“Like?”
Resting her head back against the seat, trying to pretend to herself that she was detached, unaffected, recovered, she turned to glance at him. “You don’t really want to hear this, do you?”
“Yes.”
And when he looked at her like that, as though he was driven by caring and not curiosity, she couldn’t deny him.
Taylor would be awake soon. And then this would be over. She closed her eyes again. She couldn’t talk about it with them open. It wasn’t her she was talking about. It was that other woman—the one who’d died almost two years before, when she’d left everything she’d ever known, everyone she’d ever loved, to become someone she’d never dreamed of being.
“He’d treat me more like a prostitute than a lover in bed.” Tricia swallowed. “Not in any way that would leave a mark, but there are many ways to hurt a woman that aren’t discernible. Certain…movements. Words.”
Hard to believe, but it had been the words that hurt the most. Always.
“And he said he’d make sure my mother was ostracized not only from the club, but from her place in our elite little society….”
Her poor mother who’d risen above her pain and humiliation far better than Tricia had. Her mother hadn’t run.
“So why not just leave without accusing him of anything? People get divorced all the time.”
“Thomas was in the running for big Republican backing for a State Senate seat. It’s what he’d worked for his entire life. To him, that backing meant he’d become the man he’d set out to become. To him, image is everything…and he couldn’t abide the image of a man with a black mark over his character….” Instinct told her to look around, check that they were alone, but Tricia couldn’t open her eyes. Inside, she was all coward. “He said if I tried to sue him for divorce, he’d kill me.” She’d whispered the words and was still trembling, almost awaiting the blow that would come for having uttered them at all.
Thomas was in jail. He couldn’t have heard her.
But he was going to. And try as she might to be logical, to be brave, to remember everything she’d learned these past two years, what she knew in her heart was that, somehow, Thomas was going to get her.
“So why did you finally leave?” Scott’s words dropped softly into the silence.
“I was six months pregnant, not feeling well, and he wanted to have sex. When I begged him to leave me alone, he became enraged. Started hitting me in the stomach.”
“He could’ve killed the baby!”
Tricia kept her eyes closed, doing everything she could to blot out a memory she knew she would never escape. “He was going to kill our son,” she said, her voice sounding faraway. “I knew the only way to stop him was to give him what he wanted.”
“You had sex with him.”
She’d lain there while he had sex. To her that was a very different thing, but didn’t blame Scott for the disappointment she heard in his voice.
“The next morning, as soon as his car turned out of the drive, I got my purse and I left.”
17
“I have to go back.”
Scott stayed calmly in the chair, Dog in his lap, when every instinct compelled him to jump up, grab Tricia—Kate—and Taylor, and drive down to Mexico. She’d already run. Her whole life with him had been on the run. It hadn’t been a bad life.
“You don’t owe anyone anything.” He had so much more to say, strong words to talk her out of this craziness. But his role was to sit and do nothing. He’d figured that out during the long hours of the morning, waiting to see if she showed up, wondering if he’d ever see her again.
His teenage vigil on the side of the road hadn’t been wrong. It had been a manifestation of his character, a lesson he’d been meant to learn. A lesson he was still learning.
“I owe myself.”
Part of her healing. He wanted that for her. Still…
“They’re going to get him with or without you.”
“Without me they might send him to death row.”
“I would think you’d want that.”
Tricia/Kate—maybe he’d just call her TK—chuckled, but there was no humor in the sound. “I want him dead more than you can imagine….”
The passion with which she said those words touched Scott. He glanced over at her, at the tremor in her hands as they lay on the arms of the chair, at the store-bought jeans and five-dollar T-shirt, the three-dollar flip-flops on her million-dollar feet, and at the moisture gleaming in her eyes. This was what he’d wanted—to see all of her. To have her come fully alive for him.
“…but I want him dead honestly,” she finished, speaking slowly. “I’ve done enough damage with my cowardice. I already have enough on my conscience to give me dark nights for as long as I live because of the two deaths I already feel responsible for. I can’t take the weight of another. At some point, I have to make reparation.”
He frowned, studying the tortured conviction written in her slumped shoulders, weary posture and pain-filled eyes. “You didn’t kill anyone.”
Her lower lip between her teeth, Tricia said nothing at first. Tears dripped slowly down her cheeks, almost as though she was unaware of them. She didn’t wipe them away.
“On the contrary,” Scott continued, not understanding. “By all accounts you saved two lives—yours and Taylor’s.”
Not responding, she stared out at the yard.
“Tricia.” Scott leaned forward, placing Dog gently on the ground as he reached for her hand. “Whitehead is in jail for your murder! The only reason you aren’t dead is because you had the smarts to disappear before he could kill you.”
Her face turning toward his, Scott saw what he suspected was only a hint of the anguish she was feeling. “Yes,” she said, her voice tinged with a bitterness he didn’t recognize. “And because I chose to save myself and Taylor, Leah and her baby are dead.”
“You couldn’t possibly have known—”
“Not about Leah,” she said. “But I knew what he was. It stood to reason that if he’d do it to me, he’d do it to whoever came after me. If I’d stayed, I could’ve prevented that.” She pulled her hand away, and Scott’s stomach hardened. He was powerless here.
“By dying, maybe. And then only if someone could prove he killed you.”
“I have to go back, Scott. For Leah if nothing else. A lot of the prosecution’s case seems to rest on circumstantial evidence that connects his behavior with Leah with me. He’s claiming he couldn’t possibly be the father of Leah’s child, which weakens their case. I can prove it is possible.”
“With a DNA sample from Taylor.”
“Yes.”
He couldn’t argue with that. He didn’t like it. But he couldn’t come up with one damned argument that was even remotely viable.
“I want him convicted for Leah’s murder because he did it. And I want to clear my conscience of his death—which would be based on charges of killing me and my son—because he didn’t.”
Her face was so beautiful, her flawless skin and perfectly rounded eyes accented by the dark hair pulled back in its habitual ponytail. “But at what cost?” The question was torn out of someplace deep inside him.
She shrugged. “It’s a price I have to pay.” The tears had stopped falling, but her voice was still thick with them. “The price commanded of me. You realized who I was from one newspaper article, one picture in the paper. There are going to be a zillion articles before this is over, with many more photos. There’s nowhere I’ll be able to run to stay anonymous. It only worked before because there wasn’t enough reasonable evidence for an indictment and Thomas had enough pull to keep things out of the papers.”
“Then I’m coming with you.” The answer was so obvious it should’ve occurred to him sooner. He had accumulated eleven years worth of vacation.
“No.”
“Why?” Scott hadn’t thought, after the phone call and the article that morning, that there was any hurt left to feel.
“I’m married, Scot
t.”
And it wouldn’t look good to have an adulterous lover in tow.
“Maybe you should’ve considered that before leaving the bar with me.” The slap hit its mark. Her head drew back.
Scott wasn’t proud.
“I’m sorry.”
“No,” she said, sitting as far away from him as the chair would allow. “You’re absolutely right. I am what I am. But it’s not going to help the prosecutors get a conviction if I give the defense evidence that I’m not faithful to my marriage vows.”
“Tricia, I didn’t mean that. I don’t think any less of you for what you did. Nor do I regret one second of our time together.”
Her face remained frozen. Driven by a desperation he didn’t understand and wasn’t willing to analyze, Scott moved closer, took her hand again and held it between his. Needing to connect with her even while he knew the effort was useless. She wasn’t his to connect with. Never had been. She was a different woman who belonged to a different life.
Those blue eyes that he’d never forget, that were going to haunt his nights for a long time to come, softened as they turned on him. “I used you.”
It was obvious to him that the regret she felt about that reached all the way to the core of her being.
“Yes,” he acknowledged. He’d figured that out a couple of hours before. And wasn’t ready to admit how badly the realization had hurt.
“They were looking for a single pregnant woman,” she said. “I couldn’t be that.” She hadn’t pulled her hand away, so Scott continued to hold it.
“I know.”
Her eyes wide, she stared straight at him. “But I fell in love that first week, Scott. And that’s why I stayed.”
He wanted so badly to believe her. And yet he had to get through the next twenty years—the next twenty minutes—and knew he couldn’t stand that close to the fire again. He released her hand, sat back and began preparations for a life without her.
“Where will you go?”
Now that there was no reason left to stay, Tricia had everything she’d brought into Scott’s home packed before dinner.
“I’m going to call Carley from the bus station. She’ll arrange something.”
Lunch had been a horribly strained affair. Taylor had chattered away, smearing food in his ear, clapping when Dog grabbed the macaroni he’d dropped and generally being adorable and funny—and the two adults who’d spent his entire life adoring him were unable to crack a smile.
Her sewing room was packed up in boxes and waiting outside for the women’s shelter to which she’d donated the stuff to pick it up. Patsy would be collecting the sewing machine the next day.
A bus was leaving for San Francisco before six. As soon as Taylor was up from his nap, they’d be on their way.
It meant another night of missing his bedtime, but considering everything else, that seemed insignificant.
Leaning one shoulder against the doorjamb, Scott watched as she folded the last of her panties and bras, placing them in one of the nylon knapsacks she’d bought earlier that afternoon.
“I don’t know how long I’m going to need this stuff,” she said, shaky and scared and falling apart inside. “I imagine Thomas got rid of all my things, and I don’t know how long it’ll take me to get new identification and bank cards and—”
“Tricia.” He pushed slowly away from the door, came toward her. She could see him in her peripheral vision. Bracing herself, she continued to fold. Until one big hand covered the panties in her fingers, pulled them away, dropped them on the top of the bag.
“Come here.”
She couldn’t go where he was asking, couldn’t afford to feel what she was feeling. That had to be over—as though it had never been. There was no other choice.
His arms were strong and comforting, offering a security and a warmth she’d never known in her life before him. A magic she feared she was never going to know again as long as she lived. Burying her face in her chest, Tricia promised herself she wouldn’t cry.
“Ah, Trish, you feel so good.” The words were little more than ragged whispers beside her ear and she shivered, with fear—and forbidden pleasure.
He felt good, too. So good it was more than she could bear. Just as she moved to push away from him, his hips pressed against hers, openly showing her just how much pleasure he was taking from the embrace.
“I have to go….” She clung to him. So much for her newfound strength. Her courage.
“Not yet,” he said, holding both of her arms as his eyes beseeched her. “Just once more, let me lose myself in you.” His words were no less intense for their softness. “Let me hear you cry out in pleasure one more time….”
Living a life of truth was a difficult thing. Looking up at him, Tricia knew that as honest as she was trying to be with the world, she owed him honesty even more. Reaching down to the hem of her shirt, she pulled it up, over her head and off, standing in front of him in a serviceable white bra.
“I have never loved a man the way I love you, Scott,” she said, her fingers at the waist of his jeans. “I will never love anyone else like this….”
She might not know what was going to happen to her over the next days, she might not be able to predict even one month of her future, but this she knew.
Her body shivered again when his hands moved over her ribs, holding her at the sides of her breasts. With a quick flip behind her, she unfastened the bra and released them, then brought his hands to cover them, pressing her nipples into his palms.
If this was wrong, so be it. If she was a sinner, a whore, sleeping with another man on the very day she was returning to acknowledge her marriage, then she was a sinner and whore. She was also a woman in love who had to speak her truth one last time. For that she would not feel shame.
“Will you call me?”
Standing at the end of the bed she’d shared with this man, dressed in the only pair of dress slacks she currently possessed, with a plain white cotton button-down shirt and cheap black sandals, Tricia shook her head. “I can’t.”
He nodded as though he understood—as though he’d expected nothing else.
“I’m just not strong enough….” No, that wasn’t what she’d meant to say. “I have to give up this duplicitous life, Scott. Even though I knew it was saving my son’s life, the guilt of living a lie was killing me, almost as surely as Thomas would have.”
With his hands on her hips, he looked down at her, his eyes warm with support, and showing his pain as well. “I have no idea what happens next, or where I’ll be living, but the one answer I do have, with a clarity that’s probably so obvious because there’s so little of it, is that I have to live the rest of my life honestly.”
He swallowed, took a deep breath, but didn’t look away. “If you ever get into trouble, need anything…”
“I have your number.” But she wouldn’t be using it. It wouldn’t be fair to him. Nor did she trust herself not to need him so badly she’d forget herself, throw integrity to the winds and regret it all later, when people got hurt. As they would. They always did.
Her lips were trembling; she could feel them but was powerless to make them stop. Scott was the best man she’d ever met, the stuff of childish dreams she’d long forgotten, a good man in a world with too few of them. How could she possibly walk away?
How could she resume the life she’d lived of a wealthy fashion designer in San Francisco when she knew he was here?
“Can I ask you something, Scott?”
His smile was sad. “Of course.”
“When are you going to quit punishing yourself—when is your sentence over?”
He blinked, loosening his grip on her.
“What sentence?”
“The life sentence you imposed on yourself when Alicia died in your arms that day.”
Now wasn’t the time for this, but there wasn’t going to be any other time. And she loved him too much to leave without trying to help him.
“I don’t know what you�
��re talking about.”
He did, though. She could tell not only by the way he evaded her eyes, but by the hands he’d suddenly put in his pockets. He was disconnecting. From her. And probably from himself.
“Why do you think you’re still alone?” she asked him.
He didn’t seem to have an answer, at least not one he was willing to share with her.
“It’s because you think you’re not entitled to that happiness after—as you see it—robbing Alicia of the chance.”
“Were you a psychologist as well as a fashion designer in your other life?”
Tricia flinched, although she probably deserved the sarcasm.
“And how are you any different?” he asked, peering down at her with sharp eyes. “Aren’t you throwing all of this away because you’re responsible for Leah’s death—as you see it—and have to make amends?”
In part. She thought about what he said, a glimmer of hope lighting within as she wondered if there might be a way to stay with him, yet still do the things she needed to do.
And then the light burned out.
“In the eyes of the law I’m a married woman,” she told him. “And as long as that’s true, I can’t promise to share my life with anyone else. I intend to divorce Thomas, but with his connections and money, that could take years. But that’s not all,” she said. Please understand, Scott. Please support me in this.
“There’s a man with a death sentence hanging over him, at least partially because of me. A state that needs to hear the truth about one of its leaders. Another woman who could end up married to him, being beaten at night while smiling for her friends all day. It isn’t just about Leah.”
Pulling her against him, Scott hid his face in her neck. There were no words of support, but it was enough.
At the risk of losing the warmth of his embrace, she had to finish this. She opened her mouth but no sound emerged.
“What?” he asked, straightening to see her face.
She’d promised herself no more tears. But they came anyway, blurring her vision. “It breaks my heart to think of you living like this for the rest of your life.” Her voice cracked. “You’re a great man, Scott McCall. Honest and loyal and reliable and kind and funny and sexy as hell…” The words broke on a sob and Tricia pulled away from him.
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