Page 159 of Her Reluctant Hero
“So?”
“Mallory, I—” He couldn’t say the word, swallowed it.
She sat up slowly to look at him. “Adrian?”
“Damn it, Mal, I raped you!” He whispered the word even though there was no one around to hear it.
She stared, and her mouth opened and closed for a minute. “You never did.” Her voice was hard, as if shehadblocked it out, didn’t want to accept it.
He had to turn away, though she was riveted to him. “I did. I was angry and I hurt you.”
“Adrian, you never hurt me, not that way.” She laid a hand against his cheek but he pushed it away.
He wasn’t ready for her forgiveness. He hadn’t earned it. “I did. I saw the marks on you. I saw the look in your eyes when I left.”
She tossed her hair over her shoulder, as if this was the most casual of conversations. “You left marks on me before, and I on you. We were never much for being gentle.”
“But I’d never been that mad before. When it was over, I wasn’t—anything. Not relieved, not happy, not angry. Just empty.”
She went still, sad. “Like our marriage.”
“Jesus, Mal.” He drew his legs up, dropped his head between his knees. “It was the nastiest feeling, you know? Feeling that way, and looking at you and seeing you hurt. And you don’t even remember.”
“Those days kind of blended together. We fought, we had sex, kind of like we were trying to hold on to each other the only way we knew how.”
As they were doing now. And with that, Adrian knew to win her back, he had to break that pattern. If only he could figure out how.
One question first. “Did you stop loving me?”
She took a deep breath. “I hated you for a while, but no. Not for a long time.”
“But you stopped.”
Mallory wished he’d stop pressing this, when both their emotions were in such turmoil. She let her pent-up breath out on a sigh, wanting to lie to him, wanting to protect herself. So she had no idea why instead she said, “No.”
“Mal.” He leaned toward her, eyes glinting in the firelight.
Hopeful.
God, she wanted to kiss him more than she wanted to breathe, more than she wanted to live, but she’d already opened herself too much.
To break the mood, she reached past him for a book to toss in the fire. As she heaved, a piece of notebook paper fluttered out. She was about to toss it in, as well, but Adrian closed his hand over her wrist.
“What?”
“It’s Robert’s handwriting. And it’s torn from his journal.”
She ran her finger over the ragged edge of the page. “So? His book, his notes.”
He held up the paper so she could see it. “It’s numbers. Big numbers. Money.”
When she took the paper, he grabbed a stick they hadn’t yet tossed on the flames and dragged the burning book out of the fire, scooped sand on it to extinguish it. Mallory turned her attention to the numbers on the spiral paper she held.
Four columns lined the page. The first was dates, the second letters, abbreviations. The third was ratios. The last was dollar amounts, some with minus signs, some with addition signs. Minus signs outnumbered addition signs four to one.
Adrian leaned close and took the paper from her, swearing softly.
“What?”
