If the Red Slipper Fits...

by Shirley Jump

  She stopped dead on the sidewalk when her gaze fell on the byline.

  By Sarah Griffin.

  Oh, God. How could this have happened? She hadn’t written this article. Not one word. Why would Karl attribute it to her? Sarah stuffed the tabloids into her tote bag and hurried down the sidewalk toward the twelve-story building that housed the Smart Fashion publication family. She bypassed her cubicle—

  And went straight to Karl’s office.

  “What the hell is this?” She slapped the article on his desk. “Why is my name on this? I didn’t write it.”

  “It’s your column. Who cares if you wrote it?” Karl took a bite out of the blueberry muffin beside him. A purple smear lingered on the corner of his mouth.

  “I didn’t have anything to do with it. That’s lying.”

  Karl threw up his hands. “I swear, you writers are impossible to keep happy. You weren’t here, you were off writing that ‘real’ piece you wanted to do, so when the information came in, I had one of the interns do it. You’ll have to split the pay for the piece, of course, but the byline is the biggest part.”

  She imagined Caleb’s reaction when he saw her name on the piece, and how he would think that she had betrayed him. “Do you know what this is going to do to my life?”

  A smile crossed Karl’s face, and for a moment, Sarah was reminded of the Cheshire cat. “It’s going to make you the most famous gossip reporter in this town. Isn’t that everybody’s dream, baby?”

  Caleb was twenty feet from the office when the pack of reporters descended on him, shouting questions about his mother, angling in closer, hoping for a remark. What the hell? How did they find out about her condition? He said only two words, “No comment,” then headed into the office.

  Martha’s face shimmered with sympathy. “I put it on your desk.”

  She didn’t have to say what it was. He knew exactly what she meant, and a big part of him didn’t want to see it, read it or deal with it. He’d always known this day would come, that the media would put the pieces together at some point. The headline hit Caleb before he even reached his desk.

  Lenora Lewis at Death’s Door while Son Parties!

  The black-and-white claims glared back at him. From the cover of the one magazine he’d thought he could trust.

  Behind the Scenes.

  He jerked open the tabloid, so sure he was wrong. She couldn’t have. She wouldn’t have. Not after everything they’d talked about. Everything they’d shared. Had she just been using all that as a cover? To spy on him? On his mother?

  The betrayal ripped through his heart. He’d thought he could trust her.

  But there, in print for the entire world to see, were the three words he couldn’t believe: By Sarah Griffin. Caleb dropped into his chair, the treachery a sharp blade along his senses. He’d believed she was different. Hell, he’d started to fall for her. Hard.

  Had he been blinded by his emotions? Been distracted by kissing her? Or had she just been one hell of a good liar?

  A pang rose in his chest, and he refused to call it hurt. He’d let her into his world, his business, his life, and this was how she repaid him?

  She’d done this for one reason only—to advance her own career. He’d been wrong about Sarah Griffin, on every single level.

  He picked up the tabloid, headed out of the building again, and straight for the offices of the magazine. This time without any chocolates or good humor. He had one mission and only one in mind—destroy Sarah Griffin.

  Sarah typed until her fingers hurt. She pored over her notes from the last few days, scoured the morgue of old articles on LL Designs, and pulled up everything that had ever been written about the company by the competing publications. By eleven, the article was coming together, and Sarah finally felt that she had something that could mitigate the damage done by the tabloid.

  She couldn’t write fast enough, as far as she was concerned. Undoubtedly, Caleb had already seen the articles and was blaming her. Before she tried to explain, she wanted to show him that she wasn’t that writer. That her intentions were true. Surely, he would listen to reason.

  But what if he didn’t?

  “How could you?”

  She wheeled around. Caleb Lewis stood beside her desk, his face an angry mask. Damn. He’d seen it and jumped to the only possible conclusion—that she had written it, purposely hurting him. He probably thought she’d been betraying him all along. Oh, how was she going to fix this? “I didn’t have anything to do with it, Caleb.”

  “No one knew this information.” He leaned in toward her. “No one. The only person I let get close enough to me was you. I don’t know how you found out or why you went digging into my mother’s personal business.”

  “I swear, Caleb, I had nothing to do with this,” she said again. “I didn’t even write it.”

  He snorted. Clearly, he didn’t believe her. “Then where did the information come from?”

  “I have no idea. My editor said he got a tip and gave it to an intern to write. He put my name on the piece because it’s my column. It was wrong, and if I’d known I would have stopped him.” Damn. That didn’t sound good or even believable.

  Caleb shook his head, disgust washing over his features. “Are you trying to tell me this was just one big huge misunderstanding?”

  The sarcasm in Caleb’s voice stung. How was she ever going to get him to understand? How could she make up for the damage these articles were doing, and would continue to do, now that the pack of media vultures would be pecking away at Caleb for the rest of the story? “Caleb, I—”

  “I don’t know why I ever trusted you. Why I ever thought you were different.” He threw the tabloid onto her desk. The pages fluttered open, then slid to the floor, a jumbled mess of printed headlines and speculations. “You’re like all the rest of them. You use every piece of dirt you can to ruin someone else’s life and then call it your job.”

  She glanced up at him. Yes, what had happened today was a terrible thing, but in her mind, long overdue. She could see the toll this secret had taken on Caleb. How long did he think he could keep this information to himself before some other reporter got hold of it and ran the piece? “Don’t you think having the truth out there is better than people speculating? Wondering where Lenora is or how she’s doing?”

  “My mother wanted privacy. Not this…” He waved at the pages scattered at her feet. “…this mess.”

  “But now that it’s out there, you can deal with it. People care about Lenora Lewis, and you might find that making the information public will make it easier to cope with her illness. Hiding the truth is never a good idea because someone will always ferret it out.”

  He snorted. “And what do you know about that? You’ve spent your life hiding in the corners, writing about other people.”

  The words stung. She recoiled, her back pressing into the smooth surface of the cubicle wall. “I…”

  “Would you want your mother’s story splashed across the front page?”

  “No, of course not.”

  “Then what made you think I wanted my mother’s in this rag?” He shook his head and let out a gust, not meeting her eyes, not looking at her at all. If anything, that was the worst part. The article had done so much damage that Caleb didn’t even want to see her face. “I thought you, of all people, would understand why I wanted to keep this out of the public eye. This decision—”

  He cut himself off and swore under his breath.

  “What were you about to say?”

  “Why? You want to put it in next week’s issue?”

  “Of course not. I care about you, Caleb.” She reached for him, but he was too far away, and she was sure that if she tried to get any closer, he would leave.

  “Yeah? I don’t think so. If you did, you’d understand that the decisions I have had to make have been agonizing. Not something I wanted trotted out for all the world to see.”

  She thought about the article she had read, the things he had ment
ioned, and a similar decision that had faced her not so long ago. The pieces fell into place. Why Caleb seemed so tortured when it came to his mother. Why he wouldn’t want anyone to know about her condition. Why he had stepped in and taken over the company—and refused to give up on it. “Your mother isn’t going to get any better, is she?”

  He swore again and turned away.

  She rose and put a hand on his shoulder. He flinched, but didn’t pull away. She took that as a good sign, albeit a small one, but a sign nonetheless. Maybe this wasn’t unsalvageable. “Caleb, talk to me. I can help. I’ve been there.”

  He spun around and in his eyes, she saw one irrefutable fact, and another truth that Sarah hadn’t wanted to accept or believe—everything between them had dissolved in light of that one article. She’d been found guilty of destroying his life—without a trial.

  Caleb assessed her for a long silent moment, his gaze cold, his face hard. “I don’t know if I believe that you didn’t write that piece of trash. Frankly, I don’t care. But I do know one thing. You’re not the person I thought you were. I should have trusted my instincts and said the same thing to you that I said to all the other vultures.” He leaned in and his blue eyes sparked with anger. “No comment.”

  The vultures were everywhere. Caleb pulled into the parking lot of the rehab hospital, turned off his car and steeled himself for the pack of reporters waiting outside the hospital. He let out a sigh, put his keys in his pocket and was just about to get out on the driver’s side when the passenger’s-side door opened and Sarah slipped into his car.

  “What the hell are you doing here?”

  If she was daunted by his angry outburst, she didn’t show it. “I wanted to talk to you.”

  “Why? So you could get your information before the others?” He gestured toward the pack of reporters milling about the hospital entrance. They toted their cameras and microphones like gladiators preparing for battle. “You want an interview? Or did you just bring along a tape recorder so you can get what you want without me knowing?”

  She winced, and he wanted to take the harsh words back. But he didn’t.

  “I came here to support you,” she said.

  Had he heard her right? Support him? “Why?”

  The car’s engine ticked softly as it cooled. Outside, a light rain had begun to fall, washing the windows with a fine mist. The view of the reporters blurred, until he could almost believe they weren’t there anymore.

  “I know you don’t believe I had nothing to do with that article, and that’s fine. I’m not here to try and change your mind about that. I’m here because I know what you’re going through.” Sarah sighed and ran a hand along the center console, as if the words she sought were in the stitched edge of the leather. “In the end, with my mother, we had to make the same torturous decision that you’re facing.”

  “You, your sister and father?”

  “My sister was at college by then, and I didn’t want to upset her by drawing her into this. My dad…” Sarah shook her head. “He was having a difficult time facing anything to do with my mother. He just tuned out. So ultimately, I was the one who had to make that call. Who stayed until…” She exhaled a shaky breath. “…it was over.”

  His heart went out to her. In her eyes, he could read how hard that decision had been for her, how agonizing those last moments must have been. Despite everything, his esteem for Sarah rose several notches. To go through all that, and do it alone? He knew the pain of sitting by a parent’s bedside, second-guessing every decision. She’d been younger than him when she’d done it, and she’d still come through okay. Knowing she’d done the right thing.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. The words seemed useless. Just two words people tossed out there for everything from an inadvertent bump to a major loss. There should be degrees of sympathy words, stronger ones for much bigger traumas. He reached for her, then pulled back at the last moment, not sure where they stood right now, but glad she was there all the same.

  Sarah nodded. “Thank you.”

  His gaze went out the rain-dotted window. The reporters still hadn’t noticed his car sitting in the lot. Thank God for that.

  He rested his hands on the steering wheel. The hard surface pressed against his palms. Real, solid and something tangible in a day when everything he had to deal with was in his head. He let go, then turned back to Sarah. Was she this woman, the one who was in his car, supportive and caring, or the one who had written that article? Caleb decided he didn’t care right now. He needed the supportive Sarah, and he needed her desperately. “So how do you make that decision?”

  “There is no litmus test.” Her gaze softened. “Sure, the doctors will give you this test result or that one, and medically, it may be a clear-cut answer, but the problem is, your heart doesn’t want to hear test results. It wants to hope.”

  Hope. What a powerful word for just four letters. So tenuous, yet so fragile.

  He thought of all the sleepless nights he had spent, weighing the doctors’ grave advice against his own undying optimism that maybe they were wrong. “I kept hoping that maybe if I held on long enough…”

  “They’d come back with a different diagnosis?”

  He nodded, unable to speak. Thick emotion charged through him and his throat closed, choked with tears he had yet to shed. “Damn,” he said, and shook his head. “Damn it all.”

  She reached out and touched him, her hand resting on his arm, a warm, comforting connection. Just…there. For him. He didn’t pull away, just absorbed the warmth. “Your mother was a vibrant, powerful woman. Before…this.”

  A smile crossed his lips. “She was, wasn’t she? And after the stroke—” He exhaled. “Everything that was Lenora was gone. She wasn’t there anymore. She hasn’t been ever since that day.”

  Sarah’s fingers curled around his arm. “Then let her go, Caleb. Don’t make her suffer any more.”

  The hot sting of tears pushed at the back of his eyes, but he didn’t let them fall. He couldn’t, because it was like giving in, and for so long, Caleb had refused to do that.

  “I can’t.” His gaze met Sarah’s. The pain of the last two months rushed to the surface, threatening to tear him apart, forcing him to face everything he had tried so hard to bury with night after night of loud music and mindless chatter. He realized now that he hadn’t buried it at all. He had merely let that wound fester in the background until now, it threatened to undo him. “You don’t understand, Sarah. I’m the whole reason she’s there. She asked me to come by that morning to talk to her about her marketing plan. I thought I could let her wait and show up a little late. My mom was always so buried in her work, she never noticed if I came in ten minutes or two hours late.”

  Sarah waited for him to continue. Her touch lingered on him, patient, understanding. But no one could understand this…this mistake he had made.

  “By the time I got there, at least an hour, maybe more, had passed since she’d had the stroke. I called the ambulance, and they rushed her to the hospital, but…” He sighed. “…it was too late. There was nothing they could do.”

  “Oh, Caleb. That’s not your fault.” Sarah’s soft, understanding voice filled the car’s interior, brushed against his heart. “You don’t have to keep paying the price for something that was a twist of fate, nothing more.”

  “No, I should have been there. I should have…” He bit his lip, hard, but that pain did nothing to assuage the pain inside him. “…done something. Been a better son.”

  Sarah shifted in her seat, and watched the rain slide down the window. The storm had increased in intensity, and the mist had become fast, fat drops covering everything around them. “When I was a little girl, I used to think if I behaved well enough or I prayed hard enough, God would come along and make my mother better. That maybe this was some kind of cosmic punishment for my mistakes, or that God was waiting for me to prove how much I wanted my mother to be better. It was a long, long time before I finally accepted that her health had n
othing to do with me. Or my actions. Hearts give out, Caleb, blood clots explode and cancer multiplies, because…”

  “Why?” he asked when she didn’t finish.

  She swung back around to face him. A glimmer of tears showed in her eyes. “Just because. That’s all. It’s not fair, and it’s not right, but that’s the way things work. Just because.”

  He digested those words. Was it as simple as that? Even if he had been on time, he’d have seen the same end result? Maybe not then, but later?

  Just because. That day had been his mother’s time, and he couldn’t have averted it if he tried. Since then, his actions had only compounded his regrets. They hadn’t made his mother better, hadn’t eased her pain, or his.

  There was nothing he could do to make her better, to turn back the clock. Not then, not now. For the first time in a year, the bricks of guilt began to lighten. “What do I do from here?”

  “What’s right.” Sarah’s hand covered his. “That’s the only litmus test you need, Caleb.”

  He exhaled a long sigh. “I know. It’s doing what’s right that’s so tough.” It was the decision he had delayed, time and again. The doctors had told him there was no hope, and yet, Caleb hadn’t listened. He’d just kept on hoping for the impossible.

  “All this time,” he said, “I’ve been doing what was right for me. What made things easier for me to deal with. Instead of doing what was right for her.” The light bulb in his head shone so brightly, he didn’t know how he had missed the obvious for so long. “Now I see that there’s really only one choice to make.”

  Her fingers curled around his arm. “Do you want me to go with you?”

  He considered her for a moment. “Why would you do that for me?”