broke down, screaming and crying, hating him for rescuing me.”

I craned my neck to peer at the hallway, tuning in to the thumps and curses of Wyatt trying to capture the raccoon. The Shaw men were good people. They may have been born for militia purposes, but they had a very humane side to their personalities. It just took the right person to draw it out.

“He picked me up, carried me upstairs, stripped me of those clothes, and wrapped us in blankets in front of the fire because I was so cold, Chazzy. So goddamn cold.”

My focus returned to her. The corner of her mouth was curling, a pinkness rising to her cheeks.

“After a while, I started heating up, but it had nothing to do with that fire,” she giggled, just to immediately frown. “Obviously, nothing happened that day, but the connection was sparked.”

Her lips pursed, her brows arched. “We tried to fight it, we really did. Me because of Jack and, well, Becky. He had never cheated on his wife before…

“After a couple months, we were alone in the house and suddenly, the chemistry exploded, we couldn’t resist it any longer… and Meyers signed his death certificate,” she added, her chin quivering.

“Motherfucker!” Wyatt’s voice rang through the log walls. The laundry door burst open, and he held a pillowcase that was jerking around, a screeching piercing the air. “Door, door, door!”

I jumped to my feet and ran for the entrance, sliding it open. He stumbled outside and I closed it, giggling. Watching him, I crossed my arms and shook my head.

“If you could do things over, would you change anything?”

“I wouldn’t have pushed him away as long as I did. If I knew then how much I would fall in love with him, and how short our time would have been, I would have made love to him that first day by the fire.”