Secrets

by Jude Deveraux

Cassie took a moment to calm herself. “Sorry. I guess I am. Thomas and Elsbeth are really angry at me for quitting my job. But then, I’m the one who takes care of them, so they’ll miss what I do.”

  “I think it’s more than that,” Brent said softly. “I think they love you.”

  It was more than Cassie could take. All Althea’s attempts at distracting her flew out the window. She put her face in her hands and began to cry. Brent opened the center console, pulled out a pack of tissues, and handed her a bunch of them.

  “I’m sorry,” Cassie said, blowing her nose. “I didn’t mean to do this. I love them too. They’ve become my family, and I don’t want to leave them, but I have to.”

  “Because of Ames?”

  “He’s going to get married and his girlfriend hates me. It’s either now or later, so what’s the difference? It’s just that I’d think Thomas and Elsbeth would have some sympathy for me, but they look at me as though I’m the cruelest person on earth.”

  “Maybe they think you should stay and fight.”

  “I thought about it, but how do I do that? I burned a hole in an expensive jacket of Skylar’s just to show her I wasn’t going to be bossed around by her. But if she married Jeff, she’d be my employer. Would I have to burn up all her clothes?”

  “She’d complain about anything you cooked, so you’d better burn that too,” Brent said without a hint of a smile.

  It took Cassie a moment to get his joke. She didn’t laugh but she quit crying.

  “Look, I’m sorry I made you think I was prying about you and Ames,” he said. “It’s just that I wanted to know about my competition. You see, Jeff and I know each other from way back, and there’s always been some rivalry between us.” He glanced at her. “I know what you’re going to say, that Ames is old enough to be my father, but women seem to like him, so there have been some, uh, problems.”

  “You and Jeff fought over a woman?” Cassie asked, wiping the tears from her eyes. “When was this? He married Lillian when he was very young, and since then there’ve been no women except Skylar.”

  “Is that what he told you?” Brent asked, smiling as he turned onto Highway 64.

  “I live with the man. I should know,” she said, then stopped. “I mean, I don’t really live with him, not in the old-fashioned way.”

  “No, you just take care of his life so he has time to do whatever he wants. You don’t think that all the time he’s away from home that he’s actually working, do you?”

  “Yes,” she said hesitantly. “I think so. Thought so. He isn’t?”

  “I have no right to tell anyone’s secrets. Let’s just say that I know some things about Jefferson Ames and he’s not what he seems to be.”

  Cassie opened her mouth to say that that’s just what Jeff had said about him, but she didn’t. Her mother once told her that it was better to take in information, file it, and put it all together later. Margaret said that keeping her mouth shut and listening was half of why she’d been such a success.

  Turning away from him, Cassie looked out the window at the beautiful Virginia scenery and at last began to realize that she had two whole days away from the turmoil of the Ames household. Between days working for Althea and evenings with an angry child, Cassie hadn’t slept much in the last week. Before long she found herself nodding off. It was a four-hour drive to the cabin, and the next thing she knew, the car had stopped.

  She awoke with a jolt, sitting up straight and looking about her in confusion.

  “You okay?” Brent asked as he turned off the engine.

  Cassie rubbed her eyes. “I think I must have dozed off.”

  “You slept soundly enough that horns and motorcycles didn’t even make you move.” He was smiling at her.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, embarrassed.

  “You slept like a very pretty baby.” He nodded out the window to the little store in front of them. “We’re here and this is it,” he said.

  They were in the gravel parking lot of a grocery store, with two gas pumps in the front. Next door was a shop that seemed to do everything from rent DVDs to pack and ship. It also seemed to have a tiny café.

  “Want some coffee?” he asked. “Or a Coke? Ice cream bar? Marijuana?”

  She was still sleep befuddled and could only look at him.

  “Local gossip says that they grow it in the backyard where they keep the dog, but that may only be a rumor. But they do serve a spaghetti that has some very suspicious-looking green flakes in it.”

  Cassie smiled.

  “That’s better. Wanna help me get groceries?”

  “Sure,” she said, opening the car door.

  He held open the screen door to allow her to enter before him, and she smiled when she saw the interior. It was the kind of place she loved. The wooden floor was so warped it looked as though it had been through a flood. Along the back wall was a glass-doored refrigerator case that contained lots of different drinks in bottles. To her left was a glass butcher’s case with meats that probably came from a local farmer’s herd. To the right was a cash register on a cabinet that was so piled with things to sell there was almost no room to put purchases.

  But Cassie’s smile soon left her because standing in the back, near the ice cream chest, was Jefferson Ames. Ten feet away from him was Skylar Beaumont.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” Brent said loud enough that the butcher and the woman behind the register stopped to look at them.

  Jeff had a red plastic basket over his arm with three bottles of wine sticking out of it. For an instant there was shock on his face, but he got himself under control. “I think I should ask you the same thing, Goodwin.”

  Cassie stood silent, still in the doorway, and looked at Skylar, who was now glowering at her. Cassie remembered that Brent said Jeff had been out with lots of women in the years since his wife’s death, but Cassie had defended him. She’d said Jeff worked long, hard hours. But did he? Right now he was supposed to be at work or with his daughter, but he wasn’t. How many other times had he let them think he was working when he wasn’t?

  Cassie couldn’t bear to listen to whatever Jeff and Brent were saying to each other, so she left the store. Outside, it was that beautiful time of twilight and she leaned against Brent’s car to look at the trees across the road.

  “Cassie?”

  It was Jeff, but she didn’t turn to look at him.

  “It seems that Althea has played a joke on all of us. She asked Goodwin to check on her cabin and asked me, through my father, to do the same thing. I have no idea what she had in her devious little mind, but here we all are together.”

  “I thought you were working,” Cassie said, still looking straight ahead.

  “I am,” he answered, then glanced back at the store. “Oh, I see. You think I was lying. For your information, I called Dad and told him that I’d be away for the weekend.”

  “Away for the weekend,” she said as she looked at him. She really had no right to be angry at him. He’d made no secret that he was nearly engaged to Skylar, so of course they wanted to spend time alone. At least he was considerate enough not to parade a string of women in front of his daughter, she thought. No, he’d waited until he found the right one, Skylar, then brought her home.

  Jeff leaned on Brent’s car beside her. “So now what do we do? It’s too late for you two to drive back to Williamsburg.”

  “Us? Why not you and Skylar? You two could spend the weekend at her house. Neither Brent nor I have private homes. He lives over Althea’s garage, and I live with you. Sort of, anyway. Until Monday.”

  Jeff moved away from the car to stand in front of her. “You came up here to spend the weekend with a man you just met a few days ago?”

  Cassie smiled at him. She really hated it when he put on his avuncular attitude and set himself up as her guardian. “Of course. It is the twenty-first century, you know. Or did you think that women today need to have a yearlong courtship before—” She wiggled her eyebrows. “Bef
ore, you know.”

  He glared at her. “I told you that Brent Goodwin is not who he seems to be and that you’d be better off staying away from him.”

  She came away from the car and glared back at him. “At least Brent tells the truth . He told me about you, and he understands what you’ve been putting your whole family through, all because of your lust for some spiteful—”

  “What has that kid told you about me ?” Jeff asked, his eyes angry.

  “That a lot of times when you say you’re at work you aren’t.”

  Jeff looked as though she’d slapped him. “Where does he say I am?” he whispered.

  She leaned toward him. “With women. Lots of women.”

  To her consternation, Jeff laughed. All the anger left his body and he relaxed. He put his hands in his pockets and smiled. “That’s right. When I say I’m working late I’m actually having candlelight dinners with gorgeous women. Did he tell you about the diamond bracelets I give them? Or about the nights in four-star hotel rooms with wanton sex? Hot, steamy sex that goes on until sunrise. Sometimes it’s with two women. Even three. Sometimes—”

  “I get the picture,” Cassie said, but she didn’t. Jeff’s sarcasm made her doubt what Brent had told her. But then, maybe Brent had assumed that that’s where Jeff was when he stayed out late.

  She and Jeff looked at each other for a while, neither saying anything, then the door to the store opened and Brent and Skylar came out carrying bags of groceries. They were smiling and laughing.

  “We’ve decided that we’ll all stay at the cabin for the weekend,” Brent said cheerfully. “There are two bedrooms, so there’s plenty of room for all of us. In the morning we’ll go fishing or something.”

  When Cassie heard “two bedrooms” she nearly panicked. She had no intention of going to bed with Brent.

  “Good try, Goodwin,” Jeff said, pulling his car keys out of his pocket. “But the girls go in one room and the boys in the other. I don’t participate in orgies and I don’t listen to them.”

  Cassie felt such relief that she could have kissed Jeff. Instead, she avoided his eyes. After all, she’d just told him that she and Brent had come to the cabin to be together. “I hope you two got some decent groceries,” she said loudly, as though it didn’t matter to her what the sleeping arrangements were.

  “Pasta and jars of sauce,” Skylar said, her smile gone. “What else do you need?”

  “Little green flakes would be nice,” Cassie said, looking at Brent, and he laughed as though she’d made the greatest joke in the world. As she got into the car, she glanced at Jeff and saw that he was frowning, and that made Cassie smile more.

  When they got to the cabin, Jeff said he wanted to talk to Brent. Alone.

  The second they were out of earshot of the women, Jeff turned to his student, his face showing his anger. “What the hell are you really doing here and why did you bring Cassie?”

  Brent gave a smug little smile. “I have an assignment.”

  “An assignment?” Jeff asked. His voice was cold. “And who gave you this assignment and what is it?”

  “I—” Brent opened his mouth to say that he couldn’t tell, but he knew that Jeff had the highest security clearance there was. “To find out what a Mr. Norton is doing.”

  For a moment, Jeff just stared at him, but the anger in his eyes made Brent take a step back. “And who told you to spy on Norton?”

  “Althea said…” Brent’s face changed as he realized that he’d been duped—just as he had been when Althea sent him after medicine so she could shoot a pistol and get the attention of Cassie and Dana.

  “Althea.” Jeff’s voice was very calm. “Althea told you to come up here with Cassie and do a little spying and you believed her? You believed a woman who has spent over sixty years wheedling secrets out of the minds of the heads of foreign governments?”

  “Yes, sir.” Brent was standing at attention, trying not to let his feelings show.

  “Now what do I do?” Jeff said, turning away. “No matter what I say, I’m going to look like a jealous fool.” He looked back at Brent. “What did you tell Cassie to get her to come up here with you?”

  Brent looked surprised. “I told her I had to come up here to check on the place for Althea and would she go with me?”

  “So you were planning to return tonight.”

  “No, sir. We brought bags and I thought we’d get food here. Althea said—I mean…”

  “Are you trying to tell me that all you did was ask Cassie, young, sweet, Cassie, to spend an entire weekend alone in a remote cabin with you and she agreed?”

  Brent glanced around at the other cabins. “It’s hardly remote, sir.” After the bawling out that Jeff had given him, he wasn’t about to tell him that he had sworn not to touch Cassie if she went with him.

  Jeff looked at Brent.

  “Yes, sir, I did. I asked and she accepted.”

  Jeff stared at him, his mouth slightly open. “But you hardly know her,” he said at last.

  Brent couldn’t resist a grin. “We had a good time on our other date, so—” He broke off at Jeff’s look, then took a step back.

  “I want you to remember, Goodwin, that Cassandra works for me , in my house. She is to be treated with the utmost respect. Do I make myself clear?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Get out of here,” Jeff said.

  Obediently, Brent walked away, but the moment his back was to his boss, he smiled big enough to crack his face.

  10

  IT WAS DURINGthe dinner of overcooked pasta and tasteless store-bought tomato sauce that Cassie began to feel like a third wheel. For all of Jeff’s and Brent’s hostility to each other, they seemed to know each other well. And Skylar seemed to know both of them. Jeff and Brent disappeared as soon as they got there, and Cassie was sure that something awful would result, but it hadn’t. Brent returned first and he’d been laughing. When Jeff came back, he’d spent a few minutes saying nothing, then he seemed to have made up his mind to let go of whatever was bothering him. During dinner, both he and Brent joked with each other in a way that seemed to come from years of…Cassie wasn’t sure what it was. It wasn’t exactly friendship, but it was a camaraderie that she wasn’t part of.

  Three times Jeff stopped the other two from whatever it was they were hinting at, and Cassie knew that if she weren’t there their talk would be a lot different. Would they reminisce about places they’d been together?

  Once, she tried to enter into their laughter and asked a question about something Brent said about Gibraltar. “Have you been there?” she asked. “What’s it like?”

  Immediately, Brent and Skylar stopped talking and looked down at their plates.

  Earlier, Cassie had gone to the kitchen with the intention of helping prepare dinner, but Jeff caught her arm. “You go in there now and you won’t be allowed to leave all weekend. They’ll make you into their private chef.”

  She’d nodded in understanding and stayed out of the kitchen, letting Brent and Skylar prepare the meal.

  The cabin was nice enough, but Cassie couldn’t imagine Althea in it, as it wasn’t elegant, or even very interesting. It had a living room in front, a kitchen in one end, then a hall leading to two bedrooms with a shared bathroom. Across the front was a deep porch that looked out onto the lake.

  While Brent and Skylar overboiled the pasta, Cassie sat in the living room and looked at a three-year-old issue of Field & Stream . She’d been puzzled by the low voices of Brent and Skylar in the kitchen. They certainly seemed to have a lot to say to each other.

  After a while, she went out to the porch, where Jeff was sitting in a big Adirondack chair, looking out at the lake, seeming to be content to do or say nothing. “Sorry about accusing you of lying,” she said.

  “Think nothing of it. Goodwin must like you a lot if he’s trying to discredit every man around you.” He turned to look at her. “I understand his actions. All’s fair, that sort of thing, but what I don’t unde
rstand is why you believe a man you’ve only recently met over me. What have I done to lose your trust?”

  Nothing, Cassie wanted to shout. You’ve done nothing and that’s the problem. But she didn’t say that. “I apologize. It’s just me. It’s difficult leaving Elsbeth and Thomas.”

  “Oh, that,” he said. “There’s really no reason you have to leave, and I don’t think you should.”

  Cassie opened her mouth to ask him questions. She wanted to blurt out about his coming marriage to Skylar. Had something happened that was making him rethink marrying her?

  But she didn’t ask that. “I think it’s better that I do leave,” she said softly. “I’ve become too attached and that’s not good. I have other things I want to do in my life and I need to do them.”

  She stopped talking and waited. What would he say? If he begged her to stay, if he told her that they needed her, if he promised to never marry anyone, could she hold out?

  But Jeff said nothing. He just looked out at the lake in silence and listened to the night.

  A few minutes later they were called to dinner and went inside.

  An hour later, everyone except Cassie was yawning. It had been a long day and she was the only one who’d had a nap. But she faked exhaustion and said she was ready to go to sleep. Right, she thought. She was dying to climb into bed with Skylar. Ha-ha.

  It took over an hour for everyone to get settled, mainly because Skylar hogged the bathroom. It seemed that she had a beauty routine that took forty-five minutes and involved using most of the hot water.

  Once they were in the room alone, Cassie made no comment to Skylar’s orders of which side of the bed would be hers, and how Cassie wasn’t to spend the night reading and keep the light on. With a fake smile, Cassie turned out the light and got under the covers. Skylar kept to her side of the bed, and within minutes she was asleep. Obviously, there was nothing troubling Skylar to keep her awake.

  But Cassie was awake—awake and jittery. There was too much in her head, too many questions rambling about inside it. With every passing hour, she was beginning to think that there was something going on that she knew nothing about. Since the day she and Dana heard the shots at Althea’s house, nothing had been the same. Her quiet, orderly life had been turned upside down, but she wasn’t sure how it had been changed—and certainly not why.