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Closing his book, he set it aside, pushed to his feet and stretched. Lillian admired his lean height, guessing he stood around six-four as she recalled what he looked like naked, his impressive, ripcord muscles and deceptive strength. Her blood flow heated, forcing her gaze away before he noticed her staring. The only explanation for her continued, strong responses must be stress, but regardless, she wasn’t in the market for another relationship. Not even a strictly physical one. She shut the notebook and went to dish out the chili thinking tomorrow and the snowplows couldn’t come soon enough.
Like last night, Lillian donned his shirt and climbed into bed hours before Mitchell, staring into the fire until the heat and wavering flames lulled her to sleep. But unlike the previous night, tonight she wasn’t weighed down with exhaustion to keep the bad dreams at bay. Visions of happy times with her sister kept getting jumbled with the weeks she’d lived on edge under Brad’s roof.
“Come on, sis. You can do it.” Lillian held her hand down from where she sat perched on the limb of the large oak tree in their front yard. “But hurry, before Mom sees us and makes us do chores.”
“I don’t know why I let you talk me into these things, Lil.” Liana grabbed her hand and swung up onto the branch next to her just as their mother popped her head out the back door and called for them.
They both giggled, refusing to answer until they were threatened with getting grounded for a month.
“I love you, but I’m not missing the eighth-grade dance just to get out of cleaning my room.” Liana delivered a playful punch to her arm and then jumped to the ground.
Lillian groaned, clutched her arm and rolled over as Brad’s cold voice replaced her sister’s happy lilt.
Gripping her upper arm as she entered the house, Brad swung her about with an angry glare. “Where the fuck have you been?”
Her arm throbbed and Lillian pictured the new bruise already forming. Gritting her teeth, she ground out, “I told you I had an art class this evening.”
Yanking her against him, his eyes bored into hers. “You better not be lying. One injection and Liana will suffer.” Releasing her arm, he delivered a punch to her stomach that doubled her over on a gasp. “Now come upstairs and make it up to me.” He hauled her up the stairs, Lillian cringing at the thought of him touching her again.
She let her mind go blank as he stripped her, following his demands with feigned enthusiasm. He never hurt her in bed. On the contrary, he whispered words of apology, his touch gentle, his praise of her over the top. She went along, nodded her forgiveness and accepted his thrusts, all the while vowing revenge one day…
With a quiet sob, Lillian slid out of the bed before she woke Mitchell. The extra warmth from the simmering embers beckoned and she padded across the wood planking to stand on the braided rug before the low, crackling flames. Her heart pounded and her body quaked from the conflicting emotions of sadness and fury, making her wonder which would eventually overtake the other. She’d always been the instigator of trouble and daring between her and Liana, her little stunts landing them in hot water nine times out of ten. She was used to accepting the blame and figured that was why she kept faulting herself for something neither of them could have seen coming. Her shame stemmed from being unable to find a way to defy Brad’s threats and keep Liana safe, and she needed to learn to live with her degrading compliance to his possession and painful punches.
“Are you okay?”
Lillian stiffened, anger rising to the surface with Mitchell’s intrusion. “I’m fine. Sorry I woke you,” she replied without turning around. Between sorrow pricking her eyes from missing Liana and bile lodged in her throat from recalling the distaste of Brad’s touch, she didn’t trust herself to remain bottled up if she faced him.
Mitchell fisted his hands to keep from reaching for Lillian. Her soft moan of distress had woken him from a light sleep and he’d opened his eyes to see her walking to the fireplace. His shirt hung to her mid-thighs, leaving those long, slender legs bare. Need poured off her rigid body in waves as she looked down at the small, residual glow. For what, he didn’t know and shouldn’t care. So why was he standing behind her now, listening to her lie when she said she was fine? He swore he possessed no desire to get involved with her troubles, but the sob wrenched from her throat that had roused him shredded that resolve, the quiver in her voice just now tugging at his compassion.
“Now, that’s a lie, pet,” he admonished, injecting a note of steel in his tone. He hated to ask but needed to know. “Were you raped?”
She whirled on him so fast, he took a step back, those purple eyes blazing with hate and a hint of shame, her face red, either from the heat or anger, he couldn’t tell which. “No. I went to his bed willingly every time he bruised me. And if you think that makes me a pathetic moron, too stupid to live, I don’t give a damn.” Lillian poked a finger at his bare chest, the jab landing right between his pecs. “Quit calling me pet. I don’t like it.”
Mitchell thanked his considerable control as he moved forward again, close enough his flannel shirt she wore brushed his abdomen. “I don’t think anything because that’s not the whole truth. There are all kinds of ways to coerce an unwilling woman. If you don’t want to tell me, fine by me. Since we will be parting ways tomorrow, you won’t have to hear me calling you pet again, which is good because I don’t take orders, I give them.”
Her jaw tightened as she gave one jerky nod and spun around again, but not before he caught the same flash of despair in her eyes he’d glimpsed several times before, the same despondency that still pulled him down when he thought of Abbie.
“Then there’s nothing else to say, is there?” The slight catch in Lillian’s whisper belied her stiff stance of peevish anger.
No matter how much he did not want to involve himself, he couldn’t leave her hurting. Like he said, they would be going their separate ways within hours. What could it hurt if he gave her a better memory to think about when the bad ones intruded? It would sure help ease his conscience if he could send her on her way knowing he’d done what he could to help her cope with her demons.
“How long has your sister been gone?”
She sucked in a breath and whispered, “Come morning, five days.”
Mitchell swore, sympathizing with her. The acute pain of his own loss had abated to a dull ache, but those first days of shocked grief were still too easy to recall. Before he could change his mind, he rested his hands on her shoulders and rubbed the tenseness out of them until she released her pent-up breath on a sigh. Then he slid his hands down her arms, circled her wrists and lifted her hands to the wooden mantel just above her head.
Leaning his head down sideways, he rested his lips against her ear. “You’ve trusted me for two days. Trust me a little longer and leave your hands there until I give you permission to lower them.”
Her back muscles went taut and this time, her whisper trembled. “Why? What are you going to do?”
“Make you forget the bad for a short time. Give you a new, better memory to leave here with. Trust me to do that.”
Mitchell kept his hands over hers and called on his patience as Lillian took her time answering. When she did, the relief and pleasure her reply sent rushing through him would bear deeper scrutiny later, much later.
“Okay, yes, I’ll do that.”
&n
