Women? Where’d that come from?
“And you paint them, too,” he said, nodding toward the border on the opposite wall. From a distance, it looked as though she had another shelf crammed with Toby mugs.
“I had a lot of time on my hands, and, well, I can’t afford to splurge on the real thing anymore. I got the collector’s book out and painted the ones I wanted.”
Mitch studied her painting for a moment, but brought his attention back to the table. “I figured Paul would end up being some hotshot at a bank, something cerebral. He liked being indoors, didn’t like physical work.” The rhythm of his fingers was getting more elaborate, and he’d added the plate to his “drum set”.
“He loved working on our houses. He didn’t do the heavy labor chores; we hired those jobs out. But he enjoyed the painting, sanding, especially the intricate work.”
Mitch leaned forward, fingers now quietly splayed on the white tablecloth. “Tell me about him, Jenna. What was he like?”
She felt such affinity with Mitch, even though they hadn’t touched. They both sought the answers that would connect the Paul that Mitch knew to the one she had married.
“He was …” She had to look away from Mitch; looking at him while thinking of Paul messed with her mind. “He was smart, good at business, ambitious. Very sensible, calm. And very loving,” she felt compelled to add. “He was a good husband.” Except for the secrets. “He didn’t like to go out; he was very much a homebody, which was fine with me. I’ve never been comfortable in crowds.”
Mitch took a bite of his salad, but he put his fork down. “He had this place, he had you. Why doesn’t he look happy in the photographs you have all over the house?”
She winced, not only at the bluntness of his words, but his immediate perception of what she’d only recently discovered.
“I don’t mean to imply you didn’t make him happy,” Mitch added, appearing chagrinned by his words.
She looked away for a moment, then back at him. Of course she hadn’t made him happy, not totally. “He had … blue moods.” She’d called them blue because somehow that made them seem less serious. “Times when he sunk so deep inside himself I couldn’t reach him. He never said why he had them, and I never asked. Maybe I didn’t want to know.” She set her own fork down. “Was he … like that when he was younger?”
He shook his head. “Aw, he was quiet, always was a little into himself that way. But not a sad kind of quiet.” His eyes darkened. “Maybe he felt guilty about something.”
“Or maybe he just missed his family and felt bad about lying to me.” Her voice had risen in sharp tones, enough to make his eyebrows raise. “You say you don’t want Paul to be guilty, but I think you’ve already convicted him.”
“I’ve had a long time to think about whether Paul murdered our parents. Most of what I came up with didn’t look good. That doesn’t mean I want him to be guilty. But I’m willing to face the truth, whatever it is. Our parents were murdered. He has a shaky alibi, as far as I’m concerned. He felt guilty —”
“But you said he’d been fighting with your parents before they died. Maybe he felt guilty that he hadn’t made amends.”
“The fact that he’d been fighting with them is another piece that casts doubt on his innocence. What I felt from him wasn’t just guilt, either. It was remorse. Just like you felt in his bedroom. And he shut himself away from me. We were close once; he should have moved toward me, not away. And the biggest piece of the puzzle is that he ran away. He ran, Jenna.”
“He was being a coward,” she said, surprised that the word had even come out of her mouth in regard to her husband. “It’s true. He shied away from anything he didn’t want to hear, even the news.”
“He was always a coward. He came to me to fight his fights for him. But this time he ran away from me. Why would he run away from the one person who could help him?”
“He didn’t do it.”
Mitch regarded her for a long moment. “I hope he knew what he had.” He picked up his fork and took a healthy bite of his salad. “Don’t let me keep you from eating. Seems to me you could use some nutrition.”
She decided not to ask what he’d meant by that first sentence, focusing instead on the last part. “That’s the second comment you’ve made about my weight.”
“A woman has to give her body what it needs, fill in those curves.”
She tried to ignore the way his accent had wrapped about the words woman and curves, making them slither right down her spine. “You have no place lecturing me about my eating habits. Or my curves.”
Mitch leaned back in his chair. “Sure I do. I’m your brother-in-law. And the father of your baby-to-be.”
That sent a flush of heat to her cheeks. Her mouth dropped open, but before she could come up with something to say, he said, “Jus’ eat and save your piss and vinegar for later.” He picked up his fork again and stabbed one of the tamales. “I have a feeling you’re gonna need it.”
Mitch had, surprisingly, helped clear the table, though Jenna would have preferred he go watch TV like Paul usually did. Finally she’d told him to clear out in pretense of being a good hostess, something she had no idea how to be.
He was her brother-in-law. She hadn’t thought about that, hadn’t thought to give their relationship a name. But that made it sound so innocent and normal, and what burned between them had nothing to do with either.
Jenna, stop thinking like that! It’s just this connection between you. Get yourself under control, get through this, decide if you’re really going to take him up on his end of the bargain, and get him the heck out of here.
She brewed fresh-ground coffee and prepared a tray to take into the office where they would start their journey into the past. Once everything was ready, she carried the tray into the office — and stopped in the doorway.
Mitch sat at the huge desk, reminding her for that split-second of Paul. But she couldn’t linger on that impression for more than that second, because Mitch fit in the office … differently. Where Paul had almost been swallowed up by the desk, Mitch looked right behind it. And at home, she noted with a wrinkle of her nose. After a moment, he paused in his perusal of Paul’s collection of Edgar Allan Poe’s stories and looked up at her.
She put herself in gear and moved forward, hoping he hadn’t noticed his effect on her. She had to recognize this strange … attraction, if she dared call it that, and put it in its place: out at the curb with the rest of her garbage.
Mitch had turned on only the desk lamp, creating a cozy glow around him. Jenna set the tray on the edge of the desk, backed up and turned on the overhead light with her elbow.
“So we can see,” she said in wilting tones. She pulled up the chair she had always used before Paul’s accident, keeping the corner of the desk between her and Mitch.
He upended a plastic bag onto the tray and dumped out what looked like cookie crumbs onto the silver platter. “Betzi’s brownies didn’t make the trip very well,” he said with a shrug. He scooped up a handful and, tilting his head back, poured them into his mouth. “They’re still good,” he added when he saw her looking at the mound of chocolate and walnuts.
It wasn’t their state that had her baffled; just that nine months before, she wouldn’t even be thinking of scooping up anything containing walnuts and eating it. Now, she reached over and took one of the larger pieces. He watched her chew, making the usually involuntary procedure a study of concentration.
“Happy?” she asked, wiping her palms together.
He pondered that for a moment, leaving her in the unnerving position of looking into those eyes that weighed her simple and blithe question. “Nope,” he said at last, turning back to the desk. “Fix your coffee, and we’ll get down to it.”
As she got up, she realized he had assumed the role of man of the house. “Do you always come into people’s homes and order them about?” she asked.
He looked around, as though just realizing he’d taken over the desk. �
��Dunno. Don’t think so.”
“Then do you make a habit of ordering women around particularly?”
“Nope.”
Finally she sat down and looked at him. He was sitting back in the chair, chin propped up by his hand, elbow on the armrest.
“You want to fight about it?” he asked, an amused fire in his eyes.
Jenna opened her mouth, but didn’t know what to say. She had never dealt with someone like Mitch before, and she honestly didn’t know what to do about him. “No, I don’t want to fight.”
“Might do you some good.”
“No, thank you.”
“You’re holding it all in, just like my brother used to do. It’s no good. Sometimes you got to let it all out.”
She placed her fingers on the edge of the desk, staring at them for a moment. “I like being calm. That’s the way I am. Paul and I were civil people.”
He lowered his head just the slightest bit, meeting her eyes and sending a funny curling sensation through her stomach. “Sometimes it’s good to go a little crazy.”
“I wouldn’t know.”
“Speaking of that, you have a place where I can live up to my end of the bargain? You know, one of those fertility places, sperm banks, whatever.”
“No. I hadn’t thought about it after you turned me down.” Not entirely true, but she hadn’t gone as far as finding a facility that would handle the procedure. She didn’t even know how much it would cost or where to start looking. Would ‘sperm’ be a listing in the yellow pages? “I’ll look into it tomorrow.”
He nodded with a deep dip of his chin. “Just so you know, I’m owning up to my end. Are you ready to own up to yours?”
She lifted her chin, determined to get through this. “Yes.” No.
Mitch leaned forward, meeting her gaze squarely. “You’re the key, Jenna. You’re the one who’s going to tell me what happened that night. When you were crying in Paul’s room, when you said you’d felt his sadness, I knew you had some kind of connection with him.”
“He didn’t run away. He only needed time to sort things out.”
“Nine years? Without a word to his family?”
Their faces were only a foot apart, and she could smell the brownie he’d eaten mixed with that lemony cologne. She turned to the line of pictures along the back of the desk, six Pauls looking at her with that shadow in his eyes. He wanted her to make things right, and he didn’t care if the truth hurt her. But she still didn’t believe he was a murderer.
“What do you need me to do?” she asked.
He smiled. “That’s my girl.”
“I’m not your girl.” Her words came out in a rush, as though she were trying to convince herself more than him.
“I didn’t mean it like that,” he said in a soft voice.
“I’m Paul’s girl. And I believe in him and his innocence. Maybe he did lie about his past, and maybe he was a coward, but he didn’t murder anyone.”
He sat back in the chair again, tapping a dull beat on the leather desk pad with his pen. “Do you think I like wondering if my own twin brother is a murderer? I never thought he’d be capable of murder, not my calm, sensible twin.” He shot her a look, and his voice went louder. “He held it all in, his anger, his passion. It was all locked inside him, and I had to wonder if the capability of murder was locked in there, too. Every day I hated myself for thinking that, for suspecting the one person I could always trust.”
He stood and walked closer to her, and Jenna could feel the heat and energy he emitted. “I hate him and I love him, but I’ve got to know the truth. It’s the only way I can stop this war going on inside me.” He crouched down beside her. “I need your help, Jenna. I need you to be honest with me on this.”
Jenna was frozen for a moment, though thawing quickly from his heat. Paul had no passion locked inside him, she wanted to say. She’d thought that of herself, as well. But Mitch’s passionate plea touched something so deep inside her, she couldn’t even name it. All she knew was a hunger grew from that place, a hunger to touch Mitch and draw some of that passion into herself.
“Tell me about Becky White,” he said.
“I don’t know much about her. I …” She reached for the drawer where the newspaper articles were, pushing the plastic bag farther back. “This is all I know.”
Mitch read both articles, then looked up at her. “That’s how you came to Ponee? From reading this?”
“No. That’s what made me decide that I had to go there to get some answers, but it was Paul who told me to go. And then I read the article and knew why. Or thought I knew.”
“You thought he was sending you to Becky’s family.”
“I wasn’t sure. But I found myself going right to Bluebonnet Manor, and then to you.” She remembered that first moment all over again, Mitch standing there slick with sweat about to get tackled. Her tackling him. Would she ever live that down? “I thought … maybe, that Paul was seeing her.”
“No.” Mitch shook his head with certainty.
“How do you know?”
He leaned on the top edge of the chair, regarding her with a curious stare. “I know he loved you completely.”
She came to her feet before she’d even realized it, hands crossed over her chest. “How?”
The clock on the bookcase ticked three times before Mitch answered. “I felt it.” He looked away, then back at her. “That night in the hallway.”
She sank back down into the chair. “But how?”
“Because you have Paul’s heart, and maybe Paul and I still have this connection between us.”
Was that why Mitch had held her so tenderly? She wanted to ask him, but stilled her tongue. No, she should be rejoicing that Paul loved her, that maybe he hadn’t been seeing Becky. “Why do you suppose he’s doing this?”
“I think he wants us to know the truth about that night.”
But why this pull between us, she wanted to ask. Instead, she asked, “Do you still feel it?”
“Paul’s love? No, not like that. I’ve felt … other things, but not that. All I know is it was real. I’ve never felt anything like it before in my life. He loved you, Jenna. With all his heart, he loved you.”
Jenna shot to her feet. “Don’t say it anymore! I don’t want to hear that from you, do you understand? You have no right to tell me that.” He straightened, raising his hands, but she advanced on him. “Not until you can tell me this: if he loved me so damned much, why did he lie to me? Why did he die and leave me here all alone?” She sucked in a breath as she heard her words shouted out, underlined by threatening tears. Straightening, she faced him and calmed her voice. “What other things have you felt?”
He hesitated again, obviously regretting mentioning them. Another three ticks on the clock passed. “He wants me to protect you.”
She laughed, a harsh sound she’d never heard before. “Oh, that’s perfect. He makes me find you, you who wants to know the truth at any cost, but he wants you to protect me, too. Well, here’s a word to both of you: I don’t need your protection. I can take care of myself. I don’t need anyone, got it? You’re both stomping on everything in my life. Just do what you have to do and go. But don’t think you can make it all better by putting your arms around me because Paul wants you to.”
What had become of her? She inhaled deeply, unwilling for Mitch to see how surprised she was at her anger. “You didn’t want me to lock in my feelings. Well, there you have them. And you know what? They’re tiring. I just want to be alone for a while. I’d say make yourself at home, but you already have. Good night.”
And she walked out, through the kitchen where she grabbed her sweater and headed toward her sanctuary in the gazebo.
Mitch stood there for a long time after Jenna left, listening to the ticking of the clock that seemed to get louder and louder. Her words seemed to bounce around the walls of the office, knocking his insides around. Yep, that’s what he’d wanted, for her to express herself. He could see what burned in h
er eyes even as she proclaimed to be so calm. Maybe he shouldn’t have told her what he’d felt. Hell, he didn’t have the rules to this game. And he never thought about what he said, he just … said.
Jenna was angry. What he hated was that she was aiming it at him. Sure, he deserved it, for coming here and making her face the truth. But she was wrong about one thing: he hadn’t held her because of Paul. No, Mitch couldn’t get out of that so easily.
He walked into the darkened kitchen, saw the lights leading up the path to a gazebo. He could see her sitting out there staring out at the black ocean beyond. There was something else, something she’d said that edged into his consciousness. He pushed it back, sensing it was something he didn’t want to know.
She had more fire than even she realized. “That’s my girl,” he whispered before turning and going back to the office. His girl. Why did that sound so right? He thought of her comment about his making himself at home and realized he had. Not because of arrogance, though admittedly he had plenty of that. No, because he felt as though he belonged here.
And that reason for belonging was Jenna.
If Mitch thought Paul had screwed up his life before, that was only the beginning. Maybe he would find out the truth about that night long ago, but Mitch was going to face a whole new agony. To Jenna, he was the jerk who was stomping her world and who also looked like the man she loved and lost. To Mitch, she was a woman with a delicate beauty and a fiery strength that left him wanting something he couldn’t have.
He walked out the front door and got on his bike. Maybe the wind could blow away this mess in his head.
Chapter 8
Jenna heard Mitch’s motorcycle roar to life and hoped to God he was leaving. She picked her way over the rocks down to the beach, and in the dim moonlight made a smiley face far removed from the way she felt.
The way she felt. Wrapping her sweater tighter around herself, she looked back at her home. It was warmly lit, welcoming. And lonely. For so long she had successfully buried her feelings, but Mitch had brought them boiling to the surface. She’d never spoken to Paul as she had to Mitch, never let her feelings explode in such an outburst. In fact, she couldn’t ever remember letting go of her emotions like that.
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