The Man Behind the Pinstripes

by Melissa McClone

  A weight pressed down on Caleb’s chest, squeezing the air out of his lungs and the blood out of his heart. “How many fresh starts did you give my father?”

  “If your father were alive today, I’d be giving him another chance the way I’m doing with Becca. That’s what you do when you love someone.”

  “Rebecca Taylor is a complete stranger.”

  “To you. Not to me. I care what happens to her,” Grams said. “And I’m much more interested in the woman she is today than the girl she was at eighteen.”

  Caleb pressed his lips together. This wasn’t how he’d imagined the conversation going. “You don’t know if she’s told you the truth. Read the report, then you can decide—”

  “I’ve made my decision about Becca. Nothing is going to change my mind, but you should talk to her about this and appease your concerns.”

  “You’re that sure about her.”

  “Yes,” Grams said. “I want you to be sure about Becca, too. Talk to her about your concerns. Let her explain what happened.”

  That would be a complete waste of time.

  Nothing Becca had to say would change his mind.

  Absolutely nothing.

  Grams’s eyes implored him. “Please, Caleb. Speak with Becca. For me.”

  * * *

  Screw Caleb Fairchild for delving into her business.

  Becca balled her hands. The tenth floor of Fair Face’s corporate headquarters was the last place she wanted to be tonight.

  “Mr. Fairchild will see you now,” a middle-aged uniformed security guard said. “Follow me.”

  Becca walked down an empty hallway. The fifth draft of the business plan inside her gray-and-black messenger bag bumped against her hip.

  She adjusted the bag’s strap. She wasn’t even sure why she’d brought the plan along. Maybe to show Caleb she’d been working, not plotting a crime against his grandmother.

  As if he would believe her.

  She glanced at the guard. “It’s quiet.”

  “Most folks have gone home,” he said.

  The carpet muted their footsteps, unlike the correction facility where sound echoed. Instead of passing walled cells with solid metal doors and slits for windows, she passed offices with mahogany wood doors and brass nameplates. No one whispered her name or called her something nasty. No one shot dagger-filled stares or tried to beat her up when the guards weren’t looking.

  But the memories hit her hard. The sounds. The smells. The bone-chilling cold she could never seem to shake even during the long, hot summers.

  Becca crossed her arms over her chest.

  She wanted to forget about all that. Not relieve the worst three years of her life to appease Caleb Fairchild’s curiosity. But she would talk to him...for Gertie’s sake.

  At the end of the hallway, the guard pointed to an office with its door open. A light was on inside. “That’s Mr. Fairchild’s office.”

  She wondered if Mr. Fairchild had asked the guard to stick around outside his office while they spoke. After all, she was a hardened criminal. She forced a tight smile. “Thanks.”

  She entered the office.

  Big. She hadn’t expected the office to be this large, complete with a round table surrounded by six chairs, a couch and coffee table, a large desk, chairs, bookcases along her right side and floor to ceiling windows on the two far corner walls.

  Then again, Caleb Fairchild was the CEO.

  He sat at his desk, a portrait in concentration as he stared at his computer monitor.

  Caleb looked every bit the handsome business executive—if you liked that type. Even though it was past quitting time, every strand of his hair was in place, his tie knotted tightly around his neck and his sleeves unrolled. The only thing missing was his suit jacket.

  He looked clean cut, respectable and proper. But as with Whit who’d gotten her in so much trouble, Becca knew looks could be deceiving. Caleb was a shark waiting to attack and take her out. Exactly the sort she tried to avoid. But tonight she was venturing into his water without a harpoon or any way to defend herself except her word against his suspicions.

  It wasn’t going to be pretty.

  Though he still hadn’t noticed her, so maybe she had a chance of surviving. She cleared her throat.

  Caleb’s cool, assessing gaze met hers.

  A chill shivered down her spine.

  He stood. “Good evening, Becca.”

  She saw nothing good about it. He had some nerve hiring a P.I. As if she would have lied about her past to his grandmother. She’d dealt with enough liars and fakes growing up and while she was in jail to ever want to be one.

  Becca bit the inside of her cheek.

  “Close the door so we have some privacy,” he said.

  She hadn’t seen another person in the building except the security guard. Guess he would be hanging around out in the hallway. Figured. She closed the door.

  “Thanks.” He motioned to one of the two black leather chairs in front of the large desk. “Have a seat.”

  Standing wouldn’t give her that much of an advantage over sitting seeing as she was out of her element and on his home turf. She crossed his office, removed her messenger bag then sat, sinking into a chair. She ran her fingertips along the buttery soft leather. This furniture was much nicer than anything in her parents’ house. “Gertie said you had questions for me.”

  His gaze didn’t waver from Becca’s. “You don’t waste any time.”

  Her temperature increased. No doubt stress from his hawklike gaze. He saw her as a vulture circling over his grandmother. “You’ve made it clear you’re a busy man.”

  He walked around the front of the desk and sat on the edge.

  Needing something to do with her hands, Becca picked dog hair off her skirt.

  She’d spent an hour trying to figure out what to wear, finally deciding on one of her dog-show suits—teal skirt, matching three-quarter-sleeve jacket and a lace-trimmed camisole underneath. She wasn’t sure what the proper attire was for explaining one’s prison record, but this was better than a pair of Daisy Duke shorts and a camisole.

  “Tell me how you ended up in prison,” he said matter-of-factly.

  Becca took a deep breath. She glanced around the room, not really seeing anything. She took another breath, then met his gaze directly. “I was an idiot.”

  He drew back with confusion in his eyes. “Excuse me?”

  “I did something really stupid.” Becca rubbed her face. “I fell for a guy. I thought he liked me, so I trusted him. Big mistake.”

  One corner of Caleb’s mouth rose, but she wouldn’t call it a smile. Not a half-one, either. “You’re not the first to be led astray by their heart.”

  He sounded as if he’d been there, done that, got the T-shirt. But being led astray and wearing prison garb for three years were totally different things.

  Becca had been so naive to think a rich boy like Whitley would want her—a girl from the trailer park. Yet he’d made her feel so...different. Special. Glamorous. Trying to be cool had enticed her to be reckless. She raised her chin. “I should have known better. Whitley was the brother of a girl I’d gotten to know through dog showing. They were wealthy. I wasn’t. But Whit didn’t seem to care.”

  “Whit is the man.”

  “Boy,” she clarified. “I couldn’t believe when he asked me out for a smoothie. I wanted him to like me, so I tried to be the type of girl he’d want to date, even if that wasn’t who I was. I fell...hard.”

  So hard she’d found herself thumbing through a bridal magazine at the grocery store and imagining what color dresses the bridesmaids should wear. “I’d recently graduated high school. It was summertime. We went out almost every night and then...”

  Memories hit strong and fast. The fl
ashing of red and blue lights. The accusations. The tears. The handcuffs scraping her wrists. Being read her Miranda rights.

  Someone touched her shoulder.

  She jumped.

  Caleb held up his hands as if surrendering. His eyes were dark. Concerned. “Sorry. You looked miles away for a second.”

  Not miles, years. She stood, backing away from him. “Just...remembering.”

  “This is hard for you.”

  Becca nodded, not trusting her voice. A compassionate person would tell her to stop.

  Not Caleb.

  He didn’t say a word, but remained perched on his desk as if he might attack at any minute. Not so much a shark now—more like a dangerous hawk ready to swoop down on his prey.

  On her.

  A thrill fissured through her. So not the reaction she should have around him.

  Becca shouldn’t react to him at all. Or notice all these little details about him.

  She hated that she did.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  BECCA WALKED TO one of the bookcases, the one closest to the office’s door and farthest away from Caleb. Oh, he was handsome and could turn on the charm faster than she could blink. Tonight she saw an edge to him she hadn’t see before, an edge that appealed to her.

  But she knew his type all too well.

  Whatever she said tonight would fall on deaf ears. He’d been suspicious of her since the day they met. Nothing was going to change his mind about her.

  He’d likely agreed to attend the dog show, not to see the new products in action, but to watch her because of her criminal past.

  “I’m not a bad person,” she said.

  “I never said you were.”

  But he hadn’t said she wasn’t, either.

  No one cared about the truth. “Guilty” was all that mattered to people. What happened hadn’t been forgotten. And wouldn’t be. It followed her everywhere.

  Or had until she’d met Gertie.

  Caleb wouldn’t be as understanding. That was why this was so hard for Becca.

  She noticed a black-framed photo of him and another man. Both men were attractive. The other guy wasn’t as handsome as Caleb, but as fit with a muscular V-shaped physique. A triangle folded American flag with military ribbons sat on the shelf above the picture.

  Becca realized she was procrastinating. Might as well get this over with. She looked over at Caleb.

  His dark gaze met hers. “Take your time.”

  “I don’t want to drag this out any longer.” Telling him what had happened was the only thing that would loosen the tension in her neck. “Whit asked if I wanted to hang out with him and some of his friends. I said yes, thinking things must be getting serious if he wanted to introduce me to his friends.”

  “A reasonable assumption.”

  “Reasonable, but wrong,” she admitted. “He was interested in me, but not as a girlfriend. I was being set up to be the patsy. The scapegoat. The one they could blame if their plans to break in to the bank president’s house to steal cash to buy drugs went south.”

  “They don’t sound like the Honor Society kids.”

  “Some were. Others were jocks. But they were no better than a gang of hoodlums. They just wore designer clothes and drove nice cars.”

  “You were part of it.”

  “No. I had no idea what they were planning.” She forced herself not to make a face at him and read the titles of the business books on the shelf instead. A few military strategy type books were mixed in with the marketing and finance titles. “Whit said we were going to hop the fence and go hot-tubbing while the guy was on vacation. I was wearing my bikini underneath my clothing and had a towel crammed in my bag.”

  But not even those things, including the panties and bra she’d brought to change into, had mattered to the police.

  “It wasn’t until we were inside the house and not in the backyard that I realized what they were planning. But I thought Whit liked me, so I...”

  Becca bit her lip. She couldn’t bring herself to say the words.

  “You went along,” Caleb finished for her.

  She nodded. Embarrassed, regretful and ashamed. “I was trying to fit into Whit’s world. I was afraid to speak up, so I just followed his lead.”

  “I take it things didn’t turn out as planned.”

  “No one knew about the high-tech security system in the house. The police caught us inside, and then...”

  Her chest tightened with Whit’s betrayal. Becca took a breath and another. It didn’t help. “Everyone turned on me. Pointed their fingers at me. Blamed me. They said it had been all my idea. I had picked the lock. Stolen the money.”

  “But the police should have—”

  “The police believed them. Why wouldn’t they? My dad had spent time in the county jail for getting into a fight. I was the resident trailer trash. No one was surprised to find me involved in something like this. Not to mention my fingerprints were all over the evidence.”

  Caleb’s eyes widened. “How did that happen?”

  She understood the disbelief in his tone. Her parents and lawyer had sounded the same way. “Whit had me wrapped around his little finger. Open the door, gorgeous. Hold this tool, beautiful. Have you ever seen this much money before? Want to hold it?”

  She hadn’t, and she did.

  “But the other kids were accessories to the crime,” he said. “Whit, too.”

  “True, but they had high-priced attorneys who managed to get the charges reduced or dropped.”

  “That doesn’t seem fair.”

  “It wasn’t. But life has never been fair to people like me.” Caleb’s privileged upbringing would affect one’s perspective as much as growing up in a trailer park had hers. “Luck wasn’t on my side, either. I’d turned eighteen two days before, so was legally considered an adult. My parents couldn’t afford a lawyer so I was assigned a public defender. Due to the evidence and witnesses...”

  “Whit and his friends cut a deal.”

  Becca nodded. “My lawyer recommended a plea bargain.”

  “You took it.”

  “I wanted to fight the charges, but my parents thought three years in prison was better than the alternative, so I did what my lawyer wanted.”

  Caleb didn’t say anything.

  That didn’t surprise her. She stared at a photograph of Caleb surrounded by bikini-clad supermodels. There was another picture of the Fairchild family—Caleb, a young woman who must be Courtney, Gertie and her late husband. All four people looked so happy and carefree with bright smiles on their faces.

  Becca wondered what it would be like to feel so happy and content. Just once she would like to know.

  “You must have been scared,” Caleb said.

  “Terrified.” She still was some days, but he didn’t need to know that. “I understand if you don’t believe me. But it’s what happened.”

  “A hard lesson to learn.”

  She walked back to the chair, but remained standing. “I wouldn’t wish the three years I spent locked up on anybody. Not even the kids who set me up me that night.”

  “Regrets?”

  “I know people say you shouldn’t have regrets, but if I could go back to change that one night I would. Being in jail...it sucked. But I learned my lesson. I’m not going to try to be someone I’m not ever again.”

  She waited for him to ask the inevitable questions about whether she was part of a gang or if she had a girlfriend or something else he might have seen on television.

  “I’m sorry,” he said finally.

  Her gaze jerked up. “Excuse me.”

  “I’m sorry you had to go through that.”

  She didn’t say anything. She wasn’t sure what to think of his words or the sen
timent behind them.

  “So what happened after you got out of jail?” he asked.

  “I tried to start where I left off. But it wasn’t as easy as I thought that it would be.”

  “Why not?”

  “I kept filling out applications and being turned down for job interviews. Even though I’d done my time, people still saw me as a criminal.”

  He shifted positions on the desk. “What did you do?”

  “I’d been planning to go to college to become a vet tech before all this happened, so applied to a few programs and eventually got accepted to one. I used the scholarships I’d won through dog showing and worked every odd job I could find to cover tuition. But after I had my degree, I ran into the same problems as before. I couldn’t find a veterinary clinic back home that would hire me.”

  “Your past.”

  “My past is very much my present. I fear it always will be. As our conversation tonight proves once again.”

  He stared at the carpet.

  Feeling guilty? Becca hoped so, and she wasn’t going to back down. “They say you can’t be tried twice for the same crime, but that’s only in a court of law. People don’t forget, and they hold a grudge. I moved to Boise because I thought I’d have more opportunities here.”

  “Have you?”

  “A few,” she said. “I found a job at an animal hospital. A professional dog handler I’d known through 4-H as a kid and as a junior handler in AKC took pity on me and asked if I wanted to be her apprentice. That’s how I met Gertie.”

  “My grandmother doesn’t care about your past.”

  “Gertie is one in a million.” Thinking about Gertie made Becca want to smile for the first tine since she’d left the estate earlier. “I wish more people were like her. But they’re not.”

  They were more like Caleb.

  That was one reason she preferred the company of dogs to people. Dogs were more loyal, understanding, loving.

  “Any other questions?” she asked. “I’m happy to give you the name of my former probation officer. Though he can’t guarantee I’m not trying to scam your grandmother.”

  A blush colored Caleb’s cheeks. “She told you.”