Sins and Scarlet Lace Read Online Free PDF Page B

hand, the last person she expected to see was Declan. He got out of the black Jeep and raised his brows when she pointed the rifle in his direction.
    “Are you going to shoot me?” he asked.
    “I’m undecided. Are you here to take me back in?”
    He sighed and she realized he looked tired, but she knew looks could be deceiving. She’d lived with a consummate actor, and as far as she was concerned Declan and Kane had been cut from the same cloth. His gaze landed on the Sold sign that was staked in her front yard.
    “I’m glad you were able to sell. I wish you’d let me help you.”
    “You had your chance. You’d be the last person I’d take help from. What do you want, Dec?”
    “I needed to see you,” he said.
    The gun wavered in her hands and she lowered it some so he wouldn’t notice how the words affected her. There was nothing left between them but bitter memories and regret.
    “You’ve seen me. Now leave.”
    “Soph, I need to explain why I was there. Why I had to be so hard on you.”
    “I don’t want to hear explanations. I want you to leave. I can tell by looking at you that you feel guilty.” Bitterness tinged her voice even though she tried not to let him see how betrayed she felt. “There’s no reason to feel guilty. You had a job to do, and we’re no longer the people we used to be. No harm, no foul. You only took part in destroying my life. Again.”
    “I was going to ask you to marry me when I came home from that last mission,” he said.
    She sobbed out a laugh and felt the hysteria bubbling inside of her. “Don’t you dare say that, you bastard. Not after all this. The least you owe me is honesty. I suppose next you’ll tell me you sent me away and told me you didn’t love me anymore for my own good.”
    “I thought I was protecting you. The last thing I wanted was for you to be dragged into this kind of life, where someone will kill you just as easily as they blink. It’s not what you deserved. I know you probably don’t believe me.”
    Tears ran down her face freely now and he was just a blur in her vision. She leaned against the porch column as all her strength seemed to drain from her bones.
    “No, I don’t believe you. You killed me that day, Dec. The scars you left on me are just as permanent as the one on your face.”
    She meant to hurt him, to lash out, but he didn’t even flinch at her words.
    “I know, and it was too late to do anything about it by the time I realized I’d made the biggest mistake of my like. You were already in love with Kane and I’d lost my chance.”
    “I was never in love with Kane,” she screamed. “I was just a mark to him. Did you know he romanced me like you did? What did you tell him about us? He knew how to get to me. How to make me believe that there were other men like you out there. It didn’t matter that the physical connection wasn’t there. I told myself he was a good man and that’s all I could really ask for. And I decided that if he was a good man then I could probably grow to love him one day.”
    She swiped at the tears on her face, clearing her vision, but Declan still stood in front of her as stoic as ever. She wasn’t sure he was capable of emotion. He’d proven that when he’d relentlessly questioned her for weeks to try to prove her guilt.
    “He hated you,” she said. “Did you know that?”
    Declan’s voice was tight when he answered. “I got the idea once we started going through his personal belongings.”
    “I didn’t realize how deep his jealousy went. Hell, I didn’t even know the two of you were friends until I saw you at the wedding. Stupid me.”
    “Not you, Sophia. Never you. He fooled us all.”
    “He raped me on our wedding night.” The words came out of nowhere, and she wasn’t even sure she’d said them aloud, but the stiffening of Declan’s posture and the barely restrained fury on his face assured her she had. “And the whole time he held me down—” She paused to gasp in a