“Whatever you’ve heard, Annajane, has come from somebody else. Maybe from the insurance adjuster’s team. Maybe from neighbors, speculating on your asinine behavior during the past year. However, it hasn’t come from me, so don’t read me the riot act.”
Leaning forward in a very ecstasy of anger, she slapped both palms flat onto his desk. “Look, you bozo, I’m the injured party here, and I refuse to—”
“You’re the injured party? You!” His own anger burgeoning, Jeff surged to his feet to confront this virago who had forced her way into his office. His escape. His inner sanctum. His refuge from the world. “Always the victim, aren’t you, Annajane?” he accused bitterly. “You never have taken responsibility for your own actions. Which, I may say, are becoming more unhinged every time you try to bust up my life.”
“Bust up your life!” she repeated furiously. “What about what you’ve done to mine?”
“Oh, we’re long past all that. Get a grip, woman. Grow up. Because I’m getting damned sick of even seeing your demented face anymore. You’ve got a husband, Annajane. Go home to him, and leave me the hell alone!”
Irate, she grabbed for the dagger lodged in stone—Jeff’s letter opener—and pointed it toward him. Astounded, he backed up a step in self-defense. “Apologize!” she demanded. “Tell me you’re sorry for what you’ve done! Tell me you’ll make amends!”
“Sorry! Amends!” Despite the menace of that sharp slender blade aimed at his throat, Jeff couldn’t help responding in kind. “Sorry! In a pig’s eye I will! I’ve done nothing to be sorry for! You, on the other hand—”
Annajane’s sudden burst of laughter might have been heard from Maleficent, the witch of Sleeping Beauty fame. “I what?” she leered, leaning forward over the desk, arm outstretched, so that the weapon, in all its shining steel, was brought to bear a mere few inches from its target.
“Annajane,” said a quiet voice from the doorway.
The woman whirled in a blur of motion, just as Jeff, astonished by how rapidly the situation had deteriorated into one of danger, let out a cry of protest. “No, Olivia! Get out of here!”
“Annajane, stop what you’re doing, right now. Put that thing down, and leave, without causing any further harm.” Above her pounding heartbeat and racing pulses, Olivia was desperately hoping that a reasonable tone might be all that was needed.
“Dad!” shouted Nick, peering around his mother with widened eyes. “What’s goin’ on? Who is she, Dad? What’s she doin’?”
Oh, Nicky, dear God, no—!
“Nick, this doesn’t concern you,” Jeff informed his son in a firm, non-hysterical voice. “Back off. Go out with Patty, Nick. Now. I mean it, go!”
The boy flung a desperate glance of appeal at his mother, who shook her head very slightly, in warning; then he obeyed with obvious reluctance. Olivia could only sigh with relief for his disappearance. One less innocent member to be involved in this fracas!
“Your son?” sneered Annajane, diverted. “Your son that you had with that goody goody two-shoes, over there?”
“And my past doesn’t concern you,” he told his ex-wife. Digging down deep inside for courage he wasn’t sure existed, Jeff slowly, carefully, reached over to remove the letter opener from her grip. “Annajane, if I know my capable secretary at all, she’s already called the police. Do you really want to be involved in any more scandal?”
“She wouldn’t dare!”
“Oh, yes, she would, and I believe she did.” The release of a small amount of tension offered an equal amount of breathing space, and Jeff strove for composure as an antidote to Annajane’s upheaval. “Why don’t you calm down, have a seat, and we’ll all drink a cup of coffee together and see what’s going on?”
She jerked free of the light touch he had on her forearm. “I’d rather die first. You and your mealy-mouth replacement wife and your penny-ante kid—I’ll have nothing to do with any of you!”
“We’re trying to keep this on a fairly friendly basis here, as you can understand. Nobody wants trouble. Now, are you going to cool off, or are you leaving my office in handcuffs?”
Eventually, after more quiet discourse meant to calm and ease, Annajane sullenly complied.
Meanwhile, Olivia allowed her heavy pregnant body to sag against the door in relief. Jeff sent her the same sort of warning look she had given their son. “Liv, why don’t you go out with Patty for a while?” he suggested in level, unexcitable tones. Go away from this madwoman, please, so that I can deal with her on my own until the authorities arrive!
“The coffee?” Annajane, perched upright in one of several chairs, sharply reminded him. “And put something in it. Only the finest brandy, if you please.”
“Of course.” Brandy be damned; the woman wasn’t adding any alcohol to her histrionics on his watch! Still barely breathing even though the worst had apparently passed, Jeff reseated himself at his desk and pressed the intercom to ask Patty for refreshments. Then, studying his ex-wife for a few moments, he asked if Roger knew she had come here.
“Roger?” she snorted. “Of course not. As if he has any interest in following my hour-to-hour schedule every day!”
“If I might offer an opinion, AJ, I think you’re misjudging him. The man seems to truly care for you, and he’s worried about your welfare.”
Silently Patty entered with a tray, which she swiftly deposited onto the credenza. Then she slipped out against just as silently, incognito as a shadow. With all the earlier hullabaloo, she probably felt it was safer not meeting anyone’s gaze or getting involved in any backlash.
“You still take it black?” inquired Jeff, pouring out with hands that were remarkably steady.
“No. Just add some cream and sugar. I’ve gotten used to Roger’s tastes. No brandy? Huh. This is a remarkably poor setup you have here, Jeffrey.”
“So, Annajane.” As if he were enjoying the lull of pleasant conversation, with all the time in the world in which to indulge it, Jeff leaned back in his chair, sipped from his cup, and surveyed the woman opposite. “What’s next in your scheme of things?”
She lifted eyes as blue and intense as a gas flame to pin him fast. “What’s next is to end the farce currently going on and return to the way we were.”
“Really. Kinda tough to do, doncha think, with both of us remarried.”
“Second marriages can be as easily disposed of as first ones.” She shrugged a shoulder that, clad in leather, seemed less elegant than bony. Idly she swung one long leg over the other, boot jiggling back and forth in a nervous tremor. “My suggestion is to undo both, pretend this whole traumatic last year hasn’t happened, and get back together again.”
“Huh. ’Fraid that just isn’t possible, Mrs. Kendricks. Too much water under the bridge. Over the dam. Through the sluice.”
Annajane leaned forward to emphasize her point. “Anything is possible if you have enough money, Jeffrey, darling. And I do. I want you back. You belong to me, just as you always have. We can make it happen.”
Another long soundless moment of consideration. In the outer office, where, it was to be hoped, Olivia and Nicky were being bolstered by his right-hand Patty, a telephone rang softly but insistently; from somewhere, farther down the hall, a door opened and closed.
“You found my office,” Jeff noted out of the blue.
She snickered. “Were you trying to hide it? The new address was listed on the Internet, plain as anything, for the convenience of your clients. Of course I found it. I’m not stupid.”
“No, Annajane,” he said, slowly shaking his head with deadly significance. “I have never thought you stupid. Tunnel-visioned, perhaps; narrow-minded, usually. But not stupid.”
“So what do you think of my idea?”
Tunnel-visioned; narrow-minded.
“I think,” Jeff said, pushing back suddenly to stand behind his desk, “we’ll have to table it. Hello, Officers,” as two Westhalen men in uniformed blue entered the offic
e.
A small amount of commotion ensued—nothing, however, by comparison to that of a half-hour earlier. Annajane, presented with the picture of stoic legal authority, squawked a bit in protest. Both complainants were separated and information about today’s incident was collected and reported. Eventually, since her husband had already been notified, Mrs. Kendricks was tactfully removed from the premises and taken to the local precinct, where she could wait until Mr. Kendricks arrived.
“Would you like to file charges, Mr. Quinley?” asked one of the responding officers for what was being referred to as “a domestic.”
Perplexed, Jeff rubbed the back of his neck with one hand. By now, Olivia and his son had joined him, taking a seat off to the side to answer their own set of questions, and the two of them exchanged a worried glance.
“I don’t honestly know, Officer Lowden. Think I should?”
“That’s up to you, sir. We already have your statement in our report. Given your past history with this—uh—(lunatic?)—uh—adversary…well, you’ll have to give the matter some serious thought.”
“Please, Jeff,” whispered Olivia.
He had rushed to embrace her, once Annajane had been steered to a place distant enough out in the hallway, to still the trembling of her agitated body and try to quiet her fears. After a few minutes of murmuring to each other, he had wrapped one arm around his apprehensive son. They were like the walking wounded, a family of three almost four pulling in on themselves, depending on their own reserves of strength and resilience to make it through another crisis precipitated by Annajane Kendricks.
“This—this has to stop,” Olivia managed. The clench of her right hand over his, and her left hand over Nicky’s, radiated the depth of her turmoil. “Put her away somewhere, please, before she—before she does some serious harm!”
“Serious harm?” Frowning, the boy looked up at his mother—not so far to look, in the eleventh year spurt of growth that had the top of his head nearly to her chin—with anger and mistrust. “What d’you mean, Mom? How much more serious? I mean, with the baby comin’, and everything…”
“Exactly. There’s too much going on to scare me, Jeff. Please understand. We none of us can feel safe any more, with that woman on the loose.” Tears sparkled in the green-gold light of Olivia’s eyes, and her teeth were almost, but not quite, chattering.
Under the justifiable force of their anxiety, Jeff felt buffeted, battered, and defeated. Bad enough that his wife and son were being threatened, but that threat had grown to include the fate of his unborn child.
“I’ll take care of it,” he finally assured both of them. “Let me speak with this officer for a bit, and I’ll take care of it.”
* * * * * * * * * * * *
Jeff’s first priority was, of course, the welfare of his family. Once Annajane had been ignominiously carted away in the rear seat of a squad car, once the police had finally considered the matter currently at rest and departed, he climbed into his car to follow behind a shaken Olivia and Nick for the fifteen or so minute drive to their home. There, he got her settled on the couch, with an afghan over her knees, some hot decaf tea sweetened by plenty of sugar, and the cell phone nearby, on the table beside her elbow.
“Nick, I have to go back to the office and clear up a few details,” he informed his son in the kitchen. “After that, I’ll be home again. Till then, keep an eye on your mother, okay? I’ll set the alarm when I leave, and I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
“Got it, Dad,” Nick, proud to be delegated such responsibility, asserted. “Can Bruno and I go outside for a while?”
“Hmmm?” Distracted, Jeff was making a mental list of what else needed to be done. “Yeah, I guess so. Just for a little while, though, and only in the back yard. I’m counting on you, son.”
“Sure thing.” Suddenly, the boy swung both arms around his father’s waist in an unaccustomed hug. “I’ll take care of her.”
Feeling a surge of love swell up from inside for the precious members of his family, Jeff managed to speak over the lump in his throat. “I know you will, Nicky.” He ruffled his son’s biscuit-brown hair, so like his own in color and texture. “You’re the greatest kid in the world.”
Next on the agenda was to praise his secretary’s extraordinary presence of mind and reassure her as to office safety.
“Oh, I just did what anybody would have done,” Patty tried to downplay her swift, automatic response to the emergency situation, when Jeff returned to the office an hour later.
“Not hardly. You’ve been about the most capable, loyal, second-in-command anybody could ever ask for, Patty Forrestor, and I can’t tell you how much I appreciate having you around.” Although Jeff was not usually a touchy-feely sort of person, especially with staff members, he wrapped her into a warm embrace chock full of gratitude. “You okay?”
“I think so. Things got a little—tense—for a while, but we got through all right.”
Remembering just how tense things had gotten, his hold grew tighter. “It won’t happen again, Patty. Whatever else comes along in the future, I can promise you that much. Thanks for being the very special person you are.”
Her face, hidden against his shirt collar, flamed with embarrassment. “You give me far too much credit, Boss.”
“Nope. What I’m giving you is the rest of the day off, and tomorrow, too. Go catch some of the last rays of summer. You deserve it.”
His final order of business was to call Roger Kendricks. The phone rang a number of times before being sent to voice mail. Frustrated, he hung up and tried again.
“Hello!” The man’s tone sounded rushed, stressed, and irritated, all at once.
“Jeff Quinley here. Have you gotten Annajane bailed out by now?”
“Her father’s working on that right now,” snapped Roger, “no thanks to you. What do you want, Jeff?”
“Tell me you’re checking her into a psych ward, man.”
“Psych word? You must be as insane as you’re insinuating AJ is. Of course there won’t be a psych word involved. She’s going directly to her father’s estate, up near Peeksill, to stay there—um—for a while. To—um—recover, from her trauma.”
Teeth gritted, blood pressure rising, Jeff clung to his cell phone as if it were a lifeline to sanity. “Roger, I want to see you in person. Now. I don’t care where you are, or how long it will take you to drive. Meet me at Barnaby’s—yeah, you know the place; don’t argue—in an hour. Be there, Roger. I mean it. Or, by God, I will track you down and give you the pounding of your life.”
Jeff found him in the darkest, dimmest recess of the restaurant’s bar at the designated time, nursing a scotch and soda and looking both morose and miffed. Not used to being ordered about by anyone other than his lunatic wife, Jeff decided, clumping toward him without finesse.
They exchanged a cold, sullen glance. Jeff ordered a draft beer, Roger sipped thoroughly and at length from his glass. All in silence.
Finally, Jeff unknotted his jaw muscles enough to speak. “She’s nuts, Roger.”
An upraised glare with no real power behind it. “Careful, Jeff. You’re talking about my wife.”
“And my ex-wife, you poor sap. Couldn’t you tell what you were getting into before it happened?”
Staring into the depths of his drink, Roger swirled the dark liquid around its ice cubes. His dark eyes looked like two holes burned into the remnant of a very dirty sheet. “I fell in love with her. I made promises. Vows that I intend to stick by.”
“Ha. You think she’d do the same, if the situation were reversed? Hell, no. She’d have you committed in a heartbeat, her and her hard-shelled father. You want my advice? Get out while you still can.”
Another glare. “Why would I want your advice? You’re the one she discarded, remember?”
Jeff’s mouth filled with the deep bitterness of regret, and he took a swig of beer to wash it away. “Yeah, I remember. And she damn near killed me
in the process. Still, filing for divorce so I could marry Olivia was the best move I’ve ever made, bar none.”
“Was it?” An emotionless response dictated only by the apparent need for a response.
“You bet. Hell, I’ve had more happiness in the last nine months than you’ll ever have in a lifetime with that she-witch. I guarantee it.”
“Guarantee it, do you? Perhaps that just shows how little you know me, after five years as neighbors, and how little you know about my wants and needs.”
Jeff shrugged. “Maybe so. Right back atcha, buddy.”
Subdued sounds reached out from across the bar but did not break their heavy silence. A tinkle of glassware being stowed away, the low murmur of voices in conversation, the whoosh of the door opening and closing with a flash of outdoor light into interior shadows. Jeff’s supple fingers worked with a straw, bending and folding its length, tying each end into an intricate knot.
Not due to nervousness, but restlessness. He was anxious to finish this uncomfortable interview and be on his way.
“She’s on drugs, y’ know,” he said casually.
“That’s ridiculous,” snarled Roger, as expected. “You’re completely wrong, and I forbid you to ever make that accusation again.”
“You forbid me? You forbid me?” Were the whole subject not so crucial, Jeff would have laughed aloud. “Check it out, fella. She’s got means, she’s got opportunity—hell, she probably has a favorite dealer somewhere in the city where she can pick up the stuff.”
Fists clenched in futile rage, his adversary half-rose from the hard wooden bench as if to take on the world in honor of a lady who was being maligned. “Jeff! Do you seriously expect anyone to believe that?”
“Oh, yeah, in a heartbeat. It sure explains her erratic behavior, doesn’t it? Listen, chum, open your eyes and see what’s goin’ on in your own household, okay? You’ve got a real problem on your hands, whether you wanna admit it or not. But it’s time you put a curb on that woman, because she’s downright dangerous.”
“Dangerous? Pah! Independent, certainly; strong-willed, perhaps. But—dangerous? You’ve lost all perspective, Quinley.”
Romance: He Done Her Wrong (Cuddlesack Queens #2) Page 8