“Exactly that, circumstances,” she commented indignantly.

“That first morning in the bank I found you alone in your office. You had the perfect opportunity….”

“Enough!” she stammered, and started down the two weathered steps of the gazebo. “I’ve heard enough.” She paused for a minute, her hands supporting her weight on the railing. “What I don’t understand is why, if you suspected me from the start, you didn’t tell me—or ask me? Didn’t you have the decency to respect my innocence and ask me about all those ‘facts’?”

“It doesn’t matter, not now,” he said with a rush of enthusiasm. “We can get married, and I’ll find a way to replace the money.” He strode over to her and captured her wrist. “Don’t you see, no more money will be taken, and all the cash that’s missing since Mitch left the bank will be replaced.”

“Just like that?” she asked incredulously. Her eyes narrowed and she surveyed the hand on her wrist suspiciously. “You really think that I was a part of this, don’t you?”

“Erin,” he sighed disconsolately as he tilted her face with his thumb. “I know that you met Mitch on the day of his arraignment. I also know that the money was taken on that day….”

“You bastard!” Before she could think, her free hand arched upward and slapped Kane’s cheek. The loud smack echoed in the night, and Kane’s eyes grew black with suppressed fury. His jaw clenched, and for a moment Erin wondered if he was going to retaliate and hit her.

His voice, suddenly soft, reached out to her. “Erin…”

“Don’t! I don’t want to hear anything more! Not ever again. I’ll…I’ll hand in my resignation tomorrow…and I think it would be best for all of us if you would move out of the apartment as soon as possible. You…you can…have two weeks….” The sobs that she was quietly withholding began to rack her body, and she felt as if she were about to be torn in half by his betrayal. At the pressure from Kane’s hand on her shoulder, she drew away as if wounded and started stumbling toward the house.

“Erin, wait!” Kane ordered, but she ignored his plea. “You can’t resign. If you’re innocent, you can’t resign. It will appear more incriminating!”

Whirling to face him, nearly tripping on the exposed root from a nearby fir tree, she replied bitingly, “I’m quitting. I…I don’t want anything more to do with you…or your bank!”

“Erin, don’t!” He was beside her in a minute, and his features had softened. “Don’t you understand? I need you, I want you…I love you!”

“Love? You don’t have any idea what the word means. And, as for needing and wanting, I think you’re getting them confused with using. Because that’s what you did to me, wasn’t it? You used me—tried to get close to me so that you could ‘look into my darker, private side.’ Isn’t that how you phrased it? I didn’t know what you meant, not at the time, but I know now, don’t I? You wanted to get inside my head and find a way to incriminate me for a crime that I had no part of….”