Ghostwalker 01- Shadow Game

chest-pounding session."
    "It's not quite as fun when there's only a few of them. When do you think we'll hear from the doctor about Jeff's condition?"
    "I'm certain he'll get back to me today." She pushed him away and walked toward the outer rooms.
    Ryland kept pace easily. "I'm going with you, Lily. Two pairs of eyes are better than one."
    She stopped in her tracks, not looking at him. "The day staff is here and it isn't safe, you might be seen."
    "I can get by your day staff with no problem, Lily, that's not the reason you're so reluctant to let me go with you. You don't want me to see those tapes of your childhood."

    His voice was so exquisitely gentle, so tender, Lily's heart turned over and she had to blink back tears. "I feel betrayed when I'm watching them, and if you're watching, I feel as if I'm betraying him. What he did was wrong, Ryland. It was bad enough that he did it to me, but there are other girls, women now, who didn't have the luxury of this house and the people in it. They had to have struggled, maybe even were institutionalized. That's not right. It will never be right and nothing I do will ever change it."
    Ryland took her hand, pressed a small kiss to her open palm. "He learned to love through you, Lily. He learned right from wrong and morals through knowing and loving you.
    Don't feel guilty because you loved him. He tried to do right by you. He knew he was inadequate by himself so he surrounded you with others who would fill in the gaps. And he gave them a home, a sense of purpose, a family. Few people are all bad or all good, Lily. There are shades of both in most people."
    She nodded. "I know that, Ryland, but this hurts. Going into that horrible room and having memories return… Watching those tapes and hearing his voice. I didn't mean anything at all to him back then. You can hear the impatience when I don't perform to his satisfaction. Rosa—who was the nurse then—is a much younger woman, and looks very different, she tries to comfort me and he yells at her all the time." She pressed a hand to her head, still refusing to look at him.
    "Lily, why should you put yourself through that?"
    "I need the information for all of us. For your men, for those girls. When this is over, if it takes a lifetime, I'm going to find every one of those women, and I'm going to make certain each of them is all right."
    "You don't need to be alone when you're watching the tapes." He tightened his fingers around hers. "We're partners in every sense of the word. I know you loved your father, and you don't need forgiveness for loving him, Lily. The man loved you and did his best to provide you with a home, a family, and the best education he could. There's no shame in that."
    "The shame is in you seeing," Lily insisted. "He looks at me as if I'm a specimen. I don't want you to see that. I can't let you see me that way." She couldn't find the words to tell him it diminished her. It reduced her to that frightened, unloved child in a house of strangers. Ryland would see her like that. She couldn't bear that.
    "I love you, Lily." He caught her chin, tipped her face up to his. "I'm going to love that little girl because she's in you."
    Lily pulled her head away. "Ryland, don't. You don't know that. You don't know how you're going to feel about me when you view those tapes."
    He started to protest, stopped abruptly when he noticed her hand trembling. He ached for her, felt her inner turmoil, pain swamping him, swamping her. "If I'm so shallow, Lily, that I'm not going to feel the same about you because you were mistreated as a child, then you should find out now. Do you really think that of me?"
    She closed her eyes for a moment. "No, Ryland. It's just hard for me to sit there and watch it. To know it's really the truth. He never prepared me, I had no idea of any of it."
    "Just keep in mind your father grew to love you. You gave him something all the money in the world couldn't buy."
    "Isn't that the point, Ryland?" For the first time, her voice was bitter. "He did buy us and when everything went wrong he used his money to get himself out of trouble."
    "At that time, Lily, he knew no other way." He slipped his arm around her, drew her beneath the protection of his shoulder. "Let's face it together. It won't be so difficult if we're together."
    She remained stiff, holding herself away from him.
    "I'm part of you. Whether you like it or not, I'm part of you. I feel what you feel. It's there, Lily, and it's always