Past Lies

by Kim Rees

  His hand scrubbed at his face.

  It had made him crazy. The guilt of how he had acted towards Freddie Lewis, despite his offer earlier that night, still gnawed at him. And now she was playing more games with him.

  A sign for the M25 flashed past. “Where are you going?”

  “Home.”

  “Home?”

  “Let me show you why I’m doing this.”

  “Do I have a choice?”

  Anna’s grin was sharp before she turned her attention back to the road. “No. Doesn’t look like,” she said.

  ˜™

  She was insane. What was she doing spending more time alone with Zach? But here she was, splashing a once immaculate and powerful sports car down a twisting, mud-thick lane. It’d been years since she had last bolted to this house.

  Six to be exact.

  She held down a yawn and her eyes burned. Being so tired made the whole situation faintly ridiculous. “Not far now.”

  “Is all of this mud mine?”

  He was the most annoying man on the planet. “Yes,” she said.

  “Nice.”

  Anna ignored him. She adjusted her grip on the steering wheel and focused hard on the slippery road. It was starting to look familiar and that fact burned in her chest. She couldn’t lose this land to Sofia. Her sister wanted to tear down their old home and build a holiday park. Had for years. And that wasn’t going to happen.

  Anna pulled the car into a shallow cutting in the road and switched off the engine. Her arms, neck, spine ached. She’d been driving for hours and she wanted to sleep. Sleep for a week. She laughed to herself. At least that would get her out of her current problem.

  “Care to share?” Zach asked.

  “No,” she murmured. She rubbed a cold hand over her stiff neck. “The entrance is just up the way but this car won’t take us any further.”

  Anna climbed out of the low car and stretched her stiff back. The air was fresh and cold and she pulled Zach’s heavy coat around her body. His scent invaded her and she breathed past it. An icy breeze rasped over her bare legs. Anna looked down. Her stupid shoes were already sinking into the mud and soft grass.

  “This way.”

  Anna tottered to the old gate. She had the vague memory of tumbling off it head first in the mud when she was a child and her mother picking her up, holding her so tight and promising that everything would be all right…

  “Anna?”

  She could even smell her mother’s light floral perfume.

  “Anna?”

  She willed away the pressure in her throat, her jaw. It shouldn’t hurt this much. But it did. “Yes.” She forced the word out and made herself push at the gate. “The house is behind that line of trees.”

  The grass brushed cold and wet over her bare toes, her heels sinking into the soft earth. What was she doing here? The anger of a few hours before had faded. Now she was in a sodden field, heading for a house with no heating, running water or food. Her stomach grumbled at that thought.

  She should head back to the car, drive to the motorway services she’d sped past at dawn. Yet, she couldn’t. She wanted Zach to see her home, needed him to understand. This was a place where she had been happy. She would never sacrifice that.

  “How long has it been empty?”

  Zach’s voice made her start. She tugged his coat more securely around her body. “Over fifteen years now. My mother…my parents died and Sofia couldn’t see herself living in the wilderness.” Anna shrugged. “She was nineteen. It was sold.”

  “Wasn’t it held in trust?”

  “There were debts, Zach. The house and land were mortgaged to the hilt.” She stepped over a thick clump of grass, her attention fixed on it, helping to hold back the pain, soured with time. “My father married for money. Then proceeded to spend it.” Her laugh was bitter. “Now you see where Sofia gets her ideas.”

  “And you.”

  “No.” She scratched at her tangled hair. “I’m nothing like her.”

  Anna pushed on ahead. This was a mess. She shouldn’t have come here. Not her home. Not with him. At least he hadn’t mentioned those three stupid words she’d uttered. The embarrassed heat held back the cold.

  She pushed through the thick bushes and spikes of low branches and stopped. Anna stared. For a moment, an insane moment, she was nine again.

  This was impossible.

  At the bottom of the gentle slope and beyond the little apple orchard, sat her house. Her house. The one she remembered from her childhood. A higgledy-piggledy entrance, with the wide front door set back and lost to shadow. The old barn annex stretched off to the right. The numerous high chimneys…six years ago most had fallen through the ruined roof.

  Six years before, she had stumbled through weeds and found the front door hanging by one hinge. Now, shaped shrubs edged the lawn and spring flowers burst up from tidy borders.

  Slow feet took her forward.

  Someone had restored it. Anna wiped at wet eyes and choked back more tears. Gregory had done this.

  She stood before the front door, painted the exact pillar-box red she remembered. Her arm stretched up as she never could as a child and felt along the wood ledge above the door…until she found the hole. Inside was a key.

  “Anna?”

  Her hand shook.

  Zach took the key from her and opened the front door. “Inside.”

  She was already moving. It was the same…and not. Anna had the more recent memory of debris and decay and only the hazy recollection of her childhood. Gregory hadn’t replicated the interior precisely. But it was beautiful.

  Her heels clicked over the stone flooring of the entrance hall, leaving clumps of damp soil and grass. She flopped onto a sofa set before the inglenook fireplace. “This is incredible.”

  “Yes.”

  Anna’s head snapped up. “Did you know about this?”

  “No.” Zach stared around the low-beamed ceiling, the whitewashed walls. “But it’s the sort of thing Gregory would do.”

  Anna scrubbed at her face for a final time, ridding it of any more tears and stood. “Yes. It is. So…” her hand waved around the little room, “…this is why I agreed to Gregory’s insane will.” Anna could feel the heat in her cheeks. This really was stupid. To drag them both out here. Zach didn’t care. The heat flared in her cheeks. He’d had what he wanted.

  “Anna…”

  That tone. The “we need to talk” tone she had to avoid. “I wonder what else he’s done.” She fled through one of the doors leading into the rest of the house.

  Every room was an immaculate blur until she ended up in the kitchen. Early morning light splashed through the long bank of windows opening out onto the kitchen garden. Anna leant against the cool granite of the central island and took slow breaths.

  She had made everything worse.

  Everything.

  Her stomach growled. Yes, she could make a complete hash of her life, but her body still needed to be fed.

  The large fridge was humming, so there was the possibility of food.

  Cool air washed over her body and she stared at the well-stocked shelves. “You think of everything, Gregory,” she murmured. “Except this mess.”

  Anna lifted a two-pint bottle of milk from the fridge door and looked at the date. Another week.

  “You said you loved me.”

  The date blurred and she willed her hand to grip the plastic handle. “Yes.”

  Not lying anymore. Whose stupid idea had that been?

  Anna put the milk on the island and turned to the cupboards. Tea. Falling into the familiar routine of making a pot of tea would settle her. She found a row of white mugs and a tea caddy in a cupboard beside the Belfast sink.

  Had that shut him up?

  Good.

  She was aware of him on the edge of her vision, standing at the window, staring out into the garden.

  “Yes?”

  She splashed water into the kettle and switched it on. “You wer
e there.”

  “Damn it, Anna. Is it something you always say?”

  “Can we not analyse this?”

  “Fine.”

  The kettle steamed and switched off. Anna poured it over a white pot. “We grab breakfast and then we head back. I’m sure you have something to do in your office.”

  “Yes.” Zach pulled her mobile phone from his pocket and tapped in a number. “But first I’m sorting this stupidity out.” He strode from the kitchen.

  Anna stared after him, but then forced her attention back to the pot. No regrets. No recriminations. Soon she would have her house and Zach would be a fading memory. “Should have stopped thinking about him years ago. Got on with my life.” She poured milk and then tea into a mug. Weariness weighed on her body and she didn’t want to think of how it ached in unaccustomed places as she leant back against the granite worktop. The mug warmed her cold hands. “Maybe that’s easier said than done.”

  Cereal and a good scrub, that was her plan. She would leave Zach to think he was being proactive.

  Anna was halfway through her cornflakes when Zach reappeared.

  “Carl Petersen’s heading into his office. We have to meet him.”

  Her spoon stopped and she forced herself to swallow. “Meet him?”

  “Sofia told him.”

  “What?”

  He scraped a chair over the tiled floor and sat opposite to her. “What, she told him? Or what, what did she tell him?”

  “Funny, Zach.” Anna stirred her spoon through the debris of her breakfast. She was too tired for this. “What could Sofia have told him?”

  “She saw you arrive with Freddie.”

  Could the morning get any worse? “So he wants to tell us the bad news in person.”

  Zach ran a hand through his untidy hair. “There is no way either of us is driving anywhere. David’s picking us up.”

  “Gregory will have a penalty system. He wouldn’t be able to stop himself from another little dig. You know that, don’t you?”

  He sat back and released a slow breath. “Very likely.”

  “You’re taking this well.”

  “I am, aren’t I?”

  Anna gritted her teeth. “Zach. Stop it.” The spoon clanked into the bowl. “I’m getting a shower…” The sudden shine to his eyes dried her words. She swallowed and hated that reaction.

  “You denied me a shower.”

  The soft promise in his voice prickled her skin. “This is over, Zach.”

  “Is it?”

  She stood. She was tired and grubby. And he was being a royal pain. “Yes. It is. We both know it. I was stupid to let it go that far.”

  “So…” Zach pushed himself out of his chair, “…if I were to suggest that I stink and I couldn’t possibly manage to scrub everywhere clean…?” His grin was sharp.

  Anna took a back step and refused to acknowledge the heat spreading under her skin. “You’re perfectly capable of washing yourself. You’re a grown man.”

  “Yes. I am.”

  He edged around the table that still separated them. Anna heard clicking and realised it was her shoes as she continued to retreat from him.

  “You want to hide yourself away. Shouldn’t you start to lay down some new memories here?”

  “Not with you.”

  His face darkened. “Not with me?”

  Anna smacked into a wall and the air whooshed out of her lungs. She winced. “Zach.” The doorjamb was hard under her fingers. She shuffled sideways and found the open door. “We can go our separate ways.”

  His eyebrow lifted. “Is that what you want?”

  He couldn’t ask her questions like that. “Come on, be sensible. I’ve never been the woman you wanted.”

  “I beg to differ.”

  Anna’s heart squeezed. “Don’t play these games.”

  “Games?” He reached out to stroke her jaw. It stopped her dead. “Why would I play games, Anna? What would be my reason?”

  Something itched. The tone of his voice wasn’t quite…right. “What did Carl say? Exactly?”

  “Gregory did have a penalty for not even lasting twenty-four hours.” Zach’s smile was sharp. “Of course, this is on top of losing everything.” He stared at his hand, followed his finger as it traced her skin. “Petersen revealed one of Gregory’s secrets.”

  Anna’s stomach knotted. “Secrets?”

  “One of your secrets, I should say.”

  “My…?” A shiver ran over her skin and she took a step back from him. Gregory couldn’t know anything about her and Zach. He couldn’t. “What did he say?”

  “Did you think it was funny?”

  Light angled across his face, throwing it into harsh relief. Suddenly, he was too close, too cramped in the narrow corridor. “Zach, I don’t know what he told you…”

  “I’m sure you do.”

  Anna stopped herself from running a hand over her unbrushed hair. “Do you want to drag this out any further? Or are you going to tell me?”

  Zach’s expression was carved from granite. “Freddie Lewis. You and him. It was a joke.”

  Anna blinked. She had never told Gregory anything. The false engagement had been a ploy to drive Zach away from her. In the panicked days after she’d first had sex with Zach, it was the only way she could see to escape him. She’d been an idiot. She’d known that for too many years.

  She straightened. “It wasn’t a joke.”

  “You meant me to find you half-dressed with him?” Anger beat hard in his voice and his skin flushed.

  Thank you, Gregory… Anna made herself say the word. “Yes.”

  Zach blinked. “Why?”

  The question surprised her. No sarcasm. Nothing witty. Just a simple question, so hard to answer. “You wanted to pay me. I am not a prostitute.” Anna sighed. “Look, contest the will—”

  He was staring. “You slept with him, with all of them, to spite me?”

  “Zach, can we not have this conversation?”

  His hand covered his mouth and for a moment, his shoulders slumped. He let out a slow breath. Anger curled around the next word. “Anna—”

  His pocket started to ring. He cursed and answered it. “It’s for you.”

  Anna took the mobile, trying not to touch Zach. “Hello?”

  “Ms. Shrewsbury.” Carl Peterson’s voice crackled. “Mr. Quinn has no doubt informed you of the further penalty of not meeting the terms of Gregory Brabant’s will. I…” He paused and there was an uncomfortable silence. Anna stared at her feet and controlled her breathing. “I am instructed to tell you that Mr. Quinn destroyed your friend’s career six years ago.”

  “What?” The word was strangled. She stared at Zach. “Freddie?”

  Without thought, her hand lashed his cheek and Zach staggered back from the blow.

  Anna stabbed at the phone. Waved it at him. “You ruined Freddie.”

  “Yes.”

  One word. Cold. Callous.

  Anger flared. She had never known. All those years and Freddie had never told her. “You don’t care that you destroyed him? That it’s taken years for him to resurrect his life, his career. Years. I had to use Sofia’s whim to give him his major show.” Tears edged her eyes. “You blackened his name.”

  “Yes.” Zach’s mouth flattened. “I had hoped it would teach him not to associate with women like you. Seems neither of us could learn that lesson.”

  Anna turned away from him before the urge to smack him again overcame her.

  “Yes, do what you do best, Anna. Run.”

  She stopped. Her shoulders lifted. “Would you rather I hit you again?”

  There was the rub of his hand over his bristled jaw. Zach’s voice was sardonic. “You’ve had practise.”

  He had destroyed Freddie’s life. The thought spun through her mind. This was Zachary Quinn. Proud. Self-righteous. But never underhanded. “I really don’t know you, Zach, do I?” Her fingers caught in her hair and she made herself turn to face him. “He’s still blac
klisted. His friends fell away—”

  “You didn’t.”

  “No. I thought I’d gotten him into trouble. I never, for one minute, suspected you would do such a thing.”

  “I don’t forgive.”

  Punching him, that felt really good right then. Her hand balled into a fist. Anger heated her words. “Me. Fine. But not him. He was—” Anna broke off.

  “What, Anna?”

  She couldn’t say Freddie had offered her protection from Zach. Let him think it was spite. Better than the other reason. The one even Freddie didn’t know about, that she was trying to protect her heart from Zach.

  And failing.

  “It was my idea.” What truth she could tell him tasted raw in her mouth. “I was stupid. But I was the one you should have blamed, not him.”

  “I wanted nothing more to do with you.”

  “Yes.” Her smile was sharp. “That’s been evident.”

  “Funny.”

  Anna turned from him. She was too tired to stay and fight with him. She wanted a shower, to scrub herself clean and try not to think what other little surprises could be waiting for her in Gregory’s will. “Contest the will, Zach. Get your business back. Just leave me out of it.”

  Zach grabbed her arm. “Suddenly, you don’t care?”

  Anna shrugged herself free. “All that I want now is a shower and sleep.”

  “Sleep then.” He paused. “But we will talk, Anna.”

  “Yes, about how you’re going to make it up to Freddie.” Anna threw the words back at him and her heels clicked along the narrow corridor to the back stairs. “Let’s talk about that, shall we?”

  “And why you needed to use him.”

  Her hand closed around the newel post and it stopped the tremor.

  “Is that a yes?”

  Anna couldn’t answer.

  Chapter Eleven

  “Anna.”

  She pushed her hair from her face and stretched, still only half awake. But the voice seemed insistent. Odd, it wasn’t Sophia with her usual list of gripes. She curled back into the too-comfortable mattress. Not Sophia. So she could ignore it.

  “Anna.”

  Warm fingers brushed over her cheek in a slow caress.

  Anna sighed and leant into the touch. She wanted to imagine one man’s hand there—