Part 11 (2/2)

”Huh?”

”Thanks for tonight. It was just what I needed.”

”You're welcome, Kit-Cat. Glad to be of service.”

She squeezed his hand and smiled. He felt ten feet tall and twenty years old again.

His hot breath fanned her neck, moved across her collarbone and swept across her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. She lay beneath him, her body rigid with fear and revulsion. His mouth pressed against her breast, surrounding her nipple through her cotton pajama top.

Please, G.o.d, make him stop. Don't let him hurt me again. I'd rather die than endure what he's going to do to me.

His hand slipped inside her pajama bottoms and cupped her intimately.

Tensing, she held her thighs tightly together, fighting his probing fingers.

”I don't want to hurt you,” he told her, his voice a dark, evil whisper. ”But if you force me to hurt you, it will be your own fault.”

It's not my fault. It's not. I don't want this. I hate you. I hate what you do to me.

He forced his hand between her legs.

Tears lodged in her throat, tears she would not shed. No matter what he did to her, she would never cry, not ever again.

His fingers thrust into her. She bit down on her lip to keep from screaming. But in her mind, she screamed and screamed and screamed.

John Earl leaned over the bed and grasped his wife's trembling shoulders. ”Wake up, Ruth Ann. Wake up, honey.” He shook her gently.

Her eyelids flew open, and she stared up at him, her gaze filled with terror.

”It's all right,” he told her as he sat on the edge of the bed. ”You were having a nightmare. That's all.”

s.h.i.+vering uncontrollably, she nodded and reached out for him. He took both of her unsteady hands in his, brought her cupped hands to his mouth and kissed the tips of her fingers.

”You're safe.” More than anything, John Earl wanted to erase that expression of fear from Ruth Ann's beautiful dark eyes. He never saw that look except after she had one of those horrific nightmares. She seldom had them now; as a matter of fact, it had been well over a year since the last one.

She pulled her hands from his and eased up in bed, then offered him a rea.s.suring look. ”Did I wake you? If I did, I'm sorry.” Her gaze scanned over him, apparently noting that he was wearing his pajama bottoms.

”I wasn't asleep,” he said. ”I was sitting up over there reading”-he indicated the chair by the window-”when I heard you whimpering.”

”I was screaming. Inside my head. Begging G.o.d for help.”

”Hush now. Hush.” John Earl pulled her into his arms and stroked her back. ”Don't relive it. Let it go, sweetheart. Let it go.”

She gasped, then began to weep quietly. He soothed her with his touch and loving words, praying for G.o.d to help him comfort her.

In the first few months of their marriage, the nightmares had plagued her every night, but eventually they had become less frequent until he thought they had finally gone away forever. And then Mark Cantrell was killed. Burned alive as Ruth Ann's father had been burned alive on that long-ago night when someone had set fire to their home.

Ruth Ann lifted her tear-stained face and looked directly at him. ”Sometimes I wish I knew for sure who set that fire, but then, when I think about the possibility that it might have been-”

”It wasn't. You know it wasn't.”

”That's just it-I don't know. What if I've always known and just blotted it out?”

”Ruth Ann, I thought we agreed years ago that neither you nor your mother knows who set the fire that killed your father. It serves no purpose to do this to yourself.”

”But what if...if...” She brushed the tears from her face, took a deep breath, grabbed John Earl's upper arms and held on tightly. ”What if the person who set fire to our house and killed my father is the same person who killed Mark and the Lutheran minister and the Catholic priest?”

”Merciful Lord, do you honestly believe that's possible? Is that what has you so upset, why you had another one of those nightmares?”

”Tell me that I'm wrong.” Her nails bit into his biceps. ”Tell me I have no cause to worry.”

He pulled loose of her tenacious grip, held her hands between them and said, ”You're wrong. You have no reason to worry. I'm safe. You're safe. Your father's death nearly twenty years ago has nothing to do with what happened to Mark or the others.”

I am right, aren't I, dear Lord? Please, let me be right.

”You don't have to walk me to the door,” Cathy said when Jack offered to help her out of the car, but she took his hand all the same.

If two weeks ago someone had told her that she would have dinner with Jackson Perdue at the Catfish Shack, she wouldn't have believed it possible. But not only had she shared dinner with Jack, she had laughed with him and danced with him. And he had helped her hold back the memories that threatened her hard-won sanity, memories of the day Mark had died.

Jack had been true to his word. He had given her what she had told him she wanted-not to think about what had happened today or a year ago or eighteen months ago. She had desperately needed to forget about all of it, just for a little while.

They walked up the sidewalk, hand in hand, and then, halfway to Lorie's porch, Jack stopped, looked up at the night sky and said, ”It's a beautiful night.”

Cathy gazed up into the star-studded sky and remembered a long-ago time when they had lain on a blanket in the park and gazed up at a night sky equally as beautiful. Was he remembering that night, too?

He slipped his arm around her waist but didn't pull her against him. ”I'd like to kiss you good-night, but you've already laid down the law about that. So how about a kiss on the cheek?”

”I think that after your playing my knight in s.h.i.+ning armor and running away with me, you deserve a kiss on the cheek.” She lifted her hand and caressed the side of his face.

He tensed instantly and grabbed her hand.

”What's wrong?” she asked.

He held her hand against his cheek, then eased it down his neck and beneath the collar of his s.h.i.+rt. Her fingertips encountered a rough patch of flesh at the base of his neck.

”Feel it? The doctors did a good job on my face, but my shoulder and arm and part of my chest aren't so pretty.”

”Then you were badly wounded, weren't you? Is that why you left the army?”

”I'm not the man I used to be. I wanted you to know, up front, that I've got battle scars on my body and, according to the psychiatrist, on my soul, too.”

<script>