Текст книги "Within Temptation"

Автор книги: Tanya Holmes

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Текущая страница: 6 (всего у книги 19 страниц)

“No.” I swallowed. “We get so much traffic in here. Clients, agents, vendors, loan officers.”

“What about your secretary?”

“My administrative assistant,” I gently corrected, “is Beatrice, a trusted staff member. I’ve known her since kindergarten.”

He folded his arms, settled his weight to the right, and stroked his chin. “This happen to the other agents?”

“No, but things get misplaced quite a lot—” I widened my eyes when he rounded the desk and picked up the bridal photographs from the credenza. “W-what are you doing?”

He didn’t answer, just started thumbing through the pictures. I stepped back, but he was still too close. Careful not to snatch them away, I tugged the photos from his hands.

“So when’s the big event?”

I tapped the edges to align them. “February 28th.”

“Kinda cold then.”

I dropped the snapshots into a drawer and shoved it closed. “I’m sure you’re not here to talk about my wedding.”

“Yeah. You’re right.”

Had he come to form an opinion? Or had he already decided? When his brows crested above the silver rim of his shades, I said, “I’m happy you’re here.” Hope surged. “But does this visit mean you believe me?”

His steady gaze was fastened on mine when he removed his glasses. Certainty shone in his eyes. “Yeah. It does.”

CHAPTER TEN
Broken Olive Branches

SHANNON

____________________________

Instinct made me grip the desk when I swayed, but I still landed in my chair with a graceless thump.

Trace looked concerned. “Hey, you’re sheet white.” He picked up a half-empty water bottle from the credenza and thrust it into my hand. “Drink it all.”

I obeyed. When I finished, he sat at the corner of my desk. Our legs brushed, then stilled. The right side of mine pressed against the right side of his. Winter’s chill lingered on him, but his leg felt like a branding iron. Butterflies invaded my stomach once our attention slid south.

On cue, both of us eased back to a proper distance. Then our eyes met, but didn’t hold. Too many untested emotions lay there. He became fascinated with an oil painting behind my desk, while I examined my hands, deciding it was time for another French manicure.

“Um…Shannon?”

My gaze zipped to his. “Yes?”

He hung his shades from the chain around his neck. His attention seesawed from my face to the floor. “About the stuff I said in the limo…and the parking lot…and the garage too. I-I didn’t mean to make you cry.” He blinked slowly. “I’m sorry ‘bout that.”

I searched his eyes. The cold veneer was gone, replaced by something warm and endearing.

He grasped my chair’s armrest and twisted me around to face him. “Deep down, I wanted to believe you.” He bowed his head. The invisible barrier between us had weakened. To the rug, he said, “I didn’t realize it ‘til now.”

More butterflies gathered in my stomach.

“I’ve been thinking about the other thing you said too.”

I stared spellbound. “What was that?”

“About me resenting you. I guess I did…a little. Maybe I…um…didn’t want to face it ‘cause I couldn’t justify it. Least not to myself. Anyway, given the evidence, they would’ve convicted me with or without your testimony.” He looked at the ceiling. “You were a young girl. A victim. I knew that. I couldn’t blame you, logically, but the feeling was still there.”

“It’s okay. You’re a human being, not a saint.”

He gave a solemn nod. “Well, with the letter and the fallout—when I thought you wrote it—it just stung.” He paused. “I was angry with you for other reasons, too. But I’ll…we can talk about that later.” He scratched his neck. “For now, you need to know I never lied to you. Not intentionally. I just didn’t understand what was really going on. With me, I mean.”

He let out a slow hiss of a breath, as if he’d dropped a load off his shoulders. There was a tenderness in his expression that I hadn’t seen since we were kids. It should have disarmed me, but the butterflies only multiplied.

Things got worse when he moved to stretch his legs and our knees brushed again. The contact sent my butterflies into a frenzy. He must have felt it too because he excused himself to drag a chair from the corner, mumbling something about leg cramps.

He sat across from me and the butterflies mutated into killer bees. This was ridiculous. A desk separated us, but my leg still burned from his touch, and my heart wouldn’t stop pounding.

Trace skimmed my office. “So you got the letter from the Department of Corrections?”

“Yes,” I said, grateful the awkward silence had ended. “Darien contacted the parole board and Victim Services.”

“What do they do?”

“Whenever an inmate’s status changes, all registered parties are notified through their VINE program—Victim Information & Notification Everyday.”

“What kind of changes?”

“If you—” I cringed when understanding darkened his eyes. “Uh, I mean, if someone had a parole hearing, those on the notification list would be contacted. Or if…someone was about to be released…or if y—I mean….”

“Shannon?” He paused when my gaze fell. “Will you look at me, please?”

I did.

“You don’t have to tiptoe around me. I’m not made of glass.”

“All right,” I said with a grateful smile.

He wrinkled his nose. “Somethin’ burning?”

I smelled it too. “Oh. The coffee pot must still be on.” I got to my feet and ambled past him. “Excuse me.”

He watched me leave. “Were your guardians registered?”

“They didn’t send it,” I said over my shoulder. “Trust me on this. I asked Auntie about it right before you came.”

I was still within his eyeshot when I crossed to the adjoining kitchenette and turned the coffee off. Black gook sloshed in the cloudy glass as I removed it from the well. I dumped the sludge down the stainless steel sink and rinsed the pot.

The nearness of his voice signaled his approach. He dug his hands in his pockets. “How can you be sure they didn’t do it?”

Because it was the only thing I was sure of. “Auntie and Uncle would never risk a scandal like that.” I slipped the pot back in place and the burner sizzled. “Their aversion to negative publicity can’t be understated. Excuse me.”

Squeezing past him without our bodies touching was impossible. My skin tingled at every point of contact. By the time I swept into my office to snare a cup from the sill, I was covered in gooseflesh. When I twisted around, he was right there, face to chest. I tilted my head back to look up at him. Even in the dim fluorescent light, I could see the golden flecks in his eyes.

His Adam’s apple climbed his neck. “What about your boyfriend?”

“Darien?”

“How many boyfriends you got?”

It was taking my brain longer to react. I couldn’t think when he was so close to me. “If you’re asking whether he’d do such a thing, the answer is no. And he’s not my boyfriend. He’s my fiancé.”

Trace eyed my ring finger as I stepped around him to go back into the kitchenette, but he was right behind me, stopping short at the entryway. My defenses crept up. A confrontation was imminent.

“Darien has no vendetta against you,” I said, dumping my cup in the sink. “He’d never shame me that way, and he’d never do something illegal.”

“Your man’s human. That makes him as capable as anyone.”

I bristled at his word choice. “He’s not my ‘man.’ He’s—”

“Your fiancé. Right. I get it. So he helped you find the letter?”

Jaw tight, I squeezed a drop of lemon Joy in my cup and turned the spigot on. “Yes. And while he doesn’t approve—”

“Approve?” His eyes narrowed. “You need his permission?”

I washed the cup none too gently, hating the sarcastic undercurrent in his voice. “Of course not. He just thinks nothing we do will change anything.” Switching the water off, I set the cup aside and ripped a brown paper towel from the metal dispenser on the wall. “As for your other assertions,” I said, grabbing the cup again to give it a thorough drying, “Darien’s a man of integrity.”

“Integrity didn’t stop him from prosecuting an innocent man.”

My hand convulsed and the cup crashed to the floor. I gripped the sink’s edge and stared sightlessly at the pieces.

Trace studied me with a guarded frown before stooping to collect the shards. “Damn.” He slipped a finger into his mouth.

I knelt beside him, hoping he didn’t notice I was trembling. “You cut yourself?”

“It’s nothin’.” His lips made a sucking noise when he pulled his finger out. Blood welled. “Seems every time we’re near each other, I bleed.”

My breath shuddered as I got to my feet and grabbed a broom. I handed him the attached dustpan so I could sweep. We worked in silence, and once we were done, he stood and leaned a shoulder against the jamb.

His stare burned into me—hot, hard, invasive. “I asked you a question. Would Montgomery knowingly convict an innocent man?”

“No,” I said with certainty. “If he thought you were innocent, he would’ve stepped aside.” I replaced the broom and dustpan, then headed for the lobby as Heather Nova’s “Gloomy Sunday” wafted from the radio.

He wasn’t far behind. “Do you think I’m innocent?”

I froze mid-step. Trace deserved candor, but an honest answer would trigger a backlash. His vow to protect me surfaced from a distant place in my memories. Given his abusive father, was it a stretch that Mother’s actions may have set him off? I could still see him crouched over the body…still see the spade and blood on his clothes. The rumors about the inmate he allegedly killed came to mind as well.

“You going to answer me or what?” he asked.

Just then Tori Mills of Main Street Flowers and her best friend Dee Dee Gray—Eddie’s brassy wife—stopped to look in the storefront window. Dee Dee’s four preschool-aged sons tagged along. One snow-suited child rode her hip while the walkers, who were linked with a toddler leash, formed a line behind her.

An astrology nut with a sixties obsession, Tori had a white beehive, big boobs, and endless legs that made her look like a wannabe Barbie. Her bee-stung lips fell open when she spotted Trace glowering by the fax machine. Dee Dee hitched her baby higher and squinted into the tinted glass.

I strode to the front and yanked the cords on each of the five venetian blinds. One by one, the shades smacked the windowsill as darkness raced across the office. When I was done, I rounded to find Trace’s hard eyes locked on me.

“What do you think they’ll say?” he asked.

I snatched a displaced magazine. “Who knows? I really couldn’t care less.”

“Somehow I doubt that.” He sat on the edge of Beatrice’s desk. Raw emotions flashed between us. “Still waiting.”

I glared back at him in a show of defiance, but inside foreboding set in like wormwood. “I won’t dignify your ridiculous assertion with a response.”

“Why doesn’t that surprise me?” Trace crossed his arms over his chest and the brush of leather on leather filled the momentary hush. “I’m gonna tie it all into a neat little bow so you’ll understand what time it is. Number one, I don’t give a damn about the letter.” When my eyes widened, he added, “Like your man said, finding the writer won’t change a thing.”

He couldn’t be serious. “So what was with all the questions about Uncle and Darien?”

“I wanted to see where your head was at.”

Anxiety and disbelief coalesced into anger. The song’s weepy lyrics suddenly started to annoy me. I flicked the radio off, nearly breaking the knob. “Then why all the histrionics?”

“Histri-what?”

“Histrionics!” I flung the magazine aside. “Fits. Hysterics. Drama. You went on and on about how the letter ruined your family. You sent me on an all-expense-paid guilt trip!”

“You just don’t get it, do you?”

I stormed up to him. “No, because it makes no sense.”

“How many times do I have to tell you that digging this stuff up isn’t gonna undo the past? Both our mamas are still dead. I’ve still lost twelve years. Cole’s still in Wonderland and—”

“That’s not the damn point.”

“For the love of—” He scowled. “Get your head outta the clouds, will you? Look at all the crap that’s been flying at me since I moved back. Say we find out who wrote the letter. Then what? It’ll only be somethin’ else.”

Talk about twisted logic. “You’re just going to give up?”

“It’s not about giving up. It’s about reality. Cholly can’t get a local contractor for his club ‘cause of me. So he’s working around it. I had a potential carpentry job, but I haven’t heard a word about it, and prob’ly never will. So I’m working around that too. I get at least five crank calls a day. At home. At the garage. But I deal with them. There’ll always be assholes. That’s why I’m not dwelling on shit I can’t control.”

I couldn’t believe my ears. “Nothing matters?”

“Not necessarily.” His gaze imprisoned me. “Remember what I said about tying stuff together?” Once I nodded, he asked, “Why’d you get flustered when Tori and Dee Dee saw us?”

My reasons were too complicated to explain now. “It’s not what you think.”

He canvassed my face and his chest swelled. “I only cared about the letter ‘cause I thought you wrote it. You were a girl once. Scared. Confused. You thinking I killed Lilith was understandable then. But stuff’s different now.”

I couldn’t speak, the passion in his words left me stymied.

“The way you look at me sometimes,” he said. “I can see it in your eyes. I saw it in the limo. You still think I did it.”

Think? I didn’t know what to think—about him, my family, Mother, the murder. Nothing made sense anymore. It all lay trussed behind a veil, shrouded in darkness. I closed my eyes for a second and tried to put my frenzied thoughts into words.

“Trace, listen. It’s-it’s not just you. It’s everything and—”

“Cholly was right. If you believed I was innocent, you wouldn’t have worn that hood. And you damn sure wouldn’t have pulled the blinds down just now. See, this is what’s been pissing me off. Took me a while to figure it out, but here it is.” He scrubbed a hand down his face. “You talk about olive branches. Wanna know what I’m still waiting to hear? That I’m innocent. You never said it once! How do you expect to fix stuff between us, when you still think I plunged a garden spade into your mama’s chest? Can’t you see what a joke this is?”

TRACE

____________________________

I watched her tear away to fuss with some magazines that didn’t need straightening. I’d come to ease her mind about the letter. Picking at a scab hadn’t figured into the plan. Now two questions dominated everything else: was she ashamed to be seen with me? And did she still believe I was guilty?

When she ran out of busywork, she eased into a chair, robot stiff. Silence swept through the office like an angry breeze.

I approached her, my steps slow. With a desk between us, I braced the edge. “Do you still think I killed your mama?” Her silence turned disappointment to anger. I came around and sat at the corner next to her. “Let me put this another way. We’re alone. You’ve shut the blinds, and I dead-bolted the door. Nobody can see us and they can’t get in.”

“So?”

“You’re not scared?”

“No.”

“You should be.” I directed her with a glance at the exit. “You could make a run for it, but I’ve got at least eighty pounds and a good seven inches of height on you.” I looked her up and down. “You’re a peanut compared to me.”

Her eyes narrowed. “The psycho act is getting old.”

“Who says it’s an act?”

She swallowed. “You’d never hurt me.”

I should’ve been relieved, yet it wasn’t enough. I wanted all or nothing. “You’re right, but what about Lilith?”

She lowered her eyes.

I smacked the desk. “Answer the question!” She started and I leaned in close so our faces were mere inches apart. “I didn’t kill your mama. Do you believe me or not?”

“I just need some time to—”

“If you don’t know by now, you never will.”

“It’s not that simple.”

“Fine. You don’t believe me.”

She looked away. “Don’t put words in my mouth.”

“Somebody has to. Just say it!”

“I can’t!” Shannon bolted up. She slapped a hand to her forehead and paced. “This is what I tried to explain in the limo. My memories are fractured. The diary pages brought some things back, but made others fuzzy and confusing.”

“What the hell do you remember then?”

She stopped in front of me. “The night Mother kissed you. I was in the—”

“You saw that?”

“Yes,” she said with a frantic nod. “I heard her tell Cook—Mrs. Campbell—to send you up once you finished your duties. I was afraid Mother would make you…do things, so I hid in her closet. After you rejected her, I ran after you, but I bumped into her vanity table and the vase with the calla lilies fell. Then Mother slapped me and—”

I flashed a palm. “We’re getting sidetracked here.”

“Why do you think I’ve been hounding my family? Calling Sheriff Gray? I only had good memories of Mother, but then I found the diary pages and my world flipped upside down.”

“Shannon….”

“I found Mrs. Campbell through the internet. I called, wrote half a dozen letters, but her granddaughter won’t let me see or talk to her. I wanted to know about the fight you and Mother had by the pool the night before she died—”

“Shannon! What does this have to do with my question?”

“Are you even listening?” She shoved her bangs off her forehead. “I don’t know if my memories are real or by-products of my imagination. I have never felt this isolated and lost. I had direction. A purpose. But now everything’s twisted. So yes, my head is in the clouds. You know why? Because the earth’s just too damn confusing right now!”

That was too bad because I wanted nothing to do with her aimless obsession. I could tell her about the letter Cook had written me after Mama died last year.

The old woman had asked for just one thing—that I visit her as soon as I got out. She had things to tell me, the letter had said. Secret things. I figured she wanted to purge her conscience, but I wasn’t about to oblige her. Just like I wouldn’t be obliging Shannon.

“Let’s get somethin’ straight,” I said. “The pool fight, the trial, and everything else is off limits.”

She gave her head a slow shake. “For God’s sake, why?”

“I spent half my life dwelling on it. What time I got there. Where I went. Who I saw. Well, no more. I’ve moved on.”

“But if you do nothing, you’ll never know.”

If I had wanted to dredge all this crap up, I’d have gone down in the basement by now and fixed the burned-out fuse for the ceiling lamp. Facing fear sounded brave, but I didn’t give a rat’s ass about brave. I just wanted my life back.

“Shannon,” I said calmly, “you’re asking me to open my wrists. To bleed. Well, no thanks. I’m done with that.”

“I want to remember and you want to forget. We can’t resolve this if you refuse to broach it!”

“We don’t need to broach nothin’,” I snapped. “You should’ve made up your mind way before you got in my face.”

“When I swore I didn’t write that letter you refused to believe me at first. You wanted proof.”

“Can you blame me?”

“God, no. I understand completely.”

I gestured. “Then what’s your point?”

“You only believed me after I gave you proof, yet you expect me to just take your word for it?”

“You’re damn right I do.”

Her eyes hardened. “Why am I held to a higher standard?”

“Twelve years in stir, that’s why.”

“So now we’re fighting over who suffered more?”

My face burned hot with anger. “I didn’t kill her,” I shot back. “Do you believe me or not?”

“You only care about what you want. Well, what about—”

I snatched my helmet and shouldered past her. “I’ll take that as a no.”

“Trace!”

I kept going.

“Did you kill that man in Gainstown?”

My heart hit the floor and I froze. The subtle hint of her perfume let me know she was close. She stood before me and I could barely look at her. Black, spiky lashes framed her tilted eyes, eyes that burned with desperation.

I rolled my shoulders. “I said I didn’t kill your mama, yet you don’t believe me. Why is now any different?”

“Just answer me, please.”

“What’s one got to do with the other?”

“Everything and nothing.”

I hung my head and sighed. Having laid Nyle to rest, I thought I’d moved past this, but secrets had a way of crawling from the darkest of graves. Could I put Amber’s freedom and my life in Shannon’s hands? Why should I when she didn’t believe me about Lilith?

It was all bullshit.

“Tell me,” she said. “Is it true?”

“No.” I moved around her, yanked the deadbolt and ripped the door open. Wind smacked me. The lot was almost full by now, with the brunt of cars clustered at Walmart.

She tugged my arm and I twisted around. Heat like a thousand hells burned into me. Her hand all but seared its shape into my flesh through the leather while we stared at each other.

Our labored breaths formed twin wisps of fog that knotted into one. A lock of hair tangled in her lashes and I reached to brush it back, but she flinched, just as she had in the limo.

The shock of what she’d just done played out on both of our faces. “Oh, my God,” she said. “I-I didn’t mean—”

That was the worse cut of all.

I swung away without looking back, not really sure what disturbed me the most—that she was still afraid of me or that I’d just lied to her.