Kiss Don't Tell

by Avril Tremayne

  ‘How much?’ she asked.

  ‘A thousand. I owe those guys I told you about. You know, for the stock for that online business I invested in.’

  Lane checked her watch. ‘I’ve got a … a sort of date. Can it wait until tomorrow?’

  The momentousness of Lane having an actual date was apparently lost on Brad. ‘I have to pay it tonight, Lane,’ he said. ‘It’s an honour thing.’

  ‘I don’t have a thousand dollars on me, Brad.’

  ‘But you can get it, right?’

  ‘I told you, I have a date.’

  ‘Please, Lane. You know why I don’t have any money of my own. You have it all. And I need help.’

  Lane blew out a long sigh. ‘I’ll have to go to an ATM.’ She checked her watch again. Adam would be here in fifteen minutes and she didn’t want the two men to meet. ‘Come with me and you can head straight off.’

  ‘I’m hungry, Lane. Can’t you just go? That way I can grab something to eat while you’re gone and I’ll be out of your hair the moment you’re back.’

  Experience told Lane that insisting would make Brad dig in his heels, which would waste more time, so she grabbed her car keys and left the house. All things being well, she’d be able to get the money and clear Brad out of the house before Adam arrived.

  A few minutes later, she parked at the only empty spot along the shopping strip, jumped out of the car and hurried to the closest ATM. She sighed when she saw the ‘Out of Service’ sign. A look up the road showed that no additional parking spots had opened up, so set off on foot towards the next ATM with a sinking heart.

  ***

  Adam stepped back in surprise as a strange man jerked open Lane’s door before he could knock, demanding, ‘Did you get it?’

  ‘Get what?’ Adam asked.

  The man—no, he was more like a sulky teenager—frowned. ‘Nothing. I thought you were Lane. You’re her date, then, are you?’

  Adam recognized the face now. It was the guy in the photograph he’d seen in Lane’s bedroom. ‘Yes. Adam Quinn. And you’re her brother. Brad, right?’

  ‘Yep.’ Brad made for the dining room, leaving it up to Adam whether he followed or not.

  No way was Adam not going to follow—he was curious as hell—but first, he detoured to put the champagne he’d brought with him in the fridge.

  When Adam got to the dining room, Brad was lifting a bulging sandwich off a small plate, shedding ingredients over the glass tabletop with a fine disregard for the fact this was not his house.

  A horrible thought hit Adam. ‘You’re not joining us tonight, are you?’

  It was clearly a mutual feeling of horror, because Brad said a revolted, ‘No way.’

  Whew. But then, Adam should have known better. Lane wanted to keep him separate from everyone in her life. Colleagues. Friends. Family for sure. David, too.

  David—hell.

  Maybe he should ask Lane about David. Sometime, anyway. Just to make sure he wasn’t a brick-the-redhead-up-in-the-cellar kind of guy. Or maybe he’d short-cut it and simply ask Sarah if she’d met him and what she knew about him.

  Brad took another sloppy bite of his sandwich as Adam sat opposite him. ‘Lane owes me some money,’ Brad said. ‘I’m just here to collect.’

  Even after knowing Lane for just over two weeks, Adam knew that wasn’t right. ‘Owes you money? Lane?’

  Brad shrugged dismissively. ‘It’s a family matter.’ Then, dropping his sandwich—shedding a little more crap on the table—he got to his feet. Because the sound they’d both been waiting for came. The front door opening.

  And then Lane’s out-of-breath voice was calling out from the hallway. ‘Adam? Brad?’

  ‘In here,’ Adam called.

  A moment later, she was there, framed in the doorway, looking amazing in the sunflower yellow spandex dress she’d bought on Saturday—the one she couldn’t wear a bra with, God help him.

  Then Adam looked more closely at her face, and he saw that she was, for once, visibly overwrought.

  Brad strode towards her. ‘Have you got it?’

  With an apologetic look in Adam’s direction, Lane beckoned her brother through the doorway. It looked to Adam as though Lane wanted to usher Brad farther away; Brad, however, was mutinous and going nowhere.

  This was a new side of Lane. So nervous she could barely make her lips behave.

  Well, he’d wondered what it would be like to see Lane out of control, and now he knew. He knew … and he hated it.

  He blinked as that thought registered. Because it was absurd. He wanted her out of control. Wasn’t that the whole point of signing her damn contract? To shove her out of control?

  But only with me.

  Another blink as that truth galloped home.

  Oh, boy.

  Adam couldn’t hear the low conversation between Lane and her brother, but he could see the distress on Lane’s face as she handed over a bundle of notes. He saw Brad cutting her off, shoving the money into his pocket, holding Lane’s hand off his sleeve when she would have clutched at it. Adam wanted to tell him to leave his sister’s hand wherever the fuck she wanted to put it. Well, that and punch the shit out of the fucker.

  If Lane looked at him, just once, Adam would be leaping to his feet and pulling her protectively behind him and going for it. One punch would be all it took. But she didn’t look at him—of course she didn’t. She must hate for him to see this. Hate for him to see her so vulnerable.

  By the time Lane had seen Brad out and returned to the dining room, her face was set in its usual smooth lines. But that didn’t fool Adam, not this time. He stood, walked over to her.

  ‘My brother—I guess you know that,’ she said. ‘He … he just needed a … a loan.’ Eye flick to the left.

  ‘He said you owed him money.’

  ‘Oh. Well, yes, in a way I do.’ And then her eyes went wide and little wild. ‘You didn’t … you didn’t … tell him. About the contract, I mean.’

  ‘I wouldn’t do that, Lane.’

  Lane let out a relieved breath, closing her eyes briefly. ‘Sorry, I know you wouldn’t say anything—not deliberately—not when we have the confidentiality clause.’

  ‘It’s got nothing to do with the clause; I just wouldn’t do it.’

  ‘I’m sorry. Sorry. It’s just that he—they—already think I’m—’ She broke off, looked up at him briefly, lowered her eyes again.

  ‘They already think you’re what, Lane?’ he asked gently.

  Breath in. Out. And then she shrugged, straightened her shoulders. ‘Not easy to love,’ she said baldly. ‘So it wouldn’t surprise them to know that I had to pay someone like you to be with me, but I have enough pride to prefer that they not know it.’ She laughed softly. ‘Although they do say pride goeth before a fall, don’t they? Maybe it’s time I fell. Maybe it’s time I failed.’

  ‘You’re not paying me for sex, remember Lane? You’re paying me for expertise, and I promise you, I’m not going to let you fall or fail.’

  ‘I seem to be doing that all on my own, though, don’t I?’ She smiled—a hopeless, wistful smile. ‘And maybe that’s just fine. Maybe I’ve been going about things all wrong. Maybe, instead of working like a maniac to pass everything, I should give up and admit there are some things I can’t learn, some things I’m no good at. Maybe my mother will see that as my comeuppance at last.’

  ‘Comeuppance for what?’

  She looked at him, direct and unwavering. ‘For killing my father.’

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  It took a moment for the words to sink in, but when they did, Adam knew one true thing: Lane Davis never killed anyone.

  ‘That’s such bullshit, Lane,’ he said.

  ‘It’s true,’ she insisted.

  ‘What did you use? Poison? Pistol? Knife?’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Strapping little girl that you were … what …? Did you strangle him? Hang him from
the rafters? Run over him with your bicycle?’

  ‘Stop!’ she cried, and jammed her hands over her ears.

  He pulled her hands down and held them as he examined her face. ‘You really believe it, don’t you? That you killed him?’

  ‘Yes,’ she whispered.

  Anger shook him. ‘Then I want to know why. I want to know who’d let you believe something like that. You take one of those deep breaths of yours and you tell me.’

  She breathed. Breathed. ‘I’m responsible. It was my fault.’

  He started to protest again but she pulled a hand free and placed her fingers over this mouth. ‘I’ll tell you but please just … just listen, don’t interrupt, don’t try to make me feel better, don’t get outraged over my brother or my mother, because God knows Erica’s outraged enough for all of us. All I want is for you to understand that my family has been through a lot because of me. But you’ll have to … to not touch me, okay? I can’t concentrate when you touch me.’

  He pressed the hand that was over his lips, kissed it, then held her palm briefly against his cheek before releasing it, along with the hand he still held in his. And then he stepped back and raised his hands in a gesture of acquiescence.

  Lane’s fingers instantly twisted together at her waist, and kept twisting as she spoke. ‘It happened on my birthday. My eleventh birthday. I’d been given the scooter I’d asked for. Dad bought one for Erica, too. I’d asked him to, because there seemed no point to me in having a scooter with nobody to ride with, and I knew Erica’s grandparents couldn’t afford one whereas we always had money. Dad was a pretty canny investor, you see. Not that I knew that at the time; I just knew that I always had things that Erica didn’t.

  ‘Anyway, it was a weekend and after lunch we were all supposed to go to this park that had a special kids’ track, but Brad had ended up back in hospital—he had leukaemia, you see, and Mum was beside herself, naturally. It was a terrible, terrible time for all of us, but especially for her. So Mum told me there’d be no park that day, and that I was to stay at home with Dad so she didn’t have to worry about me. I remember being angry about that because Brad always had to come first, even on my birthday.’

  She closed her eyes briefly, shook her head. ‘God what a horror I must have been. Selfish!’

  ‘Or maybe just a kid.’

  She dismissed his interjection with an impatient shake of her head. ‘Anyway, Dad said he had work to do, and he left me and Erica watching TV while he disappeared into his home office—as usual. I wasted no time convincing Erica it would be no big deal if we snuck off to the park ourselves.’

  ‘Hang on,’ Adam said. ‘You convinced Erica? I thought she was the bossy one.’

  Lane managed a laugh. ‘Funny isn’t it? But true. I was the wild child in those days; Erica was quite timid. The thing is, Dad tended to become engrossed once he started working, and the park was just a few blocks away, so I figured we could go there, whizz around the track, and be home before he even missed us.’

  She lapsed into silence, her eyes taking on a faraway look. Adam wished he could see inside her head, see the park the way she’d seen it, watch the scene unfold. He found that he was holding his breath, as though the tension in her was transferring in some mysterious way to him.

  But then she gave her head another impatient shake and refocused on him. ‘So of course, we went, but as it turned out, we were missed, very quickly. Dad came looking for us. I pieced the next bits together afterwards, because at the time it all seemed quite … quite fragmented. He knew where we’d be—I’d done nothing but talk about the park all morning!—and he must have been worried, because he drove to the park instead of walking. He was there before we even hit the track. But he wasn’t careful as he got out of the car. He didn’t even look, according to the truck driver who hit him.’

  ‘Oh God,’ Adam breathed out.

  ‘I heard the screech, and the thud, and a scream. But the scream wasn’t from Dad, it was Erica who was screaming. She ran across the road to him.’ She shuddered. ‘She almost got run over herself, and I can only thank God that she didn’t. I don’t think it had occurred to me that the park was on a main road until I was faced with crossing it to get to my father, and so while Erica went racing over to the scene of the accident, I just stood there like a … like a nothing. The main road—it was why Dad was so worried of course. It was a dangerous spot.’

  Lane covered her face with her hands, and stayed like that for the longest time, breathing through her fingers.

  ‘Lane …’ he said, taking a step towards her, and she shook her head once more, warning him off.

  And so he waited, even though he had to fight every instinct he had in order to do what she’d asked of him and not touch her.

  When at last she lowered her hands, her face was blank. ‘But I had to cross, because Erica was screaming at me to come. He … he was asking for me. It seemed to take me for ever to get to him, but it probably didn’t because he was still alive when I got there and they tell me … they tell me he wasn’t alive for long. I just … just stood there again, useless. Erica had to drag me down to kneel beside him. She picked up his hand and put it in mine, and she took his other hand in hers.’

  She closed her eyes, paused to breathe through the moment again. ‘I love her so much for that, love her so much. Because Dad … he smiled at me … and told me to look after my mother and brother … and that he loved me. I leaned down to kiss him. I was crying, and I could see my tears on his face … and he died. He told me he loved me … and then he died right there, with me and Erica holding his hands.’ She opened her eyes, tried to smile. ‘End of story. End of scooter, too. I never did get to ride it around that track because Mum threw it out.’

  ‘It wasn’t your fault, Lane,’ Adam said.

  ‘I do know that,’ she agreed. ‘At least, intellectually, logically, I know that. But sometimes—’ She broke off, shrugged. ‘Sometimes it’s hard to be logical. And my mother … well, logic was never her strong suit. She’s never come out and blamed me to my face—that’s something. But I know every time she looks at me, she sees how much I look like my father, and although something in her must love that—on some level, somewhere, surely she must love that—there’s a bigger part of her that hates me for daring to look like him after what I did.

  ‘Once, I overheard her and Erica arguing—it was something to do with her attending something for Brad instead of my graduation—and she said that at least Brad had done nothing unforgivable that people nevertheless expected her to forgive him for, which made him … easier. To love, I guess.

  ‘Erica said all I’d done was be eleven years old and go to the park.’ She attempted another smile for him. ‘Which is what you were trying to say isn’t it? But Mum said that wasn’t the unforgivable thing. The unforgivable thing was that I got to say goodbye to Dad, when she hadn’t had the chance, that he’d told me he loved me when he should have been telling her, that I … I’d robbed her of his last words. And you know what the weird thing is? If Erica had left me on the other side of the road so that he never got to say those things to me, Mum would probably have forgiven me.’

  ‘But I don’t think you would have forgiven yourself, Lane.’

  ‘No, I’m quite sure I wouldn’t. But I think that might have been easier to bear.’

  It seemed to Adam that Lane had had quite enough to bear already. From her mother, from her brother, from Dewayne the Douchebag. She had two champions, as far as he could see: Erica, and Sarah. And him, he decided. She had him, too. She wasn’t going to fail his class, not as some weird atonement for living while her father had died, not for any reason. She was going to start passing tonight.

  ‘I brought champagne,’ he said. ‘I put it in the fridge while you were out.’

  Lane looked blank for an instant—well of course she did, they’d just been talking about the death of her father, which was hardly a champagne moment. But then she did finally ma
nage a smile, even though it was with an effort. A moving-on smile. ‘If only you knew how close you came to being offered champagne along with the smoked salmon that first night.’

  ‘But I like champagne!’

  ‘Yes, but I’m pretty sure you would have thought I was planning a happily-ever-after instead of three months and I’d never have persuaded you to sign.’ Another smile. ‘But now I guess we can both assume champagne means nothing more than that you’re all clear. The blood tests.’

  ‘Yep, all clear.’ He popped the cork. ‘And you?’

  ‘Yes. So why don’t you go into the living room, and I’ll get the bottle and some glasses?’

  ‘How about I come with you?’

  ‘I’ll only be a minute.’

  ‘I’m thirsty.’

  ‘Fine,’ she said, but she seemed bemused as he followed her into the kitchen, and he didn’t quite know how to explain that he didn’t want to let her out of his sight just then, so he decided he’d pretend it was normal to dog a woman’s footsteps just to get a sip of champagne a minute and thirty seconds earlier than he would otherwise.

  In the kitchen, he couldn’t seem to keep his hands off her long enough for her to get the champagne-pouring process underway. When she reached up into the cupboard for the champagne flutes, he kissed the back of her neck. When she held out her hand for the bottle, he grasped her hand, kissing first the back then turning her palm to his lips. As she turned slightly to pick up the bottle with her free hand so she could pour the champagne, he ran his palms over her shoulders, kneading them gently, then toyed with her hair.

  ‘You look great in that dress,’ he said as she handed him his glass and poured her own.

  ‘Left to my own devices, I’m still a zero out of ten on the Lesson Three fashion scoreboard, though, given you picked it out—well, given you chose all the clothes.’

  But Adam had lost interest in clothes. All he wanted to do was kiss her, so he did, full on the mouth. He could almost taste her arousal and was frustrated beyond belief that despite the passion he saw in her eyes, she wouldn’t take the initiative and touch him.