She noticed and pulled the sweater back in place. “I—a bike accident. I landed on my shoulder.”
He studied her for several seconds, before saying, “That must have hurt.”
“I’m fine,” she said, standing up and shuffling the papers back inside the envelope. She glanced at him for a moment, then looked away. She stepped back inside the house and closed the door, the click sounding final somehow.
Nicholas stood there, his feet refusing to move. No reason on earth why he shouldn’t believe her, but he knew she was lying.
Why? That was the question.
AUDREY WAITED until she heard the car start before letting herself look out the living-room window. The black Porsche 911 eased out of the driveway.
She watched until the taillights disappeared from sight, one hand clutching the envelope, the other resting on her still tender shoulder. She thought of the day all those years ago when Martha Colby had explained away a too-similar bruise, and a queasy feeling of shame washed over her for the lie. But she had seen the question in his eyes. A moment of doubt for which there was no logical explanation. People had accidents all the time.
And yet, he didn’t believe her.
She thought of the excuses she’d used over the past few years—oral surgery, a fall from a horse, anything to explain the bruises when she couldn’t hide in the house until they’d faded. Most of the time, she simply kept herself away from the world for as long as she could, not wanting anyone to see her swollen eye or the black-and-blue marks on her neck.
In the days since the New Year’s Eve party, she’d thought of Nicholas Wakefield several times. He’d been kind to her that night. She supposed she’d been drawn to that, some starved part of her needing it, yearning for it. Pathetic as that was.
After Sylvia’s accusation that morning, Audrey had not let herself go anywhere near thoughts of the man. She was afraid that somehow her awareness of him would show in her face, that Jonathan would sense it.
Crazy as it sounded, Jonathan’s rages had never needed truth to ignite them. The mere suggestion of possibility was all he needed.
She had never expected to open the door to find Nicholas Wakefield staring down at her in his well-cut gray suit, a wilted white shirt, tie loosened at his throat.
This time, she let herself remember his voice, its low, even tones, his words, interested and inquiring.
And his looks.
Dark hair, curling slightly at the sides and just a little longer at the back than Ross Webster probably would have preferred. His eyes were a rich brown, a few worry lines at the corners. Even though it had only been a little after six o’clock, he’d needed a shave. She recalled each of these details with detached impartiality. Like someone in a museum appreciating a fine painting or a particularly nice piece of sculpture, she recognized the appeal, but realized that it didn’t apply to her own life.
She glanced at the envelope in her hand, a sick feeling settling in her stomach. Jonathan would be home soon. Should she lie and say Ross’s secretary dropped it off? No. If he found out the truth, he would accuse her of having something to hide.
And that wasn’t a chance she could afford to take.
NICHOLAS HIT the gym that night. He’d renewed his lapsed membership at a club in Buckhead known as a place where people actually came to work out instead of using it as a singles bar. Kyle had agreed to meet him here under the weight of his annual resolution to get back in shape.
He walked through the door a little past eight, gym bag slung over a ham-size shoulder.
Nicholas met him at the check-in counter. “I never thought I’d hear myself say I missed you.”
“Of course you did.” Kyle slapped him on the back. “I see you haven’t gotten any better-looking.”
“You, either,” he said, grinning.
House music blasted through ceiling-mounted speakers, the rhythm contagious enough to entice even the most dedicated couch potato onto a piece of equipment. Nicholas and Kyle went upstairs and started out on the treadmill.
“What’s it like living in the civilized world?” Kyle asked, upping his speed to a slow jog.
“Very civilized.”
Kyle smiled. “Not bored already, are you?”
“Nope,” Nicholas said, shooting for a convincing note.
“Met any hot women in that fancy law office?”
Nicholas cranked the speed, picking up his pace, his shoes pounding the machine. “Not exactly.”
“There’s a straight answer.”
He kicked the speed higher until he was running six minute miles and dripping sweat.
Kyle gave him a sideways look. “You have cheesecake for lunch, or you got something on your mind?”
“Overactive imagination, I think.”
“This about a case?”
“No.”
“A woman, then.”
Nicholas didn’t answer.
“Ah. So who is she?”
He hesitated, and then admitted, “The wife of a client.”
Kyle reached for the towel hanging on the side of the treadmill and wiped his dripping face. “So you’re looking to stay with W&A long-term?”
“I’m not involved with her.”
“But you’re thinking about it.”
“I’d have to be a monk not to think about it. There’s something about her that keeps nagging at me. Like things aren’t what they appear. She’s got this look in her eyes. You know the one. Things are as bad as they can get, and they’re never going to get any better.”
Kyle wiped away another onslaught of sweat. “Man, you’ve got victim’s radar. Things in need just automatically veer in your path.”
Nicholas decided not to tell him about the dog. “Your point is?”
“You can find bad stuff anywhere you look. So don’t look. If I let myself peel back too much of what I see every day, I’d be walking away from it, too.”
Nicholas slowed his speed a few notches to start cooling down, his breathing harsh enough to make his chest hurt. Kyle was right. He should do exactly that. But he kept seeing that bruise on her shoulder. Maybe that could be explained by a bike-riding accident. That look in her eyes could not.
IT WAS after midnight.
Audrey stood in front of her bathroom mirror, staring at her reflection. She felt disconnected from it, as if the woman looking back at her was someone she did not know. Did not recognize.
Her lower lip was still bleeding, an inch-long gash down the inside. A tear leaked from the corner of her left eye.
At least, thank God, Sammy hadn’t been here. He was spending the night with a friend from school.
Audrey touched a finger to her lip. It would probably go down by morning, but the bruises on her arms would linger and deepen.
She dropped to her knees, opened the third drawer of the bathroom vanity, reached inside and pulled loose the cell phone she had taped to the bottom of the second drawer.
She dialed the number, then sat back on the cool tile floor, legs crossed, elbow on one thigh, a hand pushing the hair back from her face.
Her mother answered, groggy with sleep.
“Mama?”
“Audrey? Honey, what is it?”
Sarah Williams was instantly awake; Audrey could hear the alarm now in her voice. “Everything is fine. I just…wanted to talk. I’m sorry to wake you.”
There was a rustling sound, as if her mother were sitting up in bed. “You know how glad I am to hear from you. No matter what time it is.”
Audrey sat silent, a sudden knot in her throat. With a few words of acceptance, her mother’s voice reduced her to childlike vulnerability.
“Are you all right?” her mother asked, the question layered with meaning.
Her parents knew her marriage wasn’t perfect. That she and Jonathan had problems. She’d never told them everything. She yearned to. But she had chosen this life. Without their absolute blessing. To drag them into it, possibly to have something horrible happen because of her
…she couldn’t.
And so they simply thought she was too wrapped up in her exciting Atlanta life to have time for them. She could count the number of times they had seen Sammy.
“I’m fine,” she said. “Just missing you.”
“We miss you, too.” This time, there was a catch in her mother’s voice, and Audrey’s heart felt as if it would split in half at the thought that her parents believed she’d rejected them. “How’s Sammy?”
“Good,” she said. “Growing.”
“He must look like a different child since we saw him.”
“Yes.”
Another stretch of awkward silence. Audrey asked about her father, her brothers and their wives. They were all well. Her father’s arthritis acting up now and then. But other than that, no one complained.
“Mama?”
“What is it, Audrey?”
“I just want to tell you how sorry I am. For the way things have turned out.”
Now it was her mother who was silent. “Why does it have to be this way, sweetheart?” she finally asked. “We love you and want to have you back in our lives. Would that be so terrible?”
Audrey squeezed her eyes shut. “No,” she said. “It wouldn’t.”
“I don’t understand,” she said softly.
“I know.” She paused. “Could you do something for me?”
“Of course.”
“Do you have an e-mail address?”
“Your father does at work.”
“Could you set one up at home?”
“Yes. But Audrey, what’s going on?”
“Use this address.”
“Let me get a pen.” Audrey could hear the nightstand drawer open, and then her mother said, “Okay.”
“CL25490. I checked, and it’s available.” She gave her mother the name of the Internet provider to contact.
“Audrey, you’re scaring me. Is something wrong?”
“Please, don’t worry. I hope someday I can explain. But not now. Can you just accept that?”
“Do we have a choice?” Sarah asked, sounding incredibly sad.
“I have to go. I’ll be in touch soon, okay?”
“Audrey?”
“Hmm?”
“I do love you. That will never change.”
“I love you, too.” Audrey cut the connection then, not trusting herself to say anything else. She sat there staring at the phone, the pain she had caused her family nearly more than she could bear.
She placed the cell phone back under the cabinet, then sat there on the bathroom floor, elbows on her knees. How could she tell her mother that she should have listened? That her parents had been right?
That the choices she had made twelve years ago had been hers and hers alone.
THE WINE had long since lost its chill, the bucket in which the bottle had been ensconced in ice now held mildly cool water.
Laura stood at the sixth-floor window of Atlanta’s downtown Ritz Carlton. Drivers wove their cars from lane to lane on Peachtree Street like amateur Richard Pettys. Beneath the street lights, a man in a tattered coat trailed a well-dressed woman who kept glancing over her shoulder before hurrying inside the revolving door of an office building.
Laura moved away from the window, glancing at the king-size bed. It had been turned down hours ago, chocolates laid out on the pillow, a single rose next to them.
She picked up her cell phone. Punched three for voice mail.
“You have no new messages.”
She tossed the phone in her purse.
This game was getting old. If Jonathan thought he could treat her like some slot machine available for play whenever the mood hit him, she would have to show him differently.
She thought of Audrey Colby, no doubt tucked into bed in her Buckhead mansion, and a noose of fury tightened its loop around her heart.
Audrey had what Laura wanted.
Obviously, this was not the way to get it. She’d meant what she’d said to her father on New Year’s Eve. She was not willing to settle for second best.
Time to play the next hand.
DESPITE THE DENIALS he’d made to Kyle, Audrey’s name was at the center of Nicholas’s thoughts throughout the next day, along with a dozen questions that hurled themselves relentlessly at him. His prosecutor’s need to look beneath the surface wouldn’t let him ignore the details. The way she’d barely look him in the eye, the nervous glances she kept sending over his shoulder, as though expecting her worst nightmare to materialize.
At six o’clock that evening, the phone on his desk buzzed. “Nicholas Wakefield.”
“Nicholas. Hi. It’s Laura Webster.”
“Laura,” he said, surprised.
“Tell me you’re bored to tears and wishing for something to do tonight?”
Nicholas pressed two fingers to the headache pulsing in his left temple. Her voice held a sub-text of subtle flirtatiousness. “I guess that depends on why you’re asking.”
“I was hoping you’d take pity on a dateless girl and be my escort to a United Way fund-raiser tonight.”
“I’m sure you have a black book an inch thick.”
“Compliment, right?”
“Truth more likely.”
Laura laughed a not-displeased laugh. “Okay. I feel like this is definite progress.”
“Laura. I’m not sure it’s a good idea—”
“No strings. You’d just be doing a girl a favor. You might even surprise yourself and have fun,” she said.
At another time, he’d have argued his case for Better Not. But the thought of spending another night seeking physical exhaustion as a means of outpacing this sudden gnawing for an explanation to the contradictions he’d observed in Audrey Colby held less than little appeal.
And so he changed his mind. “What time should I pick you up?”
AUDREY HAD DRESSED for the United Way Board of Directors’ dinner with the kind of deliberation that signified the event was one to be endured. All social events had become this for her, minefields to be negotiated carefully, a misstep resulting in unthinkable consequence.
Jonathan had chosen to drive tonight, his mood heavy enough that he hadn’t bothered to criticize her choice in dress, to suggest to her that it was too low, too clingy, too something.
From their home, it was only a short distance to the Ritz Carlton in Buckhead. Jonathan asked how her day was, and the question sounded so normal that Audrey fought an overwhelming urge to laugh at the ridiculousness of it. It occurred to her then, as it had many times before, that it was normal to Jonathan.
This was the thought most horrifying to her. That Sammy could grow up to believe there was nothing wrong with what he witnessed in his home.
Audrey tightened the lapels of her coat and stared out the window at the expensive houses rolling by, turning her thoughts away from things she could not control.
Jonathan stopped the car in front of the hotel. Two valets trotted over and opened their doors with welcoming smiles. “Good evening, Mr. Colby. Welcome back to the Ritz.”
“Thank you, Marshall,” Jonathan said, handing the man a tip. “Park her well, will you?”
From the curb, Audrey watched the exchange, struck again by how likeable her husband sounded, at the look of genuine admiration on the valet’s face. This was hardly the first time she’d made the observation, but it never failed to surprise her, make her wonder how it could be that only she saw the other side of him.
They had reached the double wooden doors of the hotel’s entrance when another car rolled up to the curb, the engine’s low rumble striking a chord of recognition. Audrey glanced over her shoulder. Nicholas Wakefield. With Laura Webster in the passenger seat, smiling at him.
Audrey glanced at Jonathan. He had a grim look on his face.
“Shouldn’t we go in?” she said, looking at her watch. “We’re nearly late.”
“It would be rude not to wait and say hello,” he said, taking her hand and tucking it inside his arm.
Aud
rey stood there, wishing she could be anywhere else in the world, knowing that he was about to provide Nicholas with a personal showing of Jonathan Colby: devoted, loving husband.
Nicholas looked up, and spotting them, raised a hand in greeting.
Laura saw them in the same moment. “Jonathan. Audrey,” she said, crossing the pavement and then waiting for Nicholas to join her. “You know Nicholas, of course.”
“Yes, we’ve already spent quite a few billable hours together,” Jonathan said, then adding, “My wife, Audrey. Audrey, Nicholas Wakefield, a new partner with…oh, but that’s right, you two met when you dropped those files at my house.”
Nicholas nodded, his expression cautious, as if he suddenly sensed a trap of some sort. “Nice to see you again.”
“We should go in before they start without us,” Jonathan said.
Inside the lobby, a small sign indicated the United Way dinner was on the third floor. They all got in to the same elevator, Nicholas and Laura in back, Jonathan and Audrey in front. Audrey kept her back straight, counting the seconds until the doors opened, and they could get out. The space felt airless, and she could feel the attorney’s gaze on her, even though she never let herself meet his eyes.
For the remainder of the night, Audrey made sure she was never in a position to be alone with him. Throughout the cocktails preceding dinner, she stayed on the opposite side of the room and breathed a sigh of relief when they finally sat down for dinner several tables apart. She felt his questions, his curiosity. And she prayed that Jonathan would not notice.
SHE WAS AVOIDING him. Why, Nicholas could not have said, but he knew it was true.
He couldn’t stop looking at her. Dear God, she was beautiful. But it was more than that, something inexplicable, as if she were a puzzle he kept going back to even though some of the pieces were missing. As a prosecutor, he’d kept a Rubik’s cube in his office. When a case had become too consuming or the questions too overwhelming, he’d grab it out of his drawer, working it back and forth until all the colors lined up. That cube had reassured him, reminded him that there was a pattern to things. Logic could be found if you searched long enough.
“She’s lovely, isn’t she?”
A Year and a Day (Harlequin Super Romance) Page 7