When he’d pulled the X5 into her drive this evening and her bare legs had danced down the steps, right in his line of vision, that dress clinging to all her neat little curves, he’d been reduced to foolish silence. And when she’d taken four goes at hopping up into the passenger seat, her bobbing breasts apparently tied in place by that multicoloured little cardigan thing, he’d nearly had a heart attack.
It would be way too easy to submit her to the clumsiest lunge in the history of man …
Instead, he took another drink. ‘So,’ he began. ‘Done any more about finding your mother?’
She wrinkled her nose. ‘The internet tells me I have a bunch of alternatives. Lots of people willing to help – some charities, some businesses. But it seems there’s no need for either. I can go to Brighton Town Hall and read the Electoral Register, and if she’s around, she’ll be on there.’
‘But you haven’t done that?’
She rolled her eyes. ‘I’ve been kind of busy, with the Teapot and with just hanging out in England.’
‘But you’re going to give it a try?’
She shifted to face him across the curve of the sofa. ‘What if I don’t like her?’
‘Isn’t there only one way to find out? Go see her and say, “Hi, I’m Freedom, remember me?”’
She laughed, but looked pained. ‘Come on, I asked you to forget that Freedom stuff. Freedom Lefevre didn’t exist for more than a few weeks and I’ve only ever known myself as Honor Lefevre or Honor Sontag. And introducing myself is not the kind of action that I can easily undo if it goes bad on me. I might just leave things as they are.’
‘Does that mean that you’re going home?’
She looked surprised. ‘I rented your sister’s place for four months so I guess that’s how long I’m here.’
‘I just thought that if your mission was to find your mother …’
She looked away. Watched the group in the corner, drinking their champagne, on to the second bottle now, getting louder, clinking glasses and drinking to the future of the happy couple. ‘I don’t think I ever said it was my primary purpose, did I? Mainly, I needed space.’
He waited. Watching her, sitting there, looking as if her dress had been vacuum packed on. ‘So you’re not rushing back to Mr Sontag?’ he prompted.
Her eyes swivelled to his. She finished her beer and sank back against the sofa, twisting her hair, thoughtfully. Her smile had been replaced by a wary notch between her brows. ‘I guess not.’
It was the opening he’d been probing for. ‘I was rude when you tried to tell me about your marriage, before. How about you tell me now?’
Chapter Twenty-One
She didn’t look away.
He gazed steadily back. Waiting her out. Watching a debate taking place behind her eyes.
She made a face. ‘I’ll need another beer. I hadn’t scheduled a Q and A.’
He got her two, so as not to invite a further interruption, and, conscious of the car keys in his pocket, chose water for himself.
She took a deep draught and licked her lips. ‘My husband’s name’s Stef. Stefan Sontag. His dad, Will Sontag, and my dad are partners in the same law firm in Hamilton Drives, which is where I’m from, a small town up on Route 7 in west Connecticut. When we were children, our dads joked that one day we’d get married because we were inseparable. But something happened to Stef at puberty – he turned into a hellraiser.
‘And a hellraiser can be an embarrassing member of the family for someone in the legal profession. His relationship with Will deteriorated, and my dad began to warn me off him. But, thing was, Stef was still my best friend.’ She smiled, her eyes warm with memories.
‘Define hellraiser.’
She lifted her brows. ‘For a long time, he didn’t do anything that was so bad. Well, OK, it was bad, like putting fireworks in mailboxes and dying someone’s white cat pink – I felt bad about the cat because it was in the paper and a lot of people wrote to say what a cruel trick it was – but his pranks were kid’s stuff. And all the other kids in town loved Stef because he was so funny and he always stuck up for underdogs. I never had any trouble in high school because he always watched over me, you know, and nobody messed with Stef. And on weekends he’d teach me how to ride a dirt bike or get everyone to the lakeside for a cook out. We played up, on those cook outs, but nothing other teenagers didn’t do; just strip poker or outrageous dares. Getting drunk, making out. Stef was always trying out new haircuts or getting a tattoo. Stef was fun.
‘And then he decided not to go to college. Just flat out refused. He didn’t really give any reason, just no. He had good brains but Dad used to say that they’d been wired wrong. I went off to college and he did a variety of jobs – car shops, delivery, making pizzas. My dad wrote that Stef was in more trouble, because he’d added joyriding to his repertoire. But when I came home, he seemed just the same old Stef. We dated. He was still my best friend as well as a date but we dated other people. After a while, I began not to like that and when I came home the summer I finished school, I told him. We’d been out to the lake and … Anyway, he said that if I wanted “exclusive” then we’d better get engaged. I wasn’t quite ready – but I did want to be exclusive. So we got engaged. Dad didn’t know what to think because he knew Stef could be off the wall but he did like him, and at least it made me plan to stay in Hamilton Drives. And, who knew, maybe Stef would settle down and put his wild years behind him. So Dad put in a word for me at VPV Finance and, over time, I took my exams to be a financial advisor – which meant years of night school. It took a while for us to get the money together to get married but that was OK. We were young.’
Other people had begun to drift into the room, late diners choosing the lounge for coffee. But Honor wasn’t paying attention to anyone else, now that she was into her story.
‘While I’d been away, two things happened. One was that Stef had found a job he liked, managing a diner. We used to hang out at the Drives Diner when we were kids and it always attracted a lot of oddballs. Well, you know,’ she laughed suddenly, eyes alight, ‘Stef is “oddballs R us” so he was happy. He stuck to the job. And if his dad was disappointed that Stef wasn’t a lawyer or a doctor, he didn’t go on about it too much. So their relationship improved.’
‘What was the other thing?’
Her smile slid off her face. ‘Some of his pranks got a little out of hand. I think it was the internet.’
He loved how she said that. Inner-net.
‘You know, if you search for “pranks” on the internet you find a whole bunch of stuff. Like how to make bombs or make people ill. Stef kind of gave our dads false hope by beginning a computer science course at night school. But he wasn’t looking to make a career, he was improving his skill set so that he could play better pranks. And, between the course and the pranks sites, he learned how to do stuff like sending emails that look like they’re from someone else. So, he’d send a guy an email, apparently from another guy, saying he’s always had the hots for him and what about it? Or send an email, apparently from the school, telling a lot of parents that school’s closed on Tuesday, when it’s not. Then he’d sit back and watch the fall out.’
Martyn nodded. Her frown kept flicking in, signalling that her memories were getting uncomfortable. ‘So was he still fun?’
A sigh. She sipped at her beer. ‘Mostly. Because he didn’t do that kind of thing all the time. He did get in trouble for riding his dirt bike around inside a rival diner, though, putting tyre tracks on the wall and breaking things up. That was one night when he was off and I was at night school and he got bored. He said it was a dare and a joke but the police said it was a crime and he got community service.’
‘Ouch.’
‘Yeah. That was just after we got married. We had an apartment in town and some of the time it was great because wherever Stef goes, there’s something happening. I remember coming home just before Christmas and he’d trimmed a Christmas tree with ornaments he’d made himself by cut
ting up Budweiser cans. It was a work of art – kind of. I don’t think he got the hang of letting go of his childhood so the rest of us got more responsible and he got less, which seemed to make him mad at everyone and more determined than ever to act like a juvenile. His pranks got more and the fun got less. By then, I was unhappy with his personal code.’
The frown had become permanent now and the second beer was on its way down. Her hand lay on the sofa and he reached out and took it, feeling the length of her fingers and the smoothness of her fingernails, still neat and pretty, even though she was working in a kitchen and waiting on tables. ‘Am I asking too many questions?’ he said softly. ‘You can stop, if you’d rather.’
After a moment, she shook her head. ‘I’m so mad at him. I’ve never been this mad at him before. I don’t think I’ve ever been this mad at anybody, ever. He took our whole life and threw it in the trash. He got out of control. That’s not the way I want things to be.’
He squeezed her hand.
‘He got more community service for taking a car,’ she continued, looking at their linked hands as if she wasn’t seeing them. ‘He said he was hiding it, to pay a woman back who dumped his friend, and it’s true he only moved it a block away. But that’s when our relationship began circling the drain.
‘Then he did something so stupid.’ She shook her head and drained the last of her beer. The hand that held the glass was shaking. ‘One of his staff, Billie, she’s a lovely person. I liked her a lot. And she was getting a whole load of grief from her boyfriend. Stef got into an argument with him because the boyfriend got the idea that Stef was having a thing with Billie and it all got ugly. The boyfriend is a dumbass, spending all his money and most of Billie’s on junk from the internet and from shopping channels. Anyway, the boyfriend began sitting in the diner on Billie’s late evenings, so that there was no chance of her going anywhere with Stef.’
‘Is that what was happening?’
Slowly, she shook her head, eyes troubled, the frown now a furrow. ‘I don’t think so. Stef just seemed to feel really protective of Billie. She’s one of those pretty, dainty little things, you know, that bring out a man’s protective streak.’
He smiled. ‘You’re a pretty, dainty little thing yourself.’
She looked surprised. ‘Oh.’ Then continued, ‘Anyway, the boyfriend used to sit there, just in case, and Stef couldn’t do a damned thing because the boyfriend was a paying customer. The boyfriend even used to ask for the diner TV to be turned to the shopping channels, if not many people were in.
‘Then, one night, when all the other customers were gone and Stef and Billie were just finishing up, the boyfriend called the shopping channel to buy something. And he gave all his credit card and security details right over the phone. Stef was writing up work sheets or something so he had a pen in his hand and he took those numbers down. Next time he heard the boyfriend being mean to Billie, he rang the shopping channel and used the information to order ten portable commodes. Then because he always gets carried away with his stupid ideas, he went on to the internet and ordered a ship load of viagra, incontinence pants, penis extenders, blow up dolls – you name it. They all arrived at the boyfriend’s house.’
Martyn tried to hide his smile.
‘It’s OK. You can laugh.’ Her own smile was only a twist of the lips. ‘We were all meant to laugh. But there were thousands of dollars involved and you know what? The police said it was a felony.’ She blinked, hard. ‘That was how I stopped wearing my wedding ring. I took it off and I threw it at him.’
‘I’m sorry.’ He held her hand tighter.
She looked surprised, as if noticing for the first time that their hands were joined. ‘So,’ she ended, resignedly. ‘Hamilton Drives is a small town. People don’t like it if their financial advisor’s husband is charged with identity theft. They start taking their business elsewhere. I knew that my boss was going to have to make somebody redundant so I volunteered. I wasn’t making commission worth a damn, anyway, with my client list shrinking like cheap socks.’
‘So you left your husband to think things over while you were away?’
She lifted her eyes to his. ‘He’s away, too. He was away before I even came out here. He got 180 days in county jail. He’s in Bridgeport Correctional.’
Chapter Twenty-Two
‘Wow,’ he breathed.
She examined his eyes. He looked astonished. But not disgusted. He didn’t take his hand away. ‘He gets to send out letters and postcards or make phone calls. He sends them to my sister Jessamine or to Billie – who finally dumped the boyfriend – and they send them to me as emails.’
She could see his mind working. Computing. Coming to the obvious conclusion. ‘So, what’s Billie to him, now?’
‘I think she’s still just his friend, because if she’s more, why is he sending me message after message and saying he wants to see me? But the town certainly thought that there was something going on between her and Stef, judging by the looks – sympathetic or knowing – that came my way.’ She stopped. Dropped her eyes to her watch. ‘Look … I’m tired and I have to be at the Eastingdean Teapot at eight–’
Instantly, he let her off the conversational hook. ‘Of course. I’ll take you home.’
The night was much cooler, now, and she crossed her arms and scrunched her shoulders as they hurried back to his SUV. He reached across and pulled her up into the seat again. ‘Thanks.’
It wasn’t until he stopped in her drive that she spoke next, words that just seemed to have made their own decision to be spoken. ‘I told him that I couldn’t put up with things any more. I’m tired of it and we’re over.’
His face turned to her, in the darkness. She could smell his clean, warm smell. ‘No one could blame you,’ he said, gently. ‘Effectively, he lost you your job. And you’ve lost face in front of the town where you live.’
‘To the point of humiliation,’ she agreed. ‘But the main issue is that I don’t trust him any more. I don’t expect a man to look after me in the old-fashioned way but I don’t expect him to drag me into his crappy mess, either. He shouldn’t expect me to wallow around in his dirt. He keeps sending messages about me being his wife and visiting him in jail and I’m just not going to do it. That wasn’t in the vows.’
Tears prickled, suddenly, and she fumbled with the door catch, hearing Martyn’s door opening and shutting as she struggled with the weight against the ever-present clifftop wind. Screwing round in the seat, she tried reversing out to see if it was any easier than going forward, muttering, ‘Holy crap,’ as she battled with her bag and the stupid mules that, she vowed, she would never wear again in any vehicle more than one foot from ground to seat.
And, as if the gremlins were listening in, the heel of her right mule caught on the sill and was wrenched off and she was suddenly hurtling backwards into space.
‘Oof!’ said the solid body she collided with. Hot hands grabbed her in mid-air, an arm around her chest and a hand on her thigh for a long, still moment. ‘Sorry,’ he muttered. Then lowered her to the ground.
But, ‘Ow!’ she yelped, as spiteful stones bit into her tender soles. ‘I lost my shoes.’
His hands grabbed her waist, lifting and turning her carefully until she was back on the edge of the passenger seat, her hands falling on his shoulders as she fought for balance. ‘Thanks–’
But the words stuck in her throat when, instead of moving away, he moved closer, and his hands slid down from her waist to her hips. Nearer, nearer, as if drawn by a string, so that her hands slid past his shoulders and her arms went around his neck as his body nestled against hers in all kinds of places.
The chills she’d experienced since exiting the warmth of that swanky club gathered into a giant shiver. Yet heat emanated from him in waves, as his hands tightened. He groaned. ‘Wow, Honor–’ Then, despairingly, ‘I’ve tried so hard to do the right thing. But I want you so much, all the time.’
She knew she ought to pull away, pat his ch
eek and say, ‘A pretty thing it would be if I told you that I want you, too, with my husband in jail. They have names for women like that, you know.’ And she ought to think of Robina’s feelings, too. Not that Robina cared a whole lot about anybody else’s.
But her heart was flying and her insides fizzing, and her thoughts turned to words. ‘I’m so tired of doing the right thing. I’ve done the right thing all my life. I’ve made a point of it. It really hasn’t made me happy. How about we do the wrong thing and see how it works out?’
‘Yes!’ He yanked her right out of the seat and held her in his arms as she gripped her arms around his neck and he pressed against her as if trying to burrow through her clothes, kissing her harder than she’d ever been kissed, his tongue in her mouth, smooth and sweet. She heard the car door slam behind her and beep as it locked. The kiss just went on and on as he swung around and began carrying her to the house.
She broke away to squeak, ‘My shoes!’
‘Tomorrow. I’ll get them tomorrow.’ He pulled her legs up and around him and she gasped and pressed against him as her skirt pinged up around her waist revealing, the heat of his hands and the deep noise in his throat told her, more naked buttock than panties. She entrusted him with navigating the steps in the dark whilst she fumbled behind his head to get her door key out of her purse and gave it to him. ‘Quick,’ she whispered.
‘Quick seems to have deserted me.’ He cursed as he fumbled behind her back.
‘If you put me down–’
‘Not an option.’ The lock gave up the fight, the door sprang open and they fell into the hallway. Having had it drummed into her by Karen that a woman coming home alone should take sensible precautions, she’d left a lamp burning in the bedroom, and Martyn followed its light like a moth, his arms fending off the walls to protect her from bumps.
The walls faded from blue to grey outside the oval pool of light and the bed quilt glowed white. He came to a halt, hands hot, breathing fast. She kissed his throat and he groaned. ‘This is where I’m supposed to give you time to think–’
Love & Freedom Page 19