MIRROR IMAGE

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Avery turned her back to keep from slapping him. ''That was ugly, Irish."

She moved to the window and was alarmed to notice that it had already grown dark. At the ranch, they'd be finished with dinner.  She had told them she was going to shop through the dinner hour. Still, she needed to leave soon.

"It was ugly, yes," Irish conceded. "It was meant to be. Every time I feel like going soft on you, I think about the countless nights following the crash when I drank myself into a stupor. You know, I even considered cashing it all in."

Avery came around slowly, her face no longer taut with anger. "Please don't tell me that."

"I figured, fuck this life. I'll take my chances in the next one. I had lost Cliff and Rosemary. I had lost you. I asked God, 'Hey, who needs this abuse?' If I hadn't feared for my immortal soul, such as it is ..." He smiled ruefully.

She placed her arms around him and rested her cheek on his shoulder. "I love you. I suffered for you, too, believe it or not. I knew how my death would affect you."

He gathered her into a hug, not for the first time wishing she was truly his daughter. "I love you, too. That's why I can't let you go on with this, Avery."

She leaned away from him. "I have no choice now."

"If there is somebody who wants Rutledge dead—"

"There is."

"Then you're in danger, too."

"I know. I want to be a different Carole for Tate and Mandy, but if I'm too different, her coconspirator will figure she's betrayed him. Or," she added soberly, "that Carole isn't really Carole. I live in fear of giving myself away."

"You might have failed already and don't know it."

She shivered. "I realize that, too."

"Van noticed."

She reacted with a start, then expelled her breath slowly. "I wondered. I nearly had a heart attack when I opened the door to him."

Irish related his conversation with Van. "I was busy and didn't pay much attention to him at the time. I thought he was just being his usual,  obnoxious  self.  Now, I think he was trying to tell me something.  What should I say if he brings it up again?"

''Nothing. The fewer who know, the better—for their sakes, as well as mine. Van knew Avery Daniels. The Rutledges didn't. They don't have anyone to compare the new Carole to. They're attributing the changes in her to the crash and its traumatic aftermath."

"It's still shallow," he said worriedly. "If there is no assassination plot—and I pray to heaven that there isn't—the best you can hope to get out of this is a broken heart."

"If I gave it up now and managed to come out alive, I would have done it for nothing. I haven't got the whole story yet. And what if Tate were assassinated, Irish? What if I could have prevented it and didn't? Do you think I could live with that the rest of my life?"

He lightly scrubbed her jaw with his knuckles. "You love him, don't you?"

Closing her eyes, she nodded.

"He hated his wife. Therefore, he hates you."

"Right again," she said with a mirthless laugh.

"What's it like between you?"

"I haven't slept with him."

"I didn't ask."

"But that's what you wanted to know." "Would you?"