Judgement By Fire by O'Connell Glenys

Author:O'Connell, Glenys [O'Connell, Glenys]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 2013-02-11T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eleven

Sunlight streamed in through the green curtain of plants that veiled a large conservatory window in the glassed in back porch of Paul and Lucy’s cottage, creating a semi tropical ambience despite the streaks of snow that still patterned the ground outside.

Lauren shivered despite the moist heat of the greenhouse as she hunched over the comforting warmth of a mug of hot, sweet coffee. Lucy, newly home from hospital herself, had declared her friend in a state of shock, rubbed a soothing muscle-relaxing ointment on her shoulder, wrapped an elastic bandage around her injured wrist, and declared she sit, stay, and rest.

With all that loving motherly treatment, she should have been feeling better. Instead, she had never felt so wretched in her life. Paul had tried to tell her that she’d been suffering from shock and tension and not thinking straight, but Lauren couldn’t excuse her behavior so easily.

Certainly, she’d been in pain, certainly she’d been shaken by the events of the past twenty-four hours, yet to accuse the man she loved, on scant evidence, of being behind such terrible things was unforgivable. A deep sense of shame haunted her because she hadn’t had the courage to trust Jon, hadn’t been able to trust her own love for him.

Talking to Paul, she’d realized what her heart and her head had been telling her all along; that Jon could not have been driving the truck that pushed her off the road. He’d arrived too early at her cottage to be responsible. And she hadn’t even given him the benefit of the doubt.

“He was like a clock spring, all wired with tension, worried sick about you,” Paul had told her, his words flaying her emotions. “He’s told me all about the things that have been happening at the company, and how he and the security chief think there may be a link between everything that’s been happening. He was terrified something might happen to you, kiddo, terrified and full of guilt. You see, he feels responsible, because it’s something to do with that company he loves so much that is threatening you. He loves you, Lauren.”

Lauren knew that Paul was trying to help, trying to convince her of what she already knew—that she had laid the blame in the wrong quarter. However, his words served only to intensify the pain and shame she was already feeling.

I’m an emotional coward, she berated herself. Jon had made it plain from the very beginning of their relationship—from the day they first met—that he was willing to put himself out on the line to see if the attraction that burned between them would go any further. He’d been there at every turn, urging her to follow her heart, begging her not to turn away from him, putting himself out in time, energy, and emotional currency.

And what had she done? She’d put him off at every opportunity. Aside from when you shared his bed, the little voice in her head had turned vicious, adding derisively: Then

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