LITMIR.BIZ

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coin earrings he’d given her on their first anniversary. They had cost way too much, but she loved them. She’d worn them almost every day until their divorce. Since then they’d lain in her jewelry box under her bed.

      She stared at it. “What are you doing with my earring?”

      He covered her hand with his, wrapping her fingers around the disk. “Chère, look at me.”

      Reluctantly she raised her head. Something was very wrong. A frisson of fear slithered up her spine.

      “This earring was on the seat of my car two mornings ago. I almost didn’t see it.”

      She tugged against his grip, but he wouldn’t let go. The post of the earring dug into her palm. “Stop it, Cody. It’s obviously not my earring, then, because mine is in my jewelry box. You’re just trying to scare me.”

      “It is yours. Go check.”

      “I’m not going to check. If it’s mine then you got it out of my jewelry box this morning. Why are you doing this to me?”

      Cody shook his head, his eyes dark and cloudy. She didn’t want to look into them, didn’t want to see the pain and the fear deep in those eyes that had so often sparked with laughter, but she couldn’t pull her gaze away.

      “Fontenot is out of prison.”

      She froze. “F-Fontenot?”

      He nodded grimly.

      “The man who shot you,” she said. “How—how can he be out?”

      “Good behavior, and good lawyers.”

      Dana closed her eyes. “He put a bullet in your head. He almost killed you. They can’t let him out.”

      “Dana, listen to me. Fontenot swore he’d make me pay for putting him away. ‘I shot you this time, but there are things that hurt more than a gunshot, Maxwell,’ he said.” Cody’s blue eyes burned into hers.

      She jerked her hand away and stood abruptly. “I don’t care, Cody,” she lied. She remembered Fontenot. Too well. She’d been with the public defender’s office, but as the wife of the detective who’d been shot, she was barred from participating in the case.

      She’d already filed for divorce by the time Fontenot came to trial, and she’d tried to stay away from the courtroom, but she’d had to hear the verdict with her own ears. She had to be there, to be sure they put that monster away.

      “He looked at you when he said it.” Cody stared at her. “And now, he’s back. He got your earring out of this apartment without you even knowing he’d been here.”

      “That’s ridiculous,” she countered. “I’d know if anyone had been here.”

      Cody shrugged carefully. “Go check.”

      She could hardly catch her breath, the growing fear was sitting so heavily on her chest. “Why are you doing this?” she asked again, still unwilling to believe that Fontenot was out of prison and once again a danger to Cody. “I don’t want to be in the middle of your blood feud with that madman.”

      “You don’t have a choice. Fontenot isn’t asking your permission. You are in the middle of it.”

      Old grief and pain ripped through her like a straight razor and her voice shook with passion and fury. “Because of you. You walked into that courtroom with your head still bandaged, so weak you had to lean on a cane, just so you could prove to the world that Cody Maxwell was tough enough to put him away.”

      She took a shaky breath. “He almost killed you. Your job almost killed you. It did kill my baby. And I am never going through that pain again!”

      She gasped at her own words. It was the first time she’d ever said it aloud, to him, and she saw the effect of her words etched in the new lines on his face.

      An anguish too profound to bear washed over his features, draining the color from his face. But then, anger replaced the anguish, and he vaulted up from the chair and grabbed her arm with his good hand.

      “Our baby,” he ground out between clenched teeth, his face so close to hers she could feel the heat of his breath on her mouth, could see the darkness behind his blue eyes. “It was our baby, not just yours. I came home from the hospital to find out my wife was divorcing me and the baby we’d wanted so badly was never going to be born.”

      He took a ragged breath and released her arm, pushing her away. “So don’t talk to me about pain. Pain is something I know all about.”

      He whirled and stalked out of the kitchen, his naked back and bare feet not detracting at all from his stiff, oddly dignified exit.

      It was true. By the time he’d come home from the hospital, she might as well have already been gone. Then when she had moved out, he’d never questioned anything. He’d just gone along with whatever her lawyer wanted. At the time she’d thought he didn’t care. She’d never even considered how he might be feeling.

      No. She clenched her fists and squeezed her eyes shut, determined not to cry. She could not let him get to her. She’d promised herself a long time ago she would never cry again, not for him, not even for herself. She’d already cried all her tears.

      She stood in the middle of the kitchen until the stinging at the back of her eyes subsided. She realized she was still holding the mug—his mug. She set it down so hard she was afraid it might break, but it was tough.

      She smiled grimly. Tougher than she was. The mug had made it through their two years of marriage with only a tiny chip in the rim. She hadn’t fared as well. Her heart and soul had been scarred, and she wasn’t sure those scars would ever go away.

      She followed Cody into the bedroom and found him standing in the middle of the room, looking around. As she watched he went over to the bed and crouched down.

      “What are you doing?”

      “This is where you keep your jewelry case, isn’t it?” he asked without looking up.

      “Cody, do you mind? This is not a crime scene, it’s my bedroom. Your shoulder is bleeding again. Aren’t you going to go to the doctor?”

      He stood and held the jewelry case out to her. She looked up to find his blue eyes regarding her with a mixture of impatience and triumph. “It is a crime scene, chère. Take a look. There’s only one earring in there.”

      She jerked the box away from him. “Don’t you want to preserve the fingerprints?” she asked acidly.

      “Fontenot’s too smart for that. You couldn’t even tell he’d been in here, could you? You said there was nothing out of place.”

      Dana tried to remember walking into her apartment the day before. She’d been distracted, thinking about how she was going to tell her boss she’d just walked out on his biggest client. The apartment could have been turned inside out and she probably wouldn’t have noticed.

      “No…” she said tentatively. “No. I’m sure. I’d have noticed.”

      Cody looked meaningfully at the jewelry case, so she sighed and opened it. Nothing looked out of place, except that there was only one coin earring. She picked up her pearls and pushed aside a bracelet. The other earring wasn’t there.

      “I must have lost it,” she said in a small voice.

      Cody laughed. “You never lose anything. Remember the time I thought I’d lost my wedding band? You had put it where I always kept it. I didn’t find it because I’d already looked there.”

      The grin slowly faded from his face. “That was early on, before I found out nothing ever gets lost around you. You won’t allow it.”

      For some reason, Cody’s words embarrassed her. He’d always made fun of her orderly ways. His teasing had been endearing once. Anger and embarrassment crowded into her breast, along with a peculiar longing for that long-ago time, before Cody’s

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