“I know why.” He choked on a sob as tears filled his eyes. “It was so I’d do her dirty work for her. That bitch did me dirty just like she’d done to every man in her life. I don’t know why I thought I’d be any different. All I know is Robby and Kenny are dead because of her.”
Mia watched as his shoulders shook, watched as snot and blood bubbled from his ruined nose. Despite everything, she felt a pinch of sympathy for him. She knew all too well how easily Jane’s beauty and charm could pull the wool over a man’s eyes. Heck, she’d grown up watching her father fall victim time and time again.
Of course, whatever sympathy she felt for Carter was eclipsed by the rising foreboding inside her. “She knew you’d try to kill me?” She shoved her hands beneath her legs because she didn’t want him to see how badly they were shaking. “For the money?”
Carter either didn’t hear her or didn’t care to answer her, because he said through his tears, “What happened to them? Do you know?”
“Who?”
“Kenny and Robby,” Carter clarified. “Did the Coast Guard gather up their bodies? Or did they leave them to rot on that sandbar?”
“I don’t know,” she answered truthfully. “I didn’t see what happened to them.”
Carter looked down at the table. His shoulders shook again as another round of grief rolled through him.
Mia knew what it was to be broken. She recognized the condition in others. And for a long time, she sat in silence and watched her cousin cry. Cry for his friends, no doubt. But also cry for himself and for the predicament he found himself in.
When his sobs were reduced to shaky sighs, she asked the question that’d been gnawing at her ever since she’d seen the white water kicked up by the speedboat as it zoomed away from the sandbar.
“Carter?” He glanced up at her, the whites of his eyes laced with blood vessels. “Was Mom the one piloting the getaway boat?”
His nostrils flared as a new batch of tears streamed down his face. “Who else?”
It was a good thing Mia was sitting down, because the agony caused by Carter’s admission would’ve driven her to her knees otherwise. Scalding hot tears burned the back of her throat, making it impossible to speak. But, really, what was there to say anyway?
What did someone say when they found out their own mother had tried to kill them?
Chapter 24
Four days later...
When Mia wafted into Romeo’s hospital room like a summer breeze, he forgot about his injury and sat up in bed.
The pain in his chest was manageable—if he didn’t move. When he moved, it felt like he’d been stabbed by a hot sword that’d been dipped in rubbing alcohol.
He did his best to hide his momentary misery. But Mia had attuned herself to any subtle variation in his expression.
She made a tsking sound before setting aside the paper cups she carried. Bustling over to his bed, she thoroughly and efficiently fluffed the pillow behind his back and then situated the one behind his head so he was properly supported.
“What have I told you about pushing it?” she demanded. Her perfect mouth was pursed into a disapproving bow, and he had an overwhelming urge to kiss it.
Why fight the urge? he thought, the pain meds making him a little giddy.
Since he couldn’t jump out of bed and ravage her like he wanted to, he grabbed her hand and pulled her down until her head was level with his. “Kiss me,” he demanded, still coming to terms with the idea that he could make that kind of request of her.
She narrowed her eyes. “You’re just trying to distract me from scolding you.”
“Not true,” he assured her. “I’m trying to distract myself from the pain in my chest.”
She turned her head and glared at him from the corners of her eyes. “That’s playing dirty, and you know it.”
He grinned, making sure his dimples winked in the florescent lighting.
When she sighed and pressed a quick and rather unsatisfactory smack on his lips, he grumbled, “A coffee run followed by a perfunctory peck on the mouth? What is this? Have we been married for twenty years or did the magic suddenly disappear while I was out of it?”
“I think I need to talk to your doctors about upping your pain meds,” she grumbled, but the corners of her plush, pink lips quivered around a smile. “You are far too vigorous for a man who was shot in the chest just four days ago. You’re going to hurt yourself.”
“Kiss me, woman,” he growled, and then watched her catch her bottom lip between her teeth. “A real kiss. Something to make my toes curl.”
The flirtatious twinkle in her eyes had him cursing his confinement. What he wouldn’t give to be able to strip her naked and spend a day or two re-exploring all that glorious feminine terrain he’d claimed on that nameless sandbar.
She cut a quick glance toward the door. When she saw there were no medical professionals lurking nearby, she grabbed his face and laid one on him. Truly, the woman kissed him like she had after she’d read the blow job scene in In Darkness and Dreams.
The memory of what she’d done to him after reading that scene and after kissing the holy hell out of him had his blood running hot. He hated to do it, but he had to rip his lips away from hers. “Sweet Mother Mary, we have to stop. They haven’t removed my catheter yet.”
“You asked for it.” Her smile was self-satisfied as she grabbed the paper cups she’d set aside. She handed him one of the cups before popping the top on her coffee and blowing across the steaming liquid.
Fitting his mouth over the hole in his coffee’s lid, he took a grateful swig. He’d been craving java ever since he’d awoken from surgery—everyone on Wayfarer Island pretty much lived on the rocket fuel LT brewed. But the hot liquid that hit his tongue was too thick to be jitter juice.
“What is this?” He made a face of disgust.
“Hot chocolate. Your surgeon said studies have shown caffeine may be bad for wound healing. You’re off the sauce for a while, my friend.”
“Just when I thought this torture chamber couldn’t get any worse,” he groaned.
“Oh, cry me a river. Plane crash? No problem. Shot in the chest? Piece of cake. But no coffee? Wah!”
He fought a grin but ultimately lost the battle. His lips stretched wide as he stared at her.