TellMeNoLies

by Delphine Dryden

  Tell Me No Lies

  Delphine Dryden

  Truth & Lies, Book Four

  Tess and Jake have avoided their attraction since they’d first discovered boys and girls were different. But when Tess hits rock bottom, Jake decides the best way to pull her back up is his way…which involves whips, cuffs, ropes, some highly customized workout equipment and a heaping helping of control.

  Tell Me No Lies

  Delphine Dryden

  Chapter One

  Tess slammed her car into gear, grimacing as the unintended force caused the roadster to start off jerkily from the turn. She shifted aggressively, heading down the highway toward home. Leaves flew up in her wake, little red and yellow foul flags, appropriate to the season in more ways than one.

  She had always loved this drive to Cranston. It was a nice, clean stretch of largely empty highway, and most of the drive was lined with trees. In autumn, the turning leaves contrasted vividly against the clear blue sky, and as they fell the canopy opened more each day. By winter, the entire framework would be visible, stark black and elegant. In the spring and summer, the trees formed a cooling canopy overhead, making the drive seem like a trek through an enchanted forest.

  Beautiful, no matter what the season. And the perfect place to give her car a good run, let her baby stretch its legs. She’d purchased the Mercedes used, over a decade old, but she maintained it obsessively and it still ran like a top. Her dream car, her only real vice. Tess pressed her foot down and allowed herself a smile as the vehicle responded instantly and eagerly. She knew it was silly, but she thought the car liked the drive too.

  Today she thought the car more likely to enjoy it than she was, inanimate object or not. Her own appreciation was intellectual, a watery memory of the joy she used to take in this. She felt inanimate herself, dead inside. But she knew the drive was something she should take pleasure in.

  She willed herself to recall the feeling, the rush, and nudged her speed up as if the car’s velocity could counteract the terrible inertia that had gripped her for months. To the speed limit, beyond and then well beyond that. At this speed, she thought idly, it would be the work of a second to ignore a turn and just keep going straight, crash through a headrail, into a tree or a ravine. Almost more difficult not to do that, really.

  There weren’t many sharp turns, though, and no convenient cliffs. Not in this idyllic pastoral landscape. And thinking about things like that was crazy, anyway, and she needed to get her thoughts and her speed under control.

  Wally Stanton, the sheriff in Beasley halfway between the city and Cranston, had ticketed her a few times when she first got the new car. She tended to treat the speed limit signs as challenges, so the sheriff’s attention was hardly surprising. Now he and his two deputies usually let her pass, a kind of diplomatic immunity. She’d written a puff piece for her newspaper about which small towns were perfect for tourists who wanted to see the leaves turn; Beasley had been high on the list, and the resulting boomlet for local businesses during the subsequent Fall Festival had been enough to ensure her safe passage through the town for some time to come.

  Cranston Township had also been on the list, of course, but Tess didn’t count on any leniency from Sheriff Fields. Not since she’d dumped his son Danny shortly before they’d graduated high school. Never mind that Danny had cheated on her during their entire two-year relationship, or that nearly a dozen years had passed since then; Tess would forever be the scarlet woman who led his son on and then hung him out to dry. It wasn’t so much Sheriff Fields himself as it was his wife who hated Tess. The sheriff was somewhat apologetic when he had occasion to speak with Tess, whether pulling her over for a ticket or otherwise. He was a nice man who knew only too well what his son got up to. The boy apparently took after his mother in more ways than one. The father was just trying to get along.

  Small towns, Tess thought, were infinitely more interesting than big cities precisely because of this sort of personal entanglement. Plenty of good fodder there for a novelist, even if she transposed all her characters back into the city and put a gloss of sophistication on them. And in Cranston she’d have blissful quiet and no excuse not to write. Perfect.

  On the other hand, small towns also tended to exert their own gravitational pull, making it hard for the inhabitants to ever truly escape. Perhaps that’s why she sped up on her way to Cranston. It was her own personal black hole, pulling her back in and crushing her in the process. Not that Cranston was a bad place, objectively speaking. Tess’ current concern had more to do with timing, specifically the timing of her move relative to her cousin Allison’s wedding. Despite all logic that might dictate a summer wedding for college professor Allison and her professor husband-to-be Seth, the couple had decided they wanted their ceremony in the fall when the leaves were changing.

  Those damn leaves, with their timeless allure.

  But Tess had made the mistake of telling her family she was finally giving up her job at the paper to write full time, that her new schedule would be flexible and allow her to “help” her cousin Allison in Tess’ capacity as bridesmaid. Apparently that translated to “Tess is out of work, she has plenty of time to come a few weeks early and get all these final details ironed out”.

  She’d stretched the truth, and gained herself some time, by backpedaling and telling everyone she would still be busy until a few weeks before the blessed event. That had given her nearly three weeks to clear out her apartment in the city and move into the tiny house she’d rented near the Cranston Township limits. A big chunk of precious days without questions, without explanations.

  Tess hadn’t told anybody that part yet, that she was actually moving back to Cranston. She wasn’t sure why she wanted to keep it secret until after the fact. It seemed a private thing, a decision she wanted to present as a fait accompli. Nobody’s business but her own, although people were sure to ignore that stricture once they found out she was here. She might have made plenty of visits home over the years, but she’d made it no secret that she was glad to get out of that place, that she was a city girl and always would be.

  She needed at least a few weeks to figure out what to tell anybody who asked her why she’d returned…because at the moment she had no fucking clue.

  * * * * *

  Tess arrived at her new cottage in good time, shortly before sundown. The house was simple and cheery, canary yellow with crisp white trim. She opened the door with a sigh of relief, looking around the empty spaces and finding the unsullied airiness extremely satisfying. A living room with a tiny kitchen visible through an archway. An open door on one wall that Tess knew led to the single bedroom, with attached bath. Dark hardwood floors, walls a soft buttercream color. Simple. Restful. Easy. Anybody would feel calm and well balanced here. She could too.

  And this time, she was finally here to stay. Her place in Indianapolis was packed up for good, the boxes all loaded on the moving van. Hopefully they’d arrive in a few days, so Tess could sleep in a regular bed again.

  She’d spent the last weekend here at the cottage, just a trial run, and had felt like she was camping. Partly because of the sleeping bag, but also because of the quiet solitude of the woods and being awakened by raucous birdsong. When she’d tried to write, the quiet had gotten to her. But then, she was used to tuning out a lot of noise at home in the city. Probably she just needed practice.

  After her sample weekend of solitude, she’d driven back to the city to supervise the packing and ended up camping out there too. The packing took less time than she’d expected, and while she’d planned to leave the bed linens unpacked until the last minute, she found they looked untidy, a loose end. She was ready to be done. So rather than use them for another few nights, she folded and boxed them. Then she waited a
mong the boxes for three days, sleeping in her sleeping bag on the couch, eating takeout and staring at her ominously empty laptop screen. By the time the movers had come and gone, she felt as if she’d spent a year on that couch.

  The cottage would be better. A new beginning, a refreshing breeze through her mind. She brought in her sleeping bag and pillow from the car, her laptop case and a backpack stuffed with some essential clothes and toiletries. Two bags of groceries, mostly snacks and frozen goods, along with a lone set of dishes she’d purchased at the discount store. A single folding wood-slat chair that could move out to the front porch once her real furniture arrived. It was all that would fit into her two-seater. The rest of her things would arrive in a few days, but for now she was looking forward to roughing it in a little more comfort than she had during her last visit. The chair, groceries and shampoo raised the standard from spartan to merely minimal. She would even tether her phone to get wireless.

  “Lucky it has a microwave,” she murmured as she stowed groceries in the freezer. “Talking to yourself already? Maybe it’s time to head to the pound and start stocking up on cats.”

  The words sounded too hollow in the unfurnished house. When Tess laughed at herself, that rang false too, a harsh note against the mellow afternoon silence. No city noises, no traffic or sirens. She heard a crow cawing somewhere outside. Then more silence. Just as silent as it had been the previous weekend.

  Just as stifling as her apartment had become.

  “Jesus.”

  She had wanted uninterrupted time to think. Now the quiet mocked her. Thoughts scrabbled to the surface and she didn’t want to think any of them, any more than she had in the city. She felt the usual self-protective response, the thick haze settling over her brain, slurring her mind but keeping the bad things at bay. Deadening, deadened, dead. Exactly what she’d felt when she looked around her empty apartment in town and turned the key in the lock for the last time. Exactly what she’d hoped to leave behind by coming here.

  Maybe she just needed some time to settle in.

  Tess pulled out her iPod and some cheap drugstore checkout-line speakers and set it all up on the kitchen counter. The tinny noise filled the awful void she suddenly dreaded. Silly pop from the eighties, because girls just wanted to have fun. Tess sang along as she unrolled her sleeping bag.

  The first knock startled the hell out of her, and she squeaked out a screech through the lyrics, like a record needle scratching off the track. The music jangled on in the background as she approached the front door warily, trying to peer through the adjacent window without being seen.

  Knock knock knock. Louder this time. “Hello?”

  A man’s voice, sounding puzzled and vaguely familiar.

  Impatient. What if I’d been in the bathroom or something?

  Tess knew she had to answer. Her car was barely visible from the main road but was in plain view to anybody standing on the front porch. The guy would know somebody was here.

  Knock knock. “Tess?”

  “Oh fuck me…”

  She twisted the deadbolt and yanked at the doorknob, glaring out into the sunset at the one person in the world she least wanted to see.

  “So it is you,” he said, seeming surprised but pleased. “What are you doing here?”

  Jake Hogan. Why did it have to be him?

  “What the fuck are you doing here?”

  He held up his hands, made a calming gesture. “I live across the road. I’d heard there was a new renter but the house seemed empty all week, so when I finally saw the light on I came over to introduce myself. Then I saw your car and—”

  “You’re my neighbor? I didn’t even know anybody else lived on this road. Great. Well isn’t this just fucking peachy?” That had been the entire point, after all—solitude. She already had a few choice words in mind for the realtor who’d steered her here under false pretenses.

  “Technically I live on McAdam, it runs past the other side of my property. That’s what my address says. I always come in the back way, though, since it’s closer to the house. There’s a gravel drive about fifty yards past yours. So you’re back in town now? I had no idea—”

  “Neither does anybody else.” Tess glanced furtively past Jake’s shoulders, as if any other traffic were likely to come along the deserted byway, then stood aside to let him in, closing the door firmly behind him. “Look, I really need you to keep quiet about this for a few weeks, okay? Just forget I’m here.”

  “Why, are you on the lam or something? Is there a story in it?”

  He said it lightly but she turned on him with suspicion. “There is no news here, Jake. I want a couple weeks to myself. Not even my dad knows I’m here yet. They aren’t expecting me until the week before the wedding. And nobody knows I’m moving here. It’s…a surprise.”

  Not only was Jake the guy everybody had expected Tess to end up with, he was the editor of the local newspaper, heir to its ownership. He’d started working with his father a few years ago, slowly transitioning into the primary role; he’d left a prestigious editorial post in Chicago to do so. Jake would never keep her secret. He was in business to share information, not hide it.

  Of course, he was also a friend, and not really in the business of spreading ordinary gossip. But Tess’ frustration and tension spoke louder than her sense on the matter, and she clenched her fists at the prospect of imminent outing.

  A new selection of happy girl-bop started up in the background. They had the beat, but it was a terrible soundtrack for the current scene.

  “I don’t suppose I could get a, ‘Hey, Jake, could you do me a favor?’” he asked wryly. “‘Could you please not tell anyone I’m here?’”

  “Pretty please? Do I have to put a cherry on top too?” Tess sassed, then shrugged and looked down at her feet, embarrassed by her outburst. She was wearing rainbow-striped socks. One of the big toes was wearing thin. “Please?”

  Pride kept her from jerking her chin away when Jake lifted it with a finger. His deep-blue eyes studied her, and he seemed to be mulling something over before he finally asked, “What’s wrong, Tess?”

  Everything.

  “Nothing.”

  His finger shifted, pressing briefly against her lips. He looked at her sternly, shaking his head. “What’s wrong?”

  When he lifted his finger, she hated herself a little for wanting it back. It had been months since a man had touched her. Years since she’d craved a man’s touch. But part of her had always wanted Jake that way, even as she’d rejected the notion. Jake was a hometown boy, the easy road to nowhere, and Tess was headed somewhere.

  They had been like peas in a pod as little kids. But as they grew up, Tess came to think of Jake as part of Cranston, part of the world she wanted to leave behind. She didn’t want to be the quarterback’s girl, get married out of high school, have babies who played with the babies of her high school friends. Didn’t want to get lost in a man, as she surely would get lost in Jake if she ever gave in to what she felt for him. So they’d remained just friends. She wanted more, more. She wanted out. And she’d gotten out.

  As it happened, so had Jake. He hadn’t been part of Cranston, after all, but his own person with his own ambitions. He’d gone farther than she had. Yet here they both were. Orbiting the black hole.

  “I don’t know,” she admitted, suddenly exhausted by that simple truth. She was so sick of not knowing what the fuck was wrong with her. And nobody ever wanted to take I don’t know as an answer. “I just…I needed some time to think. And not have to figure out all that wedding crap. If I had to hear another word about some stupid shit like whether the guest book placeholder ribbon should be merlot or aubergine, I was going to have to smack someone.”

  Not that she’d actually heard much of that. Allison turned to Lindy for most of her color and style consultation needs, to Marielle for wedding etiquette, to Seth for everything else.

  She always forgot how tall Jake was when she hadn’t seen him in a while. At least a h
ead taller than Tess herself, and Tess was a good five foot eight or thereabouts. He was standing close enough that she had to tip her head to meet his gaze. She could smell a hint of aftershave and the leather bomber jacket he was wearing.

  Does his skin smell that way too? Leather and spice and everything nice? If I licked him, what would he taste like?

  “So you’re Allison’s maid of honor?”

  “No. She didn’t want to choose between me and Lindy. It’s some girl named Marielle she plays computer games with. A friend of hers and Seth’s. Not a girl, I guess,” she corrected, air-quoting “girl”. “A math professor. But she looks about twelve.”

  “You don’t approve?” Jake guessed.

  Tess shrugged, moving away to turn off the music player. “I don’t really know her. Anyway, it’s Ally’s choice,” she said over her shoulder. She told herself her cousin hadn’t wanted to hurt her or Lindy, Tess’ younger sister, by choosing one over the other. But deep down, she thought Allison preferred this new friend. Other than emails about wedding plans, Tess had barely talked to her once-close cousin in months.

  Or her little sister, for that matter. Lindy was too occupied with her artwork and her burgeoning accessory-design career, and with her new boyfriend Richard. Or rather, her fiancé, since they’d announced their engagement at Halloween. Allison guessed Seth’s brother Drew would be next to propose. They were dropping like flies. And they were all so horribly, horribly happy.

  “I thought all that planning business was the maid of honor’s job.”

  “It is. But you know, there’s always stuff that has to be done locally. Ally doesn’t have a mom to do that for her. And Marielle’s stuck in Dinsdale, teaching classes, so…” She gestured to herself, waved vaguely in the direction of town. “I have all this free time on my hands.”

  He scanned the room. “So I see. Hey, let’s talk about it over at my place. I have chairs. And wine.”

  Her shoulders slumped. “Is that the price I have to pay for your silence?”