by Emma Accola
I did know about them, but whenever I tried to talk to Leonardo about it, he would cry and say he couldn’t believe I thought such things of him. Or he would become enraged and demand to know how I could disparage the man who loved me. When I told him that such behavior didn’t feel loving, he would accuse me of playing semantics and then request that I compose a list of what he was and wasn’t allowed to do.
Being analyzed enraged me. “Stop it,” I snapped.
“For me, my darling, stay just the way you are. You don’t have to hide anything.”
“Are you trying to talk me into or out of marrying you?”
“I want a relationship built on honesty and not artifice.”
I felt my eyes narrow because I was still smarting over his comments about my parents. “In case you’ve forgotten, the first time we met, you were trying to trick me.”
“The beginning of a relationship doesn’t have to drive what happens next.”
“We started out because of Harry Spice.”
“Forget Harry Spice. What did you feel the first time you met me?”
I answered recklessly. “I felt I was in the presence of one of the sexiest men on the planet. I thought you were going to try to trick me. I wanted to see you try and watch your agony when I called you out.”
“You thought you would best me.”
“I knew I could.”
Micah’s eyes glittered. He was enjoying this. “You were genuine with me in a way that you’d never been with any of the others you dated. Why is that?”
“Because I didn’t see you as a romantic partner,” I said before my common sense made me stop. “You were trying to outsmart me and I wouldn’t let you.”
“I’m glad you don’t apologize for that.”
“But you haven’t seen my ruthless. Not really,” I whispered, thinking of what was to come.
“I’ll love your ruthless.”
“You had better not be lying about that.”
“I’m not.”
“Good,” I said boldly, but underneath I had doubts.
“Caleb predicted this, you know. He said that if I let you get close to me, you would have the power to reach your hand into my soul like no other woman ever could.”
Those words should have thrilled me, but the ominous tone Micah used made me feel as if I were under water, slightly buoyant and ill. My movements became jerky. Did Caleb think I would possess Micah, like I was some type of succubus? Would Micah run screaming from me once he saw my ruthless?
He went on. “Regardless of what my big brother said, I found myself being drawn back to you, even after he died. All those months became a year, and thoughts of you were like a chatter in my head. Every time I was near you, it was like being paralyzed, as if my heart wanted to beat and my mind wouldn’t let it.”
The engagement ring began to itch and burn on my finger. I wanted his declarations to be more definite. Once again, I didn’t speak.
Micah’s lips grazed my forehead. “Caleb and I fought because he thought I wanted you just because Harry Spice did too. He thought I had let my anger and disgust at Harry Spice overrule my head and make me vulnerable to bad decisions.”
“He implied that I was one of those bad decisions,” I said as Micah picked up his phone to read a text. “Are you telling me these things so I’ll take a hint?”
Micah stiffened. Something cold and dangerous flickered in his eyes. “I never said that. What are you talking about?”
“Our engagement.” My stare became lethal. “Was Caleb right about your feelings for me? Have they been motivated by vindictiveness toward Harry Spice?”
“Are you really asking me whether I proposed to you to spite Harry Spice? That’s ridiculous. You have been on my mind since the first moment we met. I thought that was fairly obvious.”
“You can’t deny having a lot of reasons for wanting to hurt him.”
“You say that as if you’re not completely drowning in everything that he’s done to you.”
“It’s only drowning if I stay underwater,” I said as I moved away.
“If you need me to say it, I gave you that ring because I wanted to, not because of Harry Spice. We’re strong together.” His words were quick and sharp, as if I’d annoyed him with my question. He approached me, standing close. “I want you here with me.”
Yet something was going on with Micah. My intuition told me so and I believed it. There was something he wasn’t telling me. My mind spun wondering what it could be. My fear was that whatever it was would affect our relationship.
Micah loomed over me. “I have one of my twenty questions.”
“Do you?” I snapped at him, my voice loud to cover my anxiety.
“What do you feel for me?”
“Shall I give you a nice, short, little word to sum up everything that I’ve felt for you these past years?”
“Are your feelings that shallow, that one short little word could do it?”
I turned and walked the other way around the table. My knees were trembling. “This conversation is over.”
“What are you afraid of? Are you afraid of what you think or how it feels? Twenty questions, Gracie baby. Answer me.”
Furious, I spun around. My heightened emotions were all about insecurity, the worry that when all this was over, that Micah wouldn’t want a woman who could do what I was planning to do. Even though we were engaged, deep down inside I thought he must see me as tainted, a reminder of the man who had probably killed Caleb. I wanted Micah’s love for me to be pure, but I wouldn’t say that. It sounded too desperate. He might not understand, and I would push him past the point where he wouldn’t give a damn. I couldn’t tell him that, so I said something else.
“I’m afraid that what you care about more than anything in this whole world is your feud with Harry Spice. If it hadn’t been for him, would there have been an us?”
“His case is the reason we met. You don’t get to write a new story or change our history to make it more comfortable.” He exhaled sharply, exasperated. “Harry Spice has cost us both a lot. Together we’re strong. What do you need that I’m not giving you?”
Since he asked, maybe it was time to take a risk and give this man the honesty that I had never given Leonardo. “I want to be your priority, not an option, not what you’re doing right now to defeat Harry Spice.”
Micah’s brow lowered with his voice. “I thought that became clear when I asked you to marry me.”
“It’s not clear to me. Harry Spice isn’t a tornado and you’re not my shelter from the storm.”
Exasperated, Micah dragged his hand through his hair. “My engagement to you came from the most genuine emotion that I’ve allowed myself to feel in years. I’m here for the long haul, whether I’m your shelter in the storm or not.”
“Then why do I always hear the word if when you talk about our future?”
“You want to hear when,” Micah said softly. “You’re speculating about what will happen when the case is over.”
He was still talking about us as if we were a case, not a couple. I swallowed hard to clear my throat because Micah had once again put our relationship in the slimy grip of the Harry Spice. “Once it’s over, there can be a reevaluation of our status.”
“Spoken in third person. It’s come to that. How long have you been thinking that I’m some kind of bastard?”
“Since we first met.”
“And I thought you were wonderful.”
“You thought to use me for the benefit of Harry Spice.”
At first Micah looked stricken, but hot, angry blood flooded his cheeks. His voice fell to a harsh whisper. “I thought you were smart and beautiful. And if you let this come between us, it will be just another win for him.”
“And you’re still talking about Harry Spice.” I sighed loudly. Micah hadn’t said anything about love, and if he wasn’t going to, neither was I. “Don’t you see how we’re living in this trap made by him and that we’ve never looked beyond i
t? What’s our life going to be once the tornado has passed?”
“You can ask me that while your metaphorical tornado is spinning over our heads?” he cried.
“How can I not? His fingers have been in our lives since he created a vacancy for me in the English Department at Bailey College. Everything about us is what he’s constructed. I need to know what we can be without him.”
“How do you expect us to know that while he’s still out there?” Micah said, pointing toward the window, his shoulders rigid and eyes blazing. “Your question isn’t fair. I have to wonder if there’s a part of you that agrees with your insecurity. It’s like you’re determined to create unhappiness where Harry Spice won’t.”
And he said that name again. How had this conversation spun so wildly out of control? My goal had been to distract Micah from the selfies that Sludge had sent us, not do exploratory surgery on our relationship. The stakes had suddenly become very high, and my ruthless was just warming up. Even though my heart was breaking, I wouldn’t back down. I couldn’t. I had always known that Micah would be safer away from me during my end game with Harry Spice. I swallowed hard and spoke.
“Maybe we will be better off apart, because if all we have is about Harry Spice, then I don’t have a reason to stay. And having no reason to stay is a good reason to go.”
Under the circumstances, Micah couldn’t know that I wanted him far away from me now so he wouldn’t perceive my ruthless or be caught in Harry Spice’s net. From the way Micah flinched, my words had hit him like arrows. A confusing mass of emotions rose up in me, but my cold pride cooled them. Or maybe it was logic.
Micah’s eyes burned with a terrible fire. His phone chimed with another text. He read it before turning his attention back to me. “Then run away. Isn’t that what you do when your intellect starts to fail you? You’re not a vintner. You’re a rabbit.”
He paused, waiting for an answer. My heart screamed at me to comfort him with the truth, but my intellect insisted that having him out of the house was what needed to happen. It was logical even though I was almost staggered by the blow. Finally, his face twisted with disgust and pain, Micah grabbed his jacket and keys and left. The slamming door echoed through the empty and hollow spaces in my heart. I fell to the couch. What would I have with this incredibly beautiful man once all this was over? Hadn’t everything about Micah and me been directed, informed, and organized by Harry Spice? With that as its foundation, what could possibly be authentic? Then something tingled on my skin as it walked up my spine, the knowledge that I never ever wanted to be someone’s second choice, a placeholder for that spot next to what he really valued. It had to be genuine. The word sham banged back and forth in my head. I couldn’t hear anything else. My head clamored and rang with it.
And my heart felt like a cold and shiny piece of coal. I had forced this issue, a realization that stared its blame right back at me. I lay on the couch for a long time before getting up to take a shower. Mostly I awaited a message I was sure Harry Spice would send today. But none came. The hours dragged by. I stood by the window wringing my hands and staring into the driveway at the sound of every car. By the time bedtime came, I couldn’t sleep in the room Micah and I shared, not with all this uncertainty filling the house. I slid into the guest room bed unable to stop my wild imaginings of what he was doing and who he was with. Just having those heartbroken thoughts made me angry with myself for being so sorry and pathetic. These feelings! How I hated them at that moment, causing me to waste my tears on a man who was as opaque as fog. I don’t know long I lay in that bed shivering in anguish and wondering whether it was possible to make my heart un-feel something. Maybe we could go back to the start. Sometime during the night Micah came home, but I had fallen into an exhausted sleep and didn’t hear him.
When I got up in the morning, his bedroom door was closed. Silently I passed it on my way downstairs. In the empty kitchen I made myself some tea and stared through the patio door at all his plants. Overnight, my slumbering mind churned so much it hardly felt like I’d slept at all. I went into the dining room and leaned over the table. The pictures and maps had been shifted around since last night. Fear lanced through my heart as I worried that Micah had figured out the message in the selfies. Since they weren’t on the top of the stack, I hoped he had not. I turned over a photo of a smiling Harry Spice sitting on a heavily carved desk. Touching it made me want to wash my hands. A bolt of rage at his callousness tempted me to tear through it because I blamed him for creating strife with Micah and me. The engagement ring I wore began itching and burning. I took it off, set it on the map, and put the pictures on top of it. I was debating putting the ring back on when a movement caused me to gasp and jump.
Standing in the kitchen doorway was a criminally beautiful woman with waist-long hair like freshly polished copper. Her perfectly oval face had a porcelain complexion and bright blue eyes. She started toward me, padding along in bare feet, never breaking her gaze. Caleb’s favorite robe lay over her shoulders and was tied tightly at her slender waist. The sight of the robe made me look away so she wouldn’t see the pained anger in my eyes.
“You’ve been wearing this robe,” she said. “It smells like you.”
I met her look with as much strength as I could muster. “I’ll wash it.”
She didn’t miss my hostility. “There’s no need. I won’t be staying.” She picked up the picture of Harry Spice revealing my engagement ring underneath. When she saw the ring, she set the picture aside and picked it up. With a smile of cold challenge, she slipped it on her finger. “This wasn’t here last night. I hope you didn’t take it off because of me.”
“Does it fit?”
“Actually, it does.” She twisted it around her finger before setting it back on the map. “I didn’t sleep with him, if that’s what you’re thinking. We’re not perverts even if our father acted like a tomcat.”
“You were in Micah’s bed last night.”
“Because you weren’t. I wish you could have seen his face when he found you in the guest room. That’s where he meant for me to stay.”
“I apologize for occupying your favorite bed.”
Her expression grew sardonic when she heard mockery in my tone. “You wouldn’t have been in my favorite bed had you been where you belonged, dear one. You broke Micah’s heart last night. I hope you’re happy.”
“Sylvie? You’re Sylvie, right? You might be his sister, but you don’t know anything about us.”
Sylvie lifted one shoulder slightly. “I know that Micah thinks he let Caleb and me down. He is trying to protect us. Me and you. And it might be nice if you showed him a tiny bit of appreciation. Harry Spice has cost him a lot.”
Her words made my jaw drop. My temper flared, and I took a step toward her. “Not that it’s any of your business, but he’s cost me too. And you don’t know the first thing about Micah and me.”
“Maybe not the first thing, because I wasn’t around, but I know the last. I’ve watched you two. Even in public you and Micah have more eye sex than a roomful of the honeymooners put together.”
“Eye sex? Really? That’s what you think you see?”
“You two have a stare so hot you could burn the chrome off a trailer hitch.” Sylvie came toward me. “I was half scared to sleep in his room because I was sure you’d come in and slip under the covers. Maybe I should have. I might have gotten lucky.”
My chin jerked angrily. “That’s nasty. You’re nasty, sleeping in your brother’s bed.”
“It’s your bed too, and I wouldn’t have been in that bed had you been where you belong.” She made a scoffing sound. “Micah is one of the best men in the city. He’s had your back through everything that Harry Spice put you through. He’s even willing to marry you. What is your problem?”
“That would depend upon whom you asked.”
Sylvie’s eyes flashed at my insolence. “Micah’s everything, but you’d toss him in the garbage like a used tissue. That’s your plan, isn’t i
t? As soon as he saves your ass from Harry Spice, you’re going to marry him, dump him, and walk off with a chunk of his money.”
My temper flared. “I don’t need his money and I can save my own ass.”
“No, you can’t,” Sylvie said darkly. “You clearly aren’t smart enough to see that the reason you’re here is because Micah cares about you. He’s trying to protect you.”
“He’s using me to get to Harry Spice,” I said, snapping furiously. “I’m part of some kind of masculine tug-of-war. You’re here because you’re his sister. He loves you.”
Sylvie smiled. “Are you jealous?”
At that moment I hated her for her beauty and her certainty. I tried to think of something terrible to say to this pretty woman who made pretty cakes for a living, but I looked past her lovely face to see Micah standing in the doorway. Apparently he’d spent the night in his study. I’d forgotten about the long brown leather couch in there. He wore an expression as forbidding as a summer thunderstorm. I wondered how much he had heard. It was probably everything. Something of my shock must have shown on my face because Sylvie turned around.
“Good morning, brother dear,” Sylvie said softly. “Your fiancée seems to have an incomplete understanding of my role in all this. Maybe it’s time you filled her in.”
“Yesterday, at my request, Sylvie followed Glen. After he had lunch with you, he went to a donut shop where Harry Spice joined him. They spent over an hour together.”
Then it was true. Glen was the traitor in my family. The little girl inside of me who had ridden horses and played in the vineyards with her brother wanted to curl up in the fetal position and cry. The logical part of me knew that the tow-headed boy who had played tag and video games with me had been replaced by a stranger who had provided Harry Spice with easy access to my life and played a role in everything horrible Micah and I were enduring. Thanks to Glen, Harry Spice could now curate my history for what he could use against me. No wonder he had been so confident yesterday, so sure of his ability to bring me to my knees.