A Conflict of Interest

by Anna Adams

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  THAT WAS A ROUGH NIGHT. She had no idea if Jake was refusing to read the diary because he believed it was a lie, or because he hated the fact that Griff had written about her that way. She should have asked.

  She should have done something. Any action might have saved her a night of tossing in her bed, wishing she could learn how to guard her dignity from the staid citizens of Honesty, who’d circled their small-town wagons.

  In the morning, she dressed and steeled herself for another smack-down from a possible employer. Yesterday, walking home from the library after the stores had closed, she’d spotted a Help Wanted sign in the pharmacy, seeking a cashier.

  Maria hadn’t bothered to call first. This job, she had a better shot at. Even without an M.D., she had some understanding of pharmacology. And she saw no reason to give potential employers the chance to turn her down over the phone. Let them do it to her face.

  She sat on a blue chair opposite the counter while the pharmacist went to the back to read her application and résumé. It was a slow process as customers came and went. Some, she knew. No one said hello.

  Mr. Baxter, a former client, darted into the shelter of the store’s crowded aisles the second he saw her. Despite the situation, she smiled at his efforts to break all speed records. Was he running from the horror of talking to her, or had he suffered a setback with his kleptomania?

  She’d begun to assume the pharmacist was also avoiding her until he finally came to the counter. “Dr. Keaton?”

  “Maria,” she said.

  “I’m Robert Collins.” He held her application in both hands. “Why don’t you come on back? You deserve the truth.”

  That sounded bad, but she didn’t know how to walk away. She had to stop expecting the worst.

  The man led her to his office and offered her a chair. Maria sat, placing her feet neatly side by side on the floor. Funny how a scandal made you überaware of every little nuance.

  “I’m glad to meet you, Maria.” Mr. Collins took off his glasses and placed them just as precisely on his blotter. “But I think you know this will be a fruitless visit. You must realize by now that no one in this town will hire you.”

  She was becoming an expert on pretending the blows glanced off. “I don’t know that.” He didn’t smile. She fended him off with a lame joke. “I might get a persecution complex.”

  He shook his head, a sage in a lab coat. “I’m more familiar with pharmacology than Freud, but I believe it’s only a complex when you just think everyone’s out to get you.”

  “I don’t understand you, Mr. Collins. You speak like an honorable man. You asked me back to your office instead of throwing me out or making up something like ‘the position’s been filled.’ Why do you assume I’m guilty when I haven’t even been on trial?”

  “I’m not so honorable. I tried to wait you out.” His skin turned pink beneath and around his thick mustache. “But you wouldn’t leave.”

  “No.”

  “So I’m going to explain, and I’ll repeat myself because I’d like to save you from future embarrassment. No one in this town will ever hire you.”

  “Mr. Herbert at the department store said the same thing.”

  “Why do you keep trying?”

  “Because Honesty has been my home for two years, and I want to stay. I did nothing wrong, and I need to work. I cannot sit around and do nothing while people I don’t know decide my future.” She stood. “And I thought that maybe since you’re providing a service that deals with science and health, I’d stand a better chance with you. I took classes in pharmacology, and I’ve kept up my knowledge.”

  “It doesn’t matter, Maria. You’re tied up in a scandal with a boy from one of Honesty’s oldest families. I can’t afford to discourage people from coming to my window. I have regulars who’d go all the way to D.C. to teach me a lesson if I hired you. I’ve even heard some suggest you drugged Griff.”

  “What?”

  “You might have hurt that boy so much you drove him to kill his parents. How does anyone here know?”

  “But he was acquitted.”

  “I’ve heard many testimonials about you before now, but I don’t think you understand the psyche of a five-generation Honesty citizen. No one on that jury wanted to blame their own small-town aristocracy. Even if they thought Griff was guilty, they’d acquit him if they could blame his crime on something you did to him.”

  “I tried to help Griff. I’m not even sure I would have turned him in to the police if the law didn’t require it.”

  “Forgive me for being salacious, but a lot of people here believe you tried to help him. They just don’t know when sex became part of a boy’s therapy.”

  Maria stood, tucked her purse beneath her elbow and wished the little store had a public shower. “You didn’t have to bring me back here to tell me what you thought of me.” Before he could answer, “We Wish You a Merry Christmas” came jingling out of the PA system. Maria shook her head at the speaker above his desk. “That’s a laugh.”

  “Hearts still beat around here. Just not for you,” he said. “I’m not trying to be cruel, and I don’t share my neighbors’ bad opinion. I don’t even know you, except for what I’ve heard people say.” He shrugged. “I feel bad for you because I’ve also heard other business owners talking about your job interviews. You need to stay out of sight and let this blow over. If Griff Butler’s guilty, he’ll show some other sign, and people will realize they’ve misjudged you.”

  She stared at him. It was a funny way to help. “Thanks,” Maria said doggedly as she turned and walked toward his office door. “I won’t make this mistake anymore.” She paused on the threshold and looked back. “You do realize if Griff Butler betrays himself, it might result in someone else dying?”

  “I’m well aware. I don’t know how many of my friends are.”

  Sighing with frustration, Maria turned, only to find Jake waiting at the counter, clearly trying not to listen. Had she swallowed some kind of magnet that dragged him to the site of her every humiliation?

  “Hello.” She tried hard not to stare into his eyes, but when she was hurt, she wanted to go to him. It was ridiculous. He was not her friend. They had some crazy guilt-and-loneliness thing going on that made them want to have sex. Her awareness of him was so overpowering that she almost stumbled as she walked past him through an open space in the counter.

  “Maria, are you all right?”

  “Jake? How can I help you?” Mr. Collins asked behind her.

  Jake seemed reluctant to break eye contact with her as he turned to the waiting pharmacist. Maria breathed out. How desperate had she become? She overanalyzed every move he made, each glance he spared her. She couldn’t afford to turn into a Keaton woman, who started looking for a man—any man—at the first sign of trouble.

  The thought made her uncomfortable, both for its cruelty to her semireformed mother and sister, and for its possible truth about her.

  She turned away from Jake.

  “I need to pick up a prescription for my aunt,” he said to the druggist.

  “Ah. Helen’s digitalis. I have it right back here. I’ll go over the cautions with you, and you remind her of them. She’ll tell you she already knows how she’s supposed to take her medication, but you make her listen. Every time I cover the side effects with her, she acts as if she’s never heard of them. We wouldn’t want her to forget.”

  Maria ducked behind the first aisle and stood with her back to the shelves, trying to calm her racing heart. She hadn’t been this rattled since the first time her mother had sent her and her sister outside while an “uncle” visited.

  Jake and Mr. Collins spoke to each other like friends who cared. They’d lived in Honesty all their lives. Long enough to earn unconditional trust.

  She didn’t notice Jake and the other man had stopped talking until Jake showed up, obviously searching for her.

  Maria curled her hands into fists. She should go. His compassion
was an intimate, tangible thing that wrapped her in its arms before he even came near her.

  “What is happening to you?” he asked.

  “Nothing. I’m fine.”

  “Liar.” But he wrapped the ugly word in husky concern as he pulled her close.

  “This is a public place.” Her tongue felt thick. She could hardly put the words together.

  He shook his head as his mouth hovered over hers. “I don’t care. I need—”

  So did she. She locked her arms behind his neck, trying to get closer, her only urgent longing to feel she belonged to someone.

  And Jake kissed her as if he belonged to her. His mouth opened hers. He tasted of morning coffee. His hands slid inside her coat, clenching in the small of her back to pull her into him.

  She didn’t care about the vague memory of security cameras that flitted through her mind, or the far-off tinkle of a bell over an opening door. Even the new sound of voices didn’t bother her.

  Wanting to be in Jake’s arms, wanting him to make her forget everything that had gone so wrong, frightened her more than any disembodied threat or disgusted but self-righteous store owner.

  “I need you, too,” she said, finding sweet consolation in the hunger on Jake’s drawn face. “But I can’t have you if I don’t know why I need you.”

  “That’s up to me, too, isn’t it?”

  “I wish it were.”

  She pulled away from him, her hands sliding over his cheeks as she tried to imprint the texture of his skin on her memory.

  “Maybe, after I fix all my problems—” she began, but couldn’t finish. She hurried to the front of the store. As she turned toward the doors, she saw a mirror that reflected all the aisles. Her skin burned as she laughed, embarrassment mixed with skin-raking desire.

  THE STORE’S BELL PEALED AGAIN as Maria darted out the front. Jake stayed where he was, damn near unable to walk.

  She kept telling him to stop meddling, and God knows he’d lived his entire life taking a neutral position in battles like the one she was fighting. But Maria seemed to think she could cope completely on her own. She imagined her feelings were the only ones involved.

  He hadn’t trusted his feelings for a woman in who knows how long?

  Yeah, there’d been brief relationships. But what man even knew what the word relationship meant? There’d been nights with eager women who’d made him forget Kate had never been content to settle for only him.

  Women he’d chosen in part because he believed in their discretion in a small town. Leila’s reaction to her father sleeping with anyone had never been far from his mind, despite the divorce. Maybe, deep down, he’d realized she hadn’t adjusted to it.

  Now he was willing to risk everything for a few moments with Maria.

  He had to understand.

  He went to the front of the store, too, tucking his aunt’s medication into the pocket of his overcoat. Helen and her demon dog herd lived a few doors down from Maria.

  “Jake?”

  He turned back. Robert Collins was flapping after him, his glasses glinting, his white coat flying, his face determined.

  MARIA PAUSED in putting her icicle decorations on last year’s nails. One of them had worked far enough out to lean at an angle. Balancing on the railing, she leaned down for her hammer, but tilted mid-reach and managed to shove it into the shrubbery that lined her porch.

  Above her swearing, she heard footsteps crunching up the icy walk. She almost fell as Jake stepped onto the porch. After taking off his shoe, he climbed onto the railings beside her and used the heel to hammer in the nail.

  “There’s a hammer down there.”

  Pristine in his black overcoat and suit, he glanced into the yard. “I’m not climbing in the evergreens.”

  “You make me conspicuous every time you beat on my door.”

  “I didn’t get that far yet.”

  If she were wise, he wouldn’t. “What are you doing here again?”

  He jumped down, slipped on his shoe then reached up for her. Without thinking, she let him take her waist and covered his hands with hers. As he eased her to safety, she slid down his body and felt anything but safe.

  “I’m not going away,” he said, reading her mind.

  Would it be worse to fight or risk giving in to wanting him? He wasn’t about to back down.

  “You’d better come in.” She twisted away from him and he followed her into the house. “It was a mistake in the store,” she said. “What we did.” The last came out in a whisper.

  “No.”

  “Yes, Jake.”

  “We can’t help what we feel.”

  “I’m trained to believe we can choose how to behave,” she said, though aching for him made her question every decision she’d ever made. Maybe she hadn’t ever wanted anything enough before.

  Jake closed the front door and peeled off his coat. He threw it over the back of her sofa. “Robert Collins came after me in the store. He tried to explain why he’d spoken up.”

  “Oh my God,” she said, taking off her own coat and hanging it in the closet. “It’s not bad enough we made out in front of a security mirror. You gossiped with the pharmacist.”

  “I may have suggested he do several things most men couldn’t manage on their own, but I didn’t chat with him about you. Then I offered to break him in several pieces so as to make my other suggestions more manageable.” His rueful smile made Maria smile, too.

  “I thought you were talking about your aunt’s medication.”

  “It was after you left. At first he wanted to leave bad enough alone, but he thought I might be a friend of yours.”

  “Everyone knows you are. We haven’t been particularly discreet.” The gossips probably thought they understood her relationship with Jake perfectly. It was ironic, really, because she didn’t understand it at all. She turned toward the kitchen. “Do you want something warm to drink?”

  “No.” He took her hand and pulled her close. “I want to hold you.” He rested his forehead against hers, and she closed her eyes, knowing she should send him away.

  But temptation was too strong, and she leaned into him, hungry for even another second in his arms. A second she would hoard in her memory. When life was normal again and Mr. I-Must-Wreak-Justice got over his guilt, there would be no more moments like this. Only their mutual need made them alike.

  “Maria?”

  She opened her eyes. He bent his head. His mouth brushed hers. “I’d give anything to make everyone see what I do when I look at you.”

  Maria lifted her head. “What do you see? Who do you see?”

  “A woman I want.” He smiled, his mouth sensual and generous, stirring the most basic need deep inside her. “Maybe I’m looking at the woman for me.”

  “There speaks guilt.” She pretended her heart wasn’t battering at the walls of her chest.

  “I don’t know what to say.” He took her mouth, quick and hard and hot. “We work best together when we stop talking.” He grasped both sides of her collar. “Can we lock this door?”

  “No one will come in.”

  “I want to be alone with you.”

  “Alone?”

  He slid both hands around her shoulders and covered her mouth again, gently this time, but when he deepened the kiss and she felt her control spiraling away, she flattened her palms against his chest. His hands released her, but his savage, yearning gaze held on.

  Consequences. She’d never made a move without considering them.

  “Think about this, Jake. Are you a man who can make love and walk away?”

  “I have,” he said.

  It hit her like a punch in the stomach. “I never expected you to say that.”

  “You look scared.” Jake twisted his mouth. Simple discomfort? Defiance? The will to bludgeon her with the truth? “You’re analyzing me? Now?”

  She blushed. He reached for her collar. His hands moved to the buttons on her blouse.

  “I’m not like any woman you�
��ve walked away from.” She covered his fingers. “But I’m not right for you. Not even on a normal day, when you aren’t riddled with guilt.”

  “Shut up, Maria.” He bent his head. His lips grazed her throat. He opened his lips against her skin, and she fell against his heat, his taunting, teasing, beautiful mouth.

  Her top several buttons were open.

  “You move fast.”

  “I’m like magic.” He put his hand to the knot on his tie, and the silk soon dropped to the floor beside them. He brought her trembling hands to the buttons on his black shirt. “You work magic, too.”

  “I’m afraid.”

  “I know how tough you are.” Clearly, he meant she was not. “But I won’t hurt you.”

  “We’re bound to hurt each other.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You have to let this thing with Griff go. You’ll drag yourself into trouble when folks realize you feel more for the town harlot than you should.”

  “I asked you to stop talking,” he said, but somehow the words meant, Undo my shirt. Touch me.

  He unfastened his own buttons. His shirt fell open, revealing the sparse, dark hair on his chest. She stared at his pulse, throbbing like crazy. Without thinking, she lifted her hands and pressed her fingertips to his skin.

  A sound seeped from her mouth, need and relief all at once, as his muscles jumped beneath her palms. “Jake.” She pressed her face to his breastbone, breathing him in, tasting him with her lips and the tip of her tongue.

  “Don’t look away from me.” He tilted her head up, kissing her, holding her gaze as he explored her mouth, her desire, as she ripped the tail of his shirt out of his pants, shoved his jacket off his shoulders.

  Her own shirt disappeared. She kicked off her shoes. All the while, Jake was kissing her, following the curve of her throat with his hands and his mouth, sighing as he cupped her breasts in the lacy, see-through bra, then closed his teeth lightly over her skin and the lace, driving her nearly out of her mind.

  She’d never thrown caution to any wind. She’d clung to it like the last rope on a hot-air balloon trying to take off without her.