"I think it can wait a few minutes longer." To her horror, he began tugging her toward the bed.
"No, Peter. I don't want this. Let me go."
He didn't appear to hear her. His mouth landed on hers as he toppled her onto the bed. Just like a decade ago, she fought and struggled but was powerless against his strength.
He reached for her through the cotton and she gave a muffled shriek just as she saw the door swing open over his shoulder. Relief rushed through her. Tom!
But it wasn't. She saw the stooped, rumpled figure in the doorway and wanted to weep. She only needed this to make this whole scene a bitter repeat of that terrible evening a decade ago—for William to come storming in, slinging accusations and cruel words at her, ordering her to leave Seal Point and his sons alone.
Only this time William wasn't the domineering autocrat he'd been back then. He was only a frail, confused old man.
He stood framed in the door in his striped blue pajamas, his mouth slack and his eyes blank with that lost, baffled look.
An empty shell of a man.
What would Peter do if he saw his father here? She wondered with sudden fear for William's safety. She had to get him away.
Somehow she managed to make eye contact with him. Some glimmer of recognition sparked there as it did at odd intervals, and he opened his mouth to speak to her.
Before he could say anything, she gave a quick shake of her head. "Go," she mouthed to William, praying he would understand her for once. "Go. Find Thomas."
To her vast relief, he disappeared from the doorway. She had no time to be grateful for his safety. One of Peter's hands—the one not holding the gun to her temple—slid to her bare legs and began to climb higher.
In a panic now, heedless of the gun, she struggled harder. Somehow through sheer wild luck, she managed to bring an elbow up and slam it into his face. Blood spurted from his nose and fury erupted on his features. He slapped her and her head whipped back.
The gun returned to her temple, cold metal against her skin. "Do that again and you're dead. Since you've told me where to find the box, I don't have any reason but this to keep you around a little longer."
She shivered at the malice in his voice and her vision dimmed around the edges. As he reached for her again, she couldn't contain one low scream that burst out of her.
An instant later, Peter toppled across her in a boneless heap. The gun dangled from his fingers off the bed then fell to the floor with a thud muffled by the carpet.
For several seconds she didn't know what happened. Why had he stopped? Breathing heavily, she wriggled out from under his dead weight. To her shock, she found William standing by the bed holding one of the heavy bronze sculptures from the hallway, a freeform, eighteen-inch high depiction of a graceful ballerina in midplié.
Had he struck his son with it?
He must have. She could think of no other explanation for Peter to be unconscious. Despite the evidence in front of her, she couldn't manage to believe it.
"Are you okay, Sophie?" William asked formally, so much like the man she knew a decade earlier that she could only stare at him, disoriented.
"I…yes. I think so. Thank you so much!"
He frowned and she thought she saw sorrow crease his features. "That's what I should have done ten years ago. I'm sorry, Sophie. I knew Peter was attacking you that day. I didn't want to believe my son could do such a thing but in my heart I knew. I should never have sent you away like that. I was wrong."
"You saved me this time. That's the important thing." She touched his arm and he mustered a smile.
Before he could say anything else, the door crashed open and Tom rushed in wearing swim trunks, dripping wet.
"What's wrong? I thought I heard a scream." He stood in the doorway, blinking at the scene in front of him. "Dad? Are you okay?"
His gaze jerked beyond her and William to the figure sprawled on the bed behind them. His jaw sagged and the color leached from his face. "Is that…Peter?"
In a matter of seconds, she saw myriad emotions cross his features—disbelief, shock, joy, then a wary unease as he began to realize the implications of finding his brother alive.
Her heart ached for him, for the many horrible truths he would have to face about the brother he had loved.
"What happened? What is he doing here? Is he hurt?"
At the sound of Tom's voice, Peter began to stir. He blinked his eyes open for only a moment before William stepped forward and struck him hard again on the back of the head with the sculpture.
"Dad!" Thomas reached out and yanked the piece from his father and threw it to the floor then grabbed both of William's arms. "Sophie, get out of the way. He's dangerous."
"No. Tom, it's okay! Let him go. He won't hurt me. He was trying to protect me."
"From Peter?"
She didn't know how to answer that without revealing everything. While she was still trying to figure out the words, William spoke and she realized the literate, dignified man who had appeared so briefly was disappearing into senility once more.
"Sophie's my friend. She reads to me and we find Hopkin's roses. I couldn't let Peter hurt her. Not again. Not like he did before."
"What do you mean, like he did before. When did Peter hurt Sophie?"
William said nothing, his eyes blank once more.
"Sophie, what is going on here? When did Peter hurt you?"
She looked away, unable to face him with the truth. She wanted to protect him but she knew the time for lies and evasions was over. "When I was at Seal Point before. Ten years ago. But it doesn't matter now."
She turned back to him, longing more than anything to absorb this pain for him. "We have to call the police, Tom. Peter faked his own death and sent Shelly alone over that cliff. He killed her. I'm sorry."
Chapter 18
Hours later after he had dealt with the police and the FBI and the paramedics called to treat a supposedly dead man for a concussion, Tom went looking for Sophie.
She'd disappeared after giving her statement to the FBI agents, a statement she had insisted on giving in private without him.
Though he still couldn't absorb it all, he knew the gist of what she told them. Tom knew his brother admitted to Sophie that he arranged the hit on Walter then decided he needed to flee when the hit man he hired for the job threatened to expose him.
He knew Peter had also told Sophie that in the process of faking his own death, he had killed his wife to make the accident look more authentic. And that his brother had been hiding in a nearby estate since the accident, coming and going from Seal Point as he looked for a box Sophie had given to first her sister then Ali after Shelly's death.
Inside the box, police had found nearly a million dollars in diamonds sewn into the silk lining. His brother's escape fund, money he had siphoned out of Canfield funds and converted to gems so he could live in comfort wherever he ended up, with a new identity and enough money to set him up in style.
Despite the evidence—and what could be more damning than the very fact that Peter was alive and breathing while Tom himself had seen Shelly's battered and broken body at the crash scene?—he still had a hard time believing any of it could be true.
How could his brother have been so brutally cold-blooded, so ruthless and viciously calculating to murder two people while he managed to conceal his true colors from the world? No matter how hard he tried, Tom couldn't understand how he could share a house with someone until he was eighteen and completely miss the evil lurking inside of him.
So many lives destroyed, all because of one man's unimaginable greed. He couldn't even comprehend the magnitude of it.
He supposed he should be grateful his father wouldn't understand what Peter had done. The shock of finding out his son was a thief and a murderer would have killed William.
The children wouldn't be nearly as easy to deal with. He didn't have the first idea what they could say to Ali and the twins about their father. He was only grateful he and
Sophie wouldn't have to come up with the words yet—before the police even arrived, Mrs. Cope had ushered the still sleepy, baffled children to her sister's ranchhouse in Carmel Valley.
She would keep them there until later that evening, until he and Sophie could work out how they could possibly break the news to them that their father had killed their mother.
Sophie.
One of those lives most devastated was his wife. Whenever he managed to catch a glimpse of her while dealing with the authorities, he had been struck by how fragile she looked. Lost. Shattered.
Her delicate features had been pale, her eyes huge, bruised, as she tried to cope with the enormity of what Peter had done and he knew she had to be thinking of her sister's last moments.
He wanted to go to her then, pull her against him and block out all this ugliness. But he couldn't, not with a house full of law enforcement officers demanding his attention.
And then she disappeared.
He hadn't seen her for at least an hour. With mounting concern, he searched the entire house with no success. Though he didn't really think she would leave without talking to him, he even went so far as to check the garage but all the vehicles were there in a gleaming row.
In the empty Seal Point kitchen, he leaned against the counter and tried to figure out where she might be. It only took a moment for the answer to hit him.
Dawn was still an hour or so away but the light was already changing, the shadows softening, as he hurried through the Seal Point gardens. At the top of the long flight of steps leading to the beach he looked down and saw a flash of white below.
She shouldn't have come down these steps by herself in the dark, he thought as he hurried down, holding carefully to the railing. Not when they were slippery with morning dew. Just thinking about what could have happened to her made his stomach churn.
When he reached the bottom he found her sitting on the same fallen log where she had accepted his proposal a week earlier.
Their gazes met for only an instant before she looked back at the sea, only a vast dark emptiness in the pale half light of approaching sunrise. Though she said nothing, she slid over to make room for him beside her on the log.
He leaned against it. "It's cold down here. How long have you been sitting there?"
"A while." Her voice was rough, gritty. "I'm sorry. I probably should have told you where I was going but you were busy and I…I needed to get out of there for a while. I just couldn't be inside right now, in that house Shelly had loved."
"Would you rather be alone?"
She sent him a sidelong look. "It's your beach."
He settled onto the log. A hungry, early-bird seagull cried out over the slap of the waves and a cool breeze that smelled of the sea kissed his skin with moisture as he sat beside her, trying to find words of comfort that simply didn't exist.
Though only a handful of hours had passed, it seemed like forever since their bodies had tangled together, since she had slept so peacefully in his arms. Another lifetime ago, before he knew of Peter's vast, desolating betrayal.
So many lives destroyed.
"Will you tell me what happened ten years ago?" he asked as the seagull cried out above them. "What did Dad mean when he said he couldn't let Peter hurt you again?"
She was silent for so long he didn't think she was going to answer him. Finally she raised a knee, wrapping her arms around it and resting her chin there. "I'm sure you've figured it out."
"No, I haven't. Not really."
Her sigh was only a whisper above the murmur of the sea. "That night after we…after we made love, when I left you and returned to the house, your brother met me in the hallway," she finally said, her voice subdued. "He'd been drinking and became a little too friendly. When I told him I wasn't interested he became angry. Demanding."
His insides turned cold as she confirmed what he hadn't wanted to believe, his last illusion about his baby brother shattered like thin, crackly ice. "He raped you?"
"He didn't get that far. Before he could, your father came into the room. He accused me of seducing both his sons and ordered me to leave Seal Point. I didn't want to go before Ali's christening but he threatened to tell you and Shelly about finding us together. Peter and me. That's why I left, Tom. Not because of anything you did."
He wasn't sure his brain could sustain any more jolts. "You should have told me."
Her laugh was low and held no amusement. "Told you what? That your brother tried to rape me and your father called me a white-trash slut and ordered me out of his house, so I decided the whole Canfield family probably would be better off without me?"
He said nothing and she sighed again. "Maybe I should have told you. But I didn't think you would have believed me over your brother and your father."
Ten years ago would he have been able to accept that Pete could be capable of attempted rape? He didn't know.
"I also didn't tell you because I knew that if I did, Shelly would find out what a bastard her husband really was. A man who could attack his own sister-in-law while his wife nursed their newborn baby upstairs."
Fury at his brother burned through him again and he closed his eyes and tried to push away images of Sophie fighting off a much stronger Peter.
"I didn't want Shelly to know. She was happy here and I couldn't destroy that for her."
In the pale light he saw a muscle flex in her jaw. "But maybe I should have told her. If I had, she might have left him and then she would still be alive."
She hitched in a sobbing little breath and his heart shattered all over again. He turned and pulled her into his arms. She slid there willingly, her body trembling with cold and reaction, and he rubbed her arms to keep her warm.
After that one sob, she didn't cry again, just pressed her cheek against his shirt and shivered.
"Don't blame yourself for what Peter did," he finally said. "It's not your fault. You can't know what choice Shelly might have made. Even if she had known, she might have stayed with him."
"I know. It just hurts so much."
He said nothing, just tightened his arms around her. They sat that way for a long time, until the sky began to lighten.
Finally she pulled away from him. "So where do we go from here?" she asked, her eyes on the surf licking at the sand.
He drew in a ragged breath. He'd been thinking of little else since the moment he walked into that bedroom and had seen Peter alive and realized the entire world had just shifted.
Though the words gouged his throat like swallowing thumbtacks, he forced himself to say them. "I think you and the children should leave. Go to New York or wherever and start over away from here."
* * *
She stared at him in stunned disbelief, trying to make sense of his words. He wanted them to leave? Of all the things she might have expected him to say, that option would never have occured to her. She wasn't sure her bruised and battered psyche could sustain one more trauma without completely crumbling apart.
"Why?"
It was the only word she could squeeze out of a suddenly raw throat.
"Think about the kids. It was hard enough on them before, dealing with everyone's pity when the whole world thought both their parents died in that crash. How much worse will it be now, once word gets out what really happened?"
"That their father killed their mother?"
He nodded. "I don't want them to bear that stigma."
Those poor children. She wanted to gather them all close right now and hold them tight against her, protect them from the slings and barbs of a world that could be bitterly cruel.
"We can't just walk away and pretend none of this ever happened. That would be far more damaging to them than the pain of learning to deal with it."
"Maybe. But they don't have to cope with it on the Peninsula, where Peter was so prominent. The scandal here will be huge once this hits the media. I hate to think of three innocent children facing that every minute of their lives."
She saw the wisdom of hi
s argument. But the thought of leaving him cut at her like jagged coral drawn across her chest.
"Maybe you're right," she finally said. "Maybe a new start would be best for all of us. I can take them back to my apartment in New York until we can figure out a permanent solution."
They sat close enough together on the log that she felt the ripple as his muscles tightened. His features hardened into a taut mask and he gazed out at the sea.
"Okay," he said quietly, and she thought she heard a raw sliver of pain in his voice.
"I'll take the children anywhere you think is best. But not without you."
He swiveled to face her, his eyes shocked. "Sophie—"
"This time if I leave Seal Point you're coming with me, Tom. I won't accept anything else. The children love you and need you."
She drew upon her last reserve of strength and courage and reached out to touch the warm, solid curve of his jaw, stubbled with morning shadow. "And I love you and need you."
He stared at her and in the pale predawn light she saw shock and uncertainty and then dawning wonder. An instant later he reached for her and kissed her fiercely.
Joy burst inside her like the sun exploding over the Santa Lucia mountains behind them. This was her husband, the man she loved with everything inside of her—her bones, her blood, her heart.
"I love you, Sophie," he said, his voice ragged. "I fell in love with you a decade ago on this same beach. I thought I was over you until you came back. Since you've been here, I've discovered that although it might have been ten years since I tumbled into love with you, in all this time I somehow never managed to climb back out."
"I love you, Tom," she said again. "I never would have married you if I didn't."
He laughed. "Why do you think I asked you? I might have said it was for the children but the truth is, I couldn't bear the thought of living without you."
She smiled against his mouth. All the stress and horror of the last four hours seemed to fade away here in his arms and she wanted to close her eyes and just bask in his love, turn her face to it like William did to the sun when he was out in his garden.
She knew they had a long, rough journey ahead of them. It wouldn't be easy helping Shelly's children cope with their mother's death and what their father had done. But this was one journey she would not have to make alone and the realization filled her with sweet, healing peace.
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