Sweetest Taboo Read online

  "I believe you. I do. And if it's true, then I need you to do what I say I need, not what you want me to need. Both of you," I add with a glance toward Dallas.

  For the first time in my memory, my father seems unsure of his course. Then my mother whispers, "Please, Eli, just for now."

  Slowly, he nods. He takes a single step toward me, and I actually flinch. He freezes, his body tightening as if I'd reached out and slapped him. "I'm just--I'm just so damn glad you're okay."

  Okay? I think. Is that what I am? Okay?

  I say nothing, though, and he turns for the door. Dallas follows him, and I have to clench my hands to fight the urge to pull him back. I want him--I want him desperately--but the hurt is still too deep.

  My father walks out without a backward glance, but Dallas pauses in the doorway, lingering there until I lift my head and meet his eyes. "I'm sorry," he says, and I look away, keeping my eyes on the floor as his footsteps fade down the hall and I wonder if I've just lost the two men I love most in all the world.

  I don't sleep. Instead, I drift, my thoughts in a fog, my body thick and unresponsive from the drugs. I feel tossed around, like a cork on a stormy sea.

  No dreams fill my mind--no dark memories from the past, no terror that I will never wake again--and yet somehow that dark emptiness is even more disturbing than my usual nightmares simply because I can't get my bearings.

  I am lost. Desolate. Alone.

  Then I feel the gentle brush of a hand on my cheek, and it is like a lifeline, pulling me back, drawing me out of the storm.

  A smile tugs at my lips--Dallas.

  But then it fades as I remember that I sent him away. That I'm not ready to have him beside me. Not now. Not yet.

  The hand I feel must belong to my mother. I open my eyes to reassure her that I'm okay, then jump when I see who is really touching me.

  "Adele!" I jerk back, then push myself up to a sitting position, completely ignoring the buttons on this bed that would do that for me. "I--you startled me."

  My family has been doing everything possible to ensure my privacy, including leaving me listed as a Jane Doe. My mom's even asked my best friend, Brody, not to come visit--though she did at least let him know what happened to me--because she's afraid some enterprising reporter will follow him to find me.

  "I'm sorry," I stammer. "I'm just really jumpy."

  "Of course you are," she coos. "You poor little thing." She presses a hand to my cheek, and a single tear traces a path down the side of her nose. "I just can't believe it."

  I pull away, stretching to cover the motion. I don't want her touch. For that matter, I don't want anything from her. Maybe that's not fair, but I don't care. Right now, I'm too raw to care about propriety.

  She seems entirely unaware of my hesitancy, because she continues to stand right beside me, fussing with the bedding, then dabbing at her eyes with a tissue. Adele is Colin's ex-wife, though they married when I was an adult, so even had Colin still been my legal father, I don't think I would ever have considered her my stepmother.

  But it's not the relationship between Colin and Adele that puts me off. Instead, it's her past relationship with Dallas. I don't think she's aware that I know she slept with Dallas before he and I were together. But I do know that she's understood what Dallas and I are to each other for years, even before we revealed our secret to the press. And that fact makes me feel just a little bit too exposed.

  "This city has just gone crazy," she clucks. "Attacked and left in Riverside Park like so much garbage." Her voice climbs with outrage. "Your mother told me all about it. I called her looking for Colin a few hours ago, and she told me the whole story."

  The Deliverance guys have pieced together some of what happened, and Dallas relayed the chain of events to my mom. Well, I know it was the Deliverance guys. Mom thinks that Liam and Quince have pooled their resources. Which, in a way, they have.

  Apparently, the woman who attacked me had an accomplice. A man who picked me up off the sidewalk and hauled me into the back of a white cargo van while the woman slid behind the wheel. The guys found three witnesses. A couple who were walking at the far end of the block and didn't realize what was going on until the van sped away. And a fourteen-year-old who was sitting by his window in one of the townhouses texting his girlfriend. He didn't see the attack. He didn't even see the man pick me up off the sidewalk. But he did see the bastard shoving me in the back, and then the van disappearing down the street.

  But my assailants didn't bring me to the hospital. Instead, I was dumped--my veins pumped full of a narcotic cocktail--near one of the entrances to Riverside Park. Someone made an anonymous 911 call, and the paramedics whisked me away to the ER. None of which I remember, and the fact that I was completely unconscious and doped up on god-knows-what during all of that is more than a little freaky.

  I pull the sheet up to my chest, feeling suddenly exposed. Adele doesn't seem to notice. She glances around the room, frowning.

  "I expected Colin would be here," she muses.

  "No," I say simply. "I haven't seen him."

  "Well, that's odd. I just assumed your mother would have reached him by now. I'll start calling some mutual friends. Maybe he's tucked away in someone's hunting cabin or off on someone's yacht."

  Before I have a chance to comment, my mother steps through the open door carrying two cups of coffee. "This stuff is as thick as sludge," Mom says, "but at least it's hot--oh! Adele!"

  "Lisa, oh, Lisa." She deftly takes the Styrofoam cups from my mom and sets them on my hospital tray, then pulls my mom into an awkward hug. Awkward because my mother is as stiff as a board.

  "Are you doing okay?" Adele asks once she's broken the embrace. "I know Jane is--I practically interrogated her attending before I came in here. But is there anything you need?"

  Mom shakes her head and manages a smile, then looks between Adele and me. "Did I interrupt?"

  I almost tell her that she did, just so she'll have an excuse to leave. Adele has never been on my mom's favorite-person list. Even though Mom's the one who walked away from Colin, I think she's always felt like Adele was an interloper.

  But I just can't toss her that bone. I selfishly want her beside me, and so I shake my head. "We were just talking."

  "Has Dallas been by?" Adele asks. "I assumed I'd see him here."

  "He was right here when Jane woke up," my mom assures her.

  "But he left?" Adele isn't even trying to keep the surprise out of her voice.

  "I asked him to go," I admit, then immediately regret my words because I don't have an explanation for that. At least not one that I'm willing to share.

  But Adele doesn't seem to need one. "That was smart. If he hangs around here, sooner or later the press will notice. An orderly will sneak a picture. And then you'll be all over Twitter. And you definitely don't need that."

  "No," I agree. "I don't."

  She looks between me and my mom, and though I have never thought of Adele as a soft person, right then her expression is almost maternal. "I'm going to leave you two alone. Jane, I'm so sorry this happened to you, and I'm so glad you're okay. You'll be released soon?"

  "We're hoping for tonight," Mom says. "But as slow as the lab has been, it may be the morning."

  "I'll keep my fingers crossed. And in the meantime, I'll go see Dallas. Let him know that you're okay. That you miss him," she adds, her lips curving in a small smile.

  "You don't have to do that." I try to keep my voice light, even airy. Inside, I'm dying. I know there's nothing going on between Adele and Dallas anymore. And yet the thought of her being close to him makes me nauseous.

  "Nonsense. Someone needs to check on him. Really, sweetie, it's no trouble at all." She blows me a kiss, gives my mom a hug, then strides out the door, her Jimmy Choos clicking on the floor as her Hermes Kelly handbag swings on her arm.

  I lay back in my bed and draw in a deep breath, trying to steady myself. Trying to wrap my head around everything I'm feeling right n
ow. The deep wound from Dallas's secrets about Colin. The sharp pain from Adele's casual familiarity.

  Intellectually, I know that one has nothing to do with the other, but that doesn't matter. I want to scratch her eyes out.

  More, I want Dallas right here, right now.

  And I hate that weakness in me that craves Dallas even when he is the one who has made me hurt. Not the physical hurt of the attack, but the emotional hurt of the betrayal.

  "I've always thought that woman was something of a bitch, bless her little heart."

  I stare at my mom, see the twinkle in her eye, and burst out laughing.

  "She's okay," I say, because I know damn well my mother has no clue that there was ever anything sexual between Dallas and Adele. "She just pokes her nose in where it isn't wanted."

  "And you want Dallas here," Mom says. "Not with her."

  I only shrug, neither admitting nor denying.

  "Hmmm," she says in that way she has. She pulls up a chair and sits next to the bed. "You know," she begins conversationally, "I really do understand why you're upset with your father. Disinheriting you both, and so publicly. I imagine you're just as mad at me."

  "No," I assure her, a little flummoxed by this sudden shift in the conversation. "I get it--I know Daddy. It's not like we didn't expect him to cut us off. So I'm not mad, not really. Not at Daddy. Not at you." I lick my lips and look up at her. "But I am..." I trail off with a shrug. "Disappointed?"

  Frowning slightly, she picks up her coffee cup, then gently blows at the surface of the hot liquid. "I'm disappointed in myself, too," she says after a moment. "But that's not what I meant. I'm just saying that I understand why you're upset with your father and me. But I don't understand what happened between you and Dallas."

  "Nothing happened," I lie.

  The corners of her mouth tighten slightly. "When you sent him away, I thought it was because it was just too much. Because you needed some Mom time." Her smile is gentle. "But this isn't about me at all, is it?"

  I consider perpetuating my lie a little bit longer, but I can't stand tossing yet another deception into the mix. "It's not," I finally admit, and I try to find the words to tell her the truth about Dallas's betrayal. About the huge secret he kept and how deeply it wounded me. If anyone would understand, she would, because although she and Colin have been divorced for years and years, I know that part of her still loves him, despite all the ways he hurt and disappointed her.

  But I can't tell her.

  I sit there in my hospital bed, my head bursting with one singular absolute--I flat-out can't tell her.

  She's already been through so much with him, and if she knew that there was even the tiniest possibility that Colin--a man she was married to, a man with whom she fathered a child--was the instigator behind the kidnapping of me and Dallas seventeen years ago...

  Well, if she knew that, it would break her. She could never un-know it. And even if we never learn for certain who the kidnapper really was, the possibility it might be Colin would haunt her forever.

  So I can't tell her. I can't do that to her. Not until I'm certain. Not and live with myself.

  And that's when it hits me--that's when I finally understand what Dallas did. And, more importantly, why.

  "Sweetie?" my mom presses. "Are you okay?"

  I realize that I have pulled the covers up to my chin. "I'm fine," I lie. "I'm just so very tired."

  Even as I speak, I realize it's true. Exhaustion is carrying me away like a riptide, threatening to pull me down into the black.

  "Tell him," I whisper before I succumb. "Tell him for me."

  "Tell him?" my mother asks. "Tell him what?"

  But the weight of sleep is too much, and I can't speak the words that ring through my head. I love him, Mommy. Tell Dallas that I love him.

  It was two-fifteen in the morning, and Dallas couldn't sleep. He poured another glass of bourbon, knowing damn well it would do nothing, and tossed it back.

  The liquor burned his throat and clouded his head, but that's what he wanted. Punishment and forgetfulness. To just fucking erase all of it.

  Not possible though, and so he turned to alcohol to take the edge off. And right then, there were a lot of goddamn edges.

  Fuck.

  Liam had rightfully pulled him away from Colin, then Jane had rightfully sent him away from her. He didn't have a place with the man he now despised, and he didn't have a place with the woman he loved.

  He was alone and he was drunk and he couldn't sleep and the whole situation was just too goddamned fucked up for him to wrap his head around.

  A soft tap at the door startled him, and he cringed. Adele.

  Goddammit, he'd told her he didn't want to see her when she'd called earlier to tell him she'd visited Jane. "She's doing well, but I worry about you two. Are you sure you're prepared for this? Living in the spotlight?"

  "I've always been in the spotlight," he'd countered.

  "Not like this."

  He'd almost tossed back a sarcastic comment--something about how his sex life had always been front and center. But she was right. This was different. With Jane, he wasn't in the spotlight because he was a player, but because of who he was playing with.

  "And it's not just the fact that you're sleeping with your sister," Adele had continued. "Eventually they'll find out what happened between you two. Innocent children trapped in a horrible situation, and they'll make it seem dirty."

  "It won't come out."

  "I hope you're right," she'd said. "But secrets have a way of being discovered."

  She'd told him she was on her way over to keep him company, but he'd shut that down quickly. But Adele was Adele, and apparently she'd decided to come anyway, probably bribing the doorman to let her into the elevator.

  "Dammit, Adele," he said as his hand closed over the knob. "I told you I didn't want you to--Jane."

  She was wearing hospital scrubs, and her hair was pulled back into a messy ponytail. The bruise on her cheek had turned a sick shade of yellow, and the dark circles under her eyes were large enough to get lost in.

  She looked exhausted, shattered.

  She looked beautiful.

  He wanted to pull her into his arms, but he forced himself to stay still, not sure where this moment was leading, but praying that it was leading her back to him.

  Right then, her hands were deep in her pockets, and she lifted one shoulder in a small shrug. "I don't have a key. For that matter, I don't have a purse."

  "You don't need one," he said, stepping aside even as he made a mental note to change the lock. "Come in."

  Her teeth grazed her lower lip as she crossed the threshold, her eyes darting quickly to his face and then back again. God, they were being so tentative with each other, and that awkwardness was killing him.

  "How did you get past all the reporters camped outside?"

  An actual smile flickered. "I guess they work bankers' hours. There was only one guy out there, and he didn't even look twice at me." She gestured to her scrubs. "Maybe he figured I was a doctor coming home late."

  "Still, it was a risk coming here alone. There might have been more. They might have recognized you. Mobbed you."

  "Some risks you have to take." She lifted her head, met his eyes. "Don't you?"

  He couldn't take it any longer. He'd even shoved his hands into his pockets so that he wouldn't reach out and touch her. "Jane. Please. Why are you here?"

  For a moment, she looked confused. Then a single tear spilled down her cheek. "Oh, god, Dallas. Where else would I be?"

  "I don't know. With Brody. In a hotel. Anyplace but here with me."

  "Did you think I could leave you? Really? Ever? Don't you know what we are to each other?" She flashed a mischievous smile. "Haven't you been paying attention?"

  "I thought I'd screwed it up."

  Again, she lifted a shoulder. "You did." She took a step toward him, and it was all he could do not to pull her closer, to hold her tight. "You did," she repeat
ed. "And you didn't."

  He tilted his head, afraid to get his hopes up. "What are you saying?"

  "I'm saying I love you," she said, her words filling his heart. "And I understand why you didn't tell me."

  He tilted his head slowly to the side, surprised by this second simple statement. "Do you?"

  She licked her lips, then told him about her conversation with their mom. About how Lisa was worried about Colin. "I wanted to tell her," Jane concluded. "I thought she deserved to know what you say he did. But I couldn't."

  Her eyes were wet with tears. "She was so worried about why no one was able to find Colin, and I couldn't say a word to her. Because even the slightest hint that he had anything to do with our kidnapping would have killed her." With a sigh she shoved her hands into the pockets of her scrubs. "She would have blamed herself. She would have second-guessed her decision to marry him in the first place. Every decision she made over a huge chunk of her life. So I couldn't tell her. Not yet, anyway."

  He stared at her, and then, very slowly, he nodded. "You do get it."

  "Yeah, well, I'm still pissed."

  "I wouldn't do it any differently if I had to do it all over again," he admitted.

  "I know. I told you I get it. Just tell me one thing."

  "Anything," he said, and he meant it.

  "Are you absolutely certain about Colin? You have evidence? Solid evidence?"

  "I told you we did." He spoke gently, because he knew the truth hurt her. But at the same time, he wasn't willing to sugarcoat it.

  She nodded, hugging herself. "That's what you said before. I believe you--hell, I believed you then. But I don't want it to be true."

  He moved closer, then gently tugged her hands free from her pockets and held them in his. "Do you want me to tell you?"

  "I--no. I mean, yes. I have to hear it all. I know that. It's just..." She trailed off, then met his eyes. "There are so many things to say. Important things. Essential things."

  "Jane--"

  "But not now. I don't want to talk about any of it right now."

  Hope warred with fear inside him.

  "I just want--oh, please, Dallas. I don't want to talk. Right now, I just want you to kiss me."

  And that was it--that was the moment she broke him. He felt himself shatter, the fear that had hardened inside him like glass breaking into a million tiny pieces. He reached for her, then cupped her head and closed his mouth gently over hers.