by Tracy Wolff
She shrugged into the remaining hotel robe and crossed the room to where he sat with his back to her, reading something on his phone.
“Good morning,” she said as she approached him.
He jumped up from the chair and spun around so quickly, she might as well have fired off a shotgun. And when she saw his face, something cool and distressing settled in her belly. Because he didn’t look as though he thought it was a good morning at all.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
For a moment, he only stared at her, as if he were searching for the words he wanted to say but had no idea where to find them. Or maybe he was searching for something else, something just as nebulous and elusive.
Finally, he pulled himself up until he was ramrod-straight and crossed his arms over his midsection as if trying to keep himself that way. “Two words,” he said. “Wilson Braun.”
Gracie’s heart dropped at the mention of Devon’s father. How on earth had Harrison heard about him? More to the point, what had Harrison heard about him?
“He’s Devon’s father,” she said. “And like I said, anything that happened between me and Devon is in the past. You seemed to be okay with that. What does Wilson have to do with anything?”
Harrison studied her more intently, as if he’d been expecting a different reaction from her. “I was okay with the past when I thought Devon Braun was just an old boyfriend.”
“He is just an old boyfriend.” Among other things. Things Gracie preferred not to think—or talk—about.
“An old boyfriend you tried to extort a lot of money from.”
The accusation washed over Gracie like a wave of polluted water. She closed her eyes in an effort to block it out, but that only made it worse. So that was what he’d heard about Wilson. The same thing a lot of other people had heard. Exactly what Wilson had wanted them to hear.
She opened her eyes again and met Harrison’s gaze levelly. “That isn’t true,” she said, surprised by how calmly the words came out.
“My PI says it is,” Harrison told her.
The PI, she remembered. The one his attorney had hired to prove Gracie was a predator who’d seduced an old man and stolen his fortune. The PI she’d been so certain wouldn’t be a threat because her life was an open book. She should have realized he would eventually get to the chapter about Devon and his family. The problem was, he’d undoubtedly read a heavily edited version of the story—since Wilson Braun had made sure no one would ever hear the real one—and that was what he’d relayed to Harrison.
She sighed. “And of course you always trust people to tell the truth right off the bat, don’t you?” The way he had with Gracie. Hah.
The charge had the desired effect. His brows arrowed downward and he looked less sure of himself. “He has no reason to lie.”
“Maybe he’s not lying. Maybe he’s just misinformed.” Hey, Gracie would give the PI the benefit of the doubt. She didn’t like to jump to conclusions the way a lot of people obviously did. Even if there was a good chance the PI had been paid a pile of money by Wilson Braun to bury the truth like so many others.
Harrison’s expression fell a bit more, as if it hadn’t occurred to him that the PI could be wrong. Nevertheless, he said, “This guy doesn’t make mistakes. He’s one of the best in the business.”
Yeah, so was Wilson Braun. At least, when it came to the business of silencing other people or smearing their reputations.
“What did your PI tell you?” she asked.
Harrison hesitated again before replying, “He spoke at length to Wilson Braun about your relationship with his son, and he sent me copies of emails from Wilson to you that indicate you tried to blackmail the family for six figures in exchange for your silence on the matter of an alleged assault Devon committed—a story that you manufactured in the hope of profiting from it.”
The first part of Harrison’s statement didn’t surprise her. Devon’s father had always made sure his emails were worded in such a way that they never quite sounded like what he was actually trying to do—bribe Gracie in exchange for recanting what she’d witnessed so the charges against his son would be dropped. It was money Gracie had refused to take. It was the second part of Harrison’s statement, the part about him believing she would lie about something like that in order to pocket a pile of cash, that did surprise her. If after everything the two of them had shared, and after the way they had been together last night, he could go back to thinking the worst of her this easily and this quickly...
Very quietly, very evenly, she said, “The story wasn’t manufactured. Devon tried to rape a friend of mine at a party. Thankfully, I walked in on it before it became an actual rape, otherwise that’s what Devon would have been charged with, and that would have been the story his father would have been trying to suppress.”
She paused, letting that sink in. Judging by the way Harrison’s expression changed, it did. Some. So Gracie told him the rest of it.
“But Devon had beat her up pretty bad, so I took her to the hospital, and she filed a police report and told the cops what happened. I corroborated her story. Then Wilson Braun tried to bribe both of us to shut up and pretend it never happened. Did your PI find his emails to my friend, too?”
Harrison shook his head, still looking a little torn. “No. He was only interested in information on you.”
“Then do you have copies of my emails in response to Devon’s father?” she asked, already knowing the answer. If he’d read those, they wouldn’t be having this conversation, because he’d already know the whole story.
He sounded even more uncertain when he responded, “He’s working on it. Your old service provider won’t release them without a warrant. Wilson Braun volunteered his.”
“Yeah, I bet he did. He was super careful about what he said to me and my friend in his emails. Too bad neither of us was wearing a wire when he spoke to us in person. And he did everything he could to discredit us.”
It was why the case had never gone anywhere and the charges were ultimately dismissed. Because the Brauns were one of Cincinnati’s oldest and most revered families. They had more money and power than an entire Mount Olympus full of gods. People like that thought the world was at their disposal. They couldn’t be bothered with things like the truth if it meant their perspective had to be changed or defended.
And Harrison was just like them, she realized. He’d decided a long time ago that Gracie was someone who couldn’t be trusted and only cared about herself. And in spite of everything the two of them had shared, he’d gone right back to thinking that the minute he was given a chance. If his feelings for her were even a fraction of what hers were for him, he would never—could never—suspect her of doing what he was accusing her of now. He would trust her because he knew what kind of person she really was. Instead, when another member of his tribe said Gracie Sumner was a liar, then by all means, she must be a liar.
“You don’t believe me, do you?” she asked anyway.
His expression revealed nothing of what he was thinking or feeling. Which probably told Gracie everything she needed to know. If he couldn’t trust that she was telling him the truth... If the past few days hadn’t changed the opinion he’d originally held of her... If last night had meant nothing to him...
“I don’t know what to believe,” he said softly.
Yep. That was everything Gracie needed to know.
“You’d rather put your faith in a private investigator who doesn’t even have all the facts than in me. You’d rather believe Wilson Braun, a man you’ve never even met, than me.”
“I didn’t say that,” he said.
She inhaled a deep breath and released it slowly. “Yeah, you did.”
How could she have been thinking he had changed? How could she have been thinking she was falling in love with him? Someone who couldn’t be truste
d and only cared about himself.
“I think you should go,” she said.
“But—”
“Now, Harrison.”
Reluctantly, he gathered his clothes from the night before and went into the bathroom to change. When he came out again, his white tuxedo shirt hung unbuttoned over his black trousers, and the rest of his clothes were wadded in his hands. Gracie still stood where she’d been before, her arms roped across her chest, feeling colder than she’d ever felt in her life. When Harrison stopped near her on his way to the door, looking as though he wanted to say more, she only pointed toward it silently and turned her back. But when she heard the click of the latch, she called out to him over her shoulder one last time.
“Harrison.”
He turned slowly, but said nothing.
“I’ll have Mr. Tarrant send the documents to transfer ownership of the houses to Vivian to me in Seattle and return them to him as soon as possible. And I’ll ask Vivian to ship anything I left at her house to me at home. There’s no reason for me to go back to New York. Or to stay here in Cincinnati.”
He paused for another moment, and then closed the door behind himself. Only then did Gracie allow herself to collapse into the chair he’d vacated. And only then did she allow her heart to break.
* * *
Harrison felt flummoxed when he got back to his own room, wondering if he’d just screwed up the best thing that ever happened to him.
No, he immediately told himself. There had been nothing to screw up. All he and Gracie had had was a single night of spectacular sex. And lots of good things had happened to him in his life. He had money and professional success. What could be better than those?
Now his PI had information that might just prove Gracie was the financial predator Harrison had suspected her of being from the outset, something that increased his chances of winning back his father’s estate. And that was really good.
So why didn’t any of that make him feel good? Why did he feel so bad?
The answer came to him immediately, but he didn’t much care for it. Maybe because, on some level, he actually wasn’t convinced that Gracie was a financial predator. Maybe he’d been too quick to come to the conclusions he had.
He tossed his wadded-up clothing onto the still-made bed and fell onto the mattress. Then he pulled up his web browser on his phone and typed the name Devon Braun in quotations, along with the word Cincinnati.
The first hits that came up were for his Twitter and Facebook accounts. Harrison saw photographs of an innocuous-looking guy of above-average appearance who talked mostly about sports and a band Harrison hated. No red flags. Just some guy whose family happened to have a lot of money.
Scrolling down, he saw a link to a blog that covered Cincinnati crime called “Word on the Street.” It was written by a local resident unaffiliated with law enforcement and clearly stated that it reported gossip, rumor and innuendo. Not exactly something that instilled great confidence.
But still interesting.
The piece was more than a year old and described a rape charge filed against the member of a prominent local family, indicating that it came after sexual assault and battery charges against him in another incident were dismissed. Neither of the victims was named. Nor was the perpetrator. So why had this item come up in a search for Devon Braun?
Maybe because the author of the piece had hidden his name on the site somewhere so that it would still appear in searches for Devon but avoid the wrath of Wilson Braun?
If that was the case, if Devon Braun had committed these crimes and the charges against him had been buried, then there was still a criminal on the loose in Cincinnati, which was a scary enough thought in itself. But somehow even scarier was the thought that maybe Gracie had been telling the truth all along and really was the best thing that had ever happened to him.
And scariest of all was the thought that Harrison had screwed that up. Bad.
* * *
The feeling only grew stronger when he was back in his Flatiron District high-rise with the boxes from the storage shed he’d brought with him. The cartons were dented and misshapen from the trip, and each bore numerous Sharpie markings, in different colors and handwriting—his father’s, Gracie’s and his own.
They looked completely out of place in Harrison’s bedroom, with its wall of windows offering spectacular views of the nighttime skyline, its sleek, tailored furnishings and monochromatic taupe decor. They didn’t look anything like Harrison or the man he remembered as his father. They looked a lot like Gracie, actually, offbeat and colorful and full of character. They looked as if they belonged to someone who had spent their life, well, living. Yet they were set against the backdrop of a room that looked as if it belonged to someone who hadn’t lived at all.
Was that how he seemed? Like someone who had never lived? Sure, he spent the majority of his days—and sometimes his evenings—in his office or someone else’s. And okay, most of his socializing had something to do with work. But that was what a person had to do to build a successful life. All Harrison had required of his home was that it look like it belonged to a successful, wealthy man, because those were the adjectives he’d wanted attached to himself. His place had always reinforced that desire.
So why did he suddenly feel kind of useless and needy?
The boxes, he decided, could wait. Unfortunately, he couldn’t find enough space in any of his closets to stow them. So he shoved them into the corner of his bedroom, where they’d be—mostly—out of view. Funny, though, how his gaze kept straying to them all the same.
Work, he reminded himself. He had a ton of it to catch up on before he went back to the office tomorrow.
He started a pot of coffee, headed to his office and pulled up his email. Then he scrolled to the one he’d received from his PI this morning. Then he hit Reply and started typing. But he didn’t ask for more information about Gracie. Instead, Harrison asked for more information about Devon and Wilson Braun. And he made sure, before he hit Send, that he tagged it “highest priority.”
* * *
It was nearly two weeks before he received a reply—at 8:13 on a Tuesday night, thirteen days, eight hours and thirty-seven minutes after calling Gracie Sumner a liar in Cincinnati.
Not that he was counting or anything.
And not that he hadn’t replayed nearly every minute the two of them spent together during that time—like Gracie’s shy smile that first day in the library, and how the wind played with her hair during breakfast, and her chirpy “batter, batter, batter, suh-wing, batter” support of the Rockets, and their chaste but mind-scrambling kiss in the Moondrop Ballroom. And not that, with each passing day, he’d become more convinced that he’d had something with her he would never find again and had completely, irrevocably screwed it up.
Because even before emailing his PI, on some primal level, Harrison had known he was wrong about Gracie and should never have accused her of lying. Especially after the night they’d spent together. He’d just been so stunned—and, okay, kind of terrified—by the speed and intensity of his response to her. So he’d looked for the quickest, easiest way to escape. The PI’s report had offered the perfect excuse to put Gracie at arm’s length again. Hell, arm’s length? He’d sent her to the other side of the planet.
And then he began to worry that there was nothing he could say or do to repair things. That even if he did, Gracie might not forgive him or take him back. That he’d spend the rest of his life thinking about how happy they could have been together. How happy he could have been. If only he hadn’t jumped to some stupid conclusion that ruined everything.
In spite of all that, Harrison clicked on the file from his PI. And immediately realized that yep, he was a first-class, numero-uno, see-exhibit-A jerk. Because Gracie had indeed told him the truth about Devon Braun. All of it. The assault on her friend, the
police report, Wilson Braun’s bribes to suppress it. And Gracie Sumner’s refusal of the money he’d offered her.
Harrison grabbed a sharp knife from the kitchen and headed for his bedroom. He pushed a chair into the corner where he’d stacked the boxes from Cincinnati, and stabbed the packing tape seam of one to open it. He wasn’t sure why he suddenly wanted—needed—to go through his father’s things. Maybe because they were the only link he had to Gracie, and he just wanted to touch something she had touched herself.
His grandmother’s five journals sat on top. She’d written the first entry the day his grandfather proposed to her and the last the day she abandoned her family in Cincinnati. Harrison had skimmed the first two diaries that day in the storage unit, so he picked up the third, opening it and riffling through the pages to check the dates at the top of each. Toward the end, he found an envelope shoved between two pages.
There was no writing on the outside, and the flap wasn’t sealed. Inside was a letter written in his father’s hand, dated two years before his death. It started off “Dear Vivian...”
Harrison stopped reading there, telling himself he should give it to his mother. But he wasn’t sure his mother would even want to read it. Still, he should probably let her decide. Then again, maybe he should read a little of it first, to make sure its contents wouldn’t make her feel even worse about his father’s behavior than she already did.
Dear Vivian, I hope you and Harrison are doing well.
Oh, sure, he thought. His father had been out of their lives for more than a decade, and they’d had no idea what made him leave or if they’d ever see him again. Why wouldn’t they be doing well? He made himself read more.
I suppose that was a ridiculous sentiment, wasn’t it? How could you and Harrison be doing well in the situation I created for you? Please, first, let me apologize for that. Then let me try to explain.
Harrison had never heard his father apologize for anything. Whenever he was wrong about something, Harrison Sage, Jr. had only made excuses. And he’d never felt the need to justify anything, either. Harrison kept reading.
