Читать книгу Yuletide Protector - Julie Miller - Страница 8

Prologue

September

“I’ll save you,” she whispered into the phone.

Brian Elliott looked at her through glass that separated them. The lines of strain around his blue eyes and handsome mouth were more pronounced. And the orange jumpsuit certainly didn’t flatter.

After all she’d done for him, he still doubted her? “You don’t think they’re screening all my visitors? You’re tempting fate by coming here.”

If he wasn’t looking so haggard, so in need of the comfort he normally sought from her, she would have been irritated by his doubt. Instead, she smoothed a smile on her face—for his benefit as well as the guards who might be watching. “It makes perfect, logical sense for me to come see you. Besides, you’ve had a lot of visitors, haven’t you? Too many for the authorities to focus solely on me.”

“You arranged all those visits?”

“Not many people can benefit from being associated with an alleged serial rapist.” She’d gone to work as soon as she learned the news of his arrest. “Some of your friends and business associates probably are truly concerned for your welfare. And I might have suggested to some of them how staying in your good graces would prove most beneficial once you’re acquitted.”

He tipped his mouth closer to the phone that connected them and rubbed at his temple, as though the stress of the past couple of days had given him a headache. “How can you be sure that will happen? The police have eyewitness testimony. Experts from the crime lab to talk about trace evidence and DNA.”

“The only thing their evidence proves is that you once fathered a child with a woman who’s now in a mental institution. The D.A. will never put her on the stand to argue that it wasn’t consensual sex. Everything else is circumstantial. A good lawyer will make that go away—and you’ve got the best attorney in town on your payroll. Any other charges are minor, and I expect you’ll get probation and time served.”

Her heart twisted with sympathy when he rubbed at the cuts and scratches on his forearm, painful wounds inflicted during his arrest just days earlier. “All it takes is one woman to stand up and identify me as the man who raped her.”

“An eyewitness?” Despite his pain, she had to laugh. “How can any victim swear it was you? They were all unconscious, and you wore a mask.”

“There’s Hope Lockhart.”

“You didn’t rape her.”

He cupped the receiver with his hand and revealed a hushed admission. “I wanted to. I wanted to hurt her so badly—”

“Shh.” She leaned toward the glass and splayed her fingers there, wishing she could physically touch him and reassure him. “A jury can’t convict you for being angry and having these revenge fantasies. But it won’t help public perception if word gets out that you...enjoy the violence.”

“I’m sitting in a jail cell. My bail hearing isn’t until tomorrow. Public opinion doesn’t matter in here.”

“You talk as though you don’t believe you’re getting out.”

She was pleased when he flattened his larger hand close to his side of the reinforced glass, touching her in the only way he could. For now. As long as he needed her, as long as he loved her, she’d find a way to make it work so they could both get what they wanted. “Do you really think we can fix this and make it go away?”

“Yes. But you have to trust me.” She pulled her hand away, getting down to business. Brian had always appreciated her practical sense about how to get things done. It was one of the things that had drawn them together in the first place, even though the arguments often drove them apart. “I would have taken care of that issue with Miss Lockhart, too, if I had known how upset you were. If you had listened to me before, if you had let me handle the situation, you wouldn’t be sitting where you are now.”

“Let you handle it? I can’t tolerate a betrayal like that. She needed to understand that I—”

“Hush.” She quieted him before his agitation drew the guard’s attention to their conversation. “Your emotions are your Achilles heel, Brian. I can think rationally, for the both of us. Let me do this for you. I’ve saved your gorgeous hide more than once. That was our agreement, remember? I take care of you. I know you’re sick. I can live with that. As long as you love me. But you have to trust—”

“Sick?” He shook his head and leaned back, the boardroom glare that had intimidated many an adversary directed squarely at her. “Trusting a woman is what got me into this mess in the first place.”

She smiled. Poor thing. Didn’t he know by now she couldn’t be intimidated? “Trusting a woman is what will get you out of it, too.”

She waited, displaying far more patience than he had ever shown her. At last, his broad shoulders lifted with a heavy breath and he nodded, accepting her promise. Accepting her.

“I love you.” Pursing her lips together, she blew him a kiss. “Oh, and Brian, darling?” There were rules to this relationship, and he needed to understand them. “I’m willing to do whatever is necessary to save you. But if you betray who I am to anyone—a cell mate, a police officer or even a fly on the wall—I will destroy you.” She smiled again. “Now, say you love me.”

She held the defiant challenge in his dark eyes until, with a nod of understanding, he lowered his gaze. “I love you.”

She hung up the phone and walked away.