Page 58 of Stranded with the SEAL

As if reading her mind, Bella took her hand and whispered in her ear. “It wasn’t your fault.”

Olivia dropped her eyes to her sister’s shoes, a pair of heels too sexy for anyone’s funeral.

Typical.

Since reuniting with her sister, Olivia had regained her memories of Bella, and most of her life, for that matter. It seemed she had nothing else to hide from herself now that Marco was gone.

She let her sister’s hand go and gazed beyond their little shelter to the cemetery beyond. A movement in the distance caught her eye. A lone mourner too athletically built to be a civilian, and a rush of sexual awareness zapped through her, quickly changing to anger. What was he doing here?

A flash of light far off to her left snagged her ire, and her head spun to see it. The paparazzi was out in full force, though the cemetery had cordoned them off in a small section about two hundred feet away. Now that her memory was back, she was Brooke Barrons once again, with all that entailed. And the only thing more exciting than her announcement of who her fiancé had been was the news that he was no longer alive.

Bella gently turned her, and Olivia realized the service was over. People were mouthing condolences Olivia didn’t hear as she felt Trevor’s presence burning a hole in the back of her head.

She needn’t have worried. He didn’t approach her until the last of the mourners and photographers were gone. She was upset, the days between Marco’s murder and now doing nothing to ease her pain.

He wore a dark suit and tie, and he walked through the rain like he wasn’t even getting wet. His eyes, when she could see them, were sobering and still. “I came to pay my respects,” he said.

Bella looked from one to the other. “I’ll wait for you in the car.” She walked away.

Olivia glared at Trevor. “Do you think that’s funny?”

“No. This can’t be easy for you.”

The sincerity in his eyes was her undoing. Tears came for the first time since Marco died.

Why now? Why in front of this man, the one who was responsible for Marco’s death and her own transgressions? All of the true mourners had left her unaffected, but the one man who was glad Marco was gone had managed to touch her heart.

He opened his arms slightly. “Come here.”

She shook her head, the tears coming harder because she wanted to go to him more than anything.

“I’m sorry, Olivia.”

She wiped tears from her cheeks. “For what?”

“For having to kill him when you asked me not to. For hurting you. For caring about you and making love to you. I was selfish.” He rattled the coins in his pocket. “I wanted you, I hated him, and everything else be damned. Hell, if it weren’t for me, you might have gotten to Steele’s house that day after all, and things would have turned out very differently.”

“I wasn’t going to Marco’s.”

“No?”

She shook her head. “I was going to the cabin.” She exhaled hard and rubbed her temples. “I needed to get my memories before I left him for good, to remember who I was when I stood on my own two feet. Ironic, isn’t it? That I went there searching for my past, and I arrived there without one?”

He smiled a sardonic grin. “What kind of memories?”

“Photographs of my family and Ellie and Frank that were up in the attic. And I needed to face that house. I hadn’t been able to bring myself there since they died.”

The sky became lighter, and Olivia realized the rain had stopped. She stared at the heavy clouds, haunted by the questions she would never get answered definitively.

“Do you think Marco killed Ellie and Frank?” she asked.

“Yes.”

She nodded and bit her lip. “I think so, too. I didn’t need him enough when they were alive.” She could see it clearly now, how Marco had used her dependence on others to mold himself into the perfect man for her.

If only she’d been stronger. Able to stand on her own two feet.

“What made you decide to end your engagement?” asked Trevor.