All That Lies Broken (Ashmore's Folly Book 2)

by Forrest, Lindsey

  “Then we’ll deal with it.” Richard shrugged. “That’s what lawyers are for – you pay them to give you advice that you don’t follow.”

  She had to laugh at that, and for the first time that evening, he seemed to relax. This day had been hard on him too, she thought. He hadn’t made the decision to end his marriage lightly. She watched him out of the corner of her eye as she started more coffee brewing. She’d left her mail on the counter earlier, and he’d found the costume sketches for the tour that Dell had FedExed. His raised eyebrow told her immediately that he’d seen the dress made of leaves and vines and very little else. “See anything you like?”

  He gave her a bright look from under his lashes. “You bet. How does this stay up?”

  “I don’t know,” Laura admitted. “I have a fitting in August. It probably has very uncomfortable boning.”

  “I’ve heard haute couture and structural engineering have a lot in common.” He put the sketches down and picked up the package from Terry, turning it over absently. “There’s the old story about Howard Hughes designing the cantilever bra—”

  He stared at his hand. Then, “You get remarkable mail.”

  “What?” Laura turned from the coffee pot.

  He gave her a quizzical look and raised the box so that she saw the bottom, and her jaw dropped.

  Roger had had himself some fun. In bright red comic letters all over the bottom of the box, he had written WARNING! LOVE TOY INSIDE! PRACTICE SAFE SEX!

  Kisses and hearts decorated every I.

  If it hadn’t come after such a stressful conversation, she would have burst out laughing. Vintage Roger. That it had traveled across an ocean on an airliner, gone through Customs, and made its way to her by courier – seen by who knew how many people along the way – was just icing on his cake.

  Richard was looking at her in clear expectation of an answer, and at that, she did start laughing. “Roger is such a jokester. I asked Terry to send me—”

  “Roger Duncan is sending you sex toys?” He was frowning. Obviously, the only risqué thing Richard had ever received through the mail was a tape. “I thought he was gay.”

  “He is.” Laura took the box from him. “I asked Terry – Roger’s partner – to get my diaphragm from my flat and send it to me.”

  The blood drained from his face. “Your what?”

  Oh, no. “My diaphragm. It’s a—”

  He interrupted her. “I know what a diaphragm is, damn it. Why do you need one?”

  Why did she need one? Did he think that she wasn’t a normally functioning woman? She chose to be obtuse. “For birth control, Richard. That’s what you use it for.”

  Silence between them, a long, awful silence, while he stared at her in shock.

  “Do you mean to tell me,” his voice sounded dangerous, “that – even though I asked you Friday night if I needed to use something and you said no – we made love God knows how many times over the weekend, and you weren’t using any contraception?”

  Put like that, it did sound bad. Still…. She lifted her chin, steadied her shoulders, and looked him square in the face. “Yes and no.”

  Her words rang between them.

  “Yes and no what?”

  “Yes, we made love God knows how many times, and no, I wasn’t using any contraception.”

  He drew in a sharp, audible breath. She nearly jumped as his hands slapped down hard on the counter. “Dear God, Laura!”

  She said nothing.

  “How could you be so irresponsible! Do you have any idea—”

  She understood his anger, but she didn’t appreciate his assumption that she had behaved carelessly. “I have every idea.” She let the frost drip in her voice. “I am not stupid. I knew exactly what I was doing.”

  Oh, dear, that sounded even worse than what he was already thinking.

  “Oh, God.” Richard drew in another deep breath and ran his hand through his hair in distraction. “All right – we are going to discuss this calmly and rationally.” He sounded anything but calm and rational. “I need to know, Laura, no games, nothing but the truth. Could you possibly have gotten pregnant this weekend?”

  As if she would have gotten that way all by herself. But she was too angry to relieve his mind. Irresponsible! “No.”

  “Listen, Laura.” He put both hands down flat on the counter and leaned in towards her, his eyes boring into her. His voice was low and taut. “I have just filed what will undoubtedly be a long, painful, nasty divorce. If I need to – I can force a settlement, fly down to the Caribbean, and get it over with fast. For various reasons relating to my property, I prefer to do it here in Virginia. Now – tell me right now – is there any possibility you could be pregnant?”

  She was still smarting. “No.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  Laura glanced ostentatiously at the clock on the wall and then slowly, deliberately, looked back at him. She made him wait for three full measures. “Because,” she made her voice syrupy sweet, “my period started fourteen hours ago.”

  That stopped him cold in his tracks.

  She added helpfully, “Nine o’clock Monday morning, every four weeks. You can set your watch by me. And you,” a winsome smile, “are not going to get lucky tonight.”

  Dead silence. Then he said tightly, “You might have said that to begin with.”

  “Why?” Laura returned. “You were having too much fun assuming that I am a stupid, irresponsible woman playing games with my body and your life.”

  “What was I to think—” He broke off and inhaled. “All right. I apologize for implying you were stupid or irresponsible, but you did run a hell of a risk.”

  What a backhanded apology. “No, I did not run a hell of a risk. I’m like clockwork. I never deviate – I didn’t even skip last fall after Cam died. I knew this weekend was perfectly safe.” She looked at his skeptical face, beginning to regain some color. “I’m just like Di. Don’t you remember?”

  He waited a few seconds before he said, “It’s been a long time since I had to concern myself with Diana’s cycle, thanks.”

  There seemed nothing to reply to that. She turned away from him and began to straighten up the towels hanging on hooks over the dishwasher, and the silence stretched out between them, giving both of them time to think through their words. Laura knew perfectly well that she had behaved badly – she hoped it was more in reaction to Emma and Mark and the subpoena than to what he had actually said. Any man might have thought she’d behaved irresponsibly.

  He said finally, “How are you feeling?”

  She glanced at him in surprise.

  Richard threw his hands up. “Now don’t bite my head off. I grew up with Mom and Lucy having migraines every month.”

  She offered him a small smile in truce. “I’m fine, thanks.”

  “And, for the record,” he added, “I didn’t come over here to get lucky. I’ve had a long day, and I’m tired. I haven’t had a full night’s sleep in days. I’m not twenty anymore. You needn’t think I’m going to throw you down every time I see you.” He gave a small laugh. “I can’t believe this conversation. Not exactly what I expected.”

  She couldn’t help it; she melted at the exhaustion on his face. She came back to the island and touched his arm. “I know. But a wise woman told me once that a man who enjoys my body should know how it works, so maybe this was necessary. You don’t have to worry, Richard. I’m not going to trick you, and truly I don’t want to get pregnant right now. I have a tour this fall. I had to cancel a tour two years ago – I don’t want to do it again.”

  He gave her a telling glance. “Who was this wise woman – my mother?”

  Laura nodded. She saw his eyes drop to Roger’s artwork again – oh, she was going to give Roger and Terry a piece of her mind – and she was thinking that it was just too bad that nature and exhaustion were intervening between them, when he said unexpectedly, “Why did you cancel two years ago?”

  That startled her. For a
moment, she didn’t want to answer. But he’d shared his past with her – now he was asking her to do the same. “I got pregnant on my thirtieth birthday, and my doctor advised me against touring.” She stopped. “You saw that photo, didn’t you?”

  “It was all over the Internet. I wondered.”

  “Oh, I know.” Laura sighed. “I saw the stories. Cat Expecting a Kitten? and Mama Cat and all that. What’s ironic, the pap missed the bigger story. We were at Lincoln Center with Meg. If the guy had waited a few more minutes, he’d have seen Cam come back to our box. He could have blown my cover once and for all.”

  He paused to choose his words. “So what happened?”

  She made her voice neutral. “I had a miscarriage Christmas evening, and the doctor told Cam not to get me pregnant again.”

  “Oh, Lord.” Richard glanced away from her in unspoken recognition of the meaning of her words. “What a way to end the year – no wonder things fell apart. Laura, I am so sorry.”

  He deserved as much of the truth as she could give him. “It wasn’t the first one. I had three miscarriages before Meg’s third birthday.”

  He stared at her, and under his tan his skin went curiously pale. Then he moved away from her, and her heart sank. Maybe that was just too much to tell him – TMI, Meg would say, too much information. Men hated hearing about the mechanics of pregnancy, and they hated even more hearing about its failures; Cam had threatened to leave the country when Emma had regaled the family with the intimate details of her in vitro attempts. But, she thought, if Francie had made him into the man he had become, then those poor lost babies had shaped and molded her. Cat Courtney would never have existed if they’d been born.

  He went to the cabinets, searched for a glass, and poured himself some tap water. She couldn’t guess what he was thinking. She watched anxiously as he drank it swiftly and set the glass down with a decisive clink on the counter.

  “I can’t imagine what you went through.” He sounded strange. “I have to believe it was very difficult for you and your husband both – I’ve seen Lucy’s grief, and Tom has been at his wit’s end to help her out of it. God, Laura, you’ve had a hard time of it. I am so sorry.”

  Those simple words brought tears prickling her eyes.

  He added, “Dad told me once that my mother lost a couple after me – I don’t remember, I was too young – and he finally told her that was the end of it, he didn’t care what the Church said, they weren’t going to try again. Then Lucy’s mother left her, so Mom had her daughter and she was happy.”

  “I know,” Laura said. “She told me.”

  He turned around and leaned against the counter, crossing his arms. His eyes met hers resolutely, the eyes of a man coming to some hard conclusions. “Well, now that I know, you can be damn sure we will not take any more chances. I don’t care if you can time yourself down to the second. I am not going to run the risk of causing you miscarriage number five.”

  “Oh, no.” She reached out to him on instinct. “That’s what you think? No and no and no. There’s nothing wrong with me.”

  “Well, obviously you can conceive, but—”

  “No. You don’t understand.” She ran to stand in front of him and put her hands on his crossed arms. “You think I’ve got Lucy’s problems, or your mother’s? No. It wasn’t me, Richard.”

  His eyes flashed.

  She drew a breath. In the maelstrom of guilt after Ash Marine, she’d promised Cam never to tell a living soul, but he was dead and this was her life and her future. “It was Cam.”

  Silence.

  She said gently, “It’s not always the woman with the fertility problem, you know.”

  He stared at her, but he said nothing.

  “After the second time—” Laura kept her hands on his arms, drawing courage from the feel of him. “Cam got worried and went for tests. I didn’t know, but it had also happened to his girlfriend in college. The problem was, he didn’t tell me he suspected anything, and I got pregnant again, and – well, to be honest, we weren’t getting along that well, because the miscarriages did take a toll on us, a terrible toll, and I decided not to tell him until I got past the first trimester.” TMI again. She hesitated; she was steering perilously close to Ash Marine. “I knew he was distracted, but I thought it was just because he was seeing someone – so there we were, not talking to each other, and then I – I lost the baby, and that’s when he told me the results of his tests.”

  She looked down for a moment. He prompted, “And?”

  She shouldn’t feel embarrassed, but this was as bad as admitting she’d faked it in bed. “Trisomy 16. Eighty percent chromosomal damage in the sperm,” she said. “Not enough to prevent conception, but – the fetus doesn’t develop right, and nature – takes care of it.”

  “Oh, Christ,” Richard said roughly, and he sounded angry. “Why didn’t he get a vasectomy? I would have.”

  She glanced up at him from under her lashes. “You didn’t know Cam St. Bride, did you?”

  “I know enough. Talk about irresponsible—” He broke off. “So what about Meg?”

  Her heart beat faster. “Eighty percent damaged means twenty percent not.”

  He didn’t answer for a minute, and then he said unexpectedly, “You said she wasn’t an only child by your choice. So how did you get from this discovery to two years ago?”

  “We went on living. We knew there wouldn’t be any more children, so I went to college. And,” she felt relieved, because the worst was over, he knew, “after I graduated, there was the demo tape, and the single, and the album, and all of a sudden I had a real career. We were extremely careful, and everything was fine, except – about five years ago, I met some people who had adopted abroad, and I thought, wouldn’t that be great, a chance to give a couple of kids a good life, and I broached the idea, and he turned me down flat.” She thought she heard a muttered expletive. “He said it was too painful, like rubbing salt in the wound, reminding him it was his failure – so I let the idea drop. I had my work, and he had his work, and we both had Meg, and for a long time we rubbed along okay. Then – I turned thirty.”

  He moved his hand to cover hers.

  She sighed. “We had separated. I was looking for one of Meg’s CDs in his car and I found a torn condom wrapper—”

  That forced a disbelieving laugh from him. “You’re kidding.”

  “No, I’m not. Well, he hadn’t used it with me – birth control was my arena, that’s why I have the diaphragm, and I don’t know, I was just sick and tired of him cheating on me. He was usually discreet, but I was turning thirty, and I didn’t feel like putting up with it anymore. So I moved out of our bedroom and down the hall. Meg was going through a bad time because her cat had died, so that’s as far as I wanted to take it right then.” His fingers tightened over hers, and for the first time since she’d opened the door to the process server, she felt secure with him. “Oh, he was contrite, he swore up and down that it was a one-time thing and he’d never see her again, but I just didn’t trust him. So we stayed apart the rest of the summer. Then – then it was my birthday.”

  “I have an idea what’s coming,” he said. “This was the birthday with the Jaguar, wasn’t it?”

  She gave him a wry smile. “In the driveway with a big red bow. I’d given myself a day at the spa, and when I got home, he and Meg were in front of the house, beaming. Cam was nothing if not strategic. He knew he couldn’t lure me back with a fancy car, but he also knew I wasn’t going to hand the keys back in front of her.”

  “A Jaguar,” said Richard thoughtfully. “You have to hand it to him. That was a big play – he was trying to stay in the game.”

  Laura said in mock rebuke, “This is my heart we’re talking here. Spare me the male sports metaphors.”

  “Sorry. Still – since you couldn’t be bought with a car, how did he manage it?”

  Oh, here came the embarrassing part. “He got me drunk.”

  That earned her a quizzical look.


  “Remember I told you that Cam didn’t drink or dance because he was Baptist?”

  “Vaguely. Glad I’m Episcopalian. No rules.”

  “Well, he was pretty good about the rules, but he broke them that night. He had bought a great Chardonnay, and he had dinner catered in from our favorite Italian place. He really set the scene.” Looking back, she had to admit that Cam had done a masterful job on her. “After dinner, he shipped Meg off to a friend’s, and he put Rod Stewart on, because he knew what a sucker I always am for ‘Tonight’s the Night,’ and we danced, and he kept refilling my glass.”

  “Chardonnay. Rod Stewart. Got it.” She heard his horrified amusement.

  “This isn’t funny, Richard. This was my life.”

  “I know, but….” He stopped. She could tell he was picking his words carefully. “It’s funny, and it’s appalling, all at the same time. This guy was a master operator. I’m betting, since you are so predictable, he knew exactly what day it was, and he made sure you were too buzzed to think about birth control.”

  She looked up into his face. “Bingo.”

  “Well,” said Richard flatly, “that was criminal on his part. Listen, Laura, separated couples sleep together all the time – a friend of mine used to call his ex-wife every anniversary. Even Diana and I came close once. But what your husband did crossed the line.”

  She’d thought so too when she had awakened the next morning in their bedroom. When her fears played out a few weeks later, she had taxed Cam with it, and he hadn’t denied it. “You have to understand. Cam really loved me. He wanted me back.”

  “That doesn’t matter.” His mouth had a hard set to it. “He knew what he was risking. No honest man would get his wife pregnant knowing she had an eighty percent chance of a miscarriage.”

  She offered, “In Cam’s defense – he’d consulted a new doctor, and he genuinely did think it might be all right that time. But, after Christmas… that was the end. We were over.”

  He unfolded his arms and pulled her gently against him. “My poor girl, you have been through the mill, haven’t you? I know it’s not the done thing to speak ill of the dead, but I’m going to say this just once. I’m not a violent man, but if he were here right now, I’d beat him to a pulp.”