But he was starting to think that all he’d done was slap a shiny, pretty coat of paint on a rotting barn. He’d never been happy, had taken no joy out of the money he’d made…had deceived honest people and raped countless acres of land, and for what? All he’d done was feed the tapeworm in his gut that had driven him. None of it had nurtured him.

Marie-Terese took his hand. “So…who is that woman? What is she?”

“She’s…I don’t know how to answer either of those questions. Maybe those two guys who came with Jim can.” He glanced at the doorway and then looked at Marie-Terese. “I don’t want you to think I’m a freak. But I won’t blame you if you do.”

As he dropped his head, for the first time in a long, long while, he desperately wished he was someone else.

Words were better than nothing when it came to explaining things, but that didn’t mean they went nearly far enough in some situations.

This was one of them, Marie-Terese thought.

In her life, things like what Vin was talking about happened in the movies or in books…or they were whispered about when you were thirteen and on a sleepover with your friends…or they were lies that were advertised in the back of cheap magazines. They were not part of the real world, and her mind was fighting the adjustment.

The trouble was, she’d seen what she had seen: a woman with black holes for eyes and an aura that seemed to taint the very air that surrounded her; Vin collapsing and speaking words he didn’t seem to hear; and now…a proud man, hanging his head in shame for something that was neither his fault nor his wish.

Marie-Terese kept stroking his shoulders, wishing there was more she could do to ease him. “I don’t…” She let the sentence drift.

His reserved gray eyes flicked over to her. “Have any idea what to make of me, right?”

Well, yes…but she wasn’t about to put that thought into words for fear it would come out wrong.

“It’s okay,” he said, reaching out and giving her hand a squeeze before rising from the bed. “Believe me, I don’t blame you in the slightest.”

“What can I do to help?” she asked as he walked around.

He looked at her from over by the window. “Get out of town. And maybe we shouldn’t see each other. It may well be safer for you and that is the single most important thing to me right now. I’m not going to let her get you. No matter what I have to do. She is not going to get at you.”