Midnight Sins by Lora Leigh Page B

vicious hunger, impossible to deny.
    Pushing his fingers through his hair, Rafe blew
    out a hard breath before heading toward the shower.
    He had things to do. Things that didn’t include
    pacing the floors because Cami had slipped out of
    his bed.
    And it sure as hell didn’t include chasing after
    her, no matter how desperately he wanted to.
    Two months later
    Fate conspired against her. It laughed at her. The
    playful bitch did its best to destroy her, Cami thought
    as she stared out the window of the apartment her
    sister had once lived in. The one Cami now lived in
    herself.
    She couldn’t seem to stop crying, sobbing
    actually. It had been two months, eight weeks to the
    day since she had run into Rafe while in Denver for
    educational training. It was the third year they had run
    into each other and shared a night of passion.
    Her palm was pressed flat against her abdomen,
    the realization of the emptiness that existed there
    tearing through her again as her breathing hitched
    and she cried with all the rage and lost hope that filled
    her.
    She was aware of her aunt in the kitchen behind
    her. Ella had brought Cami from the hospital that
    morning and had stayed with her throughout the day.
    She had listened to Cami’s sobs silently, and a few
    times she thought she had caught her aunt crying as
    well.
    Cami’s mother wasn’t here.
    Margaret Flannigan hadn’t come to the hospital.
    She hadn’t called or come to the apartment. Cami’s
    father had answered the phone when she had called,
    though.
    “Your mother’s busy,” he’d informed her when
    she asked to speak with Margaret.
    “Please, Dad,” Cami remembered whispering
    tearfully. “Please let her know I need to talk to her.”
    “So you can cry over losing that little bastard he
    gave you?” Cami’s father had rasped furiously. “Your
    sister is turning over in her grave, Cami. Your
    mother’s heart is broken. How could you allow the
    monster that stole your sister from us to touch you?
    Are you so desperate to take everything your sister
    had that you have to take the lover that killed her? The
    child she couldn’t have? Maybe we’ll all get lucky and
    he’ll kill you next rather than some innocent, helpless
    girl.”
    Then he’d hung up on her.
    Cami had listened numbly to the dial tone in her
    ear for long moments before placing the phone back
    in its cradle slowly.
    At least, for a while, he had made her stop crying.
    Shock had driven every emotion she could have felt
    so deep inside her that it had taken hours for her to
    make sense of what he had said, what he had meant.
    “Cami.” Ella stepped to the window seat as Cami
    continued to stare onto the street below. “Come to the
    house, baby. Eddy’s beside himself worrying about
    you, and I don’t want to leave you here alone.”
    “I’ll be fine,” she said.
    She was lying. She would never be fine again. As
    long as she lived, she would never be fine again.
    She had lost her baby. The baby she and Rafer
    had created the night they had come together two
    months before.
    It hadn’t been a blizzard. She told herself it had
    been a coincidence, nothing more. Just as she told
    herself every year and managed to convince herself of
    it. There was no way he could have known where she
    would be and when. There was no way he could have
    been heading to the airport on the same day, at the
    same time, to the same city, every year. It couldn’t be
    coincidence; that was simply stretching the
    explanation further than she could believe.
    But what else could it be?
    The only other explanation was more than she
    could imagine. That it was by design.
    “Are you going to call him, Cami?” Ella asked
    gently.
    Cami shook her head, sobbing again as she
    turned her head from her aunt.
    Cami ached. Inside, out. To the depths of her
    soul, to the last particle of her spirit, she ached until
    she wondered if it were possible to die of it.
    “He would want to know.”
    Ella eased down beside her