They let her off the hook. Once they all took a really good look at her, in fact, she got an immediate bossy list of orders about getting more sleep, seeing a doctor, arranging for a massage.
“Okay, that’s enough picking on me,” she said wryly. “We’ve got a lot more to talk about this lunch. Caroline’s finally out of the hospital. We should be having a dual celebration for both Mary and Caro.”
“To be honest, I have a huge secret to tell you all,” Caroline said, then glanced around to ensure no outsiders were close enough to hear this part of the conversation. When she tugged her chair closer to the table, the others pulled up closer, too.
“My husband wanted me to tell you this. So did my brother Garrett, which I’m sure Emma already knows.” Caroline took a huge breath. “I’ve been hiding something from everyone. I was being blackmailed.”
“What?” The question echoed through the whole group, everyone expressing shock except for Lily.
“That’s why I was so depressed. The blackmailer was threatening me, and I was afraid if the information got out, it would ruin my marriage, my life. But Garrett convinced me to tell Griff. And when Griff got home, I did.” Tears welled in Caroline’s eyes, but this time not tears of fears or sadness. Tears of relief. “It’s been terrible.”
“Oh, Caroline.” Lily reached for her first. “That’s exactly what happened to us. Jack was a blackmailer’s target, too. Jack took the blackmail letter to the police a few weeks ago.”
“Griff hasn’t done that yet. I haven’t, either.”
“Do it,” Lily urged. “Think about it, Caroline. Don’t you think it’s highly unlikely there could be two blackmailers in Eastwick? So this could well be the same person who was terrorizing us.”
Abby suddenly spoke up. “There’s a connection between the two. There has to be. Between my mother’s mysterious death and the theft of her journals and now two blackmail attempts. Whoever stole those journals is using the information.”
“That’s what it sounds like,” Caroline agreed worriedly. “But, Abby, your mom never published stuff that was so…damaging. She wasn’t into cruelty-”
“She published the truth. She never invented anything. But that’s part of what I think is the issue. She didn’t use everything she knew. There could have been all kinds of things in those journals that no one knew but my mother and, of course, the people involved. And now whoever stole those journals knows that kind of private information, too.”
“But who?” Vanessa asked. “It has to be someone in Eastwick. Someone we know. Someone who’d know enough about us all to know what would hurt different people, you know? A stranger couldn’t read any stuff like that and know it could cause damage.”
“Yikes,” Felicity said. “This is getting scarier and scarier. To think that someone we know and trust is the culprit.”
“Not just a culprit. A blackmailer and a murderer.” Abby drummed her fingernails on the table. “I hate it that you were a victim, too, Caroline. But it makes me feel even more convinced that my mother was murdered. I’m going back to the police. One way or another, we have to find out who’s behind all this.”
The girls buzzed, united as bees bringing fresh honey back to the hive-and Eastwick was their hive, so there was no question about their wanting to protect it. Any other time, Emma would have been roiled up as the rest of them, and she was relieved to hear that the reason for Caroline’s suicide attempt had finally come out in the open. Still, Garrett’s uncovering his sister’s secret stirred her own heartsick situation again. It was so like him to get that secret out of Caro no matter what it took. Garrett would go to the ends of the earth for those he loved. But knowing that only gave Emma a fresh taste of despair…until she suddenly realized that all conversation at the table had stopped.
That never happened. Not with the Debs. Even when there wasn’t a crisis of events, they talked each others’ ears off. So the sudden silence made Emma’s head shoot up. “What…?” she began to ask.
But then she saw the man wending his way from the doorway to their table. It was hard to guess why or how Garrett snared the women’s complete attention, but Emma wasted no time wondering about that.
He searched the crowd, searched all the faces-found hers.
Their eyes met.
He kept coming. His every footstep brought a new race to her heart. He never faltered, never looked away, never glanced at the other women. When he reached the table, he just reached out a hand and snagged her wrist.
“I’m sorry to interrupt your lunch, ladies, but I need Emma. Right now,” he said. “And this won’t wait.”
Twelve
Emma had no logical reason to feel her heart suddenly rush with hope. But it did. Just from seeing him. Just from feeling his hand clasped in hers. She didn’t know why he’d sought her out, didn’t care. For those few moments, just being with him seemed enough to stave off that awful despair chewing on her heart.
But when he ushered her into the passenger seat of his car, she couldn’t help asking, “Where are we going?”
“A place where we can talk with no interruptions, guaranteed. All right?”
“Yes.” It was more than all right. He wanted to talk to her-but she so fiercely wanted to talk to him.
She watched him, not the road, as he drove. For four days and four nights she’d pined for him. She’d hurt so badly to think he’d believe she was a gold digger.
But those same four days and four nights she’d done enough analyzing and agonizing to face some scary truths. The Debs’ lunch today had reechoed one of her discoveries. Garrett had discovered his sister’s secret, dug and dug and dug until he’d found a way to help Caroline-then gone after helping her whole hog. That was how he lived, who he was.
Emma had so fallen for the right man-a man who’d climb K2 and back for someone he loved.
She just hadn’t realized how his character directly applied to how he’d reacted to her days before.
“I’ve thought over a lot of things over the past few days,” he said quietly.
“So have I.” When he didn’t add anything more personal, she tried taking a different conversational track. “Caroline had a lot to say at lunch today. It sounds as if everything’s going to work out all right for her. Thanks to you.”
“There’s no happy ending in the bank yet. Nothing can be completely resolved until the blackmailer is caught. But…”
“But what?”
“But I’ve done all I can do. The rest is up to her husband. And the police.” Garrett shot her a quick glance. “I love my sister, but I have other things on my mind right now.”
That sounded ominous. When she’d thought about seeing him again, Emma had assumed she’d rush to say all the things she wanted and needed to. Yet the fear of his rejecting her, of losing him a second time, kept a thick knot in her throat. She couldn’t tell from his expression what he wanted to say or what he wanted.
They passed the town, the wealthy suburbs, hit the coast road. Less than five minutes later he turned in at a private airstrip. A silver Lear sat on the runway, stairs pulled up to the open door. A dark haired man stood in the doorway. Garrett drove the car right on the tarmac to the steps.
“What on earth-?”
“Just a private place to talk,” he assured her.
That was a lie. She could see it in his eyes. But the plane and location were so mystifying that she decided to just wait him out, see what he was up to.
Garrett climbed out of the car and spoke to the man who descended from the plane-Emma thought she heard the guy was called Doug. Then Garrett came back for her.
“This is my driver from New York, Emma. I have to trade this set of wheels for another.”
It seemed even more mystifying that he’d be fussing with car or business problems at this precise moment, but she went along. The minute she stepped out, Doug immediately climbed in and took off with the car. Which was fine. Only there wasn’t another vehicle in sight.
Garr
ett motioned her toward the plane. “I know it looks crazy. But it’s the one place in the universe where I can guarantee that no one, absolutely no one, will either interrupt or find us.”
She never saw nerves in his expression, his posture, yet something about him was so completely different that it finally registered: he was scared. Damn near too scared to breathe. At least, to breathe normally.
She climbed the steps ahead of him and ducked inside. She’d been in private planes all her life, but not this specific Lear. The inside had been customized to resemble a living room. The couches and easy chairs had seat belts, but otherwise, the white leather furnishings and polished cherry could have been in any comfortable den. Once they were inside, out of the bright sunlight, and she was finally completely alone with him, she whirled around. It was all she could take of mystifying mysteries and waiting.
“I was wrong, Garrett,” she whispered.
“No. Not you. I was the one who was wrong.”
She shook her head. “You assumed that money mattered to me. I wanted to deny that from here to Poughkeepsie. But when I looked at my life, really looked, I realized you had every reason to make that assumption.” She gulped, then spilled more out. “I’ve had everything I ever wanted. Just took it for granted. I’ve been spoiled.”
“No, you haven’t, Em. Everywhere I look, you’re giving something to others-”
“And I love giving. But it’s been easy for me, Garrett. Easy for me to keep taking handouts from my parents because I always had the excuse of the trust fund coming in. But the reality was that it was easy to spend, easy to live exactly how I wanted to live. I guess it should have been obvious to me, but a woman almost thirty who’s never lived within her means is darn spoiled. From your viewpoint, I’d be amazed if you hadn’t seen me as selfish.”
Finally that calm, quiet expression in his face seemed to crack. Suddenly his dark eyes looked liquid and naked, raw with vulnerability and something else. “Emma, you are positively the least selfish person I know.”
“Garrett, I’m trying to say that I understand. Why you thought I might have…pursued…you, knowing there was a threat to my inheritance. I realize now that you had every reason to think of me as materialistic-”
“Stop.” He scrabbled a hand through his hair. “I admit it, Emma. I did think that-for a short period of time. Where you saw that judgment as an insult, I just thought of it as life. The practical way people are in real life. But then I did some soul-searching, too. And realized that growing up, all the values I saw stemmed from money. No one in my family made a choice that didn’t include money. Value-all value-was defined by money.”
“I understand.”
“No. You can’t. It was a knee-jerk reaction for me to respond that way. I didn’t want you to need me only because of money. I didn’t want you to believe I gave a damn about your money, either. I just wanted there to be an us. So I just said the first thing that would make that money problem disappear.”
Emma jolted in shock when a stranger showed up in the cockpit door. She hadn’t realized anyone else was on the plane. The gray-haired man raised a hand in greeting, then said quickly, “We’ve been cleared for takeoff, Mr. Keating. Five minutes.” He turned, pulled the plane’s door shut then disappeared back into the cockpit after sealing that door closed, too.
Emma shot startled eyes at Garrett.
“Aw, hell,” he said. “If I were a knight in shining armor, I could pull this off the way it should be. But I’m not, Em. This is the thing-I can have you back before work tomorrow if you need to be, but there’s somewhere I want you to fly with me now. Just say yes.”
For that expression in his eyes, she’d have said yes to anything he asked. He strapped her in next to him just in time to hear the engines start up. Before they zoomed into the air, though, he put two boxes in her lap. They were both sapphire velvet-one a small square box and the other a large oblong shape.
The jet had leveled off above the clouds before he let her open the big one. She found all kinds of papers-a lab report on blood tests, the deed and title to Color, the deed to a brownstone in Manhattan, a marriage license, an appointment with an unknown man for later that same day.
She looked up, both overwhelmed and confused.
“The appointment is with an artist. The second box is empty, Emma, for now, because I didn’t want an heirloom or a standard ring. I wanted a design created that’s uniquely for you and only you. And I thought it’d be a good time to do that right after dinner.”
“After dinner,” she said faintly.
“Yeah. I thought we could get married first. I had to call your doctor to get the blood-test form. And I bought a couple of plain gold matching bands so we could have a token before your real ring is ready.”
“Married,” she said faintly.
“I was thinking about buying you an island. Just a small one. For a getaway. A place where we could skinny-dip in the pale blue water and sleep on a bed of rose petals and watch sunrises and sunsets together. But I haven’t had a chance yet to-”
“A chance,” she said faintly.
He unhooked her safety belt, then his, then, as if she weighed less than a cotton puff, pulled her directly on his lap. “Emma, please don’t argue with me. We need to be married before your thirtieth birthday. I don’t want you ever, ever worried about your independence. That’s why I put all these papers in motion, including a trust for you-a trust that’s all yours. No matter what happens to me. And as far as your trust, cookie-”
He motioned when she tried to speak.
“As far as your trust, I think we could save that for our kids. Then you can put it completely out of your mind, never think about it again. But the rest of the plan, we could keep it between us.”
“Between us,” she echoed one last time.
“You could divorce me after your birthday if you want. But this solves everything, you know? You don’t have to fret inheritances or anything else, but you can still get what should have been yours from the start. And while we’re together, I’d have the chance to woo you, cookie. To experiment with being a better white knight. To love you the way I want you to be loved-”
It took a kiss to shut him up. Who’d have guessed her so controlled, so strong Garrett could be so vulnerable? Yet when her lips grazed his, her lover came to life. A soft kiss became richer, sweeter, deeper. Eyes closed, she offered him her heart, winding her arms around him, sealing him close to her.
Finally she lifted her head and frowned. “Did I mention that I was crazy about you?”
“I don’t think it came up,” he said.
“Did I mention how much I love you?”
“No. But I was starting to believe it.”
“Only starting?” She zoomed down again and forced him to suffer through another set of kisses, a scale of kisses and touches and embraces that threatened to crumble his control…and for darn sure, hers.
“I believe, I believe,” he whispered tenderly.
“I like that phrase you used about our building something only between us,” she whispered back. “We can do it, Garrett. Build our own dynasty, our own way. Build a house. Build a family.”
“Build a life. With love framing every day in it,” he said. And that was the last either of them wasted time talking.
Jennifer Greene
***
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The Soon-To-Be-Disinherited Wife Page 15
