by Jolie Day
Connor searched through the fridge and put cream, pancetta, and a flat paper-wrapped package onto the island. Before he turned back towards her, a bottle of cold white wine landed right next to these items.
“Have a look behind you in the cabinet and see if you can find the spaghetti.” She turned her back to him and was glad about the distraction. How could she find out what he was up to? “You really know your way around Slater’s kitchen,” Mira mentioned, when she found the spaghetti exactly where he had told her it would be. “How do you know him and his house so well?” She assumed that both men, who were roughly of the same age, had been to the same wild parties.
“It’s not what you think,” Connor replied. She heard a cork pop out of a bottle. He had opened the white wine and now, if she could trust her ears, he had set two glasses right next to it.
“How do you know what I am thinking?” It sounded harsh and unfortunately also a little more hurt than she would have wanted. But before she could remedy the situation, he had already stepped around the kitchen island and stopped right in front of the cabinet, where she had found the pasta, to hand her a glass of wine. “Try this,” he ordered and in Mira’s ears it sounded like a command. “I think, this once we won’t give the wine time to breathe first. You look like you need a drink right now.” She bit her lip to stop herself from sounding too angry when she answered him. Why did he think he knew what she needed? She took a quick sip and smiled sweetly — or so she hoped.
“I once spent six weeks with Colin when he was threatened by a crazy stalker,” he then explained and filled a pot with water before setting it onto the stove. The gas flashed blue with a slight hissing sound as he turned it on. Without waiting for her reaction, he handed her a grater and the paper-wrapped package from the fridge. “You grate the parmesan and I will do the rest.” He pulled a knife out of a knife block on the counter and began to slice the Italian ham into evenly sized cubes. The usual ice-blue in his eyes had darkened somewhat as he looked at her without stopping what he was doing. “Have you changed your mind and now you don’t want to talk anymore?” He raised both of his blonde brows, which gave him a sarcastic look. “Or would you like me to tell you what I am thinking about right now?” Oh, that almost sounded like a declaration of war.
“You asked why I always have to have the last word?” He spoke as if they were having a perfectly normal conversation. This strange situation did not seem to bother him half as much as it did Mira and if she was honest with herself, then his attempt at creating a normal everyday atmosphere calmed her down more than she would have liked to admit. “The thing is, I know from personal experience what it feels like to lose control over everything.” He looked at her quickly before placing a big pan onto the stove next to the boiling water. “When I had to defend myself in court, there was nothing, absolutely nothing I could possibly do, other than wait. I had to completely rely on my attorney and also trust that he knew what he was doing.” He threw a handful of bacon into the pan. The kitchen immediately filled with the comforting smell of crispy fried meat and spices.
“But they released you,” Mira murmured.
“Due to a lack of evidence,” he said calmly. “That doesn’t make it better — quite the opposite. I felt like a caged tiger. My lawyer was my trainer, who made me jump through burning hoops just to entertain the crowds. Can you imagine what that felt like? For three whole months I sat in jail and had to wait around, unable to do anything — particularly finding the man, who…”
“… killed my father,” Mira finished his sentence. “And can you imagine what it felt like to lose your father and then also somehow your mother, and then to learn that the man who I had to assume was the killer, walked out of the court room as a free man?”
“I am truly very sorry,” he said. “I acted like the absolute worst and most egotistic asshole.”
“Yup, you did,” Mira confirmed and looked down at the mountain of cheese. She realized then that she had grated enough parmesan for five portions of spaghetti carbonara.
“Did you honestly believe that it was me, for all those years?”
She wasn’t prepared for this question. She had expected all kinds of topics, but not this direct approach. Mira lowered her head and stared at his tanned, strong fingers holding a spoon and stirring the food in the pan. “Who else could it have been? I heard you and dad arguing. Then a shot. You came out of his study and carried me upstairs.” Even though she tried to focus only on the facts, the pain welled up so powerfully that it almost took her breath away. “I did not see anybody else in the house, Connor. My mind and plain common sense tell me today even more than back then that it must have been you.” She forced these words out of her dry throat.
“But your instinct tells you something else, or you would not be here with me right now.”
“Maybe I only agreed to come with you because I want to snoop on you to find out what you are up to.”
For a moment, they stared at each other with challenging looks, until Connor threw his head back and laughed.
“What is so funny about that?” Mira did not like his reaction at all.
“And how would you have done that? Was your plan to stare at me with your gorgeous brown fawn eyes until I give up and admitted to a murder that I did not commit?” He laughed again mockingly, and his blue eyes sparked.
“Would I have been successful with that plan?”
He didn’t say a word. The answer in his eyes sent a shiver through Mira’s entire body.
Chapter 16
They ate their dinner in the sunroom, from which they would have had a fantastic view out into the garden, if it hadn’t been dark already. However, Mira was still rewarded with a breathtaking view of millions of stars as she stared through the glass ceiling, which was relatively unusual for central L.A.
During the time they ate, they talked about meaningless things, and avoided the topic they had grazed earlier in the kitchen, which Mira hadn’t liked very much. Connor had told her about the stalker and Mira spoke about her time in Europe, carefully leaving out anything that had happened more than three years ago. Why did she have the feeling that he knew most of it already? Neither her excellent degree, nor her time at a large chemical corporation in the middle of Germany seemed to surprise him.
There had been some kind of truce between them and she was the first to break it. She pushed her empty plate aside and took another sip of the fruity wine. During dinner, a plan had grown in her head – to literally try out that fawn-eye theory for herself. As much as she hated the idea, at that moment, she couldn’t think of anything else she could do to get him to tell her at least part of the truth. Maybe Suzanne had not been so far off with her suggestion that Connor’s former sympathy for a small young girl had turned into something like a slight crush for the now grown up woman, when he had met her again. Her biggest problem right now was that she didn’t know which question to ask first. Maybe she should just do it in chronological order? Or should she just ask seemingly harmless questions and then work her way in with more serious ones? Although, the word “harmless” didn’t really exist in connection with Connor, thought Mira as she studied him silently from the side. There were moments when she believed that she could trust him. And then there were others where she was almost certain that she shouldn’t — that it would be a mistake that could actually cost her her life.
“What were you doing in the hotel?”
He leaned back in his chair. “You always manage to surprise me somehow. Of all the questions I was certain you would ask me, this would have been the last one on my list.”
Mira felt how anger started to boil inside of her. “Why don’t you just stop your games,” she said. “How about you skip your stupid comment about my intelligence or how dumb I am or how naïve. Just for once I expect you to answer. That is not too hard, is it?”
“Alright.” Had he lost a bit of color or was Mira just imagining it? “Actually, I was on my way to see how you were.”
“We already had an appointment for Monday. I cannot imagine what sudden urge could have caused you to want to see me earlier than that. And also,” she raised her head and looked him straight into his eyes, “… you are not the type to be spontaneous.” She held up her hand. “If you are considering asking me how I could possibly know that, just to distract me again, I will get up and leave.”
He crossed his arms in front of his chest. His lids lowered, making him look like a snake who was trying to hypnotize a mouse. Mira fought to keep her hands calm and prevent them from shaking. She did not dare pick up her glass of wine again, because she didn’t want to give away that she was nervous. In her head, she counted backwards from five. When she reached zero, she would go.
“It’s the truth,” he said calmly and leaned forward. “I was worried about you and wanted to make sure that you were okay.” He fell silent and Mira didn’t say anything for a moment. “Okay, so you want the whole truth. But are you ready for it? Are you strong enough?”
“I don’t know that,” Mira replied honestly. “But I am sick of all the lies. I don’t want to keep wondering any longer what actually happened back then — I want to know it.”
“Are you willing to pay the price to know? Okay.” she didn’t have to answer him, because her answer was written all over her face. “Then let’s start from the beginning. What is it that you remember? I mean, what do you really remember — I am not talking about all those stories told by everyone else?”
“I have already told you this earlier. I heard you arguing, then a shot, and then you brought me up to my room.”
He nodded. “That’s true, I did argue with Jack. But someone else shot him.”
“Who?” Mira whispered. The lump in her throat was so thick that she was almost unable to speak.
“I don’t know,” he said bitterly. “First, Jack was yelling at me that I should just go away, and then suddenly he touched his neck and collapsed in a pool of blood.”
The image that arose in front of her eyes was so brutal that Mira’s stomach turned and seemingly cramped up into a tiny hard ball. “But there was no one else in the room with you two.”
“The patio doors were wide open. The suspect must have been hiding in your garden. I saw Jack collapse. When I finally realized what had happened I turned and saw someone running towards the wall.”
“Why didn’t you help my father? Maybe he would still be alive today, if you had attended to his wound!” It almost sounded as if she had pointed the finger at herself: Why weren’t you able to help your father? Why didn’t you wake mom? Why didn’t you call the police? Why, why, why… A thousand times, her grown up mind had told her that she had only been a child back then. And yet, her heart was still adamant that she could have done something, that there had been something she would have been able to do. No matter what… something.
“He died immediately,” Connor explained with brutal honesty. “You have to realize that there was nothing I — or even a doctor — could have done for him in that moment.” He took a deep breath and wanted to reach across the table to grab her hand, but decided against it. “And before you ask why I didn’t run after the killer, I had to make a decision there and then, as to what was more important. Should I run after the murderer or look after the child of a woman whom I admire dearly and who gave me a second chance in life? What would you have done in my place, Mira? I will never forget the look on your face when you saw the your father’s dead body.” The weird thing was that she believed him, even though she did not remember seeing her dead father.
It was obvious that Connor was fighting to not lose his control. He was no ice-cold killer, despite his sometimes cold and distanced act. This man who sat across from her, had been molded by those harsh and unforgiving events just as much as she and her sister had.
“After you had brought me to bed, what did you do then?”
Now he reached out for her hand. Her fingers felt cold compared to his own, which were feverishly hot.
“I ran away.”
He did not say that he had been scared. That he had only been eighteen years old and that he had panicked. He didn’t have to. Everything, including his relentless sympathy and regret, was held within that one short sentence. “I will never forgive myself for leaving you and Francesca back then. For abandoning you,” he continued with a slightly stronger voice. “However, this is the reason why I cannot and will not let you go, Mira.” His blue eyes were burning with all these suppressed feelings — so many that she wouldn’t even be able to name them all. “Someone is trying to bring up this old story again. I don’t know if it is because of your return to L.A., or mine, or the fact that Francesca is dying, but I will not let anything happen to you. Ever.”
“Did you come back because of mom?” She didn’t know how to react to his admission, which had moved her just as much as it scared her. Connor would protect her at all costs. However, was this something Mira wanted? Her very own contradicting feelings for this man were so intense that it almost hurt.
Connor nodded. “All these years… I have never even been able to tell her how much she means to me. Francesca never asked anything of me in return for everything that she did for me.” Mira saw that he swallowed and then turned to fill both of their glasses.
“How did you meet mom? And what exactly did she do for you?”
“Suzanne never told you?”
Mira shook her head. “We don’t talk a lot about this,” she admitted. “And if we do, then we only ever scratch the surface or keep it so superficial that it would hardly count as a talk.”
“I met Francesca when I was sixteen,” Connor remembered. “Did you know that she volunteered at the charity Streetkids? This was an organization aimed at helping homeless youths. I had been living on the streets for almost two years by then and I had… let’s say… mixed in with the wrong crowd. Francesca promised me that she would find me a good job, as long as I was prepared to leave my past behind me and start completely new.”
What had he done that even now the memories of his past still seemed to haunt him?
“She managed to get me a job in your father’s company. He hired me as a packer in one of his warehouses. It had been a long time since I had had a warm meal on a daily basis and now I was able to earn money honestly. It was,” he looked at her, “a lot less than before, but it was no longer dirty money.”
This explained why Connor, just after he had turned eighteen, had been able to afford a motorbike. In her memory, this machine had been huge, a monster made of chrome and stinking of gas. Mira took another sip of her wine, which had now lost its flavor. Every word out of Connor’s mouth sounded honest. But with every new detail he added to the picture, she seemed to find more and more unanswered mysteries. Every answer created two new questions.
“So, you worked for my dad,” Mira repeated to order her thoughts. “What were you two arguing about?” Surely not about mom, Mira thought. A long time ago, she had had the unpleasant suspicion that the young Connor had had an affair with her mother. This idea made her stomach turn once more for reasons that she didn’t want to address right now. However, as she heard him talk, she realized that he might have even loved her mother at some point, just not in that way. He might have adored her and been grateful to her — all of these things were plainly audible in every single word — but she was relieved to never hear any kind of passionate desire towards her mother. In her mind, the skinny young boy and her mom, who had been in her late thirties back then, had never been a couple in love, but then again, she only trusted her memories to an extent. Mira had forgotten too much by now and she had misinterpreted so many more things, as she now found out.
“How much do you know about your father’s business?”
Mira shrugged. “Honestly, not as much as I would like to, but,” she added quickly, “… that is my own fault. I have never really looked into it or shown any kind of interest in where the money came from that paid for my very comfortable life — until
now.”
He looked at her weirdly. “You felt like you had a comfortable life?”
“Well, materialistically speaking,” Mira replied. “But that is not really relevant right now. Or is it?”
He shook his head. “You are right. It’s just that it sounds so weird when you say it like that. I mean, you haven’t been home in so many years, you’ve lost both of your parents, and in this context, the word just sounds odd. That’s all.” He paused for a short moment and Mira would have liked to ask him about his own life, but now was not the right moment. “Your sister married Russell rather quickly, didn’t she? And he is now the head of the company.”
“So far,” she said and noticed Connor’s curious reaction. “Suzanne and I will be taking part in the leadership of Dumont Ltd from now on. We informed him of this yesterday.”
This came as a real surprise to him. His eyes widened. “I don’t think that that is a good idea,” he said seriously. “Russell is not a man who likes to share anything and especially not something that he has called his own for a lot of years now.”
“It doesn’t matter to me if you like my plans or not.” Her almost affectionate feelings for him started to crumble a little. Suddenly, she realized that this was typical for him: he just didn’t hold back and said what he wanted to, whenever he felt that something was wrong in his eyes. He also did not shy away from making decisions for others. He was considerate and strong — exactly what she had looked for in a man just a few days ago. She wondered what it would be like to grow old with this man — surely it would never be boring, but it would be a constant challenge. “Dumont Ltd belongs to my mother, Suzanne, Russel, and me. Dad built the company. It is my right to become a part of it.”
