Cole Dempsey's Back In Town. Suzanne McMinn

visage made her wish she’d kept right on going up the stairs. Damn him for making her feel like the bad guy in this situation. She couldn’t stop him from looking for this truth of his, whether he was right about the past or not.

      And how could he be right? Why would anyone else have killed Aimee? Nothing about his claims made sense. Wade Dempsey had been the one with the grudge against the Louvels. The one making threats. The one who’d charged back to Bellefleur drunk, looking for revenge. The one who’d been found with Aimee.

      How dare Cole expect her to help him now? She wanted to charge right back down the stairs, shake him, strike him, do something, anything.

      Then he did something. He closed the space between them in two heartbeats.

      “We weren’t finished with our conversation,” he said quietly. The bright candescence of the chandelier played unforgivingly on his features. God, he was good-looking. Always had been. But now his face was etched with experience, and yet within those austere lines she could still see the boy she’d loved.

      His tormented bayou eyes had her aching with a raw need. They’d both given in to that need once and had found something in each other that had seemed too strong to break. But the horror their families had faced had broken it. She’d stood by her family and he’d stood by his. Their youthful trust and love had been shattered irreparably. They’d tried to talk, but they’d both been too hurt and too immature to overcome what stood between them, and eventually it had turned into a bitter chasm. And she wasn’t feeling any more capable of overcoming it now. So why did she suddenly wish things could be different?

      “Maybe you weren’t.” She forced her weak knees to move. “But I am.”

      She left him at the foot of the stairs, but her room was no escape. The pull of him reached her even there. She clicked the lock on the inside of her doorknob and sank onto the night-gloam of her bed.

      Sleep was a million miles away, but somehow she found her way into its dark, anguished arms. And the nightmares of Aimee’s murder pounded through the wispy night of ghosts and fears.

      It was sometime after midnight when a shadow lunged through her bedroom window.

      Chapter 5

      Bryn was screaming.

      Cole stumbled out from the rosewood half-tester bed. Sheets tangled around his legs and he almost fell. Bracing himself, he kicked the sheets away and tore from the room. All he could think of was the scream he’d heard the night of Aimee’s death. His heart nearly stopped beating and the blood froze in his veins.

      The Oleander Room was on the same floor as the room he’d watched Bryn enter a few hours earlier. He raced down the pitch-dark corridor, willing Bryn to be all right, praying in double time. God, if he never asked for anything again, let Bryn be all right.

      By touch, he found the door. The knob turned, but the door didn’t budge. It was locked.

      No sound came from inside Bryn’s room now.

      Cole pounded on the door. “Bryn! Dammit, Bryn, are you all right? Let me in!”

      When she didn’t answer, he reared back, prepared to break the damn door down if he had to. The shadow-black of the corridor yawned open as he threw himself against the door.

      But his body didn’t hit a door. It struck something soft and sweet-smelling. Bryn.

      Together, they fell against the hard pine floor. It took a stunned beat for him to realize what had happened, that she’d opened the door just as he slammed forward.

      “Bryn, are you okay?” He pulled himself off her. Pale moonlight tracing through her windows sketched her shocked face. Her midnight eyes stared up at him.

      “There was someone in my room,” she whispered starkly.

      The double French doors to the private balcony were shut, the drapes pushed back. Cole reached the doors, flung them wide. The moist air of the Louisiana night enfolded him, soupy and warm. He saw nothing but moon and trees, and heard only the murmur of the river and the rush of leaves in the light breeze. He swung back to Bryn.

      She was on the floor, sitting with her knees pulled up, her back braced against the foot of her bed, moon-gleamed blond hair framing her frightened face. Cole knelt beside her.

      “I don’t see anyone,” he told her, crossing the room to crouch down in front of her. “Are you all right? Tell me what you saw.”

      “I thought I saw someone coming into the room,” she whispered again, and he could see tears on her cheeks. He thumbed one away, the satin of her skin cold against his touch. “Oh, God, it must have been a dream.”

      “We should call the police—”

      “No,” she cried brokenly. “I’ve had this dream before. I dream I’m in Aimee’s room and someone else is there, too—and I can’t save her. I can’t stop the shadow from taking her.”

      In the pale moon, he saw more tears. They fell wet and warm against his hands. He felt like crying, too. He didn’t want to feel this connection to Bryn, but it was undeniable.

      They shared the pain of that night, whether they wanted to or not. She’d lost her sister. He’d lost his father. And they’d lost each other. Cole closed his eyes against the sudden onslaught of despair inside him.

      Opening his eyes again, he sat down beside her, shifting to put his arm around her. He couldn’t let go of her.

      “I heard you scream,” he said.

      She drew in a shaky breath. “I’m all right. I’m sorry I woke you. I just haven’t had a nightmare like that…in a while.”

      It was because of him that she was having nightmares now. He’d brought the terrible past back to her. And he’d told himself a hundred times before he got here that he wouldn’t care, but damn it all to hell, he cared anyway.

      For the first time, he noticed what she was wearing. Or rather what she wasn’t wearing. She’d left on the slim T-shirt she’d worn earlier, but had taken off the shorts. A wisp of panty peeked from between her pale thighs in the gloaming night.

      He jerked his gaze away, back to her face. She stared back at him with her huge, hurting eyes. She was trembling and without thinking, he rubbed her back, trying to calm her down. He could feel her heart pounding.

      “I still miss Aimee,” she said then.

      Her words broke his dead heart. “I know.” He still missed his father. His mother’s loss was new and raw. “The pain never completely goes away, does it?”

      She shook her head. “We always did everything together. When we were eight, we took swimming lessons. Aimee took a bad dive and hit the board, cut open her forehead. And after that, she wouldn’t go back. She wasn’t a good swimmer, anyway, and she’d always hated the water.”

      Bryn and Aimee hadn’t been identical, either in looks or personality. They had the same coloring, but Aimee was always smaller, shyer, somehow more fragile. It had been Bryn, with her bright energy, strong body and will and flirty-innocent eyes, who had captivated his attention—and held it.

      “She cried and cried because she thought she was letting me down when I wouldn’t go on with the lessons without her,” Bryn continued. “She knew I loved swimming. But that’s the way things were with us. We did everything together, or not at all. Until that last summer.”

      Cole didn’t say anything. He couldn’t say anything. He didn’t know what to say, how to comfort her. He hadn’t known fifteen years ago, either. And she hadn’t known how to comfort him. A fresh wash of hurt struck him. They’d failed each other, terribly. It hadn’t all been Bryn’s fault.

      “I loved dreams when I was a little girl,” she whispered softly. “I always had good dreams. We loved to feed the brown pelicans down by the river, and I used to have this same dream over and over where I would take Aimee’s hand