Her Secret Life

by Tara Taylor Quinn

“Then my honest opinion is I don’t think you should lean on her for the things you can do yourself. Save her for the things you really need from her.”

  Wow. That was harsh. But...he was right.

  “You’re afraid I’m going to fall back into old patterns.”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “But you think it.” A noise sounded beside her. Turning, she looked, but didn’t see anything. Maybe it was just the water falling over rocks. Or one of the frogs Jem had brought for the garden.

  “Not really,” he said. “But as your...mentor...someone who’s heard you lament over your lack of confidence that you won’t fall back...”

  “You’re right, Michael. If I’m going to fail, this would be the time.”

  The sky above felt too broad, filled with knowing eyes. The yard with things she couldn’t see. Holding both water bottles, one in her hand, one with that same arm against her body, she used her free hand to reach for his.

  “Can we go back in?” she asked, heading purposefully toward the door.

  “Do you want to turn off the waterfall?” he asked, slowing as they neared the switch.

  No! “Um, let’s leave it on for now, okay?”

  She needed light in her darkness.

  As soon as they reentered the Arizona room, she switched on both lamps and settled back into the couch. As far back as she could get. Letting it cradle her.

  Michael sat down, too. At the other end. She wished he was closer. But that gave him better access to any entrance to the room.

  Not that she thought there was a threat. She just needed to know she was covered. “I guess I’ll need to keep in close touch when I go home tomorrow,” she said. “I could see how the lure of the blur could be kind of tempting right now.”

  Except that the last thing she wanted was to be vulnerable in any way around anyone she didn’t know and trust. The idea of dulled senses scared the wits out of her.

  “I don’t think you should go home tomorrow.”

  “I have a date tomorrow night.” Bo...

  Lacey hadn’t called him yet. Had she? She hadn’t said so. And he hadn’t called her, which he most certainly would have done.

  “I expected Bo to be here.”

  “He doesn’t know yet. And that’s just as well. I need to get through tonight and then I can start thinking about how this is going to affect everyone else.”

  “And this is going to affect Bo how?”

  “If the police report gets media notice, it’ll be all over that Bo’s new girlfriend was attacked.”

  “So it’s the publicity you’re worried about?”

  “Of course not.” Was it? She shook her head. She didn’t know. That was her world. Caring about what was in the press. Careers were made from media attention. And could be lost, too. “I just... Lacey said she’d call. And I’m sure she knew that I couldn’t deal with all of that tonight.”

  “With Beverly Hills,” he said. The way he watched her, like she mattered, was good for her right then.

  “Yeah.”

  He was right. She didn’t want to deal with Beverly Hills until she knew what to give them.

  “This is a new one,” she said. “I’ve never been...” A source of a criminal complaint. Or tragedy. Real news. She’d never been arrested or had more than a speeding ticket. Or had her house burn down, or been in a tragic car accident...

  She’d never been married and then cheated on. Or dumped, either, for that matter. Because she’d never before allowed herself to be officially paired with anyone but Lacey.

  “I don’t know how to handle the press in an instance like this,” she said. “I’ll need to call my agent.” Before she went home. Just in case. “Hopefully it won’t go public.”

  “I made a call while you were getting dressed, back at the hospital,” Michael said. “I do some work for the Santa Raquel police. I’ve asked that the report be sealed.”

  “You did?”

  “Yeah, I just...with everything going on...”

  She shook her head. “Well, are they going to?”

  “I don’t know yet,” he said. “That’s part of why I didn’t say anything yet. There are protocols to follow. But I can tell you that it won’t be in the morning papers. Beyond that, they’re going to try...”

  She started to cry.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  GOD, HE HATED feeling helpless. Watching the tears sliding softly down Kacey’s face while she sat there calmly holding her water bottle and watching him, Michael had no idea what to do for her. Her light had been dimmed, but she was still Kacey Hamilton, larger-than-life dynamo who blew into his world on occasion and sparked his life with her friendship.

  She wanted his friendship in return. He’d give her the moon if he could. But in the end, he was still himself. Mike Valentine. A man who enjoyed peace and quiet. Playing video games at home. He shuddered at the idea of living in Beverly Hills, going to posh places where everyone wanted to know what everyone else was doing, and most definitely recoiled at the idea of being in front of a camera. He hadn’t allowed a photo to be taken of him since the second the gun went off.

  X-rays and medical photography had been difficult enough.

  She licked a tear off her lip.

  “Kace?”

  “Yeah?”

  “What can I do? How do I help in this moment?” He had Lacey’s number and was just about ready to text her. To let her take over when he had nothing to offer.

  “Hold me?” she asked him, hunching her shoulders and shuddering. “Can you just hold me, Michael? Just let me snuggle up? Like me and Lacey? I don’t feel safe,” she said. “I can’t find that... I’m insecure, Michael...”

  He moved because her gaze compelled him to do so. There was no thought to right or wrong. This was right. Period.

  There was also no thought of intimacy. He was comforting a hurting friend, something he’d done a thousand times. He gently lifted Kacey and settled her in his arms, tucked her head beneath his chin, right across his heartbeat, and pulled her legs to rest across his. He was cradling her like a baby.

  He hoped she’d sleep like one. That she’d relax and let sleep take her from the night’s reality. Just for a few minutes, even.

  He hoped that he could be enough. That just by holding her he could give her what she needed. Lord knew, he had no words.

  He also hoped that he wasn’t doing anything he’d later regret. Her body so close to his...he wanted her there, where he could protect her. He wanted to know she’d always be safe.

  He wanted it bad.

  “They took pictures of my breasts, Michael.”

  He froze, filled with anger. An instant and violent need to find the bastards, rip the digital images away from them and smash all three men into the ground.

  And while all of it would be done to help Kacey, it wasn’t what she needed from him in the moment. She needed calm—something he was not coming by easily. “Did you tell the police?”

  “It was the police who took them. A woman. She had to document all of my injuries and bruises. I’ve never felt so...”

  She was in front of a camera every day at work. But she’d told him once that neither she nor Lacey had ever done any nude work. And never would.

  “It’s not the same as at work,” he said now, feeling completely inadequate. And then, out of the blue, he thought of Diane. She was at his house, with Willie, and she’d need an explanation for his sudden disappearance.

  She knew his clients.

  Would know that there’d be no bill for this night.

  And he wasn’t sure the fake girlfriend thing was going to fly...

  He felt the possibility of lies piling up on him, when a vision of his sister’s face replaced the worry.

 
He was a great brother. His siblings all said so. He knew how to be a brother.

  Settling back to just listen to her, and to care, he cradled Kacey against him.

  Tonight, Kacey needed a brother.

  This he could do.

  * * *

  “DO YOU THINK they’ll find them?”

  Kacey fiddled with the button on Michael’s shirt. Unbuttoned it. Buttoned it again. Ran her fingers along the smooth little perimeter. Touched the threads in the center, holding it in place.

  “From what I hear, you gave a fairly good description.” His voice was a comfort. She didn’t want to go outside until the guys were caught and locked away.

  She didn’t want to risk seeing them. Risk them seeing her.

  “I want to go back to Beverly Hills tomorrow,” she said, even though she knew he didn’t think she should. “I want to be away from here.”

  “Did the police indicate whether or not they think they’re locals?”

  She listened to the even cadence of his heartbeat, feeling secure for the first time since the attack.

  “I’m not sure,” she told him. “I just remember telling them that I thought they were.”

  “Why did you think that?”

  “I don’t know. I guess because whenever I’m here I envy the locals. I think everyone’s a local and I’m not.”

  She was an outsider here.

  And wanted to go home.

  But the thought of leaving Michael. And Lacey...

  “They hurt me in places a girl shouldn’t ever be hurt...” She kept thinking about those fingers on her breast. Pinching her nipple. She grasped Michael’s shirt with both hands, pressing herself more securely against him.

  “I’m so sorry.” He kissed the top of her head. Wiped her cheek as more tears fell.

  “Hold me,” she begged. “Please, just hold me.”

  He couldn’t make the memories go away. But lying there in Michael’s arms somehow made the replays more manageable.

  So she let them come. She knew from the Lemonade Stand that to hold them in, to try to bury them, would only help for a moment. The doctor had said the same. She had to talk.

  And so she did.

  A little at a time, as she could get the words out.

  Holding on to Michael.

  * * *

  DIANE WAS WAITING up for Mike when he got home sometime after midnight. Lacey had set her alarm and come out to find Kacey starting to doze against him and had taken her sister to bed. She would be climbing in beside her.

  Kacey refused to take the sleeping pill Lacey tried to give her. And as Mike left, he felt a little bit better. His friend was stronger than she thought. She’d soak up the love she needed—it was all around her—and she’d pick up her pieces and have more to offer the world because of what she’d been through.

  At least that was what he told himself. He hoped that the shining light that made her so unique hadn’t been permanently dimmed.

  He’d spent the trip home thinking about the woman he’d left, rather than coming up with an explanation for his absence that would suit his nosy sister. He couldn’t use the Lemonade Stand at ten o’clock at night. The computer shop was closed.

  “What’s up?” he asked as soon as he saw Diane’s furrowed brow. Worry. Not anger. “Where’s Willie?” If his little brother had pulled a fast one on him...

  “In bed.”

  “Where’s Ron?”

  She shook her head. “He didn’t stay.”

  “Something happened?”

  “I smelled alcohol on Willie’s breath.”

  Damn it all to hell. “He was drunk? He sat in my house and got drunk?”

  The kid was bound and determined to create the person he thought his family saw in him. Bound and determined to prove them right.

  “No, Mike, he wasn’t drunk. As it turns out he’d barely been drinking. One beer. They each had one beer.”

  He didn’t have any beer in the place. And he’d moved his small liquor stash to the safe in his bedroom just in case Willie went looking. No sense in tempting a kid who had morose moments.

  “Where’d they get beer?” Not like it mattered. He was buying his temper a minute to simmer down.

  “Ron brought a couple over from his house. His father said it was okay.”

  It was not okay for anyone’s father to say his underage son could take beer to someone else’s house.

  “It was only one beer apiece, Mike.”

  “That you know of.”

  “I checked the trash. There were no empty cans. When I confronted Willie, letting him know I’d smelled the alcohol on his breath, he showed me the cans. They’d stashed them in Ron’s trunk. There were only two of them. I checked the whole car. And Willie’s room, too.”

  Because Diane thought the worst of Willie.

  And yet, here she was, defending him?

  “He’s scared to death you’re going to lose faith in him,” she said. “He knows it was wrong, but he figured as long as he was doing everything else right...he’d told Ron only to bring one each.”

  As opposed to the twelve-pack Willie had been caught with when he was hanging out with the crowd with whom he was no longer allowed to associate. As opposed to the drugs he’d smoked.

  “He screwed up, but it’s been an extremely hard week for him, given all of the changes he’s made. And made successfully. He’s willing to do this, Mike. He wants to be here.”

  Wow. Diane? Fighting for Willie?

  “He started to cry after Ron left, which was right after I confronted them. Not so that I’d know. He went to his room. I peeked through a crack in his door...”

  Willie didn’t cry. Ever. Like Mike. It was as if they’d made a pact with each other that fateful day a decade ago.

  “Does he know you saw him?”

  She nodded. “He was pissed as hell. But...then...it was weird. He was like this little kid—like, you know, our Willie. He just started talking to me. Telling me how much you meant to him. How your believing in him was more than he deserved, and that he didn’t want to let you down. That he really wanted to graduate. To make you proud of him. You can’t kick him out, Mike. I really think he means it. I think he might actually make it this time. It was only one beer.”

  “I have no intention of kicking him out,” he said. “You should know that by now.”

  She stopped, her face relaxing.

  “You’re a great man, Mike,” she said, her eyes tearing up. “A great brother. To all of us.”

  He nodded. Wanted to hug her. But it wasn’t what they did.

  “Get some rest,” he told her instead. “I’m going to do the same.”

  “I’m going to head home,” she said. “It’s early enough. And sleeping with my husband is a hell of a lot better than sleeping alone.”

  He thought of Kacey. Holding her. The warmth against him.

  “But first... You never said where you were. What was the big emergency?”

  He searched for the lies he hadn’t yet made up. And thought of Kacey. He could not tell his family about her. He was more certain than ever of that. Kacey needed him right now. Needed their friendship intact.

  But he couldn’t lie about her, either.

  “I was at the hospital,” he said. “Someone from the Lemonade Stand was attacked tonight and they thought the attacker had something to do with her computer.”

  He’d been worried for nothing. The truth had been right there, ready to serve him all along.

  Diane offered sincere sympathy, asked if the woman was going to be all right, and headed out, leaving Mike shaking his head. Why in the hell had he been so worried about being with Kacey? Why had he made such a big deal out of nothing?

  Ideas were occurring to hi
m.

  He didn’t want them.

  And chose not to let them in.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  SHE WAS ONE of the luckiest women on earth. While the embrace of her family—her parents arrived at Lacey’s house Saturday morning—and the decision that Lacey would take some vacation time, drive back to Beverly Hills with Kacey and stay with her there for a few days helped immeasurably, she also had Michael texting her, talking to her when she called both Saturday and Sunday nights.

  And she hadn’t been raped.

  She might have been. Probably would have been. But she’d been spared.

  Because of a man and his dog. A good man. A great dog.

  She didn’t want to ever go back to Santa Raquel again. At least not until the police caught the guys. If they caught the guys. So far, they didn’t have much to go on. No matching fingerprints had turned up in the police database. Of course. They were local kids. Not wanted criminals.

  The police sketches had been hung around town and were going to be shown around the high school on Monday. Police were hopeful they’d get some good response there.

  Kacey hoped so, too.

  Every time she heard from Michael, he asked her how she felt. And while she had a suspicion he was asking about her emotions, she told him about the soreness in her upper torso. How it hurt to raise her arms, to get dressed. She was going to have to go into the studio an hour early on Monday for makeup to work magic on her. And when she shaved her legs, she’d found new bruises where the shoes of the kid on her legs had dug into the sides of her ankles.

  Michael didn’t push her for more.

  “You sure you’re up to going into work tomorrow?” he asked on Sunday night. She was out on her balcony, watching people on the street below. She shivered against the cool night air, hugging her sweater closer about her but not wanting to go inside.

  It was getting better already, the claustrophobia that she’d been fighting since Friday night. “I’m sure,” she told him. Work would bring her back full circle. Back to herself. By letting her leave Kacey behind and become Doria. “Daytime TV doesn’t wait.” She’d said the same thing to Lacey and her parents. “I also know I’ll be fine here at home. I sent Lacey back to Santa Raquel tonight. She needs to be with her family.”