Penelope dove in her lizard bag for a second time and emerged with a gun. It was actually a tiny thing, Sophie noted. Silver and black. Very shiny. There was just this little eye, aimed straight at her.
Since honesty had failed, Sophie was happy to try begging. “Come on. Why would you do this? I thought you were my friend.”
“You were. I thought. But damn it, Sophie. You can’t let anything go. You kept finding out more and more things. And sooner or later, I was afraid you’d find out about me. Jan knew.”
“Jan knew you killed him?”
“No. Jan knew I loved him.”
“Then why…?” It was hard to talk when a girl was hyperventilating. Sophie couldn’t see many more options. Her back was to the sink. At the end of the kitchen counter, before the nook table, was the back door. She was in stocking feet, and it was cold out there, and she didn’t know if the door was locked…but it was the closest exit there was. The only exit there was.
“You asked me why? It’s all…because of the day that Jan came crying to me. She was beside herself, telling me about the blackmail, about how much trouble she was in. She only told me at all because she was desperate for money. She thought she could trust me for it.”
“And I’ll bet she could,” Sophie said. “You were good friends. And you weren’t the kind of friend who’d judge her.”
“Don’t play me, Soph.”
“I’m not playing you. I’m trying to understand. I never thought for a moment it was you.”
“That makes two of us. I never thought for a minute that I could kill anyone. God knows, I never planned to. I came over, middle of the day, sure Jon would be able to explain it all. There had to have been some huge misunderstanding. I knew he slept with other women. But when I got there, he had all this…stuff around. CDs. Letters. It was his at-home afternoon.” The gun wavered like a sick butterfly when Pen tried to laugh. “He was doing his blackmail accounting. When I got there, he just…smiled at me. Invited me in.”
“And then…?” One more step. Sophie leaned back, as if she were shifting to a more comfortable position.
“I hadn’t been to his place. He always slept at mine. He seemed to think that my being upset was silly. He put all that stuff away, locked it up, taking his time. I was just amazed. He had all these different hidey-holes and secret places, in the floorboards, inside drawers-he was like a boy in an electronics shop. And then…” Again the gun wavered. “Then he said come on, let’s go to dinner. As if I shouldn’t be upset. As if he thought I should have known…that I was just another lay for him. Special, he told me, because he wouldn’t blackmail me. We were the real thing. ‘Real thing.’ That’s what he called it. The real thing. So I hit him.”
“I would have, too!”
“And then I hit him again. And again. And he fell down the stairs-”
Sophie bolted. She fumbled with the doorknob; her hands were so slick, and she was petrified it was locked, but it wasn’t. It wasn’t. She yanked it open, heard Penelope scream at her. She started to run, but stumbled-she’d never been out his back door, didn’t realize there were a set of steps.
But then she was past it-the three steps-then she was in the damp, spongy grass, running, hell bent for leather. A long slope of grass led to a fence in one direction, woods in the other. She didn’t think, couldn’t think. Just barreled toward those woods…
She heard a pop.
She ran harder. So hard, she was gasping, and her side had a sharp burn, and because she couldn’t help it, her eyes were stinging tears. And still she ran.
She heard another pop. Heard Penelope scream at her again. Screaming, more pops, then suddenly…nothing.
Confused, panting, she turned her head-and immediately stumbled over her own feet and crashed on a knee-but not before she saw a shaggy head and a set of broad shoulders, tackling Penelope. A nearby siren screamed from the street-not soon enough, as far as Sophie was concerned. On the other hand, it wasn’t as if she needed the police.
Cord was here.
Frustrating Cord no end, he hadn’t gotten his hands on her yet. Couldn’t. Damn, but what a hullabaloo. Penelope Martin had started uncontrollably crying, babbling a full confession even before the police arrived and cuffed her; then Sophie suddenly shrieked because the back door had been left open and Caviar could get loose. Bassett tried to talk to Sophie, to calm her, because the cops figured he had the best shot at getting her to spill the whole picture of how it had come down. None of the authorities seemed to realize that the parts of the story they cared about, and the parts Sophie cared about, were miles apart.
Practical issues made it even harder to get his hands on her. He’d seen her feet when she first came in…and pretty immediately, hit the bathroom to run the tub. It was no surprise her feet were bloody, with running over rough ground in the woods in stocking feet. She also had the mother of all slivers. She wasn’t ready to have it taken out yet. She said she needed something tall and powerful before anyone-including him-came anywhere near that splinter.
He figured, when she asked for something “tall and powerful,” that she was asking for a shot of whiskey. Instead, it seemed she wanted a glass of wine.
So she had her wine and was now soaking her feet, sitting on the tub rim. Unfortunately, George Bassett had chosen that moment to try to speak to her. Cord could have warned him. But didn’t.
“You owe me an apology,” she told George Bassett. “In fact, you owe me a million apologies.”
“I know. We’re sorry.”
“You should be sorry. Not the royal we. You. Specifically, you. Thinking I was guilty of something, without even asking me! Asking Cord to spy on me! What’s the matter with you? How could you be in that job without having any judgment about people? Obviously, Cord didn’t know anything. He wasn’t living here, had no possible way to know what his brother was doing-”
“We…I…know that, ma’am. Listen, I just need a statement from you, and then I can leave you alone. We’ll all leave-”
“I haven’t heard my apology. And you almost let my cat out!”
“I’m sorry. And I’m sorry about the cat, too.”
“You think that’s enough? I’ve been scared out of my mind.”
“I’m sorry. Very, very sorry.”
She sniffed, but then seemed to relent. “Okay. I guess I’m sorry, too.”
“For what?” Bassett’s jaw dropped, as if disbelieving he’d opened his mouth. “Never mind. I don’t care what you’re sorry for. It doesn’t matter.”
“I don’t think it does, either. Because I wasn’t really tampering with anything important. I just-”
“Sophie.” Cord figured he’d better interrupt before she spilled the story of her altering the pictures of Jan. He still didn’t know how she’d done that, and wasn’t sure he wanted to know. “If you’ll just give Bassett three minutes, that’s all he needs. Then he’s gone. Then everybody’ll clear out of here and be gone. If more comes up later, we can deal with it some other day.”
Sophie was a lot more worried about the splinter. “What happens if soaking it doesn’t loosen up this sliver?”
“Then we give you another glass of wine.”
“Okay. Where’s Caviar?”
“Snoozing on top of the refrigerator.”
Still, it took forever. Bassett was a pencil pusher, wanted to fill in every detail right that minute, and spare people were still traipsing in and out from having to accumulate evidence. When the door was finally closed for the last time, Cord headed back for the bathroom with a sterilized needle behind his back.
“I’m too tired to do it now,” Sophie said.
“Okay. Let’s just have a look,” he said.
She sighed. “I’m not good with stuff like this. I don’t do needles. I don’t do pain. And I’ve had it with stress of any kind. I’m not kidding, Cord.”
“I understand. I know. I won’t touch it. I’ll just look, okay?”
“You won’t touch?”
> “Right. I’ll just look.” What a baby. Although he understood why she was freaked, when he finally got a close look at the sliver. The spear of wood stabbed into the tender side of her foot was almost an inch long. Three inches at least, according to her. It wasn’t the splinter that was the real problem, he suspected.
He suspected the splinter was just the temporary, unwitting scapegoat for all her pent-up emotions that day.
He hooked her bare wet foot in his lap, an operation conducted with her sitting on the kitchen nook table, and him on the chair-with the cat now sitting on the table with her, to supervise. He saw the sliver. Saw it was going to come out just fine. If she just sat still.
She let out a howl worthy of a five-year-old child.
And that, of course, was when he could finally reach for her.
The instant he held out his arms, she vaulted into them. And that was it. She never said another word. She just held on and held on and held on.
Or maybe that was him-holding on so tight he could barely breathe, because that’s how it seemed. He really doubted that he could breathe without her ever again. All the details that made up Sophie Campbell, from the scent of her hair, to the texture of her skin, to the weight of her, to his terror of almost losing her-there was nothing else in his life but her. Not then. Not, he suspected, for the next hundred years.
“I love you,” he said fiercely. “Love you, Sophie. Like I never loved anyone. Like I never dreamed I could feel love.”
She reared back, framed his face in her hands. “You’re honest to the core, Cord. I knew you weren’t spying on me. That you didn’t suspect me. I was just…scared.”
“You had reason to be scared. We had a lot of people trying to play us off each other. A lot of people trying to protect themselves in ways that interfered with the two of us.”
She whispered, “I lied.”
“Yeah?”
“About walking away when it was all over. The mess with Jon is over, Cord. But you’re not leaving me.”
“I know.” He took a kiss…then gave one.
She inhaled that first kiss, then took one back.
She closed her eyes on a long, soft sigh and settled into his arms. She’d had everything good in her life ripped from her. He was just beginning to understand how that built both her vulnerability and her strength. She’d fight with everything she had, past right or wrong, past danger or rules, to guard those she loved. Like him.
“Sophie?” Eyes closed, he rubbed his cheek against hers, sought her sweet mouth again. “I’ll be there for you. Through bad times and good. I’ll keep you safe.”
She smiled against his lips. “Just love me, Cord. That’s the only kind of safe that matters to me.”
That, he thought, was easy.
Epilogue
When Sophie climbed out of the car, she took one look at Cord’s face and had to laugh. “Come on, you. How scary can this be?”
“Very scary,” he muttered, and tugged at his shirt collar as if it were choking him.
“I’ll be there to protect you.”
“That’s good,” he said. “Very good. But I’m just saying, this may not go well. I’m not good in situations like this.”
“Neither of us has ever been in a situation like this,” she reminded him, and clamped an arm in his. They walked up to the door and knocked. While they were waiting for an answer, she rose up and gave him a swift kiss for courage.
The woman who answered the door was a tall, slim brunette, wearing jeans and a sweatshirt. She looked at Cord first, and her eyes widened.
He didn’t seem to notice her for more than a second. The cherub in her arms was wearing pale pink overalls and pink socks. The baby had barely enough curly dark hair to support the matching pink bow, but she was a solid chunk in her mother’s arms. Still, the baby took one look at Cord-who should have been a complete stranger to her-and raised her arms.
“I’m afraid she’s not shy,” her mother said, laughing.
Cord took the baby, more or less because the cherub threw herself into his arms. He shot Sophie a look of frantic alarm, but she could see in two shakes that Cord and his niece were going to get along like a house afire.
Naturally, it would take a while to develop a relationship with the niece he’d never known he had. And the details of helping with support, now that Jon was no longer around to provide for the child, would all have to be worked out. But this initial meeting was just to…well, to reach out.
Cord had more blood family than he’d known before. And his brother may have been an unforgivable scoundrel without a conscience or a heart…but this baby was an angel.
They left somewhere around an hour later. Cord said nothing as they walked to the car, only crooked an arm around Sophie’s shoulder and squeezed. It was only a week before Christmas now, and the neighborhoods were all lit up with lights and decorations. None, Sophie felt, sparkled as much as the ring on her left hand, but conceivably, she was a tiny bit prejudiced about that.
“Hey, Soph,” Cord said as he started the car. “You want one of those?”
“One of what?” she asked.
“One of those little people. Babies. You know.”
An early Christmas present for next year, she thought…Who could beat that?
JENNIFER GREENE
lives near Lake Michigan with her husband and an assorted menagerie of pets. Michigan State University has honored her as an outstanding woman graduate for her work with women on campus.
Jennifer has written more than seventy love stories, for which she has won numerous awards, including four RITA® Awards from the Romance Writers of America and both their Hall of Fame and Lifetime Achievement Awards.
You’re welcome to contact Jennifer through her Web site at www.jennifergreene.com.
***
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Secretive Stranger Page 17