by Rae Renzi
“No problem with that,” Ditsy said. “I’m not inclined to go babbling around anywhere, especially at this hour. Let’s get some rest, shall we? Jack, last room upstairs at the end of the hall. Casey—”
Reed stopped her. “Kind of you, Ditsy, but Casey will come home with me. We’re leaving for Baltimore in the morning.”
Casey wanted to run from the room screaming. She screwed up her courage and looked into Jack’s eyes.
If he’d looked angry, if he’d looked betrayed, she could have borne it, gritted her teeth and turned away. Those were emotions that stood by themselves and required nothing from her. But his look was searching, hopeful, as if she alone could save him. It almost killed her.
“May I speak to you alone, Casey?” he asked her, his voice gentle, as if he were calming a distraught child.
“No. We’re leaving now.” Reed took Casey’s arm, not gently.
A riff of anger flashed through Casey. She jerked out of Reed’s grasp. “Yes, of course, Jack. The kitchen?” She turned in that direction.
Reed, glowering now, stepped in front of her. “I said no, Casey.”
Casey raised her brows at him and canted her head. “You’ve lost your mind. Now, I’m going to speak with Jack, privately. If you’re in too much of a hurry to wait, I’ll meet you in Baltimore later.”
Reed’s ears blazed red, and his face contorted with rage. He made a lunge toward her but, quick as a thought, Jack slid between them, thumping a restraining hand on Reed’s chest.
“I believe Casey made her wishes clear,” he said, smiling a little wolfishly.
Reed swatted Jack’s hand away. “Get out of my way, Raines, or you’ll be sorry.”
Casey didn’t know what provided Reed’s confidence—sheer rage or the fact that he outweighed Jack by a good bit. Or, possibly, stupidity.
“A fight? Bravo! Now that I’d like to see.” Ditsy stage-whispered to Casey, “Didn’t you tell me Jack grew up a skilled street fighter? Knives, fists and so on? That’ll certainly even things up…if not tilt them over.” She danced a few steps and punched the air. “Go for it, boys!”
Her words had a decidedly deflating effect on Reed.
Casey said hurriedly, “Sorry, Ditsy. Not going to happen. I’m sure everyone can calm down and act civilized. Now, Jack and I are going into the kitchen to talk. It won’t take long.”
It didn’t.
Before Jack could form a question, Casey blurted out the words she had to say. “I’m married, Jack. Your situation with Ramona doesn’t change that.” The words in themselves were not bleak, desolate—they stated the facts, not the truth.
“But he’s an ass.”
Casey frowned at him.
Jack slumped in a kitchen chair and leaned forward. His silky hair slipped over his drawn brows. Casey stifled the urge to smooth the furrows, to trace the faint scar along his jaw.
He sighed. “Okay, there might be more than one ass in this story. But—” he raised his eyes to hers, “—this ass loves you.”
Casey collapsed into a chair opposite Jack. Her head felt like a jackhammer had set up housekeeping inside her skull, but it was nothing compared to the punishment meted out by her heart. But one couldn’t die of heartbreak, or so she’d heard.
“I don’t know if you’ll understand this,” she started slowly. “I made the decision to marry Reed, right or wrong, and I have to live with it. He’s the same person I married. I can’t punish him for my failings. He’s done nothing to deserve that.”
“Are you sure?”
“What? What do you mean?”
Jack opened his mouth to say something, then apparently thought the better of it. “Nothing. Never mind.” He pressed his lips together so hard his skin turned pale around them.
Casey took a shuddering breath and stared at a tiny scratch in the wood of the table. “I can’t be the person that abandons someone who needs her. Someone she promised to support in good times and bad. I just can’t.”
“You mean you can’t be your father.”
The words jolted through her. Casey stood abruptly. “No. I can’t be my father. I can’t do to Reed what my father did to my mother and me. And I can’t…lead the kind of life you do, with the press all over you, no privacy, no peace.”
“It’s not always like that. I’m here now without anyone bothering me.”
“And to what extremes did you go for that?”
Jack closed his eyes and placed his forehead on the table for a few seconds. Then he straightened up and took a deep breath. “When you breathe, Casey, air fills my lungs.” He stood and came up behind her until she felt his warm breath on her neck. He placed the fingers of one hand lightly on her chest. He whispered, “When your heart beats, blood races through my body.” He moved closer, until she felt his heat along the length of her back. With his other hand he traced her jaw, her lips. “And when you smile, it brings life into my world. I love you.”
Casey closed her eyes and squeezed her arms over her middle to hold herself together, to keep from breaking into a million pieces.
When she spoke, her words sounded fractured, as if each one was torn from her throat.
“If you love me Jack, you’ll go.”
Her heart beat once, twice, three times, all the while her eyes were tightly closed. She couldn’t bear to see his melted-chocolate eyes. The hurt that would be there. The love.
She held her breath when Jack’s fingers trailed along her cheek like a butterfly kiss. And a few seconds later when she heard his footsteps and the door close, she let the tears come.
Jack stalked into Nocona’s guesthouse and closed the door, careful not to slam it. He’d seen his stepbrother through the window of his study and had raised a hand in greeting as he’d hurried by, acting like everything was normal, everything was okay. It probably wouldn’t work, but Nocona wouldn’t bother him, at least for a while. If he saw right through Jack’s charade to the pain, he also understood the healing power of solitude.
Solitude wasn’t going to do it this time, though. Jack knew that. He walked into the bathroom and cranked on the water in the tub, flipping the lever that turned the old-fashioned bathtub into a shower. He stripped off his clothes and lay down on the cool porcelain surface of the tub. The shower pummeled him into numbness; the soft drumming of the water took the spike out of his pain. Or maybe drove it deeper—he couldn’t tell.
He knew Casey loved him, as he loved her. He knew it. But what could he do? Helplessness did not work for him, but his options for action were pretty damn limited.
Reed might destroy the marriage himself. Jack was sure Reed had been involved with the Carr woman, but obviously Casey didn’t know. At least he’d been man enough to walk away from the temptation of revealing the truth to her about her husband. He snorted. To be brutally honest, his motivation was not exactly pure—she might have lopped his head off as the messenger.
And there was his ace in the hole, which was, now that he thought of it, plenty of leverage. Without breaking a sweat, he could force the matter and kill her marriage. He could bring in so much bad publicity that it would make Reed desperate to push Casey aside, to block her out of his life. Oh, yes, he had plenty of power in that arena.
He sat up and put his face in his hands, let the water pelt his head. It was chilly now, the hot water all used up, but he didn’t mind. The small torment of cold water was a welcome distraction from the ache in his chest.
If he did that, if he used his ace in the hole, what would it do to Casey? It might liberate her from her marriage, but it could destroy her in the process. It would also make him into someone he loathed, someone who didn’t deserve her.
He cranked off the water and took a deep shuddering breath. It was time for him to actually be the hero he’d acted so many times.
Because sometimes love really was about letting go.
Chapter Forty-Five
“My client, Patricia Carr, has authorized me to negotiate an agreement with you.” The
knot of Donald Naismith’s beautiful tie disappeared under his two chins when he leaned forward to slide a folder across the coffee table in Casey and Reed’s apartment.
He’d called a week after the authorities had taken over the blackmail case to ask for a meeting with Casey and Reed. Except for some administrative details, the blackmail scandal had been dispatched with a minimum of exposure. A man named Buddy Birkhelm, the head of Celestial Productions, had been arrested on charges of extortion. He agreed to cooperate with the authorities in exchange for a reduction in charges. He confessed that he’d coerced Patricia Carr into compliance when she was a young homeless girl but insisted his intentions were pure. He used the money to give her an education and launch her political career. Casey never quite bought that part of the story. She interpreted it as a deal between Carr and Buddy Birkhelm, in which he took the fall in exchange for something else.
Patricia Carr quietly resigned her office to become the director of a nonprofit organization with the mission of helping victims of the sex trade. She cited her desire to become involved at a personal level in the battle against moral corruption. Neither she nor Buddy Birkhelm admitted to the assaults on Casey or Jack. Detective MacElroy was pursuing the trail with bloodhound determination.
Carr had admitted, however, to pressuring the CEO of Casey’s company to hire her. She wanted to give Reed, whom she’d originally pegged as a good investment because of his family, every reason to happily stay with her, including a terrific job nearby for his wife. When she learned of Casey’s too-dangerous research, she’d also leaned on the same man to discourage Casey’s project. That one had backfired.
Reed scanned the document, but Casey wasn’t in the mood for wading through pages of legal-speak. “Can you summarize for us what she has in mind, Mr. Naismith?”
“Essentially, although this cannot and should not be construed as admission of guilt, if you agree to drop the investigation into your assault, former Senator Carr will agree to not make public a certain situation that may cause your family embarrassment.”
Reed dropped the document on the table and leaned back.
“Situation? What situation? I don’t have anything to hide,” Casey said, though her throat tightened. Her mother…again?
Mr. Naismith gazed out the window and tapped his pen on his legal pad. He shot a glance at Reed. “No, Dr. Lord, you probably don’t. However, Ms. Carr makes the assumption that you’re interested in doing what is best for both you and your husband.”
“I am not very good at dancing around issues or reading between the lines, Mr. Naismith. Please tell me what you’re talking about. Otherwise you’re just wasting our time.” Casey folded her hands in her lap and waited.
Naismith flicked an eyebrow, glanced at Reed again, and said, “Very well. The unvarnished version, then.” He cleared his throat. “In exchange for your agreement to drop the investigation, Ms. Carr agrees to keep strictly confidential your husband’s sexual involvement with her during his employment.”
The words hit Casey like a fist. “Her…sexual…with Reed?”
Reed didn’t miss a beat. He leaned toward the attorney as if pouncing on a bone. “Carr has the greater culpability. She was my superior. She shamelessly used her expertise to take advantage of me. I could sue her.” He shot a worried glance at Casey.
Casey suddenly saw herself in the relationship wagon—sitting backwards. She’d been imagining her future with Reed based on where they’d been, not where they were going. Big mistake.
The attorney smiled pleasantly at Reed. “Nice try and technically true. Nevertheless, since her political career is a thing of the past, she’s no longer quite so vulnerable to scandal. You are. Are you sure you want to go down that road?”
Reed leaned back and stared at the attorney for a long moment. He shrugged. “Point taken. Casey, it’s probably best to sign the release. What do you say?”
Casey tilted her head toward the sound of Reed’s voice, but her eyes stared straight ahead. “I…want a divorce.”
Chapter Forty-Six
The ponderous clanging of a city garbage truck roused Casey from her blue funk as it growled by, setting off a slight riff of alarm in her head—just an automatic startle response to a loud noise. She easily dismissed the noise as no threat, a triumph of reasoning over emotion. Hurray. She sighed, shifting the heavy grocery bags she carried.
The air had a slight nip and the fragrance of wood smoke was in the air. People here jumped at the first opportunity to bring the cheer of a hearth fire into their homes, something she should consider, as she could use a little cheer. Even the jewellike color of the changing leaves, usually a reliable mood booster, failed to nudge her out of her doldrums.
It had been a week since the resolution of the situation with Patricia Carr, but the situation with Reed hadn’t yet been resolved. Casey had agreed to drop the investigation, but after the meeting with the attorney, she’d had an enlightening conversation with Reed.
“Casey, you knew this would get messy—I told you so. That’s why I need you to stick with me, to not abandon me at the time I need you most. Marriage is for better or worse. I promise it will be better after this is all over.”
“Marriage is about love and fidelity—it does not include bonking your boss. The ink on the marriage certificate was barely dry before you crawled into her bed. You expect me to be okay with that?”
He’d had the good sense to look ashamed. “No. Not really. But Casey, I hope we can get past that. I really am sorry—getting involved with her was stupid, but divorce would be worse. Think of your mother—”
“My mother, whose home you threatened to sell.”
“I just wanted to keep you from doing anything rash. I didn’t go through with it. She still has the house.”
And he could still sell it.
It was a subtle threat, but that didn’t make it ineffective. The idea of dealing yet another blow to her mother had twisted Casey in knots, but she was determined to find a way out of this mess.
When Reed left to go back to Baltimore that evening—he’d found a job already—she sat at the kitchen table, pencil and paper in hand, and called her mother to find out the exact terms of the mortgage.
“Why are you asking, honey?” her mother asked.
“Things aren’t so good between me and Reed, Mom. I’m not sure things are going to work out. I need to know exactly where we—you and I—stand financially.” She’d expected her mom to protest, to convince her that things would get better, that Reed just needed to settle down. Her mother had surprised her.
“No? Well, not a shocker, I guess.” She sighed heavily. “I had Reed cast as a knight-in-shining armor, a misplaced fantasy, I think. After your visit I had another look at the loan papers—a real look, not to see what I wanted to see, but to see what was there.”
“I don’t like the way this is sounding, Mom.”
“I’m not always stupid, Casey, but I can be fairly determined about not letting the facts get in the way of my dreams. That happened here.”
“Just go ahead and tell me.”
“The papers I signed weren’t exactly a mortgage. They were a loan from Reed. Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars.”
Casey swallowed hard. “Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars… But you have the house, right?”
There was a long pause. “I thought so. Reed said he would take out the loan and I’d pay it back. I thought that meant when it was paid, I’d own the house. To tell you the truth, I didn’t feel like I could say no to him—he said it was so important to him for me to accept his help.”
Casey believed that was so, and that his impulse had been generous. She didn’t think he’d actually planned this all out in advance as a kind of marriage insurance. On the other hand, he’d been under the influence of Patricia Carr, a master manipulator, so who knew?
Her mom had continued. “After your visit, I took those papers to Jill, a new friend of mine—she’s a real estate agent. She said t
hat the loan papers weren’t in any way linked to the mortgage—it could be a loan for anything. The mortgage is in Reed’s name. No mention of me.”
Casey looked down at the empty sheet of paper and drew a dollar sign, followed by a zero. “So, basically you owe Reed two hundred and fifty thousand dollars and he owns the house.”
“That sums it up from what I can tell,” her mother agreed. “Jill said that even if I pay him back, there’s nothing that requires him to sign the house over to me. I just have to trust him.”
Casey tapped the pencil on the desktop. “Yeah. Trust.”
There was no sure-fire way out of the situation. Casey didn’t have the money to cover her mother’s debt, and her mom certainly didn’t. Sharon Lord could sue Reed, but she’d have to prove she hadn’t received anything in exchange for the loan and that Reed had deceived her. With her mom’s record of arrest for embezzlement and the prominence of Reed’s family, the deck was stacked pretty solidly against them. Reed, she guessed, counted on that.
She’d had the divorce papers drawn up anyway, but Reed had thus far refused to sign. Partly because he felt it important to his career to present the appearance of a solid family life, but she suspected that part of it was just plain stubbornness. Reed probably counted on her desire to avoid a lawsuit and the publicity it would entail.
He was right. She supposed it wouldn’t be quite as bad as she imagined, not quite the impact of the divorce of a Kennedy or one of the British royals, but the Trabors were socially prominent, high profile. The idea of her name and face splashed all over the cover of the tabloids quite literally made her ill. Nonetheless, she was determined to get out of the marriage, one way or another. She hoped peacefully.
In the meantime, Reed seemed to be content with their two-household arrangement. Until things were settled, which meant something different to him than to her, he asked only that she not do anything dramatic that would impact his career. Was the person he now worked for a woman? Casey tried to care, but didn’t have it in her.
