But that wasn't good enough for her, was it? Oh, no. Not for Lexi Stoltz, the nurturer. The woman who steadfastly defended a father who'd apparently treated her like dirt, and was now soothing the damned soul of a man beyond salvation.
It wasn't enough for her to have her precious normalcy. She had to inflict it on him, as well. And dammit, it was hard enough being near her when people were shooting at them. This bull was almost impossible.
He was afraid she had a repeat of last night on her mind. But when she came down from her hour-long soak in the tub wearing sweats and a ponytail, he decided that theory might be off the mark. She'd suggested he take a bath, as well, but he'd settled for a quick shower. And when he'd rejoined her there was a fire snapping in the living room hearth. He knew it before he got to the foot of the stairs. He smelled the burning logs, heard the snapping and hissing of the resin.
And he smelled something else, too. Something spicy and Italian that made him hurry his pace. But he slowed it again when he saw the dancing candlelight in the living room. Half a dozen flickering tapers chased shadows up and down the walls.
He lifted his chin, swallowed hard. He didn't want to go to bed with her again. Much as he'd denied it all day long, that first time had damn near shattered his sanity. It had been too intense. Too hot. Too frantic. And at the same time, too tender, too intimate. And just too damned good.
He hadn't stopped thinking about the way it had felt to hold her in his arms since. At least, not until he'd heard that voice on the lawyer’s answering machine. That voice had shocked him back to reality the way a pail of ice water would have.
How could he have forgotten so easily in Lexi's arms?
It was wrong. And he wouldn't let it happen again. He had to keep his focus, keep his hatred alive and burning.
She came in from the kitchen with a wineglass full of pale pink liquid in each hand. "Thought you could use a little relaxation, too." She handed him one.
He took it, sipped it.
"Dinner's almost ready. Spaghetti and meatballs.”
"You waxing domestic on me, Lexi?" His words came out sounding sarcastic and cold. She flinched and her lips thinned. But that wasn't enough for the bastard inside him. "Look, I don't know what you're expecting this to lead to, but it’s not gonna be a repeat of last night. It can’t be that.”
The stricken look in her eyes faded fast. It was replaced by a look of fury. She snatched the wineglass out of his hand and, with a flick of her wrist, applied its contents to his face.
"It's my house. If I feel like cooking, I'll cook. If you don't like it, you can always leave."
She left him there with wine dripping from his chin and burning his eyes. Maybe he was being just a little bit vain to assume seduction was what she had on her mind. But what the hell was he supposed to think?
He played with that idea for a while. Twenty minutes later she was back, a steaming plate of food in her hand, her wineglass brimming and the bottle tucked under her arm. There was more wine in her glass than there had been before, so she must be on her second. Or third.
She put the plate on the coffee table and sank onto the sofa, curling her legs under her body, drinking deeply from the glass.
"Don't hit the wine too hard. We have to stay sharp."
"You stay sharp," she snapped. "And if you want to eat, do it in the kitchen. I know it’ll come as a shock, Romano, but I don't want your company right now."
He rose to the bait, though he should have known better. With a meaningful glance at the firelight and candles, he said, "You could have fooled me."
“The fire and the candles are for my benefit, not yours. They soothe me when things are falling apart. I had a fire and candles burning that first night you showed up to rain chaos down on my life, too."
She had a point. There had been candles glowing that night. And she hadn't been seducing anyone then. He took a breath, thinking maybe he’d been mistaken.
"I'm sorry if I jumped to the wrong—"
"I don't think there's anything wrong with me. I really don't." She drained the wine, reached for the bottle, refilled her glass.
"Who said there was anything wrong with you?” She was going to get plastered if she kept it up. Her gaze seemed fixated on the dancing firelight, so he took the bottle and set it on the floor beside the sofa, out of her sight.
"Is there?"
He swallowed hard. She hadn't touched her food. "There’s nothing wrong with you."
She met his eyes. She wasn't drunk. If she was, he wouldn't be able to see the hurt in them.
"You lie," she said. "There are lots of things wrong with me. The SVT for starters. And then there's the fact that I can never have children. I don't suppose your background checks on me turned up that little tidbit, did they?"
He flinched when she said it. "You can't believe that matters."
"Matters to me," she told him, and he could tell by the pain in her eyes that it did. It mattered very much.
She shook her head, heaved a long sigh. "This isn't working. I can't relax and pretend things are fine. My brain just isn't buying it." She closed her eyes. "Hand me that stupid book, and then please leave me alone while I read it."
He was only just beginning to realize how much she dreaded reading her father's diary. Maybe she sensed something. Maybe... somewhere deep inside her, it was something she'd known for a long time but hadn't acknowledged. Now she'd be forced to see the truth, ready or not.
He should have been a little more understanding.
"Okay." He took the book from the mantel, carried it to the sofa, set it down beside her. She didn't even look at it. "Are you sure you'll be okay alone?"
"I've always been okay alone, Romano.”
It hurt his feelings, just for an instant. He’d been wrong, before, when he’d wished she would stop calling him by his first name.
*****
She'd said to leave her alone. He didn't. Not really. He left for a few minutes, long enough to eat a plateful of food and pour a glass of milk, though he was dying to sample that wine internally. And when he finished, the meal, which was delicious, he went very quietly into the big foyer, where the stairs landed. He sat down on the bottom step, his milk in his hands, and he watched her.
She read, oblivious to his presence. Her hands trembled a little, then a little more. After a while, blinking as if dazed, she laid the book down, staring straight ahead. What she was seeing, though, wasn't in the living room with her. It was in her mind. And whatever it was, it wasn't pleasant. Not with those tears springing into her eyes. Not with her lower lip quivering that way.
Squeezing her eyes tight, drawing a deep breath, she seemed to gird herself. Then she looked at the pages again, and she read some more.
It was killing him not to go in there. At first, his eagerness had been based on his hope that there would be references to the formula in the diary. But that concern had faded. Now all he wanted to know was what that book could hold that would hurt Lexi so much. Because it was hurting her. Pain etched itself more deeply into her eyes with every page she turned. Romano knew pain. He knew it too well not to see it cutting her heart to ribbons.
It was an hour before she stopped reading. She looked shell-shocked when she closed the cover, laid her father's diary on the table and got to her feet. Her knees wobbled, but he was there before she could fall. He grabbed her shoulders, and gazed down at her face. He wanted to hold her. Lord, how he wanted to hold her.
"Let go."
Two words. A harsh whisper wrapped in hurt and anger. He didn't let go. He pulled her to his chest and slid his arms around her. He stroked her hair, imagined pulling it out of its scrunchy and smoothing it over her shoulders. "What is it? What did he write that hurt you this bad?"
With a strength that surprised him, she pulled free. He didn't try to hold her when she did. Her eyes were tear glazed and distant when they met his.
"You don't care. Why are you asking when you don't care?"
She bent over the coffee table, and when she straightened, she held the diary out to him. "Here. Take it. It's what you came for. It's why you stayed. Take it and read it. Maybe your precious answers are in there. I don't know. I couldn't... didn't finish it."
“Lexi….”
She pressed the book into his hands and turned away, her ponytail snapping with the motion. Romano dropped the journal to the floor. "I don't give a damn about the book right now." He touched her shoulder, and she stopped walking away from him but didn't turn around. "Come on, talk to me. Tell me what's wrong, maybe I can help."
"I don't need your kind of help. Just..." She drew a breath, tears shuddering on its surface like dew on a windblown leaf. "Just leave me alone."
She walked up the stairs. He heard the bedroom door close, and that was all.
"Damn."
His gaze was drawn downward, to the journal on the floor. He could go upstairs after her, but he had a feeling she wouldn't tell him anything. Or, he could leave her alone as she'd asked and read the book for himself.
He squatted on his haunches and picked it up.
*****
Lexi lay face down on the bed, crying, heartbroken. He'd never loved her. Her father had never loved her.
No. Not her father. He hadn't even been her father.
The hateful words he'd scrawled in his poisonous ink about her and her mother were etched indelibly now, in Lexi's mind. She wished she’d never read them.
I couldn't stand the woman. Marrying her was the biggest mistake of my life. I should’ve known all along the brat she carried wasn't mine. Five years later, she died, weak, sickly thing that she was, leaving me to raise another man’s child.
"All those years," she whispered, and she slowly sat up. She brushed the hot tears with the back of one hand and was surprised when no fresh ones fell to burn her face. "All those years, bending over backwards to please him. But it didn't matter what I did, what I was or what I became. None of it mattered."
Her eyes dried slowly, leaving salt on her skin. "None of it mattered," she said again, and finally it was beginning to sink in. Her eyes were opening. She was understanding. It hadn't been that she wasn't good enough, or that she’d disappointed her genius father in some way. It had never been that. She could have been crowned queen of the world and he still wouldn't have loved her.
"It wasn't me. It was never me, it was him." Pushing both hands through her hair, pulling her ponytail free on the way, she sat on the edge of the bed. This wasn't a revelation, though. Not really. It was merely confirmation of something she'd been feeling for a very long time. But she'd been unable to acknowledge it. Because if true, it would mean her father was just a selfish, cruel jerk who was truly unworthy of her love. But he was the only one she’d had to love. And she’d needed, so desperately, someone to care for. Someone to nurture.
The way she’d tried to take care of her mother, as her life had wasted away. The end hadn’t been pretty. And her five-year-old self had been sure she could save her if she tried. So she’d tried, in her way. She’d made artwork to paste on the walls around her mother’s bed. She made sure her water pitcher was always filled with fresh cold water. She’d mimicked the nurses who were there more and more of the time, doing things she saw them do.
It hadn’t been enough, of course. And her mom’s final words to her had been. “I love you, baby. Take care of your father. He’s a great man.”
She sat on the side of her bed, blinking in shock at the clarity of that memory. No wonder, she thought. No wonder.
She had seen her entire life through the warped glass of a lie. She’d chosen to believe what a great man her father was. She'd let herself feel inadequate, unworthy of his love, when deep down, she'd known better. She’d always known better.
Lexi got up and opened the drawer in her nightstand and took out her scrapbook, started leafing through it. There she was getting on the school bus for the first time. The mother of the little boy next door had taken the picture as the two of them boarded together.
She'd been terrified to get on that big yellow bus. Her father had called her a coward.
"But I wasn't," she whispered, remembering now more vividly than she ever had before. "That boy… Billy… he was just as scared as I was. But his mother came to the bus with him. She hugged him and promised she'd be waiting right there when he came home that afternoon."
The pain in her heart softened, began to change form, to alter into something else. She flipped more pages.
There she was in the second-grade production of The Wizard of Oz. Her father had said he’d have taken the afternoon off to come to her play, if she'd landed the lead. But he certainly wasn't missing work to see her play an extra.
“I thought if I could only be better... just be better, he'd love me."
The pain became an ember, and as she flipped more pages, relived other disappointments, other times when he'd made her feel worthless, the ember glowed hotter and brighter.
"Damn you," she whispered when she flipped a page and found a photo of him accepting some award. She stood up, peeling the photo from the book, holding it at arm's length in a white-knuckled grip, and she said it again, louder this time. "Damn you! How could you do that to a motherless child who adored you?"
Rage welled higher, flooding her soul and spilling out of her. It had built up there all her life, but it had been denied. No more. No more.
"It wasn't me, you selfish bastard! Do you hear me? It was never me. It was you!” She flipped pages, tearing out every clipping about his achievements, every story about another award he’d won, every article calling him brilliant. “You're the one who wasn't good enough. You didn't deserve the love I lavished on you. You were stupid to throw it away. And so is that idiot downstairs!"
Crumpling the photos and clippings, she took a shuddering breath. She felt strong. She felt free of a terrible burden she'd carried too long.
"I am good enough," she told the wad in her hands. "I always was. You were too filled with hatred to see it. And Romano is too filled with guilt, and this damned quest for vengeance of his. I love him. I love him a hundred times more than I ever loved you." She fell to her knees in front of the hearth, her chin falling to her chest, her eyes filling again. "But he can't return that feeling any more than you could, can he, Father? No, of course he can't. And I'll tell you something, I'm finished. I'm not going to waste any more of my heart on men too stupid to know its value. I am worthy, dammit. And one of these days, I'll find someone who's worthy of me."
She tossed the wad of keepsakes into the fire. Red flames devoured them, turned them into a charred ball of ash.
"Lexi..."
She stiffened, not turning at the sound of Connor’s hoarse voice coming from the bedroom doorway. How long had he been there? How much had he heard?
It didn't matter, did it? She'd made her decision. She thought she was beginning to know herself as she truly was for the very first time.
She got to her feet, choosing to ignore his intrusion. Crossing the bedroom, she opened the closet and located a cardboard box in the back. Bending to it, she flipped it over, emptying its contents onto the floor and tossing the box onto the bed. Then she left the room, her steps fast and sure. She moved through the cabin, picking up the trophies, the gold watches, the medallions her father had won over the years, then carried them all back into her room and dropped them into the box.
Connor followed her as she moved down the hallway, yanking framed certificates off the walls. He’d hung more every day since they’d arrived. Those went into the box, too.
Then she returned to her bedroom, and went to the framed portrait of her father that sat on her nightstand. She threw it at the box as if she were trying to pulverize it. The sound of breaking glass was satisfying.
"I know you're angry," Connor said. "You have every right to be."
She tipped her jewelry box upside down, shaking the contents onto the dresser, shoving the piles around. Her class ring. He'd complained about the cost but finally shelled out the money for it in lieu of a birthday present. It felt hard and cold in her palm. She fired it into the box like a bullet.
"Will you stop? Will you just talk to me for a minute? Please?" He grabbed her arm. "Stop this. Lexi, we have to talk."
She stood still, panting with rage. She couldn't look at him.
His fingers touched her face, lifted her chin, and she met his eyes. "I'm sorry. I don't know what else to say."
She wanted to fold herself into his arms, just melt against his strong chest, and let him hold her. She wanted that so much!
But she stood still, unblinking. "Did you find what you wanted in the journal?"
He shook his head. “No.”
She was tired. Drained. Slowly her taut muscles unclenched, and she managed to stop grinding her teeth and calm her breathing.
"Tell me what other bombshells you found in that damned book," she said, the words falling from her lips without inflection or emotion.
Connor cleared his throat. "He made a deal with White to develop the formula in secret, right under the noses of his team at the University. It’s all in the journal. He was paid a lot money for it."
She closed her eyes, nodding slowly. "He always complained he was unappreciated. All the acclaim, all the awards, it was never enough. And the whole time, he wasn't even capable of loyalty to his own country. Or even to mankind."
She opened her eyes again, faced Connor's blue ones, wished she didn't see so much concern for her there. "What else?"
"He collected half the money up front, and was supposed to get the rest on delivery of the formula. But apparently, he got cold feet."
"Oh?"
"He accidentally exposed himself. Once he realized he was dying, he seemed to find a conscience. Either that, or he wanted time to try to develop a cure. Whatever his reasons, he backed out of the deal. He knew White wouldn't take that lying down, so he dropped out of sight." Connor watched her face. "For what it's worth, he wrote that he kept himself away from everyone until the incubation period had passed. He knew he was no longer contagious by the time he got near you, or anyone else again.
"The man was a saint," she whispered, remembering the three days he hadn’t come home from his lab. That was when she’d begun to suspect dementia.
"The man was a fool."
"So are you." She held his gaze for a long moment. He didn't argue. In fact, he lowered his eyes as if in silent concession.
She swallowed hard, looked away from him. "I'm a doctor. Why didn't I see symptoms of this virus before it killed him?"
“The symptoms were subtle, and he only recognized them himself because of the research he'd been doing. Forgetfulness was one. The rest he could have hidden easily enough. Fatigue. Night sweats. Gradual decline over a 6- to 12-week period, followed by death."
True, Lexi realized. All true. "Did the diary say what he did with his notes?"
Connor shook his head.
She sighed long and low. "That's it, then."
He looked up, met her eyes, brows raised in question.
"You wasted your time coming up here and dragging me into this whole thing." She fought to keep her voice level, to sound rational and calm. "I really think it's time we ended it, don't you?"
"I can't leave. You know that."
She shrugged. "Then I will. You can have the place to yourself, Romano. Tear up the floorboards looking for the formula. I’ll come back someday when this is all over." She picked up the box she'd been filling and started for the door.
"You can't just leave!"
He followed her, but she did her best to pretend he wasn't there as she descended the stairs. She carried the box full of her father’s accolades through the foyer and to the back door, then balanced it on her hip while she got the door open. She stepped into a pair of tall rubber boots, and then right outside into the frigid air.
Connor grabbed their coats and followed right behind her, yelling questions all the way, but she ignored him. This was between her and her father.
The icy wind stinging her cheeks felt good. It cleared her head, numbed her heart a little to the hurt her false father had inflicted so deeply for so long. She trudged through the snow, across the lawn to the tiny rectangle that had been his garden. And there she tipped the box upside down, spilling its contents onto the snow.
"There you go, Father. You always preferred the company of this stupid patch of dirt to mine. You should have been buried right here. It would have suited you, wouldn't it? No time for a daughter who loved you. No. Out here all the time, digging. Always digging.”
Her tirade fell to silence and the cardboard box fell from her hands. She stood there blinking down at the snow around her feet. And just like that, she knew. She simply knew.
Without lifting her head or turning to face Connor, she said, "Get a shovel."