“They were college kids that I paid to spend time with me. They did work around the house, watched movies, or played Monopoly.” She gave an embarrassed laugh before catching herself and falling silent once again. When Mac looked over at her, her head was still lowered and she refused to look at him. Somehow that angered him even further. She had ripped his world apart with her words, and she couldn’t do it to his face.

He jumped to his feet, feeling the anger ripple from him in waves. Without thought, he grabbed a glass vase full of flowers from the side table and hurled it against the wall. Ava was finally looking at him, her eyes wide in shock. He wasn’t the type of man prone to displays of anger, but she had just taken years of his life and told him that he had needlessly suffered because of a lie, or in this case, years of lies. He felt shattered at her underlying reasons, but somehow knowing that she’d suffered through years of pain when he could have been there, helping her to heal, slew him further. Mac was a quivering, raging mass of emotion and could no longer trust himself to be near her. He’d never physically hurt her, but he couldn’t guarantee that his words wouldn’t wound her just as deeply. He had to get away; he needed to breathe again.

Mac heard her calling his name almost as if in a tunnel as he stalked out the door and to his car. In the back of his mind, he felt bad for leaving her to clean up the mess he had made with the vase. But he just couldn’t stay there for one minute longer.

*   *   *

Ava stared at the door in shock, expecting Mac to come back. She waited, but it never happened. He was gone and from the look on his face, she wasn’t sure if he was ever coming back to her apartment . . . or to her. She’d never seen him so out of control before. She could handle his anger, even though it was foreign to her, but the hurt. . . . God, the hurt when he looked at her was devastating. Without warning, she felt her stomach start to churn and she bolted from the couch, just making it to the bathroom before the contents of her stomach released. She slumped back to the cool tile of the bathroom floor and stared at the ceiling. Dominic had been right—Mac had lost it when he found out about her ruse. Her gentle giant had cracked before her very eyes, and it had been all her doing.

She wasn’t naive; she knew Mac didn’t suffer fools gladly, but somehow she always thought she would be on the other side of that. Now it seemed that he was angry with her more often than not. Of course, the anger over her new reckless hobbies was much different from his anger today. He wasn’t just mad; he was a mass of seething fury. She had the shards of glass and water all over her living room to prove it.

Her anxiety levels spiked as she faced the very real possibility that she had finally driven Mac away for good. Could he ever forgive her for what she had put him through? In trying to hide her pain from him, she had caused him to suffer immeasurably. At the time, she was like a junkie trying to hide her shame from the world. She didn’t want people feeling sorry for her. For months after her rape, her brothers and Mac had treated her as if she were different. She had ceased to be the kooky sister and had turned into someone whom everyone wanted to tiptoe around. Conversations stopped when she walked into a room, and concerned eyes followed her every movement. Her very identity had died that day. In their eyes, she was broken. That impression didn’t change until the day that she’d decided to bury the old Ava under the persona of a new Ava. The new woman was cool, indifferent, something approaching normal. She wasn’t scared of anything, including men. Or so they had all thought. Maybe after worrying about her for so long, they all saw what they wanted to see. Did that make it right? No, even though at the time she thought she was doing what was best for everyone. Now she didn’t even know what choice she had other than to keep doing what she had been this past week. For, as crazy as it sounded, things had been more real with Mac than they had been in years. She only hoped he cared enough now to continue watching over her.

Chapter Twelve

Mac cursed loudly when he pulled into his driveway and saw Gwen’s car still there. He’d been gone for a couple of hours, but she had stayed? He was in a foul mood and his usual diplomacy was shot to hell. He needed to get her out of there—fast. The sound of his door slamming reverberated in the darkness as he stalked toward the driver’s side of her car, intending to send her on her way. He was surprised when the car appeared to be empty. Concern overrode his anger as he looked around the empty expanse of lawn, seeing no sign of movement. He walked up the steps to his deck, intending to grab a flashlight and go check the beach for her. Women liked doing crazy things like walking on the beach at midnight.

“So, you finally made it back. I was starting to think that I wasn’t going to be able to stay awake long enough to satisfy my curiosity tonight.” Mac’s head swung to the rocker in the corner of the porch where he could just barely make out an outline.

“Gwen? What’re you doing here?”

As his eyes slowly adjusted to the dark, he could see that she was rocking lightly back and forth. “Just answering some questions that I had.”

Mac was beyond frustrated with the women in his life by this point. The last thing he wanted or needed was some long, drawn-out cryptic question-and-answer session. He didn’t want to take his anger at Ava out on Gwen, but damn it, he desperately needed some space. Taking a deep breath, he said, “Gwen, I’m sorry. I’m not in the best of moods right now. Let me walk you to your car and we’ll talk tomorrow, yeah?”

Ignoring his attempts to get her to leave, she continued rocking. “It was Ava tonight, right? The reason you rushed out of here like the world was ending?”

“Yes,” he answered warily, not sure where this was going.

“You know, the one thing that really confuses me about you, Mac, is I have no clue why you ever asked me out.”

The same alarm bells that sounded in most men’s heads when women said shit like what Gwen was saying were going off like high-pitched sirens. It didn’t seem to matter whether he was in the mood for a talk about his feelings or not, Gwen was more than prepared to force the issue. He could hear the underlying determination in her voice. Holy fuck. “You’re a beautiful woman, Gwen. Why wouldn’t I be interested?” He cringed when he ended his comment with a question. That was a dumb move.

“Thanks, Mac,” she said softly, “but I don’t think that even applies here. I suspect you’re looking for some meaningless sex to scratch an itch. So what I don’t understand is what’s made you hold back . . . from the sex part? I’m not the type of woman to sleep with every guy I go out with, but I think I’ve shown you after a few dates that I was interested in something physical between us. I mean, come on, Mac. You’re sexy enough that any woman would want you. I’m just curious to know why you always halted things before they got that far. Your body wanted me—you can’t fake that—but your head took you out of the game every time.”