That's all she said, making him frown. "How old were you when you went there?"

"Fourteen."

So she'd been on her own ever since? "You're twenty-four now, right?"

"Yes."

Six years on her own. "Where'd you go when you first left them?"

Her eyes flickered away again. "I moved here, to Ohio."

Getting answers from Cherry was like pulling hen's teeth. "From where?"

"Kentucky."

Eighteen and alone, no job, in a new state... He wanted to know everything between when she'd left and now, but at the rate they were going that could take a while. So instead he got back on track. "When you lived with them, was it just the three boys? No other kids?"

"Yes."

Done with the curt one-word replies, Denver tilted his head. "Why do you despise them so much?"

She stared him in the eyes. "You met them. They're terrible people."

"Now."

"They were terrible then, too!" She snatched up her muffin and took another big bite.

This time Denver let her eat. The muffin was fresh, healthy, and she needed food as much as she needed sleep. Though she was recovering quicker than he'd expected, a slight rasp still sounded in her voice and her skin remained a little pale. But she no longer looked feverish or ready to keel over. Progress.

By tomorrow she should be just about there-just about well enough for him to taste her again, to feel her soft skin all over. To sink into her warmth- "Am I holding you up?" she asked.

"No."

"You're just sitting there and staring at me like you're waiting for something."

He smiled. "I was thinking about tomorrow, hoping you'll be ready for me."

The empty muffin paper crumpled in her hand when she braced it at the edge of the table and leaned forward. "I'm ready now."

So anxious. It was a very nice thing to be wanted by Cherry Peyton. "Not just yet." She furrowed her brows, ready to debate it with him, so he threw out his biggest question. "Why'd you freak, girl?"

Her eyes widened.

Denver pushed back his chair. "When I admitted I'd met them, you lost it."

She pressed back in her seat as he circled the table. "You only call me 'girl' when you're thinking about sex."

He confirmed it. "I'm thinking about sex." But he didn't relent. "Why'd you freak out?" And just in case she was considering it, "Don't lie."

"Stop accusing me of that!"

"Then stop fudging the truth." He took her shoulders and eased her from the chair. So soft and female. Without meaning to, he caressed her. "You thought I had some kind of association with your brothers."

"Not my brothers."

"I'm glad of that." He kissed her soft mouth, but kept it brief. "What did you think?"

The way she tasted her lips with her tongue made him a little nuts. "Kiss me again?"

"All right." There were few things he'd enjoy more-other than getting his answers. "After you tell me."

Shoving away from him, she wrapped her arms around herself. "Maybe I wouldn't have to fudge things if you didn't keep trying to take over."

Is that what he was doing? "I thought we were involved."

She whipped back around, her eyes big. "We are."

"But you expect me not to care? You think I shouldn't bother to understand?" He crossed his arms over his chest and stared down at her. "That's the kind of man you think I am?"

Using both hands, she tucked her hair behind her ears. "I think you're wonderful."

Keeping his stern expression wasn't easy, not when he wanted to pick her up and hold her and tell her to stop worrying. But he honestly believed the best way to ease her worry was to get to the truth. Once he knew it all, he could help her come up with solutions.

Breath left her in a defeated sigh. "It's not an easy story to tell."

"You can tell me anything."

With a negative shake of her head, she paced away. "It makes me sound stupid and gullible."

All that? "I would never think those things about you." To reassure her, he stepped up close and put his hands on her shoulders again, this time standing behind her. "How about you tell me and together we figure out what to do?"

He heard her swallow, felt her blond curls tease his chin when she finally nodded.

Hugging her, Denver wrapped her close and waited.

"They liked to set me up. A lot."

That didn't make any sense to him. "Set you up how?"

She put her face in her hands. The silence stretched out, but he didn't rush her. He could sense her collecting her thoughts, searching for the words.

And working up the guts to tell him.

He kissed her temple and just held her, giving her the time she apparently needed.

Her hands came down and rested on his forearms, which were crossed under her breasts. "They would get guys to pretend they liked me. Sometimes to ask me to school dances or stuff like that. The guys...a couple of times they were their friends. Other times they were just dupes like me. Boys forced to do...mean things."

It was the "mean" part that stirred his anger, and the fact she sounded so embarrassed told Denver it was still raw for her.

Yet what she said didn't really explain anything. They pretended to like her? How could that have been so bad that she'd never stopped hurting over it?

He brought her around to face him, but let her huddle close. "Can you give me an example?"

As if she needed to ground herself, her small hands fisted in his shirt. "The first time it happened was when I was a freshman. A senior asked me to prom and I was...ecstatic. Life with the Nelsons was as far from fun as a girl could get."

"How so?"

She waved a hand. "Small, dirty, ramshackle house. Tons of drunken fights. Foul language and fouler attitudes. For me, getting away from there, being with the other kids at prom, being normal, would have been like a Disney vacation."

Everything she said just brought up more questions. Denver thought he could probably dedicate an entire day to interrogating her and still not know everything he wanted and needed to know.

"I spent two weeks cutting grass for Gene and Mitty, and they gave me a percentage of the money they would have made."

"If you cut the grass, why didn't you get all the money?"

Leveling a look on him, she said, "It was Gene and Mitty."

Right. "What does cutting grass have to do with-"

"I used what I made to buy a dress and shoes at the thrift shop."

Did she have any clue how she broke his heart? "I bet you looked sexy even then."

That must've been the wrong thing to say because she jerked away and put several feet between them.

"It was all a sham. I was there that night, stupidly giddy, dressed up and waiting. And then still waiting." With demons chasing her, she paced the room, always keeping her face averted. "Finally he showed up-in jeans and a T-shirt. I didn't understand...until they all cracked up, laughing hysterically. It was a joke." She shook her head, and said with emphasis, "I was a joke."

Oh God. He wanted to kill them. All three of them, Denver decided.

"That game became their favorite sport." She'd walked to a corner of the kitchen, her hands braced on the countertop. "Prom was the worst, but it happened four more times, each time more convincing than the last. And I guess I was just so...so stupidly desperate for something real, I was easy to convince. But I finally got smarter and I gave up on the idea of dances, or going to the football games or...anything like that."

"I'm so damn sorry."

She accepted that with a nod, her expression distant with her thoughts. "The last time it happened," she whispered, "was in the summer when all the neighborhood kids were getting together to head to the lake."

A hollowness filled her voice. Worse than the cough, because although her expression was carefully void of emotion, in her voice he heard the edge of hurt...and maybe a hint of tears. If she cried, Denver didn't think he could bear it.

"This nice, shy boy talked me into going along and swimming with them. He said all the right things, telling me not to let Carver or the others know, like we had a special secret between us."

She looked so delicate standing there, her eyes haunted-but her shoulders were straight and proud.

"I didn't own a suit, so I wore a T-shirt and shorts." Her voice lowered and her eyes narrowed with a touch of anger. "He kissed me in the lake. He...touched me."

"You liked him?"

She laughed without humor. "I think I would have liked any guy that wasn't one of the brothers."

Any guy who'd been nice. "I can understand that."

She twisted her mouth with rueful contempt. "I was so pathetically desperate..." The words trailed off and she straightened again. "He was kissing me, both of us mostly submerged in the water, and then Carver applauded on the shore and I looked up and everyone was standing there, some of them confused, some full of pity. Others, Carver and Gene's friends, laughed until they couldn't stand up straight. The boy who'd been kissing me like he actually liked me just waded out and I was left there in the lake."

Alone.

Denver took two big steps that put him directly in front of her, caging her in.

She held up a hand, maybe to deny the need for comfort. Maybe to block him from getting too close. He stepped into it until her palm flattened on his chest. He put his hand over hers and his forehead to the top of her bowed head.

And he struggled. With himself, with what he wanted from her.

How he wanted to find the miserable fucks and tear them apart.

"After that," she whispered, "I just refused to speak to boys, and I didn't make friends with girls. Because I stopped participating, Carver was forced to give up that particular game."

That game-but had he found other games to play? Denver wanted to know everything, especially whether or not the brothers had ever physically hurt her. But she'd spent enough time reciting bad memories.

A deep breath lifted her breasts against his ribcage. She shifted, slowly raised her face and looked at him. "It wasn't until that day at the lake that I realized why Carver did the things he did."

Hands shaking from several emotions, but mostly debilitating fury and a staggering tenderness, Denver cupped her head. "Why?"

"He said he didn't want to share."

"With you?"

She shook her head. "He didn't want to share...me."

CHAPTER NINE.

AN AWFUL EXPRESSION fell over Denver's face. She'd seen him fight, but she'd never been up close when he went into battle mode-as he did now. He looked ruthless. The hardness in his golden hunter's gaze, the flexing of steel muscles, might have unsettled someone else.

Before this moment, she'd touched him because it gave her comfort. Now she touched him to offer it, smoothing a hand over the tension in his chest, up to those bulging biceps and hard-set shoulders. "Carver said it was seeing me in the wet T-shirt that did it. His way of blaming me. But later, when I thought about it, I knew he'd been thinking along those lines for a while."

Eyes narrowed and jaw tight, Denver growled, "He touched you?"

He'd done so much worse than that. She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to block it out. "He never raped me." Not for lack of trying. Her words sounded like gravel, and she hoped Denver attributed it to lingering sickness instead of deep-rooted fear and revulsion.

"That's not what I asked you."

She shrugged as if it didn't matter, when it mattered far too much. "He liked to manhandle me. They all three found one reason or another to yank me around, shove me. They threatened plenty, but they never outright hit me."

He breathed harder and his eye flinched. "That sounds pretty awful for a young girl."

Too awful to bear-especially when she knew it was leading up to worse. "After that day at the lake, everything changed. It's like they were no longer rough just to be mean. It was more about..."