Larger Than Life by Alison Kent (bill gates books recommendations .TXT) 📗

for it, finally letting go. "The last man who tied me up used a knife to rape me."

"What?" Spencer reeled back.

"I'd brought two six-packs outside. My mother sent me. Her boyfriend's posse was partying and raising hell. And she sent me outside." Candy hugged herself tightly, her fingertips digging into her ribs. "Seems I made the perfect party favor. They stripped me, cut me, tied me facedown to the hood of one of their cars, and took turns."

She stared at the toes of her boots, seeing her own reflection from all those years back in the glossy black paint of the car. "The last one was the man my mother was going to marry. He was going to be my stepfather. He was going to be living in my house. When he finished threatening me, I picked up the knife where he'd dropped it. And I killed him."

"What are you talking about?" Spencer croaked out.

"Exactly what I said." She crossed the living area to the corner windows that looked out over the wide expanse of open spaces beyond the Barn. She couldn't look at her beautiful boy anymore. She didn't want her last picture, her final memory, to be disgust in his eyes.

Numb, she went on. "I met Neva when I was in prison. She was my court-appointed attorney."

"How old were you?" His question was a whisper.

"When it happened? Seventeen. When it was over and done and I moved here? Nineteen."

"Younger than me. The same age as Liberty Mitchell."

She couldn't help it. She had to look back. His compassion, his eyes, which were red with emotion, made her wish she hadn't. He looked years older than he'd ever looked before. "She's a cute girl, much more your type. You ought to think about dating her."

"That's not funny."

"I know." She braced her hands on the wall behind her, leaned back against them. "It's just easier to make jokes than to break things off."

"Break things off? Between us? Why?"

"Because of my past. The secrets you've always wondered about. And because of your future." Because you need a girl with pink apple cheeks and white cotton sweaters who can give you babies to bounce on your knees. "I'm not a girl your parents are going to want to have sitting down to a family dinner."

His voice was soft, shattered. "What about what I want, Candy? What about what we've got?"

She chewed the inside of her lip, pressed her short nails into her palms, her knuckles into the wall. "Spencer. Trust me. In a year, I'll be nothing but an occasional wet dream to you."

His jaw bulged. "So that's it? I'm just a hick sowing a few wild oats? You really believe that?"

Jesus Lord help her, no. But she let her silence say otherwise until the light died in his eyes. She was so cold. So cold. Her teeth were threatening to chatter. "I hope we can stay friends, Spencer. This doesn't have to turn ugly."

"Turn ugly?" His laugh, a harsh cackling burst of sound, said it all. "It was ugly before 1 got here."

He turned, slammed the door on his way out. She heard him start up his truck engine, heard his tires spew gravel, heard him drive away.

And then she crumpled onto her sofa, drew her knees to her chest, and cried until she couldn't cry anymore over those lost seventeen years of her life.

By the time Mick got the information he needed from Neva and checked the feeds before leaving the barn, Candy was walking into range of the two front cameras. He headed down the hidden staircase and into the shipping center, hearing the same blowtorch from earlier today firing once he reached the patio door. Candy was back at work.

Neva had told him that she wanted to stay and show Liberty the workings of the apartment. That was fine by Mick. It gave him time to touch base with Rabbit in the SG-5 ops center. Mick's fellow operative might not be thrilled with his plan—Harry never had been happy working in the desert heat. But he wouldn't argue. That was the way the Smithson Group worked. A real bunch of merry musketeers.

FM trotting along at his side and still looking freaky, half the mutt's face missing its fur, Mick headed around the back of Neva's house where he'd moved his Rover before coming in earlier for lunch. Hadn't taken a rocket scientist to figure out Doc Ed wasn't overjoyed at finding another man at Neva's table—though the piece of furniture most on the man's mind had been Neva's bed.

Mick didn't get it. The doc needed to let the woman go and move on. She wasn't interested—a fact Mick had gathered when he was half dead in the bed of her pickup, long before she'd come to life beneath him on that love seat, which was way too short for a man in his condition. And he wasn't talking about the state of his ribs.

He'd only planned to hold her while she got her cry out. And, okay, give her a comforting kiss. Which was bloody fucking stupid when he thought about it. Because comforting and Neva Case didn't fit. She fit with the things they'd done, the groping and getting off. She fit with a whole lot more they hadn't done . . . yet.

And even as he declared it so, he knew it wasn't true. Because being here for her, protecting her, seeing to her safety, and offering the comfort she needed were all part of the same package. A package wrapped around the good stuff he'd eventually get to. As long as he could make this deal with Rabbit and buy himself the time.

He opened the Rover's driver's-side door, flicking the lever that would switch his headlights to bright, were they turned on. Instead, the lever released the lock holding his custom captain's chair in place. He slid his fingers between the seat back and the seat bottom, pulled the latter forward to reveal a compartment