Her Best-Kept Secret

by Harlen, Brenda

  “No,” she responded immediately, maybe a little guiltily. “I didn’t mean to give the impression that John and I were neglected, because we weren’t. There were always nannies and tutors and play dates to keep us busy and out of trouble. But there were occasions when I wished my mom and dad had been around more.”

  She shook her head. “That sounds incredibly selfish. They gave us every opportunity any child could want, and yet, there were times when all I wanted was to stay in one place.”

  “It doesn’t sound selfish.” He took the wine and corkscrew she passed to him and started to open the bottle. “It just sounds like a child who was shuffled around a lot.”

  Her smile was wistful. “I used to wonder how my life would be different if…”

  “If what?”

  There was another pause—maybe a hesitation—as she poured the Bordeaux into two crystal glasses, then she shrugged again. “If things had been different. If I’d had parents who were settled in one place.”

  He wondered what she’d really been thinking, what had caused the hint of sadness in the depths of her eyes. Because he knew her thoughts weren’t as simple as her response implied.

  He sipped his wine as he debated whether to advance or retreat. He wanted her—the more time he spent with her, the more certain he was of that simple fact. And it didn’t seem to matter how different they were or how many reasons they each had for not wanting to get involved. Except he realized he didn’t really know her reasons.

  “Tell me about him.”

  “Who?” she asked warily.

  “Your ex-boyfriend. The one you left before you came back to Tokyo,” he said. “I’m assuming he’s the reason you’re determined to keep me at a distance.”

  Jenny picked up her glass, set it back down again without drinking. She didn’t need alcohol clouding her judgment when his mere proximity seemed to do that so effectively.

  “You said you broke up with him about six months ago.”

  She nodded. Six months, two weeks and five days.

  That was how long it had been since she’d left Brad in New York, but it had been longer than that since she’d had sex. And it was sexual deprivation, pure and simple, that was responsible for the power of the attraction she felt for Richard Warren.

  “What happened?”

  She shrugged, deliberately casual. “I wanted more than he was willing to give me.”

  “A commitment?” he guessed.

  “That’s usually what scares a man off, isn’t it? And though I’m not denying that I want to get married and have a family of my own someday, all I wanted from Brad was to be a priority in his life.”

  “That’s what he ran away from?”

  She managed a smile. “Brad was always running toward the next big headline rather than away from anything else.”

  “He was an idiot.”

  “I like to think so.” She selected a sandwich but set it down on her plate without taking a bite. “What’s your story?”

  “What makes you think I have one?”

  “Everyone has a story.”

  “Not necessarily an interesting one.”

  Obviously he still wasn’t going to tell her about his failed marriage. “Okay,” she said. “Tell me about the scar on your chin. How’d you get it?”

  He rubbed his finger over the spot and smiled. “Making cinnamon buns.”

  He poured more wine into both of their glasses, giving no indication that he intended to expand on his response.

  “You’re going to have to explain that,” she told him.

  “I was five—maybe six years old,” he told her. “I always liked being with my dad in the kitchen, but I especially liked the smell of cinnamon buns baking, and he would sometimes let me help make them. One day I was standing on chair beside the counter, helping spread the cinnamon and sugar mixture onto the rolled out dough and I leaned too far, tipped the chair and smacked my chin on the counter.”

  She winced with instinctive sympathy. “I bet that hurt.”

  He shrugged. “I don’t really remember, but I do remember hearing about it. Mr. Tortelli—a retired judge who lived in the neighborhood and one of my father’s most regular and loyal customers tell the story in very dramatic fashion—of The Day Of No Cinnamon Buns At Warren’s Café.”

  She listened, mesmerized by the nostalgia that warmed his voice. Despite the incident, it was obviously a happy time in his childhood.

  “Apparently my father was more concerned about the blood than the baking, and he forgot to take the first batch out of the oven before he took me to the hospital. And the second batch, which I had been helping with, had to be thrown out because I’d bled all over the counter.

  “I got three stitches and Mr. Tortelli got a tale of woe to share over his morning coffee for the next twenty years or so.”

  “He doesn’t sound like a very nice man,” she said, automatically defensive of the child Richard had been.

  “Mr. Tortelli was a fabulous character,” he explained. “He came in every morning for his coffee and a sweet roll and to grumble about me being underfoot. He’d talk to anyone who would listen about the one time he had to have an apple Danish instead his customary cinnamon bun because I didn’t have the sense to keep both my feet on solid ground.

  “Mr. Tortelli never had any kids of his own and he liked to claim he never wanted any. But he carried candies in his pocket—the crunchy mint ones with the soft chocolate centers—and he always managed to slip one to each of me and my brother along with a few coins before he grumbled his way out the door again.” Richard smiled again.

  “My father often said that Mr. Tortelli was the reason he got up at 3:00 a.m. every morning to bake. He told me that it didn’t matter what I chose to do with my life so long as I was there for the people who counted on me to do my job.”

  “You’re close to your dad, aren’t you?” she asked gently. “I can hear it in your voice when you talk about him.”

  He nodded. “I was.”

  “Was?” She frowned. “What happened?”

  The happy memories that had warmed his smile and his voice were gone, replaced by stark emptiness and raw pain. “He was murdered.”

  Chapter Seven

  Jenny immediately regretted her prying. She was always curious about family dynamics—at least with respect to other people’s families—but she wished now she’d never asked the question.

  Richard’s gaze was focused on something over her shoulder, or maybe somewhere in another time, and though his words might have been matter-of-fact, she heard the anguish in his tone. She lived with an emptiness deep inside herself from never having known her birth mother. She couldn’t begin to imagine the horrible void that had been left inside Richard when his father-a man he’d known and loved—was abruptly and violently taken away.

  “It was summer vacation after my first year of law school,” he said. “My father was so proud of me—the first Warren to go to college, and on a scholarship.

  “Anyway, it was a hot night and he was closing up when a teenage junkie—a skinny fifteen-year-old girl hopped up on some kind of drugs and looking to score some more—came into the café waving a gun around and demanding money. My dad gave her the cash in the register, but he’d already sent me out to make the night deposit so there was only about fifty dollars that he’d kept for the start of business the next day.”

  He recited the facts evenly, almost dispassionately, but she heard the bleakness in his voice.

  “She was furious and still strung out enough to be dangerous. And she put the gun to my father’s head and pulled the trigger.”

  She touched his hand, not objecting when he turned his over to link their fingers together. “I’m so sorry.”

  “He wasn’t even fifty years old, and he’d always been healthy and strong. He was the cornerstone of our family, then suddenly he was gone.”

  “That must have been horrible.” It was an inane and inadequate response, but the only thing she co
uld think of to say in the moment.

  He nodded. “It was a shock for all of us. Especially my mother. For months after, she went through the motions of living. Then his killer finally went to trial. My mom sat in the courtroom for the entire proceeding—six days of arguments and evidence and testimony.

  “Unfortunately the only evidence the prosecution had was circumstantial. The gun, with the girl’s fingerprints all over it, was excluded because it had been found during an illegal search. Without the weapon to tie her to the crime, she was acquitted.”

  She could only imagine the fury and frustration he must have felt when the verdict was read in the courtroom. She squeezed his hand gently. “How did your family take it?”

  “My mother was devastated all over again. All she’d wanted was justice for her husband. She harassed the D.A., demanding a new trial. She petitioned the courts. She became a crusader—determined to change the laws and the world. When she didn’t succeed, she turned her attention to me.”

  “That’s why she wanted you to become a criminal prosecutor,” she realized.

  He nodded. “I was in my final year of law school by that time and she wanted me to apply for a job with the district attorney’s office or for a clerkship with the courts. It didn’t matter to her that I had no interest in criminal law—and even less after my father was killed—she just wanted me to make a difference.”

  “I can understand that she would be angry and disillusioned with the system,” Jenny admitted. “But I can’t believe she expected you to make it your battle.”

  He shrugged. “I sent out a dozen applications, including one to the local D.A.’s office. It was a half-hearted measure to appease her.

  “I never thought they would actually offer me a job. Maybe it was because of my father that they did. But I also got an offer from Shotwell Cunningham, one of the top ten firms in Chicago. The day I started work there was the same day my mother followed through on her threat to take my younger brother and move away to a little town called Crooked Oak. She said that if I wasn’t willing to do my part, she needed to move somewhere she could feel safe.

  “And maybe that was a factor in her decision,” he allowed, “but she didn’t have to move all the way to North Carolina.”

  “I can’t imagine how awful that must have been for you. First losing your dad, then being manipulated by your mother and cut off from your brother.”

  “She thought I owed it to my father,” he explained. “Because he’d made sacrifices so I could go the law school, she thought I had a responsibility to use that education to bring his killer to justice.

  “I could see her point, but I couldn’t let myself be drawn into her cause, to become part of what was tearing her apart. And she has never forgiven me for letting her down.”

  “I’m sure that’s not true,” she said, although the picture she was getting of his mother didn’t make her certain of anything except that Mrs. Warren had treated her elder son unfairly.

  His smile was bitter. “She didn’t even come to my law school graduation.”

  Unfairly and horribly, she mentally amended, trying to imagine how he must have felt not to have such an important milestone acknowledged by his closest family. “I’m sorry, Richard.”

  “That was eight years ago,” he said dismissively. “It hardly matters anymore.”

  “Of course it matters,” she said. “The actions of a parent can have lasting impact on a child’s life.”

  “I was hardly a child. In fact, it was only a few weeks after that Marilyn and I got married.”

  And she was starting to suspect that the estrangement from his family was a factor in his decision to marry so quickly. “Was your mother at the wedding?”

  “I didn’t invite her.”

  No doubt he hadn’t done so because he didn’t want to be hurt again when his mother declined to share in that special day. She recognized the self-preservation tactic because she’d used it herself. She’d left James because she’d known he wouldn’t stay with her, then she’d followed the same pattern with both Kevin and Brad.

  But understanding Richard’s reasoning didn’t blind her to the results. His action had hurt his mother and cemented their separation, and her heart went out to both the parent and child who still bore the scars of a tragedy.

  “She sent a card and a gift,” Richard continued. “Later, when I called to tell her that Marilyn and I were getting a divorce, she told me she’d known all along that the Crock-Pot she gave us would last longer than our marriage.”

  Jenny winced sympathetically. “That was harsh.”

  “She’s always known how to make her point most effectively.”

  “Do you ever see her anymore?”

  “Once, sometimes twice, a year. A few years ago I tried to make more frequent visits, as if doing so would somehow bridge the gap between us. But she still can’t forgive me for my failure to right the wrong of my father’s death.”

  “What about your brother? You carry photos of your niece and nephew in your wallet, you remember their birthdays—obviously you’re close to them.”

  “Not as close as I’d like, but things are a lot better between us than they used to be. On top of my mother’s negative attitude, Steven had his own reasons for resenting me.”

  “Such as?”

  “The fact that I went to law school. After my father died, there just wasn’t enough money for my brother to go to college.”

  “You said you had a scholarship.”

  “I did, but my parents still helped out with additional expenses. My brother didn’t have that option. He was stuck. Now that he has a successful business as a mechanic and a beautiful wife and two children who adore him, he’s happy.”

  “It sounds as though you envy him,” Jenny said.

  “I used to,” he admitted. “But after my divorce, I accepted that I couldn’t have everything I wanted—that my career had to come first.”

  If Jenny needed any further reminder that he wasn’t right for her, it was there in his own words. He might have opened up to her, sharing a lot of his personal history and past hurt, but he wasn’t the man who could make her dreams of marriage and a family come true. No woman would ever take precedence over his career—and she had already lived enough of her life in second place.

  Richard noticed that Jenny kept casting worried glances at the gray sky as they packed up the remnants of their picnic. It had been a beautiful sunny day when they first arrived, but the weather was changing quickly and rain seemed imminent.

  “I don’t suppose you have an umbrella in this basket?” he asked as they started to make their way out of the park.

  “I wasn’t supposed to need one,” she said. “The forecast was for clear skies.”

  She hadn’t finished speaking when the clouds opened up and fat drops of rain started to fall. “It was wrong,” he told her.

  She narrowed her eyes at him. “Obviously.”

  They quickened their pace, but Richard soon realized why she’d been so distressed by the unexpected precipitation. The blouse she was wearing was white and made of some very filmy fabric that was, within minutes, not just wet but very transparent. Her bra was also white and her nipples were beaded beneath the delicate lace.

  Despite the moisture in the air, Richard’s mouth was suddenly dry thinking that the young co-eds who participated in wet T-shirt contests during spring break had nothing on Jenny Anderson.

  She crossed her arms over her chest. He didn’t know if it was because she was cold or because she was aware of the transparency of her garment. He wished he had a jacket he could give her, but he’d opted not to wear one in the ninety degree heat. Then he remembered the blanket. He tugged it out of the picnic basket and draped it over her shoulders.

  She turned, her expression reflecting both surprise and gratitude. “Thank you.”

  He smiled, forcing his gaze to remain on her face despite the urge to let it drop lower. “I can’t have my tour guide catching a chill,” he
said lightly.

  “What about the tourist?”

  “I live in Chicago,” he reminded her. “I’m made of tough stuff. Although I wouldn’t object to a cup of coffee to take away the chill when we get back to your apartment.”

  “That sounds reasonable,” she agreed.

  Despite the rain, Jenny had enjoyed her day with Richard and found herself reluctant to let it end. As she clutched the ends of the blanket during the short subway ride to her apartment, she worried that she was beginning to enjoy his company too much.

  She didn’t delude herself into thinking there would be many more days like the last few they’d spent together. Richard’s stay in Tokyo was limited. But even so, she knew she was starting to care about him. All it took was one kiss and a few casual touches. Or maybe it was the knowledge of everything he’d been through and his willingness to share it with her that made Jenny want to drop the shields around her heart.

  What was wrong with her? Was she so desperately needy that she latched on to anyone who showed the slightest interest? Was she so scarred by her abandonment as a child that she couldn’t be alone? She didn’t want to think so, but she couldn’t think of any other explanation for her inability to control her own feelings.

  She hesitated on the sidewalk outside her apartment, suddenly aware that she’d never invited a man inside. As Samara liked to remind her, in the six months since she’d been back in Tokyo, she hadn’t even been on a date. And maybe that was the reason for her hesitation—that inviting Richard into her apartment, showing him where she lived and sharing conversation would seem too much like a date.

  Not that she wasn’t ready to start dating again. Contrary to what Samara thought, Jenny was definitely over Brad and ready to get on with her life. But she wasn’t going to date anyone who was the least bit similar to her ex. She was determined to finally break the cycle of dead-end relationships once and for all.

  But she had offered him coffee and she wasn’t going to renege on that promise. As she unlocked the exterior door, however, she made a point of saying, “Just because you’re coming up to my apartment doesn’t mean this is a date.”