Whether any future relationship could overcome what had happened fifteen years ago, she didn’t know yet. And Cole had been part of that horror. He belonged to another lifetime, and he had no place in her here and now. He was not that tender boy she had once loved any more than she was that naive sixteen-year-old girl. At thirty-two, his face had taken on a mature seasoning that was both handsome and cold. And his eyes, oh God, they were the worst. She would have known them anywhere, and yet it was as if she’d never looked into them before. Gold flecks like solar flares dotted in the brilliant green of them, compelling and yet bitter now, the gentleness all gone.
Cole Dempsey the man was hard as stone.
“If you’re here to dig up the past, the last thing I’ll ever do is help you,” she promised. “So if that’s what you’re here for, you’re wasting your time. There are several perfectly fine new motels closer to town—”
He shook his head. “You’re running a business here, Bryn. What kind of business turns away customers? Especially a business that’s in dire need of cash flow.”
She carefully schooled her features to reveal nothing of the clean shot he’d achieved. Yes, Bellefleur was in trouble. When the sugar mill had gone under, they’d nearly lost everything. Her father’s drinking and gambling had consumed the last years of his life. Maurice Louvel had drowned himself in alcohol and debts until he couldn’t see his way to the surface anymore, then he’d shot himself by the edge of the reflecting pond.
“Your father ruined us,” she bit out. “He got the revenge he’d sworn, didn’t he? He killed Aimee and destroyed my father—”
“And your father did nothing?”
His gaze bored into her.
“Your father deserved everything that happened to him,” Bryn hissed back. “For what he did to Aimee. How dare you ask me to care what happened to him after that? Do you think it was easy for my family?”
Her nightmares about that night were both surreal and vivid. Over and over, she had to hear her sister’s scream, her mother’s cries in the darkness, her father’s frantic running, lights flashing over the grounds, and the angry shouts, a popping gunshot and the silence. The silence was the most horrible part.
In the silence, she always saw Aimee, face up at the edge of the reflecting pool, bloody, battered, her life gone. And Wade Dempsey beside her at the pond’s bank, one bullet clean through his heart, gazing lifelessly up at the death-dark sky. A bullet Maurice Louvel had fired.
Ten years later, Bryn’s father had placed himself in that same spot, only this time he’d shot himself. He’d won his freedom in a courtroom, but he could never forgive himself for inspiring the revenge that had made Wade Dempsey kill Aimee. To the end, her father had blamed himself for his daughter’s murder.
Cole’s voice was as bitter as the look in his eyes. “Oh, I hope it was hard, Bryn. I hope it was very hard. Your father was judge, jury and executioner that night.”
“He was out of his mind that night. Who wouldn’t be after finding their daughter dead in their own backyard?”
“Oh, I know all about it. Temporary insanity. He got off, didn’t he? No court in St. Salome Parish would convict a war hero and the town’s biggest employer, would they? Even if it was all lies. That’s right.” He kept his agonizing gaze on her. “Lies. Do you know I’ve read every document I could get my hands on connected to your sister’s murder, Bryn? Have you?”
“No,” she said finally. She couldn’t bear it. She didn’t want to know more about that night than she already did. The bitter strife between her parents, the near-violent altercation when her father had fired Wade Dempsey, and the horror of everything that followed. It was enough. Too much.
Bryn would never forget the betrayed fire in Cole’s eyes when she’d sat across a courtroom from him months later when the verdict was read and Maurice Louvel was acquitted for taking a father’s justice. But she had lost Cole even before that last day of the trial, and there was no going back. She’d had to start over, just as he and his mother had had to do when they had left Azalea Bend. Her father hadn’t been able to start over, though.
Her father had lost more than a daughter that night. He’d lost his will to work and even to live. His business had been destroyed, his family broken. Battered beyond repair, just like Aimee.
Nothing had ever been the same.
“Your father lied,” Cole said. “Your mother lied. And you lied, Bryn. And we both know it.”
Guilt was a horrible thing, but Bryn had learned to live with it. The only lie she’d told wouldn’t change the fact that Wade Dempsey had murdered Aimee. Her father’s pride, her mother’s dignity—it was little enough to leave them after they’d lost Aimee.
And for that, to save what was left of her family, Bryn had lied. To Cole, it had been betrayal. To Bryn, it had been her only choice for her family’s survival.
“Go away, Cole. If you can’t let go of the past, that’s your problem.”
“Oh no, that’s where you’re wrong. It’s your problem, too—because you and your family weren’t the only ones who lied. This whole town is full of liars, and I might not have been able to prove that fifteen years ago, but things are different now.”
Bryn’s blood ran cold. Oh, this wasn’t the first time she’d heard Cole’s conspiracy theory about the prosecution. Even at seventeen, he’d been determined that his father had been innocent. But he wasn’t seventeen anymore.
What havoc could Cole’s misplaced, bitter loyalty create now? He blamed an entire town for his father’s downfall. And she knew he also blamed her. She’d hurt him, she knew that. But he’d also hurt her more than he could possibly realize. She’d never imagined she could be as close to anyone as she was to Aimee—until she’d fallen in love with Cole. Then she’d lost them both in one night.
And he could still hurt her. She had a business to build, and everything depended on its success.
“Aimee’s murder is the last thing I plan to discuss with you, Cole.” She gave her words the ring of finality, but she might as well have flung them at a stone wall for all the effect they appeared to have on Cole.
“It’s late, and I realize seeing me again is…upsetting,” he said. “We’ll talk tomorrow.”
God, he was arrogant. “I’m not upset, Cole. I’m not bound by the past as you clearly are.” She took another step back, bumping into the column behind her.
“Did you know I’m an attorney now?” he went on in his quiet-steel voice as if she’d said nothing. The lethal ice of his eyes prickled uneasiness up the nape of her neck. “That’s right. I worked my way through college, made something of myself that no one in Azalea Bend thought possible. Especially you, isn’t that right, Bryn?”
He stood a breath away, and with the column pressed against her back, she had no room to get away. She was trapped, in every way possible.
“You’re looking at the newest partner in Granville, Piers and Rousseau. That’s the biggest law firm in Baton Rouge, if you don’t know,” he continued, lifting his hand and running the tips of his fingers down the side of her face. Her pulse jumped in response. “I’m a
