The detective abruptly swung his attention to Aubrey. “What about you Miss Grayson? What time did you last see Mr. Livingston?”
Her hands were twisted together in her lap, the knuckles white. “I–I guess it would have been a little later. About ten thirty.”
Travis could feel the tension vibrating through Aubrey’s body.
“And where did you see him?”
“Out–Outside the ladies’ room.”
Her voice quivered and Travis wanted to pick her up and cuddle her to his chest. Clearly she was terrified of the police. She’d had a very different upbringing in Chicago than he’d had in Montana. Perhaps her memories of law enforcement weren’t as positive as his own.
“Did you speak to him, Miss Grayson?” the detective pressed, his lips a straight line. Travis didn’t like the way the man was looking at Aubrey.
“She doesn’t even know–” began Travis but she shushed him, shaking her head.
“Yes, I did speak to him but only for a moment.”
She hadn’t mentioned anything about it when she’d rejoined him. As shy as she was there was no way Aubrey had approached Bruce. He had to have talked to her first.
“And what did you talk about?”
That was a really good question. One that Travis wanted answered as well. Bruce had considered himself something of a ladies man and Travis had an idea of what might have transpired between them.
More trembling and then Aubrey took a deep breath. “He recognized me across the room. We went to school together in Chicago.”
Travis froze and stared down at the beautiful woman next to him. “You knew him?”
Nodding, she placed her hand on his. “That’s one of the things I wanted to tell you. We went to the same junior high and high school.”
“Did you date Mr. Livingston, Miss Grayson?” the detective asked, obviously trying to get their attention back on him.
Aubrey wrinkled her nose at the suggestion. “No! I barely knew him. He was two years ahead of me but I knew of him I guess you could say. But I’m not sure we ever even spoke to one another although we had some mutual…friends.”
Prather’s gaze flickered to Travis and then back to Aubrey. “We have witnesses that place you and Mr. Livingston in the alcove outside the ladies room arguing about an hour before his body was found. Is that true?”
Of course it wasn’t true. Eye witness accounts were notoriously faulty and should never be relied upon.
Sagging against him, her lips turned down in what looked like defeat.
“Yes. Yes, it is true.”
* * *
Aubrey had managed to shock Travis, the unshakable man.
She hadn’t wanted him to hear about Bruce and her past…this way. Her mind raced as she tried to find a way to explain the situation without spilling her guts about things that didn’t – or shouldn’t – matter. Her past was none of the detective’s business.
But she better think fast because it was obvious she was a suspect.
“What did you argue about Miss Grayson? Specifically, please.”
Her nails dug into her palms and her heart pounded against her ribs. It was her worst nightmare come to life.
“Bruce…Mr. Livingston, I mean, made a pass at me and I declined.”
It was the truth although she’d left out the ugly backstory.
“And he was angry about that?”
“Yes. Very angry. He grabbed my arm.”
She held up her arm to show off the already visible bruises. Travis’s grip tightened on her shoulder and she could feel the rage radiating off of him.
“I’d like our crime lab guys to get a picture of those bruises if you don’t mind. So what happened after that?”
“He pushed me against a wall and I kneed him in the balls. He said some nasty words and I walked away. That’s it.”
“Good for you,” Travis approved. “Everyone knows what Bruce was like. Talk to anyone, Detective, they’ll tell you that he could be handsy and ignore the boundaries of good taste. I doubt Aubrey was the first woman to have to fight him off.”
Awash in guilt that Travis was defending her when he didn’t know the entire story, she avoided meeting his gaze, looking intently over the detectives shoulder although there wasn’t really anything to see.
“Did anything else happen, Miss Grayson?” Detective Prather didn’t acknowledge Travis’s commentary in any way. “Did Mr. Livingston have any reason, based on your previous relationship, to believe you’d have sex with him?”
“No!” Hell, she wasn’t even having sex with the man sitting next to her and she adored him. “He had absolutely no reason to think that except his own ego. He wasn’t the nicest person in school and apparently he didn’t change much. I kept my distance then.”
“Did you know he was going to be here at the party tonight?” Prather pressed, his eyes narrowed as if he was trying to see through her. He thought she was hiding something. She was of course but not what he believed.
“Again, no,” she said firmly, meeting his gaze directly. “I assumed I didn’t know anyone here this weekend.”
“You didn’t know he had married Martin Guinness’s granddaughter?”
Aubrey exhaled slowly hanging onto her temper by a thread. She understood why she was being questioned but the interview had made a frightening turn.
“Detective,” Travis cut in smoothly. “We want to help you but I’m not sure where you’re going with this line of questioning.”
Prather smiled but it didn’t reach his eyes. “It’s my job to cover all the bases, Mr. Anderson. If Miss Grayson and the deceased had any prior relationship I’d like to know about it.”
“She told you they didn’t,” Travis shot back. “Are we done here? Miss Grayson has had a rather trying evening. Seeing a dead body and all.”
The sarcasm in his tone was unmistakable and the detective clearly wasn’t amused.
“For now,” Prather conceded, snapping his notebook closed. “Stay close as I’m sure I’ll need to talk to you again. I appreciate your…cooperation.”
Travis stood and gathered her close, his arm a reassuring weight around her waist. “One of your men took my cell number so you can get in touch with us. Come on, Aubrey. You need to rest.”
Blood still pounding in her ears, she allowed Travis to lead her down the hall and into an elevator. As the doors glided shut, he pressed a kiss to her temple and ran his fingers through her hair.
“A hot bath and a strong drink is what we both need. Then I think you and I need to have that talk.”
Everything she’d feared since meeting Travis was coming true. She couldn’t hide what she was any longer and frankly she didn’t want to. She was exhausted keeping up the charade.
She’d tell him everything.
Chapter Seven
‡
Aubrey sipped at the brandy, its fire warming up her belly and making her fingers and toes tingle. She’d soaked in the bathtub until she was wrinkled like a prune before scrubbing off her makeup and changing into a pair of sweatpants and t-shirt. If she was going to bare her soul to Travis then she might as well be comfortable. It wasn’t like they were going to be a couple by the time she was finished.
He’d be polite and understanding, of course. That was the kind of man he was, but he’d end the relationship just the same. He’d tell her that perhaps things weren’t going to work out between them and then he’d find her another job somewhere in the Anderson holdings.
Like Magellan, she’d be history.
But then she’d never expected anything different. It had only happened sooner than she’d predicted.
She was sitting on the loveseat in the bedroom, her legs curled under her, staring at the television that was currently muted. Anything to avoid looking him in the eye and confessing a multitude of sins.
He sat down next to her and waited, not saying a word, letting her gather her thoughts once again. Finally when she couldn’t take the silence any longer,
she broke.
“I never wanted to tell you.”
A gentle smile played around his well-shaped lips. “Clearly. Although I must tell you that unless you’ve killed a homeless man or cheated people in a Ponzi scheme, everything is going to be fine. Hell, even then you probably had a good reason.”
It was her turn to smile even at a shit moment like this. “I’ve never killed or cheated anyone.”
“Then this can’t be that bad, kitten. Trust me a little and tell me.”
She did trust him. More than she had anyone in her life. Travis Anderson was a good man, one of the best, but she was asking too much of him to not care that the woman in his life had been around the block dozens of times.
Slut. Whore. Easy. Tramp.
That’s what she’d been called by the other girls in school. Those catty ones who looked down at her and made sure she didn’t get invited to certain parties. They’d made her school years hell and even now all this time later those eager twins – guilt and shame – couldn’t leave her in peace. She hadn’t known it as a naive teenager but she knew it now…
A person has to live every day with the decisions they make. Good or bad.
“You know I was in foster care and then I was adopted,” she began, figuring she should start at the beginning. “My family was good to me but I had a lot of baggage. Things I had a hard time dealing with.”
Travis ran a finger across her jaw, tender and slow. “Did Bruce hurt you back then, sweetheart?”
Her throat swelled with emotion and she shook her head, forcing the words out. “No. It was the truth when I said I barely knew him. But I’ll get to him in a minute, okay?”
She took his silence as agreement and pushed forward, afraid that if she paused she’d lose what little courage she’d managed to scrape together.
“As I said, I had a lot of baggage. Most of it was about my mother and wondering how a parent couldn’t love and care for their children. It made me feel unworthy of anyone loving me. Let’s face it, if a parent can’t love you, then what’s the chances of anyone else loving you?”
“That’s not true–” he protested but she pressed her fingers to his lips.
“I know that now but I didn’t feel that then. Please let me tell this before I lose my nerve.”
He nodded but both his hands came up to wrap around her own, warm and caring and so needed. She would miss his touch when she left tonight. She couldn’t stay around to see the distaste on his face when she was done telling her story.
“I hungered for affection. My adoptive parents were sweet but not demonstrative. I’d never been held or cuddled as a child and by the time I became a teenager I wanted it so badly. That’s when things sort of went south.”
Aubrey had to steady her voice, her entire body shaking with emotion. Reliving the past was her least favorite thing to do and here she was doing it. Shame choked her and she had to swallow hard to be able to continue.
“I realized I could get attention from boys. They liked the way I looked and I began to flirt with them. It made me feel better about myself that they’d call me or ask me out. But like a junkie, that soon wasn’t enough. When I was fifteen I lost my virginity in the backseat of a Ford Taurus near the lake to a football player.” She closed her eyes in misery, tears welling up despite her desperate attempt to keep them at bay. “The next weekend I had sex with one of his teammates. And the next weekend another. Before too long I had plenty of guys paying attention to me. As long as I gave them what they wanted they gave me what my twisted-up brain had convinced me was love and affection. I used sex to numb the pain of my mother rejecting me. I lost track of the number of guys I slept with.”
Travis was silent although his grip had tightened. Aubrey didn’t dare look up to see the expression of disgust on his face. She didn’t think she could bear it.
“I was the school slut. Basically, I’d sleep with any guy that said I was pretty. I did that until senior year when one of the few girlfriends I had got pregnant. It sort of snapped me back to reality and I straightened out. But it was too late, really. I was shunned by most kids in my school even though I lived like a nun the rest of that school year. I was a whore and no one was ever going to let me forget it.”
She moved her legs restlessly, her body filled with a pain so acute it almost took her breath away.
“And tonight Bruce reminded me of what I really am. I’d almost forgotten. I’ve spent the last ten years trying to run from it but I realize that’s never going to happen. I wanted to be perfect for you so badly, Travis. I wanted to be the kind of woman you could care about, but the fact is I’m still that trashy lay from Chicago. I’m so fucking sorry that I didn’t tell you in the beginning. I really am. I could have saved both of us all of this.”
Travis had levered up from the loveseat and begun to pace the room, back and forth, as if he was pondering the secrets of the universe. Aubrey said nothing, too exhausted from her confessions to say much more. In reality all she wanted to do was crawl away and curl up in the fetal position for the next several days. A dreamless sleep was the only thing that would stop the hurt from her shattered heart.
He finally stopped, standing in front of her, but she tried to keep her gaze on his shoes. Tugging at his bow tie, he tossed it onto the arm of a chair with a heavy sigh, along with his jacket.
“Aubrey, look at me.”
Deep and commanding, she found herself obeying his voice even though it was difficult to see him through her tears. She’d never wanted it to come to this.
“I am so fucking angry right now and I’m trying to keep myself under control.”
“I’m sorry–” she began but he reached down and pressed a finger over her lips, getting on his knees so they were eye to eye.
“I’m not angry with you so stop apologizing. You don’t have a damn thing to apologize for, kitten, although it sounds like you don’t believe that. But this talk between us is apparently long overdue.” He leaned forward, their noses almost touching. “And by the way, if you ever call yourself a slut or a whore again you’re going to find yourself over my knee getting a very unpleasant spanking. I won’t allow you to denigrate yourself in any way. Am I understood?”
No, she didn’t understand in the least. She’d slept around. She didn’t know how many guys she’d had sex with. She’d lost count.
“But–”
His lips crashed into hers effectively silencing her, and they both tumbled back onto the small sofa, their bodies pressed together. When he lifted his head his expression was a mask of control.
“I mean it. Don’t ever speak of yourself that way again. I don’t care if you’ve slept with the entire NFL. Just fucking stop it. I won’t tolerate it.”
More tears welled up in her eyes and his face softened, pulling her onto his lap.
“Is that what you’ve been torturing yourself with all this time? Is this the thing that’s been holding you back these last months? This mistaken notion that somehow you’re not good enough?”
She wasn’t nearly good enough.
“You’re not listening to me–”
“Stop it,” Travis exploded, his cheeks turning ruddy with anger. “I fucking mean it. Stop it. I don’t give a shit, Aubrey. I don’t care how many guys you’ve had sex with. Do you care how many women I’ve had sex with?”
“Well…no…not really, but you’re missing the point.”
His fingers dug into her shoulders, turning her so she had to look into his eyes. “I don’t think I am, sweetness. If you had been a guy you would have been a high school hero, but you were a girl. And girls aren’t supposed to want sex or enjoy it, right? Isn’t that what this is all about? Some stupid societal double standard? None of this matters.”
“But…”
He was confusing her and her head already pounded from the worrying and the crying. Since her run-in with Bruce she’d felt like hell.
“But what? Tell me why it’s different for you than for me.”
“It just is,” she answered lamely, her heart rate beginning to return to normal. “And you know it is.”
“Maybe to a bunch of closed-minded kids who see the world as black and white, but I hope I’ve moved past that. Shit, if it’s okay for a guy to have sex and it isn’t for a girl, well, who the hell is he supposed to have sex with, anyway? Those nosy busybodies didn’t think that one through, did they? The whole thing is just stupid.”
He didn’t care. Really. Truly. At least she wanted to believe that. His words sounded so amazingly wonderful. For the first time in a long time she felt something akin to hope, although she was probably a fool for even entertaining the notion.
“I–I slept with a lot of guys, Travis. A lot.”
His right brow inched up and his fingers captured her chin, rubbing along the jawline and sending shivers down her spine.
“You said that already. But you didn’t murder or cheat anyone, right? So I’m not sure what you feel guilty about, baby. I sure as shit haven’t been a saint either. Should I start confessing my sins?”
“No!” Aubrey pressed her fingers against his lips in alarm. The last thing she wanted to hear about was his sexual exploits before her. She already had an inferiority complex and that wouldn’t help it. “I think that’s best left in the past.”
“But yours isn’t?” he pressed. “I never expected a virgin, kitten, and I sure don’t deserve one considering my past. I’m just sorry that Bruce brought this all up again. What did he say to you?”
Aubrey sighed and closed her eyes for a moment, reliving the ugly scene. She hated to tell Travis about it but he had that determined look in her eye she’d come to know so well. She’d never hear the end of it until she told him every dirty detail.
“He threatened me.” Travis waited quietly for her to continue but she could see the muscle working in his jaw. He was already pissed as hell and she hadn’t even told him the worst part. “He said that if I didn’t have sex with him he’d tell you all about my past.”
“He tried to make you ashamed of having sex? Of enjoying it? Fucking asshole.”
Indecent Danger (Danger Incorporated Book 3) Page 4