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“I wish she’d left me, too, even if it meant living on the streets,” Shayne whispered. “It would have been kinder.”
Chaz stilled. “What the hell did she do to you?”
If he hadn’t been holding her, he wouldn’t have felt the tiny tremor that rippled through her body. “Nothing overt. Nothing child welfare could use to remove me from the home. But I paid the price for what she regarded as my mother’s sins. The first thing she did when we arrived in Florida was to burn all my possessions, including the doll Rafe had given me for a Christmas present.” She attempted a smile, the tremulous pull of her lips so vulnerable and so sad, it utterly unmanned him to witness it. “You asked me why having a tree is so important to me? Inever had one the entire time I lived with her. Iwas the original Cinderella. Isn’t that a riot? And Jackie relished the role of wicked stepmother.”
Stark stories followed, ones he knew with soul-crippling certainty she’d never revealed to another person, not even Rafe. Stories that had him clutching her convulsively, helpless to protect the child she’d been. “What about your brother?” he asked, when her throat grew hoarse and the words ran dry. “He found you, didn’t he?”
“Yes, he found me.”
But it hadn’t been in time. Not nearly in time, Chaz realized. “How old were you?”
“Thirteen.”
Ten years. Forever to a helpless child. And almost as long as it had taken Chaz to find her. “So Jackie just turned you over?”
“Oh, no.” Shayne looked at him then, her eyes huge, wounded smudges in her tightly drawn face. “She sold me to him.”
A roar of fury welled up inside, one even more tortured than before. His throat worked as he forced it down, forced himself to offer succor for a wound that couldn’t be healed. He held her in his arms and rocked her, murmuring meaningless words of comfort.
“You don’t understand, Chaz. Ididn’t tell you this for my sake.”
“Shh. Everything will be all right.”
“No, it won’t.” She eased back and captured his face within the softness of her palms. “I know you can’t love me anymore. That doesn’t mean you can’t love Sarita. She’s an innocent child. Don’t let her go through what I did. She needs Isabella just as I needed Rafe. But she needs you even more. Please, Chaz. Do this one thing for me and I won’t ask you for anything else.”
“Don’t, Shayne.”
“I’m begging you. Ipromise I won’t cause you any more trouble.”
He couldn’t bear it. “Sarita doesn’t have anything to worry about.”
Shayne expelled her breath in a relieved sigh and Chaz closed his eyes, fighting an almost incapacitating fear. “I promise I won’t cause you any more trouble,”
It was a farewell, if he’d ever heardone.
He needed to swear, to vent his frustrations with a truly nasty word. He fought to come up with one, even a mild one. Just something to blister the air. Just a single oath to ease the confusing tumble of emotions that muddled his brain. But nothing came to him. Nothing but a single jittery warning, ringing with all the clarity of silvery bells on a winter’s breeze.
She was going to leavehim.
