Too Wicked to Keep. Julie Leto

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СКАЧАТЬ couldn’t live with the lies. Unlike you, I believe people should have the whole truth about someone before they make a serious decision. Marshall didn’t have to honor our engagement. He could have…he should have called the whole thing off. But he didn’t. He’s a real man who loves me enough to forgive me. And I love him. I always have and I always will.”

      David stood, his head shaking from side to side as if he was trying to process all she’d said. But how could he? He didn’t have the capacity to understand things like love and compassion and honesty and forgiveness. If he had, he never would have sought her out in the first place.

      Then he went still, took a deep breath and met her confused stare with clear, determined eyes.

      “My name’s not David.”

      Her heart fell, even though this news came as no surprise, not after all the searches she’d done after he’d disappeared with her painting.

      “Who are you, then?”

      He hesitated.

      The momentary pause acted like an explosion of awareness. She’d made the right choice in confessing to Marshall. She’d made the right choice in accepting his forgiveness and pushing her leftover feelings for David Brandon—or whatever his name was—out of her heart.

      The truth did not come easily to this man—and it never would.

      He’d come into her life at precisely the wrong time. Just out of graduate school and only a few months into her first job, she was staring down at a future that had been mapped out for her from before she was born. Until she’d met him, she’d never questioned any of it. She’d willfully stepped onto the path of her life, never straying, never questioning, never doing anything her family would be ashamed of, even if she had fantasized about dangerous adventures and sensual sins.

      Then he’d shown up. He’d offered her a taste of the very things that had always been forbidden—and for that, she’d paid a high price.

      “Tell me your real name.”

      “Daniel,” he replied. “Daniel Burnett.”

      “And you’re from?”

      “Anywhere,” he said, shaking his head. “Nowhere. Doesn’t matter, Abby. Nothing matters. Not if you’re really going to marry him. I made a lot of mistakes, but the worst was falling in love with you.”

      She snorted, not caring that it was unattractive and unladylike. “That was your biggest error? The so-called falling-in-love part? Not the lying or the scheming or the fact that you took the one thing my grandmother left me when she died?”

      “No, that’s not what I meant. That was wrong, too. All of it. But it’s what I do. It’s who I am…or who I was, before I met you.”

      She glared at him, willing herself to ignore how sincere he looked, how broken.

      “And you expect me to believe that after all those carefully crafted lies, you’re now telling me the truth? You’re reformed? Just like that?”

      “No. I mean, yes, I want you to believe me. I need you to believe me. I’m not reformed. I don’t know if that’s even possible, but I do love you.”

      She contained a bitter chuckle. God, how had she become so jaded so fast?

      Falling for a liar like Daniel Burnett had definitely helped.

      “And why should I believe anything you say, Daniel?” she asked, putting a searing emphasis on the name the first time it passed her lips.

      “I can’t stop thinking about you.”

      “That’s just your conscience.”

      “No, that can’t be it.”

      “Probably not, since I doubt you even have a conscience.”

      “I probably don’t. At least, not one I’ve paid any attention to for a long time. When I do a job, I do a job. I get what I came for, I sell it for the highest price and I walk away. It’s what I do. It’s what I’ve done my whole life. But suddenly, that’s changed. I can’t get you out of my mind. I can’t stop thinking about what I did. Remorse is an emotion I’ve avoided my entire life, and yet that’s gotta be what I’m feeling, right? That has to mean something.”

      Abby took a bold, if shaky, step toward the door. This conversation was over. This situation was over. “It means you crossed the line this time, Daniel. It means you went too far. If you want to find my grandmother’s painting and return it, that’s up to you. But I want no part of it—no part of you.”

      She reached for the doorknob, but he intercepted her.

      “You loved me,” he insisted.

      Just a short time ago, his hand on hers would have felt exciting, wicked, thrilling.

      Now, it just felt foreign.

      And wrong.

      “I loved the idea of you. I loved the secrecy and the illicit sex. It was like a drug. But I never meant to hurt anyone. You did. If not for this sudden burst of conscience, you would have walked away without a second thought. I may never forgive myself for my part in this mess, but Marshall has forgiven me. He trusts me to never make that mistake again. That’s what love is, David or Daniel or whoever you are. Maybe someday, you’ll learn about real love, but it won’t be from me.”

      Though she didn’t want to, she took one last look at him, with his dark, swarthy skin, close-cropped hair and twinkling green eyes—which had, in the uncertain light, lost their clever confidence. Every muscle, every fiber, every bone in her body ached for him, but she pushed the empathy aside. She couldn’t care about his pain. She couldn’t even believe it existed. Nothing about him was real.

      “I’m going to go ask my mother to help me out of this dress. If you’re not gone by the time we get back, I will call the police and I will make sure you’re prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”

      “Abby, please,” he began, but he stopped when she turned her back and snatched the doorknob.

      And with more power and will than she ever thought she possessed, Abby walked away.

      2

      Present Day…

      “IF YOU NEED SOMETHING slick to rub on there, I think I have just the thing.”

      Daniel Burnett stopped tugging at the ring caught on his knuckle. He must have looked like a moron, sitting in a New Orleans casino, tugging at his finger as if the gold band was cutting off his circulation. He couldn’t imagine why any woman would proposition him under these circumstances, especially since he probably looked like a schmo trying to hide the evidence of his marital status.

      But when he looked up at the woman behind the sultry proposition, he nearly slid right off the bar stool.

      Everything about her was different. Her hair, once a straight, unadorned brown, now glimmered with striking copper highlights. Amber eyes once muted behind square-shaped red-framed glasses now flashed from СКАЧАТЬ