“We need to talk.”
“No. We have nothing to talk about.”
“How can you slam me for not giving you a chance to defend yourself all those months ago and then deny me any opportunity to do so when the shoe is on the other foot?”
“I didn’t have a husband to explain!”
“Right. You only had a mostly naked man in your bed.”
“This is neither the place or time for this. You want to talk? Fine. We will talk. Come over at seven and we will sit down so that you can try to explain to her how you neglected to mention in all this time that you are married. I guess now I understand why we are always at my humble little abode rather than your place. I suppose it is difficult to take lovers home when your wife is there.”
“I’m not going to even dignify that with an answer. I will be at your place at seven.”
“Fine.”
Harper sighed and looked at her for a moment. She could see a silent plea in his eyes, but she chose to ignore it. He made this mess, not her. She dropped her eyes back down to the work on her desk as a silent dismissal, forcing herself not to look back up until she heard his footsteps retreating down the hallway.
Charles, the mailroom clerk appeared in her doorway with his cart and brought a handful of mail inside to lay on her desk in the caddy that held incoming correspondence. She saw his gaze drift toward the flowers.
“Wow, that’s an impressive bouquet of flowers you have there! My wife wouldn’t know how to act if I brought her something like that home. I might end up with four more kids!” He laughed.
Claire smiled despite herself and nodded. He was already walking back to his cart when she had a thought and stopped him. “Hey, Charles?”
“Yeah?”
“When you get done, stop by and pick them up. Take them home to your wife.”
“What? Oh, no. I can’t do that.”
“Sure, you can. Trust me. They are the last thing I want to look at and they mean nothing to me. She’ll love them.”
“Are you sure?”
“Positive.”
“Thanks! I appreciate it!”
Claire heard him whistling as he made his way further down the hallway, finishing up his mail run. A few hours later, he returned to retrieve the massive bouquet, thanking her profusely again.
“Oh. You’ll probably want to at least keep this.” He pulled the card attached to the flowers off and set it on her desk before departing with them.
Claire hadn’t even noticed it on there and wasn’t sure she cared to even read what it said. She lay it aside for a while, but her thoughts kept drifting back to it as she tried to focus on work, unsuccessfully. Opening the small envelope that held the card, she read it and then crumbled it up, tossing it in the waste basket with a scowl.
I’m sorry. I can explain if you will just listen to me. I love you. Yours, Harper
They were words that meant nothing to her right now. Yeah, he was sorry. Very sorry he got caught was her best guess. He and she had a misunderstanding regarding Samuel. Not telling her he was married was downright deceitful. She just couldn’t imagine how he could have thought the truth wouldn’t come out or why he thought she wouldn’t react exactly as she did.
“I’m getting nothing done,” she said to herself, glancing up at the clock. It was almost time to go home. She took her time tidying up her desk and getting things ready to go for the next day. Hopefully, her talk with Harper would at least give her some closure so that she could focus on other things, like her job.
Chapter 37
“Come in,” she told him as she held the door open.
Claire was incredibly jittery and trying to hide her somewhat shaky hands from him so that he wouldn’t see how his presence affected her. She wasn’t about to give him the upper hand. He filed in and turned expectantly, as if waiting for further instruction.
“Have a seat.”
“I’d rather stand.”
“Suit yourself,” she replied, shutting the door and walking over to the sofa to have a seat. She felt weak as she waited to see what it was he had to say to her.
“Look. I know she fucked up. I didn’t know how to tell you.”
“You should have just said it, Harper.”
“I know. I know I should have. I was afraid you wouldn’t understand.”
“I don’t understand. How could you get involved with me, tell me you love me and let me fall in love with you without mentioning something as important as a wife?”
“I never intended for you to find out about her.”
“Oh, well that is just fantastic, Harper. At least it’s honest. It might be the most honest statement you’ve ever made to me.”
“She is blackmailing me, Claire.”
“Blackmailing you? Oh, that is rich. How is your wife blackmailing you?”
“We have a prenup that says if she is unfaithful she gets nothing, but if he is unfaithful, she gets more than half of everything.”
“Well, looks like you are about to be a lot less wealthy.”
“I could do without the sarcasm.”
“I could do without an adulteress lover.”
“Look. She cheated on me repeatedly, but I have no proof of that. After years of it, I got tired of it and moved out into my own apartment. I never once strayed, even when we were separated. Not until we seemed to have just been going our separate ways and I didn’t think it mattered.”
“So, I’m a rebound?”
“No. You aren’t. Not at all, but the one before you was. She worked in the temp pool for the office. They assigned her to my office and I was lonely. We were there for long hours. One thing led to another.”
“Great. I’m not even your first office affair.”
“It’s not like that, Claire.”
“No? It sure feels like that.”
“Well, it isn’t. Let me finish.”
“Suit yourself.”
“Anyway, what I didn’t know is that my wife was in cahoots with this woman that I was seeing at the office. There is a tape of us together.”
“Your wife set you up with a sex tape?”
“I don’t think she set her up from the beginning. She just seized the opportunity. The employee and I had an argument. She wanted to get more serious and I didn’t, couldn’t. I was married and was working with lawyers to try to protect my estate and get a divorce without losing my ass. Things soured and she quit working for me.”
“I don’t follow.”
“A few days later, she came by my apartment and we made up. She said that she understood and was sorry that she had tried to push me into something I couldn’t handle. I believed her. We ended up in bed. A week later, she called me and asked if I wanted to come over. What I didn’t know was that she had set up cameras to capture us on film.”
“At what point in this story am she supposed to start feeling any sympathy for you?”
“I’m not asking you to feel sorry for me, damn it! I am just trying to explain to you what happened.”
“Okay. Your money is too important to you to get a divorce. You rather just lie about it and pretend you don’t have a wife. How can we ever have a future?”
“It’s not about the money. I mean, it was in the beginning, but things changed after that film. Something happened afterwards that is more important.”
“I can’t imagine what.”
“Listen, I don’t want you to be afraid. I’m going to show you something that I should have already told you about, something I was going to tell you about once I was sure we were entirely solid.”
“Great. Another secret,” Claire said, rolling her eyes.
“Claire, please…”
“Fine. Go ahead.”
She watched as he began to take off his clothes, then stood before her ,completely naked. At first, she didn’t understand, but then he began to change somehow. It made no sense as his skin contorted and his bones cracked, spreading out in different directions to reform him, recreate him.
Her heart almost stopped as she found herself looking at an impossibly large black wolf.
“What the fuck?” Claire managed, almost to herself.
Then, he was changing again, this time into a tiger that stood looking at her, but not moving. It was followed by a change into a hawk, then a panther and finally, a cobra before back into himself.
Claire’s heart was racing as she watched in disbelief. This didn’t even make any sense and she wondered if she was dreaming or perhaps hallucinating. She looked around, bewildered. She seemed to be awake and in her own living room. Perhaps it was a tumor.
“Claire?”
“Uh,” was all she managed in response.
“Are you okay?”
“I think I’m having some sort of psychotic break.”
“No. No, you aren’t. I am a shifter.”
“A what?”
“A shifter. I can shape shift into different animals.”
“That’s crazy. It doesn’t make any sense.”
“I know. It’s a lot to swallow.”
“Why did you show me that?”
“So, you would believe me and so that I could make you understand the situation with my wife.”
“I don’t,” Claire replied, still in a partial state of shock.
“The sex tape is not what my wife holds over me. It’s the tape that she captured afterward.”
“Which was of what?”
“When I left the woman’s house, I was in a hurry. I had taken a cab there so my car wouldn’t be seen and I had a meeting to get to, a meeting I was late for. Instead of calling a car or a cab to get back, I stripped down in the back yard and tied my clothes in a knot around my neck before shifting into a hawk and flying back to the roof of my office.”
“And the woman saw you?”
“Worse. That would have just made her sound crazy. My wife had also hired a private investigator to follow me. He got the whole thing on camera.”
“So, she will expose you if you divorce her?”
“Exactly.”
“So? Why would it really matter?”
“People are, by nature, skeptical. It would label me a freak, a hoaxer. The press and attention would ruin me. The people who would stalk me to try to catch me would prevent me from ever shifting.”
“Why do you need to shift?”
“Same as any other animal, Claire. It’s my nature. I only showed the small animals. I can shift into much bigger things, even a dragon.”
“Dragons don’t exist.”
“Until a few moments ago, you would have said that about shifters. I am half human and half dragon shifter and the mutation of those two gives me the ability to shift into all sorts of things.”
“So, we have no future. You will always be married and you’ll always be this … this thing.”
“Before I met you, I wasn’t worried about a future. I admit that. If I divorce her, she takes money that I need to support my business, to take care of the people that work for me. I have people to think of other than myself. On top of that, she exposes me and ends my career altogether, unless I want to become a circus freak.”
“Then you should make sure you take care of your people. I think we are done here, Harper.”
“No. We aren’t done.”
“Yes. I think we are. You can’t get a divorce from the wife that you failed to tell her about because she has tapes of you fucking one of your employees and shifting into a bird.”
“That’s not fair.”
“Life isn’t fair. Get out of my house, Harper.”
“Claire. Please. I’m begging you.”
“Don’t bother. Just leave.”
“Claire…”
“Leave!”
He looked as if she had hit him rather than just barked at him, but she didn’t care. Everything he had to say only made matters worse. She couldn’t believe he had shown up here with such a crazy attempt at explaining himself.
He opened his mouth to say something and then just closed it again. She watched as he walked toward the door, opened it and left. Dropping down onto the sofa, she put her head in her hands and began to cry.
Chapter 38
Once he was gone, Claire struggled to sort things out in her head. It was just too much. Perhaps there came a point when you just had to say too much water had passed under the bridge and build a solid dam against the current
It no longer mattered how she felt about Harper. He was married to a woman that he would stay with to protect his secrets. What sort of future was there for anyone else in that sort of situation?
Then, there was the issue with him being something she couldn’t even comprehend. Didn’t everything else fall to the wayside in the light of that revelation? Even if he never did that again in her presence, what about children? What would their children be? Would she wake one morning to find a dragon at her breakfast table toasting the bread? If the thought wasn’t so horrifying, it would be laughable.
The thought of children reminded her of something she had overheard him saying to his wife in the office. Something about Molly? Had Molly been a child? What had happened to her? Claire pondered this for a while before deciding she had a headache and deciding to go lie down.
Sleep was not to be found, but closing her eyes for a bit was enough to stave off the headache forming in her temples. Eventually, sleep did come, though it was restless and filled with horrible nightmares about wild animals and broken hearts.
Chapter 39
“Claire, turn on the news,” Monica said, not even waiting for a greeting when Claire answered the phone.
“What? Why, Monica?”
“Just do it.”
Claire walked toward the coffee table with the remote in hand and turned it on, switching to the local news station. She was shocked to see a picture of Harper plastered on the screen. He was younger, in a tuxedo and standing next to a woman in a bridal gown. She recognized her as the woman from his office. Turning up the volume, she listened for a moment, Monica’s chatter temporarily fading into the background.
In tonight’s news, Howard H. Tanger, wealthy investor and CEO of Saxon and Bluth Ad Agency, has been arrested on suspicion of murder. The victim, his wife, Anka Marie Tanger, has been found dead in their family home…
“Claire, are you there?”
“Monica, I have to go.”
Claire ended the call without waiting for a response and listened to the newscast in disbelief. Had she somehow caused this? What had he done? The news report was pretty sketchy with the details, so she wasn’t sure what had happened. A horrible, selfish thought occurred to her. Was she going to get dragged into this?
Some of you may remember the Tangers from two years ago when their young daughter, Molly, was found dead in the family pool while under the supervision of her mother. No charges were brought in that case.
Claire sat down, feeling weak at the knees suddenly. Harper had lost a daughter. Then, a wife. No wonder he wasn’t willing to chalk up the career and fortune he had worked so hard for up so easily. No wonder he wasn’t willing to expose himself as something that would be deemed a freak.
How much should one man have to sacrifice to a woman who had let him down in ways that she couldn’t even begin to fathom? Claire was having a hard time reconciling her sense of outrage at not having been told with a sudden sympathy for him. Now, there was more to consider, though. Had he killed his estranged wife?
Chapter 40
“State your name for the record.”
“Claire Ann Ronson.”
“And what is your relation to Mr. Tanger?”
“I’m a former employee.”
“Is that the extent of your affiliation with Mr. Tanger?”
“We dated briefly.”
“What caused the end of your relationship?”
“It just didn’t work out.”
“Can you be more specific?”
“I’d prefer not to.”
“Listen, Miss Ronson, you aren’
t in any trouble here. We just have some routine questions.”
“I don’t really know what I can tell you that would be of a help to you.”
“You can tell us what happened to end your relationship with Mr. Tanger.”
“Detective Branson, sometimes things just don’t work out. It’s a simple fact. It has no relevance to this case.”
Her heart was drumming against her chest. It might have every bearing, but she wasn’t about to even suggest anything that might land Harper in more hot water. Guilty or not, she wouldn’t contribute to his downfall. Word at the office had cleared up all the questions she didn’t allow Harper to answer when he visited her apartment. No one knew what had happened exactly, but Anka had been supposed to be watching Molly when she was found in the pool.
“She claimed that she was taking a shower while Molly was asleep and that the girl had gotten up and wondered out to the pool.”
“Why do you say it like that?”
“Because the police said she was as dry as a bone and Molly was discovered by her father, hours later, when he returned from a meeting with a client.”
Claire shuddered at the thought of Harper finding his child dead, imagined what it must have been like for him. He would have pulled her out, tried to revive her. How much pain not having been able to do so must have caused him. Pain like that doesn’t go away, nor does the anger at the person who allowed it to happen. Thoughts like that were best kept to herself.
“Mrs. Ronson?”
She realized that she had zoned out for a moment and the Detective was still asking her questions. She looked up at him, trying not to look as bewildered as she felt.
“I’m sorry. What?”
“Is it true that you were witness to an argument between the Tangers recently?”
“Am I being held for something, Detective?”
“No, not yet. Should you be?”
“I am free to go then?”
“Yes. I can’t stop you if you choose to do so, but I must say, I’d be suspect as to your reasons.”
“Be suspect all you like. I have nothing to do with whatever has happened here.”
“Then you shouldn’t mind answering our questions.”
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