Free Shameless (The Contemporary Collection) by Jennifer Blake Page B

to be timidness. Her concern and loving attachment had only been used to make him feel guilty for not caring more, while her passion was counterfeit, a camouflage for desperate neediness.
    Joanna, focused on her own feelings, her own limited vision of what marriage should be, had never even begun to understand him. She had been incapable of accepting what had really happened when he turned on her that morning in the bathroom. She wouldn't believe it was the result of simple animal reflexes, but insisted on taking it as a violent rejection. He could not love her, she said, could not really want to be married to her, if he could hurt her like that.
    Maybe she had been right; he didn't know. If she'd been able to forgive him, he would have lived with her and tried his best to make some kind of life. It hadn't happened that way. And when she was gone, when the divorce was final and her belongings no longer cluttered his life, he had been embarrassed at the relief he felt. Joanna, it seemed, hadn't been the only one willing to accept any substitute for love and a normal life.
    He wondered what Cammie would have done in Joanna's place. He wondered, but the last thing he wanted was to find out. The answer might be too dangerous, for both of them.
    He couldn't stand the thought of anyone else coming close enough to be a threat, either. Even her husband — especially her husband.
    What she needed was a guard. Someone outside who could keep watch from a distance — a great distance — and make certain she wasn't hurt any more.
    He had nothing better to do.
    There was no sign of Keith Hutton outside the house. Reid wasn't surprised. Neither Cammie's husband nor his Land Rover had been in sight when he'd gone back out in the rain to get Cammie's wallet and the pistol.
    He had not told her that, of course. He should have, certainly would have, if he had known it was going to matter. He had been certain that nothing could persuade him to act against his better judgment, but hadn't been prepared for a frontal assault.
    He wasn't proud of his surrender, no matter the reasons for it. But neither did he feel regret.
    Less than a half hour after he had reached the Fort, Reid was ghosting through the wet woods, covering the few miles that separated the old log house from the Greenley place. The woods dripped and the creeks and branches he crossed were high with runoff from the rain, but he made good time. He should. He knew every hill and gully, tall pine and fallen oak along the way, had since he was ten and first began to notice Camilla Greenley.
    It had been a sappy thing to do, sneaking around the back way to lie hidden in the woods, watching her house and hoping for a glimpse of her. Nine long years he had kept vigil, nine years in which she never noticed he was alive.
    Once, he had seen her at her bedroom window dressed in frilly shorty pajamas. He had lived on the memory for weeks. Hopeless. But even now, recalling it had the power to make him smile.
    A lot could be overlooked in a boy with a crush on the prettiest girl in school. Judgment would not be that lenient toward a grown man. He would have to be careful.
    He would be, not that he cared. The only person who had any right to question his motives was Cammie, and she, of all people, would never know.
    So involving were his thoughts that he came upon the house almost before he was aware of it. It was still and insubstantial in the gloom that was just turning from black to dark gray. He could see the glow of the security light on the other side of the house, but the windows were dark.
    His gaze rested on the rectangles of black glass where the spare bedroom was located. He thought of Cammie lying where he had left her, in soft, warm nakedness, and the ache that he carried inside throbbed into insistent life. He suppressed it as he had earlier, turning it off as ruthlessly as he had turned off nearly every other soft emotion in the past twelve years and more.
    How would she feel when