“Touch my back?”
“Yes. Just your back. Me. Touching it.”
“Would Colin and Chantel be outside with us?”
“Not my first choice.”
“How magical do you think this touch of yours is?” She was grinning. Probably still half suspected he was kidding.
Fine, for the moment, since it kept her open to the conversation.
“The back can be quite an erogenous zone,” he told her. “And yet, touching it is completely noninvasive, too. Plus, you wouldn’t even have to see me. You could sit there and stare at your pool. Or you could close your eyes. Just feel the tips of my fingers on your back. Writing you a letter.”
A woman he’d once dated had told him she and her girlfriend used to do that, write on each other’s backs, when they had sleepovers. He couldn’t remember the woman, but the story was one he’d never forgotten.
“Then there’s the foot. Another noninvasive place and yet one of the most erogenous parts of the body.”
“The foot.”
He had a feeling the repetition was more because he was engaging her senses than because she doubted him. She was shaking a little.
But there was no fear in her gaze. No hint of distaste as she slid her tongue along her lips.
“You’ve heard of reflexology?” When she nodded, he went on. “They say the foot has pulse points that lead to almost every part of the body. You can be fully dressed, just like you are now. Take off one sandal, and I could help you feel pleasure in places you’ve never felt pleasure before.”
He was sure he could do it. Not sure, however, that he could do it for her.
But he was positive he wanted to try.
She wasn’t giving him her foot. But she was sitting there. Meeting his eyes, with a slow smile forming on her face.
“And then there’s—”
A hard knock sounded on his front door.
They looked at each other.
“You expecting someone?” she asked him.
“No.”
Hunter was already making his way to the front room when the knock sounded again. It was loud. Commanding. Not like a neighbor coming to borrow a cup of sugar.
He looked through the front window first. If someone was up to no good...
Julie had her phone out, with text messaging open.
“It’s a police car,” he said, staring at her.
“I swear, Hunter, I sent her a smiley face.”
“She must’ve asked them to send someone anyway.”
She frowned, as she went toward the door. “No, as long as I text that things are fine, she wouldn’t. Maybe, if for some reason my brother was concerned, he’d call 911 or try to get Chantel to order a patrol car. Though this is too much even for him. He just...he’s always blamed himself for not watching out for me better.”
She pulled open the door. “It’s okay, I’m—”
She quieted abruptly as an officer pushed past her. “Hunter Rafferty?” the man asked with not the least hint of friendly cop in his tone.
“Yes?” Hunter stepped forward. He turned to her, then shrugged. They must be playing some kind of game with him.
A trick for the trickster.
“You need to come with me, sir. You’re under arrest.”
“What for?” he asked, half smiling. He glanced at Julie who looked horrified.
But she’d just told him how Chantel could have someone stop by for a welfare check. He hadn’t read either her or Colin as pranksters at all, but the night before, Julie had talked about how, before the rape, she’d been a pistol. Taunting and teasing her brother mercilessly. Was this some kind of joke the three of them had come up with? An attempt to fit into his prankster world? It made no sense, but was all his shocked mind had come up with.
“Assault.” The uniformed cop pulled out a set of handcuffs and slapped them on Hunter’s wrists.
“I didn’t hurt anyone,” he was saying as the man led him through the door, playing along. For Julie’s sake.
Not his idea of a fun time. But at least she was trying to join his jokester world...
“Hunter!” Julie ran up to him, cold stark fear on her face. “I’m phoning Colin. He’s a lawyer. Don’t say anything, not a word, to anyone. Not until he gets there...”
“But I didn’t do anything,” Hunter said. He was still kind of grinning. But a knot of lead sank to the bottom of his gut.
“Don’t say a word,” she told him again.
And the cop led him away from her.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
CHANTEL TOLD JULIE where they were taking Hunter. She stayed on the phone until Julie met her and Colin there. They were waiting outside in the parking lot.
Chantel spoke first. “He’s being booked on charges of sexual assault.”
Julie’s gaze flew to her brother. “Colin?”
He nodded.
“Have you talked to him?”
“Not yet. But they know he’s got a lawyer. Anything he says without me present will be inadmissible.”
She nodded, feeling a little better, but not much.
And then it hit her.
Sexual assault.
Her gaze flew back to Colin’s. It was as though he’d been waiting. “I need to know, Julie. Has he given you any reason to feel uncomfortable? Done anything that—”
“No!” Hunter was the least aggressive man she’d ever met. If you didn’t count the number of times he’d asked her out before she’d finally agreed to attend the roast with him.
“And he’s never made a move on you?”
He’d held her hand. And talked about touching her toes.
“I saw him that night at the pool, remember? When you were crying and he had you backed up to the fireplace.”
Yes. Right. Colin was confusing her.
Sexual assault.
“Who made the claim?” she asked. “What do they say he did?”
“I don’t know the answer to the first question yet. He’s alleged to have forced sexual advances on a woman under false pretenses. Touched her inappropriately. Even had intercourse with her. Multiple times.”
“False pretenses? What’s that?”
“Not a formal charge,” Chantel said, pushing a strand of hair away from Julie’s face. Touching her. Gently. Reassuringly.
Chantel had been the one to first reach into Julie’s hell and bring her out. Chantel, who’d known her own life of pain. Having had her best friend murdered in front of her, shooting the guy who’d done it but not in time to save her friend’s life.
“There aren’t any formal charges at this point,” her sister-in-law continued. “Just a warrant for his arrest. To bring him in for questioning.”
“Someone, a woman, says Hunter raped her?”
“She says he forced himself on her.”
He raped someone? Multiple times?
Julie dashed to the far side of her car, but that was as far as she got before she puked up the salad she’d just shared with him.
* * *
FOR ALL HIS troubled youth, the mistakes he’d made, the chances he’d taken, the night he’d spent in juvie, Hunter had never been inside an adult jail cell. It felt worse than anything he could have imagined.
But he had no difficulty imagining how his father must have felt, a respected doctor, sitting on a bench with druggies and smelly alcoholics.
Confused. Angry as hell. And scared.
Hell, yes. Scared.
No one was telling him what was going on. He had to wait for his lawyer.
Colin Fairbanks.
He wasn’t putting a lot of faith in the guy. Colin had probably left him there to rot. Whisking his sister as far from him—the bastard, Hunter�
�as he could. Hunter remembered the force with which Colin had come at him that night at the pool. He figured he was lucky if all the guy did was whisk Julie away.
Sexual assault. Sexual assault?
Who on earth... Why... His head hurt as he tried to recall every woman he’d come in contact with over the past ten years of his life. Had he ever been too eager? Even a little? Too drunk to take care?
He’d swear not.
He was sure not.
But he’d partied a lot. Could there be a night he’d had too much to drink, a night he couldn’t remember?
Not since high school.
He was sure of that.
Unless someone had slipped something in his drink...
The idea scared the shit out of him all over again.
Made him sick.
And even those thoughts weren’t the worst ones.
Julie. She would’ve had it confirmed by now that there’d been a warrant out for his arrest because of a sexual assault charge.
Oh, God. He’d lost her. Right when he was so close to finally having someone worth sticking around for...
“Rafferty? Your lawyer’s here to see you.” The uniformed young woman who came to unlock the cell didn’t look him in the eye. I’m innocent, he wanted to tell her, but he didn’t waste his breath.
She probably heard the same every day. All day.
She wouldn’t believe him.
No one would.
Least of all, Colin Fairbanks.
Funny, though, it wasn’t Colin he was worried about. Or even himself. It was Colin’s sister—and the thought of what Julie must be going through—that had him feeling like he had chains around his throat.
* * *
LEAVING JULIE’S CAR for Colin to drive, Chantel had taken Julie to The Lemonade Stand. She’d offered to take her wherever she needed to be.
That was where she’d wanted to go.
By the time she arrived, she was calm. Feeling empty. Dead inside. But calm. She could walk just fine—and went straight to Lila’s office.
Where she sat, sometimes with Chantel, sometimes with both women, until Colin called to tell them that Hunter was out on bail.
“He didn’t do it,” she told the two women who’d been her backbone when she’d lost her own. Who’d given her legs to stand on when hers wouldn’t work. “I know he didn’t do it.”
She did know. She knew Hunter.
“You ever hear him mention some woman named Mandy?” Chantel asked. She’d spoken with Colin the longest. “She’s the one pressing the charges.”
She nodded. Mandy. He’d had sex with her, by his own admission.
The woman had come looking for him that one time...
She hadn’t seemed ready just to walk away, either.
Another memory. A few nights ago, on the phone, she’d heard a noise—he’d said he’d thrown his keys on the counter. Then there’d been voices—he’d said music.
Had he been in a bar? Someplace meeting Mandy?
Was he playing them both?
That was what men, did, right? Went for as many women as they could get? Talked about them. Took pride in getting them.
She shook her head.
Her father had been a one-woman man. There’d never been any doubt about that. Her mother had told her shortly before she died. She’d tried to convince Julie to make sure her father didn’t feel guilty about dating again. She didn’t want to think of him living the rest of his life alone.
Colin was definitely a one-woman man.
David Smyth. He’d dated a lot of pretty girls, but had chosen her. He’d married someone else. And then continued to take what he wanted from other women.
He’d been a charmer.
Hunter was a charmer.
Admittedly shy of commitment, he’d never been in a serious, one-woman relationship.
He didn’t lie about who he was.
Couldn’t even see his own value.
He’d talked about touching her feet—so she could keep her clothes on and feel pleasure.
He’d talked about physical pleasure with a woman who’d told him she’d been raped and never wanted to have sex. Yet there he was, trying to talk her into trying.
Because he wanted it that badly?
Or cared that much?
“He says Mandy called him the other night. That he told her he didn’t want to hang out with her anymore. He said talking to her was like talking to someone he’d never met before. She was contradicting everything she’d ever told him about what she wanted and needed. Talking about how she’d been waiting around for him to be ready to have a girlfriend. And how it wasn’t right that when he reached that point he didn’t choose her.”
Chantel was looking at her.
So was Lila.
“Colin says it’s pretty clear, based on her statement, that she’s doing this to get back at him,” Chantel added.
“He’s on his way here,” Lila told them. “Edward’s already here, with Joy.”
“Edward,” she said. “Good.”
But Joy shouldn’t see this. Any of it.
Not that Hunter shouldn’t be around the little girl. He should. He was great for her.
He hadn’t done anything wrong.
Right now, he needed Edward. Not Joy.
“He wants to see you,” Chantel said to Julie.
“No.”
“Julie.” Lila sat beside her. Put a hand on her shoulder.
She shook her head. Felt a tear drop on the hands at war with each other in her lap.
“I can’t,” she said.
“I understand.” Lila’s words were firm, reassuring. “And you don’t have to. Your fear is completely understandable.”
“I’m not afraid of him.”
“Then what?”
She looked up at Chantel first, then Lila. “It’s like you said. Sometimes things happen to people, change them, and the change is irrevocable. That’s me. I’ve got issues. I know about them. I’m on top of them. I’m in counseling to learn how to live with them. But the truth is, I’m going to have them for the rest of my life. And while I know in my heart that Hunter didn’t do this, my mind...it keeps presenting doubts.”
She could feel the storm coming. Knew she needed to bury her head and cry it out. “I thought I had to listen to my head. That it was my heart that had let me down. But it wasn’t. It was my head all along. I can’t do this to Hunter, can’t see him again. It wouldn’t be fair to him. Or to me, either. I doubted him. I still doubt him. There’s always going to be that ‘what if.’”
“Don’t you think that whether or not he lives with that is his choice? If he wants to take it on...”
“Do you think it is?” She turned to Lila. “You said yourself there are some people who’ve been so changed by life that they aren’t meant for partner relationships.”
Lila looked shocked. And shaken.
Julie took that as her answer.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
HUNTER’S HEART FELT as if it had been ripped out. Mandy had turned on him. She was his accuser. Out of spite.
Because she’d waited around all those years for something he’d never even known she wanted—and then thought he’d given it to someone else.
He knew for certain he’d never abused her. Never, ever touched her without her consent. In fact, most times, she’d initiated their contact.
But she’d been right about one thing.
When he’d finally given his heart, it hadn’t been to the woman who’d kept him company all those years. It had been to a woman he’d only known a few months.
One he’d never even kissed.
He could see how that would be hard to take.
He could also see—completely—why Julie refused to see him. Her worst nightmare was coming to life before her eyes.
He’d been hauled out of his home, in handcuffs, right in front of her. Charged with doing the one thing she feared most of all.
Sexual assault.
He couldn’t fix this, couldn’t joke his way out of it. She wouldn’t even see him to give him a chance to try.
His whole life, through all the fights, the parties, the trouble, he’d always been able to find the bright side. And get others to see it, too. His mother. His father. His clients. Joy. Pretty well everyone he’d ever known. The one thing he could count on was knowing how to lighten the moment—or escape from it. Until the one time he couldn’t.
“Joy was asking for you,” Edward said as Hunter stood in the lobby of The Lemonade Stand, still wearing the golf clothes he hadn’t changed out of yet. He’d have to prepare for the evening’s comedic tribute.
He’d be later than he’d intended. He had time to get home. Get changed. He was going to make it to work. This was all so hard to believe. An hour for lunch, a couple of hours in jail, and off to work.
“I don’t think I’d be good for her right now.”
“I told her you were here. Can’t you stick your head in for a second?” Edward was struggling to find solid ground with the little girl. Mostly because he didn’t know how to be a parent to one.
Not because he didn’t care. He’d just lost his confidence after Cara’s defection.
Joy still hadn’t said more than a few words to Edward. Hunter already knew that. Now Edward had told her Hunter was there. She’d smiled when he told her, and Edward asked if she wanted to see him. She’d nodded.
Hunter couldn’t see Julie, but he couldn’t not see Joy. So, with his feet heavy, he followed Edward through the Stand’s main door and outside, across the grass, and to the bungalow where the girl was staying.
Joy’s housemate smiled, then disappeared. He’d learned that she’d been abused by her adult son, a heroin addict. She was wonderful with Joy. And just as happy to leave the room when Edward or Hunter came around.
He got it.
Things happened to people, caused reactions they could neither help nor prevent.
For Joy's Sake Page 24