“Maybe not.” He’d put Amy Finley out of his mind a long time ago, knowing that was best for both of them. Yet with the feel of her hip still imprinted on his skin, he wasn’t sure he could keep her as part of his past. “But I’m glad to know you have some good memories in spite of how it all ended.”
He’d never meant to hurt her, but a whisper of something in her eyes said clearly he had.
Shoving away from the tree, she straightened.
“No sense denying what happened. Especially since it will be a matter of public record soon enough.” She headed toward the cabin, her fine hair gently swaying with her movements. “Thanks for standing between me and the wild boar, Sam,” she called over one shoulder. “It’s been a long time since anyone put himself in harm’s way for me.”
A damn shame, as far as he was concerned.
He watched her walk away, his eyes drawn to her hips as he remembered what she’d felt like in his arms all those years ago. The attraction hadn’t died. It was still plenty hot. Only now that awareness was tempered with suspicion. Something wasn’t right.
Once she reached the cabin door and retreated inside, he pointed his feet home, wondering why she had tried so hard to avoid this conversation. And why she had goaded him about their past to distract him and throw him off guard. He’d like to think it wasn’t going to work.
But the truth of it was he’d be reliving those nights with her in his dreams anyway. And he already remembered them very, very well.
* * *
A WILD BOAR was chasing her.
Amy ran and ran through dark woods. Branches scraped at her face and tore at her clothes as she scrambled down the hill toward the hunting cabin. She was close. So close to safety.
She could almost reach out and touch the familiar rough-hewn logs...
But the grunting pig was faster.
Steaming breath scorched her ear as she struggled. Hairy hooves pawed at her. She wanted to scream. But fear robbed her of sound. Every time she opened her mouth, nothing came out. Tears burned her eyes. Fury fired her insides.
Silently, she lay there as the beast nuzzled under her clothes...
Knifing upright, Amy blinked out of the dream. Drenched in sweat, tangled in her sleeping bag, she felt around to discover she was safely inside her father’s hunting cabin. Tools lay all around her from the remodeling project; the cabin floor was still covered in dust from where she’d removed the wall. She must have been more rattled by the wild boar than she’d guessed since the thing had given her nightmares for two nights straight.
Then again, she had struggled for years to forget about other predators that lurked in the woods around Heartache. The boar was just another way for her brain to relive that long-ago horror—the night when she’d been too shell-shocked to scream or defend herself.
Bad enough a faceless man pawed at her in that memory. Now she contended with a two-hundred-pound pig.
Same difference, she thought ruefully.
The urge to get in her car and drive that rattling heap the hell out of Heartache was strong. Yesterday, after she’d dreamed about the man-pig the first time, she’d tucked her car keys in the attic crawl space, just far enough out of reach that she’d have to really think hard about leaving town before she did it. It had taken ten years to get back here. She wasn’t going to turn tail and run without good cause.
And bottom line, no matter how scary things got, Jeremy Covington was still in jail. Based on what Sam had said, Amy had good cause to think Covington was the same man who’d hurt her. If that was true, she was safe from faceless molestation in the woods as long as the man stayed behind bars.
A surge of anger prompted her to sift through her purse and pull out a cell phone. She’d come home to support her sister when Heather gave testimony against the bastard. It was high time she actually delivered on that support and stopped hiding in the woods.
Opening her contacts, she scrolled down to the Hs and pressed her sister’s name. Two rings later, a groggy voice answered.
“Amy?” Heather sounded like their mom on the phone, although at least she spoke her name with more kindness than their mother usually had.
“Hi.” She gripped the device tighter. “Sorry it’s taken me so long to call.” Had it been almost a week? “But I’ve been working on the cabin. If you want to stop by—”
“I can come in the morning,” her sister offered quickly, sounding more awake.
In the background, Amy could hear a man’s voice. Zach, no doubt. Probably asking who was calling in the middle of the night.
“Okay.” Better to follow through before she lost her nerve. “I have to meet Sam later in the day, so morning is good.”
“I’m glad you called, Ames.” The warmth in her voice chased away the last remnants of the dream that had gripped Amy.
For a moment, she was transported back to the old bedroom the three of them had shared—Erin, Amy and Heather. Heather would tell stories until they fell asleep. Or they would act out fairy tales like “The Three Bears” and fall asleep giggling. Quietly, though. Always quietly.
The game was over if they disturbed their mother.
“Good. I’m up early. Come anytime.” She disconnected the call, forgetting to say goodbye. Regretting it.
She didn’t mean to be rude. She was just out of practice being a sister. A friend.
But she was here, damn it. Back in Heartache, trying to do better.
Unable to get back to sleep, Amy slid out of her sleeping bag to walk around the cabin. Finding her purse, she searched for her retractable baton, a weapon she’d carried with her since the early days in Atlanta. She’d found it in a pawnshop, where the old couple who ran the place had given her a good deal that she still hadn’t really been able to afford. Holding it in her hand now, feeling its familiar weight, helped settle her nerves. Seeing the boar and having the disturbing dream had stirred old anxieties. Hell, just being in Heartache was an anxiety.
Baton in hand, she forced herself to unlock the front door—the original lock as well as the new dead bolt she’d installed her second day in residence. She wasn’t crippled by her old fears. She’d learned tangible ways to own them, manage them and keep them at bay. The locks helped, as did the assortment of self-defense devices. Plus she was more physically equipped to handle herself now than she had been as a teen.
Her first year in Atlanta, she’d taken a free class at the YMCA to learn how to get away from an attacker. Each year, around the anniversary of The Incident, she rewarded herself with a new class. Karate. Kickboxing. Krav Maga. She still wasn’t strong, but she was a whole lot smarter than that paralyzed, silent teen in the woods had been.
Breathing in the cold night breeze, she leaned against the porch rail and hoped the fresh air would help her sleep. In the distance, when the wind blew the trees a certain way, she could just catch a glimpse of a light farther down the hill. It had to be Sam’s house, the only other residence within half a mile from hers.
Would he be awake right now, too? Did worries about his son have him pacing the floors? She hated that someone had threatened that tiny baby simply because Sam was good at his job. It also unsettled her to think that whoever had made that threat was not behind bars. Sam didn’t believe he had the wrong man in jail, but who else besides the man who had assaulted Gabriella Chance and the others would want to stifle new evidence in the case?
The attacker—whoever he was—might still be free.
Her gaze slid from the light in the woods to her car parked out front. She could leave whenever she wanted. Whenever she needed to. She wouldn’t allow this trip to Heartache to undo all her hard work to put the past behind her.
But for now, she