“Look, Nolie . . .” He dragged his fingers through his hair, then breathed deeply. “This thing between us . . . it’s not working. It was nice and-and convenient, but . . . like you said at the lake, I’ve been bored and you’re not my type, and now that I’m not stuck out here any longer, never seeing anyone but you, I’m ready to-to find someone more-more suitable.”
She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think, could only stare at him through eyes filling with tears. Her chest hurt, and her stomach, and there was a knot in the back of her throat, locking her voice inside, along with the sobs rising slowly all the way from her toes.
“Don’t get me wrong,” he went on, his gaze fixed somewhere around her chin. “You’re a nice woman, and you’re pretty, but . . . my type is more like Fiona or Raine and you’re . . . not.” Again he combed through his hair, and again sucked in a deep breath. “There’s no way I’m gonna stick around Bethlehem and no way I’m gonna get serious with a woman like you, and sure as hell no way I’m gonna play father to some other guy’s kid, so . . . I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to give you the wrong idea. I-I’m sorry.”
He sat there a moment longer, but when the first tear fell, sliding slowly down her cheek, he muttered an obscenity, sprang to his feet, and walked away.
And she sat there alone and cried.
Chapter Sixteen
HE WAS A BASTARD.
Chase lay in bed, the cabin dark and still, the bottle of whiskey cool where it rested against his skin. He didn’t know what time it was—the wee hours of morning—and wished he didn’t know what day it was, but he did. It was Tuesday. The start of the third day without Nolie.
The start of his third day of pure hell.
He’d known it would be hard giving her up, though he hadn’t known how hard. He had thought he could handle it—after all, he’d survived Fiona breaking his heart three years ago. Jesus, he’d been an idiot. Losing Fiona had nothing on losing Nolie.
And losing Nolie would have nothing on being the reason she lost Micahlyn. There wasn’t a love in the world strong enough to survive that. Even if there was, certainly he wouldn’t inspire it.
He’d put six hundred miles on his truck Saturday night and Sunday morning, had driven mile after mile, trying to find a way out of this mess and failing. Only a year into his law career, he’d become cynical as hell about the court system. Justice wasn’t blind. As often as not, it went to the highest bidder—the one with the best, most expensive lawyers and the best, most expensive witnesses. Testimony could be bought and sold, jurors manipulated, the law itself manipulated and twisted and perverted. Verdicts had little to do with guilt or innocence, or right or wrong.
Even in the best-case scenario, with a fair and impartial judge, Marlene could use him to make Nolie look bad. For practical purposes, they had been living together, having sex while her five-year-old slept fifteen feet down the hall. Regardless that he’d been wrongly convicted and had served his sentence, he was still a felon. And no matter how innocent his falling asleep with Micahlyn had been, any decent lawyer could make it look like the first step to molestation.
Told to a judge with a vested interest in making his dear old friends happy . . .
He’d had no choice but to do Marlene’s bidding. If Nolie knew, she would agree. There was no place in her and Micahlyn’s lives for him.
And there was no life for him without them.
He rolled onto his side, bringing his arm up to cover his eyes. The first time they’d met, he’d come back home, intending to pack up and leave that very day. He never would have gotten to know them, never would have fallen in love with them, and never would have hurt them. But, no, he’d taken the easy way out and stuck around.
Now they all had to pay for it.
IT WAS NOTHING LESS THAN AMAZING THAT A PERSON could go on about her life, functioning perfectly well, when her heart had broken into a dozen pieces. Never having had a broken heart before, Nolie would have expected it to be more crippling. She would have thought a newly broken heart would cower in bed, crying, asking Why? and pleading for another chance.
But not her. Oh, she’d done her share of crying—Sunday afternoon when Chase had walked away, that night after Micahlyn was asleep in bed, and again Monday night. She’d wondered obsessively about the why and had wanted desperately to plead.
But she’d gone about her business as usual. Taken care of Micahlyn. Handled things at the store. Waited on customers and dealt with Marlene and Obie and joked with Trey, all as if nothing had happened. If anyone had noticed the hurt in her eyes or the fragility that made her feel she might shatter given the slightest nudge, no one mentioned it. No one seemed to notice anything out of place.
No one but her, and she was trying so very hard to pretend it wasn’t so. Life would go on as normal, and so would she.
It was Tuesday, the end of Obie and Marlene’s first week in Bethlehem, still without any mention of going home. For the first time since they’d arrived, Nolie didn’t care. They could leave today or stay forever. It didn’t matter to her either way.
With a deep breath, she turned her attention to the mail on the desk in front of her. There were just a few bills, along with a reminder to deliver a check to Cole Jackson. Chase had wanted to check him out before—
She swallowed hard. Screw Chase. He didn’t want her anymore, so he had no say in what she did anymore. Grabbing the checkbook, she scrawled out a check to Jackson Investments for every single penny of Jeff’s $30,000 life insurance proceeds, plus three years’ interest, tore it out, and laid it aside to deliver later.
She was writing a check for the electric bill when the door opened just as an eighteen-wheeler rumbled by on the highway. Making a mental note to get that blasted bell repaired, she fixed a smile on her face and managed to keep it in place even though the new arrivals were Marlene and Obie—without her daughter.
“Where’s Micahlyn?”
Naturally, it was Marlene who answered. “She wanted to stay for storytime at the library. Corinna Humphries offered to watch over her while we take care of some business.”
Nolie counseled herself to count to ten, but made it only to three. “You shouldn’t be leaving my daughter with someone else without asking me first.”
“I told you—” Obie started, but Marlene silenced him with a look. In the next instant, she dismissed Nolie with a wave. “Corinna’s a pillar of the community. You know her, and you would have let Mikey stay with her if we’d asked, so we didn’t bother.”
“That’s not the point, Marlene. It’s my decision to make, not yours.”
Marlene rolled her eyes. “Oh, pardon me. I raised my son and helped raise you, but I’m not good enough to make one small decision about my granddaughter.”
“That’s not what I—” Nolie broke off, and made it to ten this time. She just couldn’t play her mother-in-law’s games. She didn’t have the emotional fortitude for it.
The silence dragged on until finally Obie cleared his throat. “Where’s Chase?”
Nolie’s hands curled into fists as she willed the pain to remain manageable and the tears to stay inside where they belonged. “He’s home.” Maybe. Or in town visiting someone. Or finally waking up after a long, busy night in some other woman’s bed—some suitable woman’s bed.
As opposed to Nolie’s convenient bed.
Unwilling to follow a line of thought that could only lead to tears, she smiled brightly, phonily. “What business did you have to take care of?”
Obie looked at Marlene, as if trying to send her a message with nothing more than his gaze, but Marlene turned away from him and focused on Nolie. “It concerns Chase. You’re a trusting woman, Nolie—too trusting. You rented a house to this man, you became friends with him and . . . more.” Her lips thinned, as if she found the idea of Nolie having a sex life too distasteful an idea to contemplate. And why not? She considered Nolie even being friendly with another man a betrayal of Jeff’s memory.
“I didn’t rent—”
“You invited him into your home and your life—into your daughter’s life—without bothering to find out anything about him, just taking him at his word. For all you know, he could be a criminal, a thief, a liar, or worse.”
The last thing Nolie wanted to do was discuss Chase, and the very last thing she wanted was to defend him. Still, broken heart aside, she couldn’t not do it. “Chase—a criminal? He was a highly respected lawyer in Boston, Marlene. It may not be the most honorable career in America these days, but it’s a far cry from being a criminal.”
“Not in his case.”
The words hung in the air, quiet, practically vibrating with certainty. Nolie looked at Obie, who wouldn’t meet her gaze, then turned back as Marlene withdrew a red-white-and-blue Express Mail envelope from her purse and laid it on the counter.
“You might be willing to allow strangers into your life, but we were concerned, and it turns out we had good reason to be. We hired a private investigator, and he sent us this.”
For a long time, Nolie didn’t touch the envelope. It had been sent in care of Angels Lodge, the motel where her in-laws were staying, and it bore a return address in Boston. Obviously, the information inside wasn’t good— Marlene didn’t like it, and expected the same response from Nolie. Why?
At the moment her brain was too befuddled to think of any possibilities, which left her little choice but to open the envelope. Inside was a sheaf of papers, topped by a letter from the investigator that offered little— Here’s what I’ve uncovered so far. If you want more detailed information, let me know. Underneath was a copy of Chase and Fiona’s divorce decree, a letter from the state confirming that disciplinary action had resulted in his disbarment, and copies of newspaper articles.
ATTORNEY ARRESTED.
ATTORNEY CONVICTED IN EMBEZZLEMENT CASE.
ATTORNEY SENTENCED TO THREE-YEAR TERM.
Her first reaction was shock, the second disbelief. The Chase she knew wasn’t a thief. Sure, he’d used her because she was convenient. He’d let her fall in love with him, then left her with nothing to show for it but heartache. He was going to take forever to get over. But an embezzler? A common thief? No way. He wasn’t that kind of person.
Her third reaction was shock again, stronger this time. She went back to the beginning and started reading. Her hands were trembling, so she laid the pages on the counter, touching them only to turn to the next one.
There was only one photograph accompanying the newspaper articles, and that was the first one. It showed Chase being led out of an office building in handcuffs. He looked far more than three years younger and bewildered, but there was a certain confidence about him, too, that said this was all a horrible mistake and would soon be cleared up. She wondered how different a photo accompanying the last article—Attorney Sentenced to Three-Year Term— would have been. Where would that confidence have gone?
“Well?”
The impatient question came from Marlene. Nolie looked up at her, at the cool smile that curved her lips and the triumphant gleam in her eyes. She expected Nolie to be stunned right out of her socks by the news—to be hurt, betrayed, angry, weepy.
Nolie had news for her. She was already hurt, betrayed, angry, and weepy. This news hardly registered, compared to the little bombshell Chase had dropped Sunday afternoon.
She was stunned, granted, and hurt that he’d never confided in her, and she was damned angry—at the authorities who’d wrongly arrested and tried Chase, the jurors who’d chosen the easy verdict, and the people who’d set him up in the first place. She was angry that he’d gotten such a raw deal and beyond angry that Marlene thought to twist it to her advantage.
Grateful that her hands were once again steady, Nolie straightened the papers and slid them into the envelope, then held it out.
“Keep it,” Marlene said. “We’ve got copies.” For the first time since their arrival in Bethlehem, she touched Nolie, taking her hand, squeezing it tightly. “I know how hard this is for you. You thought you were lucky that such a handsome man was attracted to you. You thought he actually cared about you. But you see now that he’s a thief, a liar, and an ex-con. He was just using you.”
Pain spasmed through Nolie, making her tremble as she pulled her hand back. “You really don’t think much of me, do you, Marlene?”
Her mother-in-law’s forehead wrinkled in a frown. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“You don’t believe I’m pretty enough or smart enough or likable enough to attract a handsome man. You can’t believe that Chase could possibly want anything besides sex from me, and you think he wanted that only because . . . what? I was easy? I was handy?” The hell of it—that Marlene was right—brought tears to Nolie’s eyes. Hugging herself tightly, she blinked to keep them at bay.
Marlene opened her mouth, closed it, then opened it again, her manner brusque and annoyed. “This isn’t about you, Nolie. It’s about your so-called boyfriend, the convicted felon. The ex-con. For God’s sake, forget your hormones and open your eyes! It’s all there, in black and white. Chase Wilson is a thief! He stole more than a million dollars and—”
“Bullshit.” The obscenity, sharp and succinct, came from behind the Harpers and from the unlikeliest source to defend Chase in all of New York—Earl Wilson.
I really have to get that bell fixed, Nolie thought.
Marlene rounded on Earl. “This is a private conversation, so kindly mind your own business.”
“That’s my son you’re talking about, which makes it my business,” Earl retorted. “I admit, he was a wild kid, in and out of trouble all the time, living to make his mother’s and my lives hell. But I can tell you this—that boy’s never stolen anything in his life. He wouldn’t.”
Earl Wilson’s creed, Nolie thought, too numb to smile even cynically. He could criticize his family all he wanted, but by God, no one without Wilson blood flowing through his veins got the same privilege. Jeff had been that way. He could complain about his mother all he wanted when she’d driven him crazy, but heaven help the poor fool, even Nolie, who chimed in.
Marlene pointed to the envelope. “The state of Massachusetts says otherwise.”
“Then the state of Massachusetts is wrong.”
“He’s a convicted felon.”
Earl’s only response to her was to repeat the obscenity, with more emphasis this time.
Nolie tried to send a plea for intervention Obie’s way, but he was still refusing to look at her. He was ashamed to even be there, she thought, reading his slumped shoulders, downcast gaze, and stiff posture. It was too bad he didn’t have more of a backbone, but then he had to live with the woman . . . or thought he did.
Marlene did what she did best—ignored Earl and his opinions—and fixed her gaze on Nolie. “We don’t want him around our granddaughter, Nolie. We’re God-fearing and law-abiding people, and that sort of influence is something she doesn’t need and we don’t want.”
“He’s innocent.” Nolie couldn’t find a single doubt inside her.
“What? Did he tell you so?” Marlene asked snidely. “I bet he also told you you’re beautiful . . . just before you let him in your bed. Men lie, Nolie. Heavens, he’s got you thinking he cares for you—maybe even loves you. How could you not know he’s lying?”
Nolie bit the inside of her lip until the tears slowly seeped back where they belonged. Before she could come up with a response, no doubt a pathetic one, Earl spoke again.
“If he told her she’s beautiful, it just proves he’s got good taste.”
Marlene shot him a killing look. “I believe I asked you to mind your own business.”
“No, you told me. And I told you, Chase is my business. Besides”—he gave Nolie a sidelong look and a wink—“as I understand, this girl’s gonna be my daughter-in-law someday. Let’s see, that gives me two reasons to butt in while you only have one, so maybe you should butt out.”
Marlene’s mouth dropped open, her face turned cherry-red, and Nolie swore she
could see each thud of the woman’s heart in the vein throbbing wildly in her neck. It was a fair bet that nobody in the world had ever told her to mind her own business, and she didn’t like it one bit.
It took her a moment to regain enough composure to speak again, her control rigid but liable to shatter at any moment. “You think about what you’re going to do, Nolie. You think long and hard, because it will determine what we’re going to do. Right now, we’re going to pick up our granddaughter at the library. We’ll be in touch with you to find out—”
“No.” Nolie blurted it out before she lost her nerve.
Eyebrows reaching toward her hairline, Marlene stared at her. “No? You think you can turn us away without an answer to this problem?”
“I mean, no, you can’t pick up Micahlyn. I’ll do it.” Finally Obie found his voice. “But we promised her—” “Don’t push me, Nolie,” Marlene said, her voice soft but menacing.
Nolie matched her, note for note. “Don’t threaten me. I’ll get Micahlyn. Call this evening, and I’ll let you know when you can see her again.”
Marlene stared at her as the clock on the wall loudly ticked off ten seconds, twenty, thirty. Then she spun and regally swept down the aisle toward the door. Obie took a step toward Nolie, squeezed her hand, and shrugged, then went after Marlene.
Closing her eyes, Nolie sank onto the stool next to her, then covered her face with both hands. Her limbs were heavy, her knees unsteady, and if her heart hadn’t been thoroughly broken before her in-laws had walked in the door, it was now.
But not all her problems were gone. Earl came around the counter and laid his hand on her shoulder. “I’ve got to give you credit. You don’t look strong enough to stand up to that old battleax. She’s been getting her way longer than you’ve even been alive.”
Drawing a deep breath, she faced him. “Thank you.” He’d taken her side when her own father-in-law—her surrogate father!—hadn’t. It meant a lot, both in her feelings toward Earl and her feelings for Obie.
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