by Lexi Blake
Isla could guess what happened next. “He got hurt.”
“Two games into his fifth season, he tore his ACL and was out for the rest of the year. He did rehab and came back strong. But he blew out his knee again and he was done. He was on the roster for another half year and then they released him.”
She wasn’t sure where he was going with this. “None of that makes me think I shouldn’t date him. I don’t choose my dates based on the state of their knees.”
He sent her that look she was sure had worked on Austin as a kid. He softened it with a little smile. “Smart-ass. I’m getting to my point. After he realized his pro career was over, he decided to go to law school. Unlike a lot of pro players, David actually completed his undergraduate degree. Got a degree in history. He ended up returning to the Northeast, and I believe it was Henry who convinced him to go back to Harvard for law school. They’d become close friends when they did their undergraduate studies there. David’s grades and LSAT scores got him in. His marriage started to crumble.”
“That’s a lot of change. It would be hard on anyone.” And they’d married young.
“His wife got cancer. Breast cancer.”
God, even the word made her a little sick to her stomach. “That’s terrible.”
“She fought for roughly eighteen months,” Carey continued. “As far as I can tell, he went to her bedside exactly once. According to her parents, she had to beg him not to divorce her. Oh, they hate him, Isla. They claim he’s very cold. He had the insurance in his name and he tried to leave her high and dry. They managed to convince him not to divorce her, that it would be better for him financially to stay married, but he moved out of their apartment. The day she died, he was in court. He didn’t bother to go to her funeral.”
That sent a shiver through her. It was hard to reconcile the kind man who’d held her all night long with a man who couldn’t find the time to go to his wife’s funeral. But she had to wonder why Carey knew so much. “You talked to his wife’s parents?”
“I have a dossier on him as well as his business partners. I have the same on two other firms. I can never be too careful, and I want to know who I’m comfortable calling in case I need a criminal lawyer. Not that I think I’m getting indicted anytime soon, but I have enemies and they’re capable of trying anything.” He pulled away, relaxing back. “Just think about it. I’ll send you his dossier this afternoon. Read it over and think about it before you do anything that could lead to more heartbreak. Now, if you ask my opinion, which you did not but you should have because I’m old and wise, that Noah fellow is a much better bet.”
She actually shuddered. Noah was definitely in the friend zone. “He’s far too promiscuous for me. I don’t think I want to join the model population of Manhattan. And I don’t want to think about how many women he slept with in Texas.”
Carey was grinning in a way that let her know he wasn’t serious. “Now, we can fix that. I’ve found shoving a shotgun up against a man’s nuts makes him think about how he wants to use those things again. And can you imagine having the contacts his brother must have? Baby girl, it would be a royal American wedding.”
She groaned. He was always thinking business. “Pass.”
He chuckled and got to his feet with minimal trouble. “Well, I had to try. But you know, I do like the idea of you dating again. It’s time, sweetheart. Austin wouldn’t want you to be alone for the rest of your life. He would want you to find a good man and marry and have babies. I would love to see you have a few babies before I die. You’re all I have left of him. But you were a damn good part of my boy.”
There were those tears again. They were always there at the surface these days. She hugged the man who would have been her father-in-law, deeply grateful to have had him in her life. He was bombastic and over the top, and he’d been nothing but kind and loyal to her.
“Think about what I said,” he whispered.
Think about what he’d told her about David. “I will.”
She doubted she would be able to think about anything else.
“Well, Jay says unless I get those videos, the world is going to think I’m a terrible friend. I can’t use recycled video. I have to show the private side of the woman.” Amber had tears in her eyes as she strode back into the room, her sky-high heels clacking on the floor. “What am I going to do? I can’t be a terrible friend.”
Carey turned and held his arms out again. “Now, darlin’, we’ll work something out.”
She walked into her husband’s arms. Isla had to hope this was Amber’s grief coming out in different ways. She prayed the woman wasn’t seriously thinking about her own reputation at a time like this. And she also didn’t say what she was thinking. Portia wouldn’t want the public to see her private side. That had been reserved for her husband and children.
Amber looked over at her, still sniffling. “Please let me know when I can get into the penthouse. I need those private photos and video. Miranda said I could have them. It’s just that I want to make this perfect. Portia was so kind. It has to be perfect.”
And then Amber seemed to lose it, crying against Carey’s shoulder.
Isla put a hand on the other woman’s back. They were all too emotional.
And that was precisely why she should do what Carey had asked her to. She should be careful around David Cormack.
SIX
Frustration welled as he looked out over the beach. He shoved his cell phone back into his pocket.
“No luck?” Isla asked as they waited in the pretty sitting room of Portia Adams’s sister’s Hamptons home. It was one of the larger spreads directly on the beach. He looked out and couldn’t help but think about how much he preferred Henry and Win’s tiny cottage on Martha’s Vineyard. It had none of the glamour of this place, but he felt at home there.
This place was a lovely museum dedicated to high fashion and to two beautiful sisters. The sitting room was dominated by a painting of Portia Adams and her sister, Cressida Bardsley. That painting had to be four feet tall and almost as wide. It showed the two sisters during their youth, wearing garlands in their hair and sheaths of white and pink. They looked slightly surreal.
Every other surface held pictures of one of the two sisters with famous people. Cressida was a slave to celebrity it seemed. And to delicate furniture. There wasn’t a single chair in the place that looked like it could handle his weight.
“No luck. They said there’s no way they can get our doctor in until tomorrow morning. They had to sedate Trey twice. He’s on lockdown and on suicide watch.” He turned, staring as she paled, and wished he hadn’t mentioned that part. But she deserved to know.
And something had changed between that moment when he’d walked out of her apartment to get his car and when he’d picked her up to make the trip to the Hamptons. When he’d left, there was something in her eyes, something that told him she wasn’t particularly happy to see him go. That soft looked had been replaced, as had her pajama bottoms and T-shirt, with a slightly frosty professionalism. She now wore a power suit and some killer heels, and she hadn’t looked at him once during the lengthy drive to the Hamptons.
They’d talked, but she’d carefully steered everything toward the case.
He needed to stop thinking about what had gone wrong with Isla and start thinking about the case. He wasn’t trying to date her. Except he’d thought about it the whole time they were apart.
Isla’s jaw tightened, but she made no move to leave her place on the couch. “I’m going to see him tomorrow. They can’t keep me out forever.”
“I’ll try to get us in.”
She nodded and went back to staring at the ocean.
He was about to do something stupid—like asking her what had gone wrong—when he was saved by the tempestuous artistic tidal wave that was Oscar Adams. The young man stormed in wearing loose-fitting jeans, a T-shirt with some sort of �
��fight the power” message on it, and hair that looked like he’d just rolled out of bed but had likely taken an hour in front of the mirror to achieve. David had no idea why today’s masculine youth thought they should wear a bear claw over their foreheads that brushed over their line of vision, but he’d seen this trend all over.
“What are you doing here, Isla? I thought you would have the good sense to stay away at a time like this.” Oscar was a good-looking kid, or might be if one forgave the sulky expression on his face. Had he been sucking on lemons? It would be the only way to explain that pouty mouth and pained look in his eyes.
“I called your aunt.” Isla stood. “I called Cressida and told her I was coming out.”
“And she promptly took a couple of Xanax and passed out,” Oscar replied. “It’s how she reacts to everything. I take it the housekeeper let you in? Because that bitch is fired.”
“Oscar, I thought we agreed I would handle this.” Miranda appeared at the bottom of the stairs looking world-weary, her eyes red as though she hadn’t slept, but she’d dressed for the occasion. She wore black jeans and a dark sweater, her hair tugged up in a ponytail, and red-soled flats on her feet. “Isla, I’m sorry. Don’t pay attention to him. Do you have any news on Dad?”
“What she’s asking is, have they hauled our loving father to jail, and if not, why?” Oscar asked, anger feeding every word that came out of his mouth.
Miranda glanced at her brother, eyes narrowed. “That is not what I mean. Do you want me to leave? Because if you don’t stop talking about Dad like that, I will. I’ll leave you all alone with Cressida and you two can figure out how to handle everything.”
For a moment he thought the kid might tell Miranda to fuck off, but his shoulders slumped and he sank to the couch with a sullen huff. “Who’s the suit?”
Isla sighed and sat down across from Oscar. “This is David Cormack. He’s handling your father’s defense.”
“Of course he is,” Oscar said, his face flushed. “I’m sure he’s the best money can buy.”
“He’s the best,” Isla assured him. “I wouldn’t get anything less for your dad.”
“Even though he killed my mother?” Oscar asked.
“Oscar!” Miranda strode across the room, standing over her brother with a look of fury on her face. “I told you he didn’t do it. You can’t say things like that. You can’t.”
Oh, but David was interested. Here was the first real crack in the family line. “Why would you say that, Oscar?”
The young man turned to him, his eyes assessing before he spoke. “Well, Counselor, I say it because my father is a powder keg waiting to go off, and it looks like he blew. Who else would hurt my mother? My mom was one of the most loved people in the city. She . . . she . . .”
Miranda sat by his side, her hand finding his shoulder. “She was an amazing woman who did amazing things. She was well loved.”
Beneath all that rage was a young man who’d lost his mother. He needed to treat Oscar that way. There was enough hostility coming off the kid that David didn’t need to inject more. He needed to listen because it was obvious Oscar had zero filter. “Your mother did a lot of good work.”
He nodded, taking a deep breath. “She cared about people. She wasn’t like lots of rich assholes. Mom thought we had a responsibility to the people around us because we had more than they did. She was very involved in the community.”
“She had a lot of friends?”
Oscar laughed and sounded a bit less like a tool. “Yeah. Tons. She was one of those people everyone wanted to be around, you know. She accepted everyone.”
There was something about the way he said accepted that made David home in on the word. “But not everyone in your family did? Accept you, right?”
Oscar turned sullen again. “No. My dad . . . my father was an intolerant ass. Is an intolerant ass.”
Miranda sighed. “He’s not really. You’re forgetting everything from before and focusing on the bad stuff.”
Oscar turned to his sister. “Well, when was the last time Dad called you a fag?”
Isla gasped. “He did what?”
Oscar laughed again, but there was no humor in the sound. “Don’t know everything, Isla? That’s funny. I thought you did. You didn’t know dear old dad was a closeted homophobe?”
“He threw you a coming-out party,” Isla said, shaking her head and looking at David like she desperately needed to explain. “When Oscar was sixteen, Portia and Trey threw him a coming-out party. Trey would talk about the fact that his son was gay and how much he supported him. There was never any question of not accepting him.”
“He only did it because of Mom.” Oscar sniffled, a disdainful sound. “I guess his real feelings finally came through.”
Oh, but David understood. “When did he start showing these homophobic tendencies?”
Oscar shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess he decided to stop hiding it a couple years ago.”
“When his memory started going?”
“Don’t blame this on some mental illness,” Oscar replied, rolling his eyes.
David held a hand out, attempting to stop an argument he couldn’t win. “Look, you’re a smart kid, do some research. CTE like your father has can cause poor impulse control, dementia, confusion. He might not have understood what he was saying or who he was saying it to. Has he directly told you he hates gays?”
Oscar went quiet.
Miranda sat up straighter. “No. He was having a bad episode and called Oscar a faggot. I don’t even know that Dad was calling him that. He said the word. That was all. Oscar’s held on to it for two years now. Dad called me a whore once. I was wearing a super-low-cut dress. It was weird though. He spat the word out a couple of times and then he was back to normal. He told me I looked pretty, but it was cold and I should wear a sweater.”
“You can’t know what he means in those moments,” he explained. “He could have looked at you and thought something about how others might view you in that low-cut dress, and the word he spat out wasn’t a pleasant one. It didn’t mean he thinks you’re a whore. His brain is a storm of competing information, some real and some made up. In this case, you have to look to his actions before he got sick to find the real man.”
Oscar didn’t look convinced, but he sat back and showed no signs of fleeing. “Are you some kind of expert?”
“I used to play. Believe me I’ve spent my time studying up on CTE,” he admitted.
Isla’s eyes flared as she looked at him, and that softness was back momentarily.
Compassion. Sympathy. It wasn’t what he wanted from her. He focused on Oscar. “Do you have any other reason to think your dad would have hurt your mother?”
“He wouldn’t have,” Miranda interjected. “Dad loved Mom. She was the only one who could calm him down when it got rough. She was his rock.”
“I was asking Oscar.”
The young man looked away. “I don’t know.”
He couldn’t give up. It was obvious something was brewing inside Oscar, and he needed to know what it was. “I think you have a theory. I would love to hear it.”
Oscar huffed. “No, you wouldn’t.”
“If you intend to tell the DA, I need to hear it.”
Miranda shook her head. “He’s not telling the DA anything because there’s nothing to tell.”
Oscar’s head swiveled and he took Isla into his gaze. “Is there anything to tell, Isla?”
Isla’s eyes widened. “What do you mean?”
“I mean it’s going to come out no matter how hard you try to hide it,” Oscar said.
“What are you talking about?” Isla looked at him, confusion plain on her pretty face.
But David was fairly certain he did understand. “I believe he thinks you’re sleeping with his father.”
Her face drained of color. �
��What?”
“You think I haven’t seen you sneaking out of his room?” Oscar said, his voice rising. “Or all those nights you stayed over? I know I’ve been in my own place for a year and a half, but I bet nothing’s changed.”
“I stayed over because your mother asked me to. There were nights when she felt she couldn’t handle him by herself,” Isla replied, but her voice was shaking. She looked to Miranda. “Tell me you don’t believe this.”
Miranda looked away. “I don’t know. I don’t hate you, if that’s what you’re asking. I figure if Mom was okay with it, I couldn’t be too angry. I know she was seeing someone.”
Yep, a mental illness defense was looking better and better. “Your mother was seeing someone?”
“You don’t know that for sure,” Oscar said.
His sister frowned. “Well, you don’t know that Dad was boffing Isla either.”
“I wasn’t.” Isla stood up, every muscle in her body tense. “I have never touched your dad in anything but a friendly way. On occasion I’ve helped him get to bed because the meds got to be too much and sometimes your mom got emotional. So if you saw me coming out of his room, that’s what I was doing. I didn’t do it because I wanted to crawl in with him. I didn’t do it because I was his lawyer. I did it because I was his friend, and I kind of thought I was close to the family.”
“Yeah, you always intruded,” Oscar replied. “I get it. Everyone who could have loved you is dead, but that doesn’t mean you get to play around at being in my family. You’re the help. That’s what you never once understood.”
Isla stood for a moment, her body completely still, and then she turned. “I’m going to wait outside. When you’re ready, I’ll be in the back.”
