Deeper Than Need: A Secrets & Shadows Novel

by Shiloh Walker

  Just like that. Jeb wanted to make Trinity go to the police station but was just fine asking Noah about it here.

  Let it go, that small, quiet voice of reason advised.

  Let it go? Nah. I don’t think so.

  “Shouldn’t we go to the station?” Noah asked, baring his teeth in a sharp-edged grin. It had been a long, long time since he’d tangled with a cop, but Noah hadn’t forgotten this particular dance.

  Maybe it wasn’t a good thing, and he knew that. Losing his temper never led to good things, but he was walking a razor’s edge already and giving in to that particular demon would feel so sweet right about now.

  Every once in a while, it just felt good to lose his temper, and he hadn’t done it in a long, long while.

  Jeb, not entirely realizing how dangerous Noah’s mood had gotten, sealed the bag and tucked it into a pocket. “That won’t be necessary. I don’t guess you went and stole Lee’s phone.”

  “But you think I might have?” Trinity said, her voice silky.

  Noah slid her a look, saw the echoes of his own temper dancing in her eyes. She looked about as angry as he felt.

  “Now, I didn’t say that,” Jeb said. “We would have cleared all of this up at the station, Ms. Ewing. No reason to get upset.”

  “If we can clear it all up at the station, then let’s go,” Noah said, jerking a thumb at the door. “I’m no different from her, right?”

  Something flickered in Jeb’s eyes. He studied Noah’s face.

  “Are we going or not?” Noah demanded.

  “There’s no reason—”

  “Why not?” Noah took one step forward. “You didn’t so much as ask her, give her a chance to explain. It wasn’t even on her damn desk, but you just assumed and decided you’d make her go to the station and when she wanted to know what in the hell your problem was you threatened to arrest her. So come on … do the same with me.”

  Trinity’s voice, soft and steady, came to him from the side. “Noah—”

  He shook his head at Trinity, still staring at Jeb. “It seems to me you were determined to take her down there, for some reason. Now that you know I am the one who found the phone, everything changed. Why is that?”

  A muscle pulsed in Jeb’s cheek. “You probably don’t want to discuss this here.”

  “Oh, I’m just fine discussing it here.”

  Jeb jabbed a finger in Trinity’s direction. “Yeah, but does she want me discussing it?” He shot her a scathing look and then looked back over at Noah. “You’re free to hire who you like. Your personal life is your business, but you really ought to know more about the people you invest time and money in. The people you might invest in … emotionally. You obviously don’t know anything about her or you wouldn’t have hired her.”

  From the corner of his eye he saw Trinity go white, her eyes dark and turbulent in the pale oval of her face.

  In that moment, he wanted to hit Jeb. He wouldn’t. But the only thing that stopped him was the fact that Trinity was there. So was her son, happily watching TV, just a few feet away.

  “We found the phone on a bench in town. Trinity and I were together at the time. Hank had just been there, but I didn’t think it was his. Kept it with me, just to check. I’d been talking to him right before we saw it. He later told me he found it on the sidewalk and he was pretty sure it was Lee’s. I was going to turn it in later today, but I hadn’t had time. That’s pretty much all I know about it.”

  Jeb opened his mouth and Noah felt himself teetering on that edge, his balance all but gone. He shot out a hand and caught Jeb’s shirt.

  Jeb reached for his weapon. “Now just a fucking minute, Noah,” he snarled.

  “Get. Out.” Noah spaced each word out, slowly and carefully. “The next time you come in here, it had better be on official business. Otherwise, you’re not welcome.”

  He let go and backed away before he did something he’d regret. Jeb gaped at him, something akin to shock rolling across his face as he realized what Noah had just said. “Noah, look, I realize this might be coming off the wrong way, but I…”

  “I said, get out,” Noah snapped. “If you have official business, you can come through that door. If it’s personal or if you’re looking for a repair job, you’re not welcome here. Find another contractor or somebody else to listen to whatever trash you have to spew, because I’m done.”

  Jeb stared at him, his eyes slowly going blank. “Is that so?”

  “Your ears always worked well. Now, unless you need to ask me questions about that damn phone, you need to get gone. If you do have questions, you’d better be prepared to do it at the station, because you are not going to upset Trinity any more than you already have.”

  “Mama?”

  Noah tensed at the sound of that small voice.

  “Micah, go back in the playroom for a minute, please,” Trinity said, her voice soft, but the thread of steel under it was undeniable.

  Micah hesitated, flicking a look back at Jeb. “Why is the policeman mad at you? Is it about Dad? I heard you talking about people stealing. It wasn’t Dad.” Micah’s eyes were big and sad as he looked over at Jeb. “Dad can’t steal anymore. My mama made sure of it. She helped send him to jail. She had to go to court and everything.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Well.

  This was awkward.

  Cradling a glass of wine in her hands, Trinity sat across from Noah and tried to pretend she was anything but nervous. Anything but scared.

  Anything but ashamed.

  That shame was always there, a nasty little twist in her stomach, a smear on her heart, and even though she hadn’t had a damn thing to do with Anton’s actions, she still felt the backlash.

  Incredible, she thought. She had been innocent of what he’d done, but he still loved to play the victim.

  How could you do this to me? Do you know what they did to me this time? His weekly calls about the abuse he’d suffered in jail, all of it.

  He’d embezzled more than a million dollars from her father’s clients, and who did Anton blame? Who had everybody eyed during the trial?

  Who was getting the side eye, even now?

  Pushing the guilt and shame aside, she took a sip of her wine and then put it down, studying Noah from under her lashes. He had a faint smile on his lips, watching Micah as he played in the back of the restaurant in the kids’ area.

  Micah was back there with Ali’s two boys and the three of them sounded like they were having a ball. For Micah, the darkness of the day had never happened.

  For her, it seemed to hover over her, a cartoonlike rain cloud.

  If only a few toys and a few friends could take away all the bad from her life, she’d be okay.

  She’d attempted to gracefully bow out of the dinner, but once Noah had kicked Jeb out of the office, he’d just given her a grim look. “Come on. We’ve earned that pizza.”

  When she’d tried to dance around it, he’d pretended not to understand, and just seeing how Noah had put such a light in Micah’s eyes, even mentioning the word pizza, she hadn’t had the energy to fight both her son’s disappointment and Noah’s … whatever he had.

  Persistence? Determination? Positive outlook? She didn’t know. Maybe it was a preacher thing. Maybe it was just him. Although she suspected she wouldn’t be seeing a repeat of the heat, the interest, she’d glimpsed in Noah’s eyes. Not now.

  The weight of the words Micah had innocently dropped hung between her and Noah, heavy as an anvil, toxic and ugly.

  Even from hundreds of miles away and behind bars, Anton still managed to screw with her life.

  The table shifted and she watched as Noah leaned forward, elbows braced on the table. Fine lines fanned out from his eyes and something that might have been temper continued to linger in his dark-blue eyes.

  If he was hers …

  A kick of lust burned through her at the thought, but she shoved it aside. No point in dwelling on that now. Those hopes lay behind her, burned to
ashes. Refusing to dwell on it, she smiled and gestured to the bottle of wine.

  “Ali suggested the red from that winery here … Lanthier?”

  “Yeah. That’s the place.” He didn’t even glance at the bottle.

  “Want a glass? If not, I’ll be tempted to have the entire bottle myself. It’s definitely been one of those days.”

  A faint smile tugged his lips. “I don’t drink.”

  “Ah. Sorry. I keep forgetting the preacher thing.”

  “It’s not the preacher thing.” He shrugged. “I’ve told you a dozen times—I’m not a preacher anymore. The drinking thing is a me thing, not a preacher thing.”

  There was something in his voice, she decided. Then he flicked a glance at the bottle and something glittered in his eyes. Something vivid and bright. Then he blinked and it was gone. Just like that. When he looked back at her, that edge of temper burned hotter, brighter. “I’ll agree with you, though. It’s been a monstrous sort of day—having Jeb show up like he did, that was just the icing on the cake. Leslie was about as pleasant to deal with in person as I imagine she was on the phone.”

  “A bundle of joy, then, huh?”

  He laughed softly. “Oh, yes.” Leaning back, he slumped in the booth and dragged a hand down his face. “We’re trying to make up for lost time on the job at the café and I didn’t get anything done out at your place.”

  “I told you I don’t want you working yourself into the ground on my place.” She curled her fingers around the wineglass, staring into it. Was he going to ask? She wished he would, just so she could get it over with. At the same time, she didn’t want to even talk about this.

  The silence continued to linger, brittle and tense, and Trinity felt like she’d snap. Snagging her wine from the table, she tossed it back and poured herself another half glass. “Should I turn in my resignation?”

  “Your … what?”

  “You heard me.” She shot him a narrow look.

  “Yeah, I did, but I’m not really following you.”

  Drumming her fingers on the table, she met his gaze and held it. No matter how hard it was to look at him, or anybody, she wasn’t going to let the shame she felt over somebody else’s actions drive her down. Not anymore. Enough was enough.

  “You heard what Micah said. It’s pretty obvious what Detective Sims thinks on the matter.”

  Noah curled his lip. “Yeah, well, screw what Jeb thinks. He didn’t hire you and he doesn’t run my place. I do.” He watched her, his eyes unreadable, his face a smooth, blank mask. But there was temper underlying his voice. A lot of it, almost hot enough to burn. “I heard what the boy said, yes. What I fail to understand is why what his dad did should have any impact on your ability to do the job.”

  Her fingers trembled. In an effort to stop it, she hid her hands in her lap and curled them into fists. Outside of that, no sign of the turmoil she felt inside showed. She knew how to hide it when she was falling apart inside, when she was a twisted mess of emotion. When she was scared … when she was confused.

  Twisted and confused summed it up pretty well just then. Without blinking an eye, she said calmly, “Your business could be affected once the word gets out. Apparently, the detective has been poking around in my background. If he knows, chances are others are going to find out.” Then she sighed and glanced back to the play area. She had to accept reality. Micah had already told Joey. Joey knew. Ali knew. Others would find out.

  “Micah loves his dad. Sometimes I wonder why, because the man wasn’t exactly father material, but he loves him and I don’t lie to my son. Micah knows where he is and it just doesn’t occur to him that people would think … unkindly of us when they hear the truth. So even if Sims keeps this quiet, word will get out because Micah will talk about it. Is that what you want? People talking about the possible criminal you have working for you?”

  “You’re telling me that you are a criminal?” Noah snorted. “Sorry, Trinity. I’m not buying it.”

  The absolute faith in that simple statement hit her hard, square in the chest. There had been only one person who had believed in her, right from the start. That had been her father. Well … and Micah. A child’s love in an amazing thing. So accepting, so all consuming. Even knowing what his father had done hadn’t altered Micah’s love for the man. But Micah hadn’t ever once thought she had done anything wrong. In his eyes, she could do no wrong. It wasn’t exactly as comforting as one might think.

  Blowing out a slow, careful breath, she reached for the glass of wine and took a small sip. She felt like she was being pulled apart … from the inside.

  “No. I wasn’t involved in anything Anton—Micah’s father—had done. But that didn’t matter to just about anybody who knew me,” she said, shifting her gaze to the wine in her glass, staring down into the dark, ruby-red liquid. If only she could find the answers to life, some simple recipe for peace inside. “Not once everything he’d been doing started to come out. People I’d known for years, people I thought were my friends … they all thought I was involved. Or they thought I knew and had kept quiet.”

  “Then I’d say those people didn’t really know you.”

  Through her lashes she studied him. “You don’t even know what happened, Noah. How can you be so sure?”

  “I’m usually a pretty decent judge of character … but even if I hadn’t already had a good feeling about you, I would have figured it out when you told me you don’t lie to your son.” He glanced at Micah. “I see how you are with him, how much you love him. I suspect telling him the truth about his father was probably one of the most painful things you’ve ever done in your life. But you told him the truth because that’s just what you do. That’s just how you are. If you can’t hide something even though it hurts you, then you’re not the kind of person who would have been involved in whatever he was doing.”

  The calm, absolute assurance in Noah’s voice was enough to twist her heart around in her chest.

  She looked away until the burn of tears faded, until the ache in her throat eased.

  “Since you seemed determined to talk about this, I’m just going to ask. What happened? What did he do to you?”

  Startled, she looked back at Noah. Determined to talk about it? I’m not … she started to say. She almost shouted it. But even as the denial rose inside her, she realized if she said it, she’d be lying.

  She’d never talked about it. Never told anybody. Not her side.

  She’d been cross-examined. She’d been interrogated.

  But never once had anybody just asked her, What happened?

  Her side of the story. Somebody really just wanted to hear her side of the story.

  Licking her lips, she tried to figure out just where to start. Nervously she glanced around. The place wasn’t very busy, but it was the middle of the week. Carryout orders were flying out of the place and there was a line of customers at the counter, but here in the back near the kids’ area it was just them.

  Where do I start?.…

  At the beginning.

  “Anton was hired because I liked him,” she said slowly. “My father owns … owned a big advertising firm in New York. One of the biggest. He sold it after all of this.” Staring down into her wineglass, she shook her head. “He was so proud of that company. He built it from the ground up. When he took me on as a junior partner, I was … thrilled. Sooner or later, I thought I would take the place over, although I never cared for the business aspects. Paperwork. Management.”

  Noah lifted a brow. “You seem to handle paperwork and everything pretty well at my place.”

  “Handling it doesn’t mean I like it.” She let herself have another sip of wine, savoring its sweet warmth as it hit her belly, and then she forced herself to continue. “I was more into the creative end—I liked that part, designing stuff, working with people. The company was growing, getting bigger and bigger all the time. Anton was brought in to help with marketing, working with new customers, finding us new customers. It made it e
asy for him.”

  * * *

  The look in her eyes had Noah ready to punch something.

  She might think she had it hidden, all that pain, all that shame, all that misery, but he could see it, more of an echo than anything else. But that echo was enough to have Noah ready to spit nails. At the same time, he wanted to go around the table and pull her into his arms, hold her tight, tell her that it was all going to be okay.

  He couldn’t make that promise, though, because he knew, just as well as she did, there were always going to be people who’d judge her based on what somebody else had done. That was just life. It sucked, but knowing that it sucked didn’t change it.

  Instead of saying anything or offering her false platitudes, he made himself be silent and listen.

  “He started overcharging. Had new pricing sheets made up, and since he was the one handling the new accounts they never thought to question it. He started small, too … a few hundred on the little bookstore in Brooklyn. A thousand on a new bar. Eventually, he started getting accounts from bigger places … boutique hotels near Times Square, a couple of national accounts, and that’s where he started taking the bigger risks—he’d be skimming tens of thousands off those accounts.”

  “Wouldn’t somebody in … shoot, I don’t know how big companies work, but aren’t there invoices and things to be accounted for?”

  She gave him a grim smile. “Oh, yes.” She twirled her wineglass around, and for a moment Noah found himself mesmerized by the way the liquid splashed around in the glass.

  One drink.

  Just one.

  Then he jerked his attention back to her, watched as she lifted the glass to her lips and sipped.

  “As far as I can figure out, Micah had just been born when he started taking the bigger risks. We started dating almost as soon as he settled in with the company—he chased after me and I let him catch me. Didn’t even put up a fight. I was pregnant within a year. While I was on maternity leave, adjusting to being a new mom, he was getting it on with the girl in Accounts Payable. Others in the company knew. I think some people kept quiet because they felt bad. Me having the new baby. Others didn’t want to get me pissed off—owner’s daughter and all. Looking back, I can remember the whispers. The looks. I was almost always with somebody else when I was out of my office, heading to a meeting, off to a business lunch. There was one time, I’d seen one of the women in the accounts department—standing there, staring toward this group I was heading out with—and she was whispering to somebody else.”