But he hadn’t done that.
Kit joined him at the railing just in time to see the remnants of the sun drop into the water. “Ever thought of having one of your own? A baby, I mean.”
In spite of his earlier thoughts, her direct question caught him off guard. Kit merely shrugged. “Hey, last night I bared my soul. Tonight’s your turn. I’ve never asked you about Claire; never wanted to go there.”
Much like she’d felt the night before, he didn’t want to dwell on his past, didn’t want to talk about it. But if they were headed toward a relationship, and he thought they were, it was better to get things out in the open.
He took a pull on his beer. Kit watched as he swallowed the liquid, gathering his thoughts. He finally set the bottle down on the table. “I knew from the start I’d made a huge mistake. When you marry someone based on a lie, there’s no other direction to go but down when the truth comes out.”
That was the last thing she expected him to say. A tug of sympathy formed in her heart. “Why’d you marry her then?”
With the tips of his fingers he rubbed both eyes before drawing out a sigh. “She told me she was pregnant. But two weeks after the wedding I walked into the bathroom, caught her taking a birth control pill out of her pill pack. She tried to make me believe that she’d miscarried, but I wasn’t quite that stupid. She’d lied and got caught, simple as that. There were plenty of red flags before we were married that spoke volumes about what kind of person she was, but like an idiot, I ignored them all. I thought once we were married, she’d change.”
He shook his head. “People don’t suddenly change their behavior because you stick a ring on their finger. But knowing she’d lied about being pregnant, I was done. I knew she couldn’t be trusted.”
Suddenly Kit understood the infamous Claire had tricked the founder of a multimillion-dollar software company into marriage for his money. As she listened intently, she walked to the grill and turned the steaks, intrigued that the confident, arrogant man she’d known could have been fooled so easily into believing a lie like that.
But he must have loved her.
“We were married twenty months, just a little more than a year and a half. It was the worst time of my life. I was miserable. I spent more and more time away from the house and buried myself in work. It wasn’t that hard to do, I had a pretty full plate at the time trying to keep sales up, keep the software current, and meet strategic marketing deadlines on three continents. I had to travel a lot back then, so I was gone most of the time. Our marriage became more like a roommate situation. We shared the same house, but lived in separate bedrooms. If I suspected there were other men, the truth is, at that point, I just didn’t care. I was too busy with work to pay much attention to what Claire was doing, how she lived. As long as she left me alone, I didn’t care.”
“Why didn’t you get a divorce?”
“And admit to everyone they’d been right about her. A part of me was humiliated that I’d been so stupid. Then… That day—I’d been out of town for almost two weeks. I landed at LAX at seven-fifteen in the morning from Germany, went directly to the office, put in a sixteen hour work day, I didn’t get home until well after midnight. When I walked upstairs the first thing I noticed was the blood on the carpet in the hallway. Then I walked into the room—I’ll never forget that as long as I live. There was blood everywhere, on the bed, the walls, the floor. There’d obviously been some kind of a fight…” His voice trailed off.
How horribly sad, Kit thought. But she had to stop him from going any further. She didn’t need those kinds of details. She reached out and took his hand in hers, pressed it to her face. “Jake, you don’t have to do this. It isn’t necessary. I get the picture.”
He squeezed out a forced laugh. “The thing is I wasn’t entirely sure about the men, the affairs; I mean, I had no confirmation of that until after she died. It was St. John who asked me real nice like to come down to the station for a little interrogation, a little one-on-one, and then he hit me over the head with that information right between the eyes. Of course, I wasn’t all that surprised, but hearing a police detective tell you that your wife is screwing anything in pants is a pretty low point in your life. And just when you think things can’t get any worse, you learn that the police plan to use her infidelity, her affairs, as your motive for killing her. Honest to God, that was perhaps the lowest point in my life. When I found out I was a murder suspect, I hit rock bottom. I’d embarrassed my parents, my sisters, my friends, my employees, myself.
“St. John just assumed I knew about the affairs—and cared enough to kill her or have her killed. I swear I didn’t know about the affairs until after she died; I didn’t know that every day while I was at work, she was sleeping with her aerobics instructor, or her tennis coach, or her personal trainer. And I paid for all of them. I paid for her lifestyle, the car she drove, the house; I picked up the tab for every goddamn thing she did because I just didn’t care enough to get a divorce. How stupid is that?”
“Oh Jake, I had no idea.”
“I’m convinced one of the men she was seeing killed her. I tried to get St. John to follow that logic, but he refused to go there. It didn’t stop me though. I hired a private detective, and for almost seven months I hoped he’d turn up something, anything at all to show everyone I hadn’t done it. But as it turns out it was a waste of time and money. He found no new leads and eventually, I had to let it go.”
A stressful sound escaped his throat, as he admitted, “I’ve finally let it go, Kit.”
“I’m glad, Jake. Life takes turns we’re not always comfortable with and we can’t change the past, can’t go back. It is what it is. You were right to let your past go. I’m sorry you went through that kind of hell.” She waited a beat before looking into his eyes. “I was pretty upset when I got an invitation to the wedding.”
“An…an invitation to the wedding? Claire must have…ah, I see.”
“Do you? Needless to say I passed. But when I read about it in the paper, I cried for days. I assumed the infamous Claire was the love of your life.”
He stared at her, speechless. What was she telling him? But when he looked into the depths of those deep, green pools, he saw the answer in her eyes. He saw the honesty, the truth of what she was saying. The knowledge humbled him. He thought about all the pain and hurt she must have suffered as a child, considered what his rejection must have felt like back then.
And then it hit him. She hadn’t been a teenager when he’d gotten married. “You had to be what, nineteen or twenty?”
“Twenty. When I came out of my funk I decided it was time I lost my virginity, time to quit waiting for—” With a toss of her head, she took a stab at lighthearted. “I picked a very serious-minded geomorphology student. It lasted two months before he bolted to South America.”
She smiled as she stood up to check the steaks, but wasn’t quick enough; Jake had her wrapped up in his arms, settled on his lap. He rested his forehead on hers. “Kit, I don’t know what to say to that, other than I wish with all my heart that I had never met Claire, let alone married her. I wish I could change the past for both of us, change what’s happened to both of us over the years. All I know is that we can start fresh right here, right now, and go forward from here. If you want to, that is.”
“Okay.”
He didn’t need more incentive than that. He turned her mouth up to his, gently parted her lips. She opened, slipped her arms around his neck. The kiss started tender, gentle, until he deepened it. Desire stirred within, filled her with longing.
This is exactly what she’d wanted. She was pretty sure she’d never felt this kind of aching need, and it felt so right. When Jake’s hand moved to her breast, Kit broke the kiss, reluctantly pulling away, and said shakily, “I have to check the steaks…” Her voice trailed off with a sigh.
Jake dropped his head and for several seconds just held her in place on his lap. With a sharp sigh of his own, he let her go, but said, “Any man t
hat prefers the jungle to spending time with a woman like you is nuts. He didn’t deserve you, Kit.”
She forked the steaks onto a plate. “And you do?” She saw the hurt look on his face. “Well, with me, it seems men are always running off somewhere.”
“I’m done with running.”
“You think so?”
It was time to level with her. “I was attracted to you—and mortified to know that attraction was to someone so young. A grown man shouldn’t—isn’t supposed to have thoughts about someone so young.”
Amazed at the revelation, she turned to him. Holding the plates with the meat, she wanted to know, “That’s why you were such a jerk.” It wasn’t a question.
“You were fifteen but you didn’t look fifteen. You were tall for your age. One day I saw you in the file room and thought wow, maybe you were a young-looking eighteen. Eighteen wouldn’t have been so bad; at least eighteen is legal. But when one of the lawyers mentioned that he thought you were just sixteen, I―”
“Ran the other way,” she finished for him.
“Exactly. And then a week later, Morty mentioned that you had just turned sixteen. I wanted nothing more to do with you. I couldn’t afford the office gossip. So I deliberately discouraged you anyway I could.”
“Actually, I was fourteen. I thought…I thought it was because…of…what happened to me, the abuse. I thought you knew and you didn’t want to have anything to do with someone like me. I thought Gloria might have said something.”
He stood, went to her then, and set the plate on the table before taking her chin in his hand. “Aw honey. That wasn’t it at all. I didn’t even know. If I’d known, I’d have…” What, what would he have done about it? “Why didn’t Gloria help you?”
She shrugged. “What could she do? She moved out here, kept an eye on me as best she could after I was twelve.” She desperately needed to change the subject. “I’ll get the salad. The meat’s getting cold. We need to eat.” Uncomfortable, she hurried off to the kitchen.
Over the meal, they laughed about some of her and Baylee’s choices at making money during college. “Hey, don’t knock it. We were eighteen and didn’t have much of a skill-set back then. It was either that or work the drive-thru at McDonald’s. We both loved art, both loved to draw and paint. It made sense to go that route. In addition to working at Morty’s law firm in the summers, Baylee and I painted houses on the weekends.”
“Blondes Paint, I remember.”
“That was us. We had business cards printed up and everything. At first, we painted houses, inside and out, then we started painting murals. The murals were my idea. Who would have thought that painting murals on the walls of nurseries for pregnant moms could be so lucrative?” She laughed just thinking about how many Winnie the Poohs and Barneys she’d painted back then. “Granted, it was a little unorthodox, but the fact is it was a pretty good way for two college students to work their way through school.”
He sat a little straighter at the table. “Alana didn’t help you with college at all?”
“Not a penny. Baylee and I started saving every cent we could get our hands on. We weren’t brilliant like Quinn who got an academic scholarship. If Baylee and I were going to college, we’d have to put in extra work to make the grade. And after one particular nasty argument too many with her stepfather while still in high school, Quinn moved out on her own. Of course, it didn’t take long before she discovered she needed help paying the rent. When she approached us about moving in with her, we jumped at the idea. I couldn’t wait to get out of Alana’s house and Baylee couldn’t wait to leave hers.”
Prone to rattling on, she realized she’d drifted from the point of the conversation and got back on track. “Anyway, since the painting business was just a sideline, so to speak, and not much of a business, when I found out Gloria intended to close the bookstore here, I jumped in with both feet. I knew I didn’t want a regular nine-to-five, structured, corporate kind of job.”
At that, she shot him a solemn look, adding, “Sorry, but it’s just not my idea of bliss, spending nine hours every day in a stuffy setting where other people tell you what to do, file this, e-mail that. Sitting at a desk for hours unable to get outside when you want to would drive me over the wall. It didn’t take long to discover that every time I found myself stuck inside that file room for hours at Morty’s.”
“It isn’t for everyone.”
“No, it isn’t. This afternoon at your office, the idea hit me that if I had to work in your environment for very long, I’d go mad.” She puffed out her cheeks and blew air out. A habit, Jake had come to realize, she had when she was nervous or exasperated and didn’t know what else to say or do.
“It is pretty stressful.”
“It isn’t that, Jake. It’s confining. Take your receptionist for example; the woman can’t even get up and walk around, can’t leave her post, not even to go to the bathroom when the urge hits. I’d go crazy surrounded by four walls, chained to a desk all day. I feel sorry for her.”
Hearing this confirmed, once again, her sweet nature. Her empathy for the receptionist Deidre was just another example of her even temper. And then something else occurred to him. “Kit, by any chance are you claustrophobic?”
Her face went white. Oh, God. She’d said too much. She stammered, “Well. I’m…not sure…I’m…maybe. I don’t know. Why?”
“It sounds as if you don’t like small, cramped spaces, don’t like to be confined indoors, love doing things outside.” He reached across the table and took both of her hands in his. “It’s okay, honey. Lots of people are claustrophobic.”
Flustered now, she realized she’d drifted from the topic yet again. She tried to pick the story up where she’d left off. “Well, once I got the idea in my head to add the coffee shop, it just wouldn’t go away. I knew I didn’t want to design websites or something equally boring; that’s what some of the other art majors wanted, but not me. So, I bit the bullet, put a proposal together for a business loan, made a trip to convince the nice loan committee at the bank I was worthy of a loan.”
Impressed, he asked, “How’d it go?”
“What I did was make a total ass out of myself asking those stuffed shirts for a loan. They turned me down flat. Well, why wouldn’t they turn me down? I was a college senior, a woman at that, with no real business experience other than freelancing as an artist painting a bunch of storybook characters on walls and working another part-time job at a coffee house. I left the bank in tears, cried on Glo’s shoulders, not knowing she’d interpret my pathetic existence as something she could fix. She offered to co-sign the loan for me, but that didn’t sit well. I didn’t want her to go out on a limb like that. What if I couldn’t make a go of it and the bookstore went bust; it was already in trouble. What if I lost her money and she didn’t have anything left for retirement? I just couldn’t let her take a risk like that.”
Jake didn’t have the heart to tell her that he was pretty sure Morty Gandis had left Gloria in a position where she didn’t have to worry about money.
“Still, the idea of getting the bookstore back on track appealed to me. So, I dug into my hard-earned savings and took the plunge. Quinn was dating a contractor at the time. He came up with a bid I could afford.”
She paused and looked skyward, held up her wine glass in salute. “Thank you Steve Harper, wherever you are. I’m just glad Quinn kept him around long enough for him to finish the remodeling.” Her laugh came from deep down in her throat. “With my investment in the coffee house, Gloria made me an equal partner. And once again I have Gloria to thank for being there when I needed her.”
“What do you mean?”
“She’s been coming to my rescue, been my saving grace for so many years, ever since, I…when I…well, for a long time.”
She’d almost said something else. He was sure of it, but then he remembered what he’d found out that afternoon and the moment was lost. “By the way, I found out a little more about John Griffin’s d
eath.”
Telling her was difficult. “I think maybe, your mother, uh, Alana that is, told you the truth on this one. John Griffin’s date of death came up as November 2. The cause of death is listed as accidental. He fell from a horse doing his own stunts while on location in Santiago, Spain, suffered a head injury, and died about six hours later at the hospital.”
“I never knew when he died. She never told me…November 2 would have been three weeks after my fourteenth birthday. He missed my birthday because of the shooting schedule.” Tears filled her eyes, ran down her cheeks. “But he sent me a birthday present, an autographed poster of the last movie we saw together in July when we went to a premier showing of Men in Black. He was like that. He knew how much I enjoyed the movie.”
Jake put his hand over hers.
“I should have been curious enough to find out for sure before now when he died. Instead I spent all these years hoping like a silly child that Alana had been trying to hurt me by telling me he was dead. I thought he’d come back, you see.” She wiped at her eyes. “How stupid is that? I always thought he’d come back.”
“It isn’t stupid to hope for a different outcome, honey. But Kit, your father had a son. He’s been receiving his residuals since his death. His name’s Ben Griffin. He lives in Galway, Ireland.”
The stunned look on her face and the tears running down her cheeks made Jake feel like the biggest heel. Why did he have to be the one to tell her this?
When she just sat there, as if in shock, he pulled her onto his lap, wrapped her up in his arms, and rocked her. “I’m sorry. I guess I could have thought of a better way to tell you.”
“No, it’s okay. He had a son. Where has he been all this time? Ireland, you say, he lives in Galway. Imagine…a brother, six thousand miles away. That’s the second time today someone’s mentioned Ireland to me. How’d you find out all that?”
Evil Secrets Trilogy Boxed Set Page 15
