“Almost perfect?”
Laurel heard the grin in his voice and the constriction in her chest loosened a little.
“There is that ego of yours,” she teased. He was perfect. But he didn’t need her to tell him that. In high school and college he’d had every girl he’d ever wanted—and many he didn’t—swarming after him.
Paul had been too focused on his goals to be aware of the lovely coeds around him. Focused on his goals—and on Laurel.
“But it’s not just sex?” he asked softly, seriously.
Shaking her head, Laurel tried to explain what she didn’t understand. “It’s like I’m desperate to be close to you. And there’s nothing closer than sex. The thought of sharing that with you makes me feel safe.”
“Safe from what?”
She didn’t know.
“Are you afraid of something? Has someone threatened you? This Shane, maybe?”
“No.”
“So why safe?”
“Safe from losing you, maybe.” She picked her own piece of grass. “I don’t know.”
“So it’s not desire you feel, but some need to stay connected?”
“No.” She could feel her face burning and was glad he couldn’t see that. “I definitely feel desire.” And then, because she was being completely honest with him, she added, “Like I’ve never felt before in my life.”
The words fell baldly into the night air and hung there, suspended.
“What about Paul?”
“Not even with him.”
What was the matter with her? Being more turned on by Scott than she ever had been by his older brother was beyond transference. How could you transfer what hadn’t been there to begin with?
There was no movement beside her. If not for Scott’s warmth making her nerves crawl with anticipation, she’d have wondered if he’d left.
“It’s okay, you know.” Her throat was dry. Too dry. “I didn’t tell you this to put you on the spot or make you feel like you have to tell me you feel something, too. I just wanted to explain why I was so out of line last night. And to apologize.”
“I told you earlier today that you have no reason to apologize for anything.”
“My behavior was inappropriate to the point of insulting.”
“It was flattering.”
It was her turn to say nothing. She was too busy trying to pull a breath past the tightness in her chest.
“You didn’t have me at gunpoint last night, Laurel,” Scott said, his voice soft but completely sure. “I could have said no at any time.”
“So why didn’t you?”
“Because the pleasure was so excruciating, I couldn’t deny myself.” Before she could figure out what to say, he continued. “Because after dreaming of something like that happening for so many years, I didn’t have the strength to stop you.”
Her insides were on fire. “Oh. Then...”
“And because I knew that it was something that wasn’t ever going to be my right to enjoy.”
“But...”
“I killed Paul, Laurel. It’s my fault the man you love is lying in a grave instead of in bed beside you every night.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
LAUREL FLINCHED BESIDE HIM. “You know that’s not true.”
“I know that it is.” His voice was gravelly, jarring in the peaceful night air.
Laurel turned, leaning her shoulder right next to his against the tree, her face only inches away, torturing him with its promise of a sweetness he could never receive. He could feel her looking at him and was glad for the darkness that allowed him blindness, an excuse to avoid the compassion he knew he’d read in those expressive gray eyes.
“I took a grief class, Scott, and it’s natural for you to blame yourself for living when Paul died—especially when you were driving the car—but it was not your fault. The car slid on a patch of ice. There was nothing anyone could do.”
She was repeating most of what he’d told her that day in the churchyard—he just hadn’t mentioned who’d been driving. He hadn’t realized she’d even heard him that day. And now he knew for sure that she hadn’t seen an accident report.
The car had slid on some ice. And there’d been nothing anyone could do after that. It was before the accident that things should have been done differently.
Stars were out now, twinkling a promise so far away he wondered how he’d ever believed in wishing on them.
“I wasn’t driving the car.”
“Of course you were. You and Paul both promised me when you went to Boston for that party that you’d do all the driving. Paul was a horrible winter driver. And it was your car.”
“I know. But I wasn’t driving.”
“I don’t understand.” He heard the confusion in her voice. She was so certain he and Paul wouldn’t lie to her. Her trust was that complete.
Another thing for him to destroy.
“I got drunk at the bachelor party,” he confessed. “Disgustingly, falling-down, passing-out drunk.”
“You don’t drink.”
“I know.”
“You never got drunk. Not in high school. Or college.”
“I know.”
“So...”
He was going to have to tell her. Right then. He struggled to find the right words.
“I got so drunk I stripped down to my briefs, stood on a table and sang karaoke.”
He’d hoped she’d laugh, that maybe they could bring a little levity into the conversation. Her silence told him what he’d already known. There was absolutely nothing funny about any of this.
Head down, he picked at blades of grass that were only shadows. “I was aiming for oblivion.”
“But why?”
The bitch of it was, he’d found neither. He could, still this night, remember every excruciating moment.
“The party ended at two in the morning. Up in my room, I pretended it was still going on. I turned on music videos and danced with a bottle until about four.”
“You had to leave for Cooper’s Corner at six.”
“I know.”
“You didn’t know what time it was?”
“I knew.” Every single minute that had ticked by was a minute closer to a life he couldn’t stomach thinking about—a life with Laurel as Paul’s wife.
As it turned out, the minutes were ticking away the last hours of Paul’s life.
“When Paul knocked on the door at six, I was sitting on the bathroom floor, thinking about getting sick.”
“Why, Scott?” Blame had not yet replaced confusion. “Why would you do such a thing to yourself? It doesn’t make sense.”
It made hellishly perfect sense.
“I was in no state to stand, let alone drive,” he continued. “I told Paul that we’d promised you he wouldn’t drive, but he figured you’d be more mad at him for missing his wedding. He figured that if I slept for the three-hour drive home, I’d be sober enough by the time we hit Pittsfield for us to switch drivers.”
“That doesn’t sound like Paul.”
“He wasn’t going to miss his wedding.”
“Had he been drinking, too?”
“Not nearly as much as I had.”
“But he’d been drinking.”
He didn’t want to remember. Paul had been so happy, the alcohol and the excitement of his wedding freeing him from his usual restraint.
“Some.”
“Paul didn’t drink, either.”
She couldn’t think badly of Paul. Period.
“He was just happy, Laurel, happier than I’ve ever seen him. The guys poured him a shot or two and for once he threw caution to the wind and joined in the fun.”
“I wish I could have seen that.”<
br />
“Yeah.” He wished the memory didn’t have so much pain attached to it for him.
They both fell silent, but it wasn’t over yet.
“So he was hungover, too.”
“Not really.”
“Paul wasn’t used to drinking.”
Okay. So maybe Paul had been a little worse for wear.
“He’d had four hours to sleep it off.”
Laurel turned around, her back against the tree once more. Pulling her knees up, she wrapped her arms around them, rubbing her legs from her ankles to her knees, back and forth, slowly, as though easing a pain.
It was a pain that couldn’t be eased. Scott knew. He’d tried every way he could think of, but nothing worked.
“So you were sleeping when he hit that patch of ice.”
“Yes.”
A car drove by. Scott wondered where the occupant was going, and wished he were going there, too. Anywhere would be better than this.
“You said the seat belt broke.”
She’d heard that, too. All these years he’d comforted himself with the fact that she’d been in shock that morning, that it would all be a blur to her—nothing to haunt her nights the way his had been haunted.
Images of waking up in the car, hearing the sirens, the hissing of steam, the voices yelling outside his window. Getting out, stumbling around the car until he recognized that it was his car, wondering why he’d been so far from the steering wheel. Coming upon Paul’s body... Remembering where they’d been going. What Scott had done.
“The seat belt on the driver’s side broke,” he told her now, wishing he felt as emotionless as he sounded. “The one on the passenger side didn’t. That’s why I lived and he didn’t. Being thrown from the car is what killed him.”
“And because you should have been driving, it’s your fault he was killed and not you.”
Damn. Who would have thought, after all the recriminating things he’d said to himself, it would hurt so much to hear her say those words?
“Yes.”
“Bullshit.”
She must not have understood. He’d have to figure out a way to make it clear to her.
“That seat belt breaking was an act of fate, Scott,” she went on. “It could just as easily have been the passenger belt that broke.”
Wrong.
“I’d had a recall notice on it. Three of them.”
“On the driver’s side belt.”
That was the one.
“I’d already taken the damn thing in for a recall on a floor mat—one had doubled up under a gas pedal and caused an accident. And I’d had it in for a fuel-system recall that had turned out to be nothing more than an indicator light.”
“So you didn’t bother to take it in for the seat belt.”
“I was going to...”
Maybe. When he’d had the thing serviced the next time.
“If this is true, you could have sued the company.”
“For my own lack of responsibility?” he asked derisively. “Why should they pay for that? And what were they going to be able to do to make amends for my having killed my brother? Bring him back?”
“Of course not.”
Arms still around her shins, she laid her head on her knees. After a while he wondered if she’d fallen asleep.
He leaned his own head back against the tree, reluctant to disturb her.
“Why did you get so drunk?”
Her words were like a knife jabbing into him.
“What was bothering you so badly the night before Paul died?” she persisted.
Scott needed to move. To stretch. His joints ached from sitting on the hard ground for so long.
He couldn’t move.
“I...”
“I have to know what was driving you, Scott.” Her tone brooked no argument. “I have to know...” The words dwindled off to a whisper as her voice broke.
She was crying.
With a sick feeling in his gut he realized that she’d been sitting there all this time, quietly crying.
“Because it seemed like the only way to forget how much I hated myself.”
She turned her head toward him. “Hated yourself?” Her mouth was so close he could feel her breath on the side of his face.
“Yeah.”
“You were the best man in your brother’s wedding and were throwing him a bachelor party. You’d just gotten word about the job in Boston. You were getting a nice raise, a promotion, a new home close to your family. A new life. One you’d earned through hard work and sacrifice. What did you have to hate yourself for?”
For a second there, hearing her describe his life, he actually felt good about himself and was tempted to leave well enough alone.
“I hated myself for being in love with my brother’s fiancée.” The words were cold, unemotional. It was the best he could do for himself, because he couldn’t stop there. “I hated myself for being so damned jealous of him that I couldn’t be happy for him. For hating how happy he was, knowing that making you exclusively his was the root of that happiness.”
She didn’t move. Didn’t say anything. And then, slowly, her head turned away from him and she gazed out at the field in front of her.
“It had to just be the moment, the situation. Paul was getting married. You were there for every step of the planning, reminding him he had decisions to make when he was too focused on work to remember. Sometimes it seemed more like you were the groom than he was. It’s natural that you’d superimpose his feelings onto your own in the end.”
She’d given him an out. Scott considered taking it.
“It wasn’t just that night.”
“So, it was just those last weeks of planning, when everything was so crazy and you and I were spending so much time together getting everything finalized while Paul finished that embezzlement case.” She sounded adamant in spite of her shaking voice.
He could go with that. Should go with that. No one would ever know.
“No.”
“How long?” The voice no longer sounded like hers. It was flat. Distant.
“What?”
“How long were you...feeling...like that?”
“Since high school.”
Her head snapped around. “No way, Scott. You’ve built this up into something that’s not even there,” she said, her voice breathy with relief. “You were in love in high school, that’s true. About ten times. Always with beautiful blondes who thought you could solve any problem, make any wrong right. They hung all over you—adored you.”
“You’re blond.”
She faced the field again. “Yes, but...”
“And you, more than anyone, spent hours talking to me about solving all of the world’s problems.”
“Yes, but...”
“Didn’t you ever wonder why I never had a serious girlfriend? Why I’ve never, not once, dated a girl more than twice?”
“Because you had so many to choose from and weren’t ready to settle down?”
“Wrong.” He turned to look at her, knowing that he was going to feel damned humiliated when this was over, but needing to finish now that he’d started. “It was because no one measured up to you.”
She shook her head. “No.”
“Yes.”
“I can’t accept that.”
He didn’t blame her. Neither could he.
And there was one more thing he couldn’t accept. Not ever. Not in this life and not in any that were to come.
“Right before the bachelor party started, Paul called you and I overheard him telling you what you and he were going to be doing in Maui the following night.” When his throat grew too tight, he stopped for a moment, remembering. “I hated myself for a lot of things that nig
ht in Boston,” he said, giving her the rest. “But mostly I hated myself for the one brief second during that phone call when I wished him dead.”
* * *
LAUREL DIDN’T SLEEP well that night. Exhausted, numb, she went to bed as soon as she got back to her room. But each time she started to drift off, she startled herself awake with a thought, a movement, a whimper.
She and Scott had had little to say—after having said far too much—and she’d just wanted to escape. From him. From the things he’d said. From the different shadings he’d put on her memories of the past.
She didn’t want him in there, messing with things she’d accepted long ago. Things she’d found places for.
She didn’t want to feel things for him. Like desire. Romance. Love.
She didn’t want him. And she did.
She’d needed to be alone.
At quarter after eleven, she reached for the phone, dialing by the light of the moon shining in the window of her second-floor room.
“Hello?” His voice sounded reassuringly normal. Far away, from another life, but something she recognized immediately.
“Hi.”
“Laurel?”
“Yeah.”
“God, honey, it’s great to hear your voice.”
“Yours, too. I didn’t wake you, did I?”
“Of course not, I just got in a few minutes ago.”
She’d known that. Shane was usually at the station until after the evening news.
“Where are you?” he asked, his eagerness flattering her battered heart. “Home?”
“No,” she said, stretching beneath the covers, taking comfort in the sensation of the soft, cool sheets against her bare flesh. She’d neglected to buy a nightgown when she and Scott had gone shopping the other day. “I’m in Worcester. William Byrd’s still missing, but we’re finding all kinds of information. We’re just not sure how it all fits together.”
Shane talked to her for a while about the case, adding his own thoughts and suggestions, and though he came up with nothing she and Scott hadn’t already covered, still it comforted Laurel. She and Shane had a lot in common.
“I miss you,” he said.
“I know. I miss you, too.” A lot, at the moment. She missed his predictability, knowing exactly where she stood with him. Shane had always been honest about the fact that he wanted her. That as soon as she gave the word, he’d have her in his bed.
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