You Betrayed Me (The Cahills #3) - Lisa Jackson Page 0,2
rest of his share of the Cahill fortune. Even without that knowledge, women were continually flinging themselves at him, and he, prick that he was, didn’t exactly discourage them.
Fortunately, in Rebecca’s case, she’d put all that behind her.
Her sister was long over James.
Right?
Didn’t matter, Megan told herself, chin jutting as she squinted through the windshield, snowflakes swirling and dancing in the glow of her headlights.
Rebecca would know what to do.
She always did. Rock-steady, determined Rebecca Travers would help Megan set things right. Despite any latent feelings Rebecca might harbor toward James.
Megan’s conscience twinged a bit. How many times had she relied on her sister? How often had she run crying back to her older sibling, who always helped? Even when . . . ?
She felt a small stab of guilt, which probably should have been sharper. Deeper. She glanced at her reflection in the rearview mirror.
The blue eyes in the reflection were red-rimmed, but not because of remorse. If she had the chance to do it all over again, to right that wrong . . . she bit her lip and pushed the thought out of her mind as her car struggled against the incline. She wasn’t a bad person. Not really. And James . . . Oh, dear God, James . . .
A lump filled her throat as the Corolla nosed upward, snow now covering the pavement and piling along the sides of the road where the plow had come through earlier. She fiddled with the defrost knob, as the windshield was beginning to fog, and cranked the temperature to the highest level.
Nothing.
The fan was broken. Had been for weeks.
“Shit.” She grabbed a used napkin from the coffee shop, which had been wedged into a cup holder. Lump in her throat, she swiped away the film as best she could, then she squinted through the windshield.
What little traffic there had been had thinned, and finally, as the car climbed, engine whining, she found herself alone on this stretch of road winding through the night-dark peaks of the Cascades. She pressed harder on the gas. “Come on. Come on.” Visibility was hampered by the ever-increasing snowfall and, of course, the useless defroster. Once more, she wiped a spot clear above her steering wheel to see that now, in the mountains, the snowstorm was nearly a whiteout.
“Great.”
She thought of James, and her heart crumbled. A wash of memories slipped through her mind, and tears threatened again. She hit the gas at the next sharp turn.
Her wheels shifted.
Spun.
She eased off. “Get a grip,” she told herself as the car straightened out, the beams of her headlights reflecting in a million swirling flakes, the engine lugging down with the steep incline.
Their last fight had been their worst. Never before had anger and nasty words turned physical, but tonight her rage had been mercurial.
More tears.
Blinding her, just as rage had blinded her earlier.
Shaking her head against the memory, she floored the accelerator, snagged the wet, wadded napkin, and took another swipe at the fogged windshield as the road dipped suddenly.
“Crap!”
Her heart froze.
Another corner loomed, this one hairpin sharp.
Automatically, she hit the brakes.
The back tires spun as she turned the steering wheel with her free hand.
The Corolla hit ice and began a slow, steady swirl.
“No . . . no, no, no!” She was high in the mountains, the tops of eighty-foot fir trees level with the road, their icy branches laden with snow, the canyon below invisible. “Oh, God.” She took her foot off both the brake and the gas . . . that was what she was supposed to do. Right? Drive into the spin or some such thing? Her heart pounded in her ears.
In slow motion, she saw the edge of the road, the piles of snow hiding the guard rail, if there was one, and beyond, the darkness.
Fear crystallized her blood.
Don’t panic, Megan! Do NOT panic!
But a scream started to form in her throat.
Suddenly all four wheels found traction, and she had control again.
Oh . . . hallelujah . . .
Heart thudding, nerves jangled, she licked her lips. That was close. So damn close. She let out her breath slowly, concentrated on what she had to do, pushed the fight with James far from her mind and drove ever upward, meeting no cars, which seemed weird even with the blizzard-like conditions here, near the summit. A few more miles and she’d be heading downward.
To Seattle.
To Rebecca.
To sanity.
Over the summit, the car sped up.
She eased on the brakes, hands holding the steering wheel