Finding Justice

by Rachel Brimble

  The massive space was breathtaking. A crisscross network of beams and posts added strength and character, as did the russet-and-gold oversize couches and cushions. Cases and cases of books and a plethora of candles, framed photographs and paraphernalia added an abundance of color and comfort.

  It was a man’s place, but also one where any woman would happily lie on the settee in Jay’s arms. Cat’s face heated and she hastily looked around to check Jay wasn’t silently watching her as he so often had since the train. She released her held breath. She was alone. Wandering farther into the space, she headed for the living area and stood in front of the huge black wood burner and stone fireplace. It was the focal point of the entire bottom floor.

  Smoothing her hand over the hammered metal surface, she smiled with pride at what Jay had achieved. In spite of his problems, Jay Garrett had survived and then some. Her stomach clenched and a strange tingle swept across her skin as the sensation of his thighs clamped between hers on that single night rushed through her.

  She snapped her gaze to the staircase. What the hell was she thinking? She struggled in vain to shift her mind to the only reason she was there. To find Sarah’s killer. She knew enough about victim psychology to know her association with Jay and the feelings it caused in her had nothing to do with attraction—and everything to do with the need to go back to a time when she was so happy.

  A time when her dad was alive and her mum drank nothing more than the occasional glass of wine with dinner.

  Cat shook her head. Jay’s sobriety, lifestyle and access to money couldn’t be further away from her life of alcohol dependency and its effects. Regret washed over her. He called her successful. Beautiful. A cop with a blossoming career, yet she felt like none of that. All her time and self-confidence was wrapped up in that five-feet-five-inch package known as Mum. Her mind rarely strayed from working out how to find her mum the help she desperately needed before the woman she loved with every inch of her heart ended up dead.

  “Cat?”

  She jumped at the sound of his voice and when she spun around, her breath caught. He’d showered, too. His damp hair was swept back, dark and unruly...and impossibly sexy, dressed in black shoes, black jeans and a crisp, pale blue shirt. Cat swallowed the ball of attraction that tugged at her chest.

  “Hey.” She smiled, hoping the tremor in her bottom lip wasn’t visible from across the room.

  “Are you okay? You look great, by the way.” He walked toward her, lighting candles with a long-stemmed flint as he came closer.

  “Thanks. You, too.” Cat tried and failed not to stare openmouthed at the sight of his pretty impressive pecs beneath the shirt, and the incredibly grabbable ass as he leaned up and down, reaching the shelves holding votives and pillar lights. Her anger at him for not telling her a week before about his addiction wavered.

  He abruptly straightened and turned. Her face burned as if he’d turned the flint on it. She was ogling him like a teenager in heat. He winked before continuing with his walk around the room. Years had passed since she gave Jay her virginity on the sands of Cowden Beach, but as she watched the light dance and flicker over his face, Cat knew he’d been the right man to take it. He was a good man then and a good man now—and God only knew she’d had enough experience personally and professionally of the bad ones.

  Please, God, let him be innocent...

  Cat looked to the floorboards, afraid to face him lest the sudden urge to kiss him break free. “If I didn’t know you better, Jay Garrett, I’d swear you bought this cabin just to torment me.”

  “How so?”

  Cat warmed hearing the smile in his voice. She met his eyes. “You know damn well how many times I said I’d buy it when I won the lottery and moved out here.”

  His eyes gleamed brighter than they had since she arrived. “I always knew one day you’d see sense and come back to live with me.”

  Cat’s heart kicked.

  A long moment of silence followed and she prayed he said nothing else. Left the subject of them well alone, in the past, where it had to stay no matter how tempting the urge to relive it. He was a suspect in a murder investigation—and even if he wasn’t, there was no way she would drag his newly successful and happy life into the mire of hers.

  He took a step toward her and she resisted the impulse to step back.

  “Are you glad it’s mine, though?” he asked, his gaze wandering over her face. “I bought it as soon as I could so nobody had the chance to take it from me.”

  “I can’t think of anyone better living here. Except me, of course.”

  He laughed. “It makes me happy to hear you say that. I didn’t want to make another mistake.”

  She frowned. “Another mistake? What do you mean?”

  “From now on things are going to change.”

  Cat stiffened. Was he talking about Sarah? “You said something like that on the train. Do you want to tell me about it?”

  He glanced away toward the French doors leading outside. “I lost touch, Cat. Got so embroiled in the business, I lost touch with what matters.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like Sarah, my family...you.” He faced her.

  His pain was palpable. Not sure she had enough strength to soothe him, Cat moved to create some space between them. “Sarah’s death has shocked you, catapulted you back to a time when we were all safe and happy. You can’t dwell on what-ifs and maybes. We all have to face what life throws at us or it will win and we’ll lose.”

  Images of her mum lying on the bathroom floor with her cheek in a pool of her own vomit filled Cat’s mind. Another of Cat manhandling a vodka bottle from her hand and hurling it out the back door into the garden. The noises, the anger, the chaos whirled inside her mind. She swallowed the lump in her throat.

  “You don’t have to tell me about mistakes, Jay. Stuff happens. It’s what we do about it that matters.” She exhaled, forcing the rare resentment toward her mum from her body. She only became the bitter person she was so ashamed of when she thought of the Cove or Jay. That was why she never made contact with him. What was the point of fixating on the possibilities that could have occurred in her life had her father lived?

  His gaze lingered on her mouth before grazing over her hair. “I guess you have things to tell me and I have things to tell you.”

  Trepidation skittered along the surface of Cat’s forearms. Did he know? Did he know just by looking at her that she was hurting? Of course he did. As she did him.

  “This isn’t about us. This is about Sarah.”

  “That means we can’t get to know each other again?” He shook his head. “While you’re here, I want you back. All of you.”

  The implication, the verve of his tone hitched Cat’s heart. The look in his eyes was open and hungry. Her skin tingled as need and entirely selfish desire rushed through her veins. She couldn’t let him get too close. She stepped back again, afraid she’d succumb to the simmering need to fling her arms around him and hold on, begging him to never let her go home and face reality.

  She was a bona fide coward with a secret and it pained her just to look at him. “You’re tense, I’m tense. The sooner we get things moving with this investigation, the better.”

  He closed his eyes. “I should’ve been there for Sarah, I wasn’t. The fear I’ll make the same mistake with you scares the hell out of me. Don’t shut me out of this, okay? Don’t shut me away from you.”

  She released her held br
eath. “I won’t. Of course I won’t.”

  He smiled. “That’s all I need to hear. We need to talk, but let’s eat first. Once I tell you what I’ve been up to your appetite might disappear.”

  “Jay—”

  His smile faltered. “Please, Cat. Let me feed you, then we’ll talk.”

  The sadness in his gaze and the stiffness of his shoulders weakened her resolve to get the ugly out of the way as soon as possible. She nodded, forced a small smile. “Okay.”

  “Pasta, basil, cherry tomatoes and fresh green salad, washed down with Templeton’s very best bottled water. How does that sound?”

  She grinned. “Perfect.”

  “Well, then...” He offered her his elbow. “Shall we?”

  She slipped her hand into the crook of his arm and let him lead her outside. Something wasn’t right. Something deep and dangerous ate Jay up from the inside out. He mentioned guilt with Sarah. She hadn’t turned up when she was meant to. It didn’t make him the guy who clasped his hands around her throat.

  His intense need to find out who murdered Sarah could be a smokescreen for something Cat didn’t want to contemplate. His calling her there, knowing she once loved him, could be his only defense. She was a cop. A detective. Which meant that to her he was a suspect the same as anyone else. She didn’t know him anymore. He wasn’t the same carefree boy he was before. While she was in the Cove, she’d leave no stone unturned...no matter how heavy.

  Please, God, give me proof he had nothing to do with this...and give it to me tonight.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  JAY WATCHED CAT SUCK the last morsel of raspberry pavlova from her spoon, her gaze fixed out across the water, her features relaxed and content. They’d been sitting outside for an hour, yet neither of them had brought up a subject of any real importance. They skirted around their families, their jobs, even their damn hobbies. Jay picked up his glass and drank.

  His addiction and this whole life Cat knew nothing about hung between like an invisible barrier. He had to tell her. Damn, he wanted her to know. How could they progress past this superficial closeness until both of them filled in the last seven years? Something lingered in her past, too. If there was one thing he’d learned how to do in rehab, it was recognize pain and shame in people’s eyes. He saw it deep and scarring in hers.

  She turned, her smile bright even in the semidarkness. “You okay?”

  Here goes nothing. Jay stood. “Shall we go and sit on the grass? Watch the sun go down?”

  Her smile faltered and her brow creased for the briefest of seconds before she smiled again. “Sounds good to me.”

  “Great.” He forced a smile. “I’ll go and grab a couple of blankets.”

  Leaving her sitting but feeling the intensity of her gaze on his retreating back, Jay hurried inside and whipped two fleece throws from the living-room couch. His heart hammered and his throat was drier than his liquor cabinet.

  “Come on, Garrett, you can do this,” he said, quietly. “It’s Cat. She’ll love you no matter what.”

  Heading back out, he prayed that sentiment was true. Friends forever, they had said. He, Cat and Sarah, the summer before he turned eighteen, had sat on Cowden Beach, all a little drunk on beer and youth, vowing to always be friends no matter who went away to college, committed a crime or got married. They’d always be there for each other through thick and thin.

  Now one of them was dead and the other was waiting outside to hear all about his two-and-a-half-year mistake.

  He stepped outside and his smile slid into place. “Let’s go.”

  She turned and smiled, flipping his stomach all the way over. Beautiful, courageous, kind and caring Cat. Pulling up to his full six feet two inches, Jay took her hand and led her across the veranda and down a narrow set of steps onto the grass surrounding the cabin.

  He walked to a spot that had a fantastic view of the horizon, day or night, and flicked out one of the fleeces. Spreading it on the grass, he gestured for her to sit. She did, leaning back on her elbows, which resulted in her breasts thrusting forward. Jay averted his gaze and let the other blanket drop from his hand to the ground. His attraction to her was insane after all this time, but it burned with a passionate yearning he hadn’t felt for anyone since. He wanted to be close to her.

  Swallowing, he refocused and lay down flat on his back on the blanket beside her. He stared at the salmon-pink and lilac sky. “I suppose this is the perfect time to tell you all about it.”

  The night was quiet and he heard the subtle changes in her breathing, the soft hitch and exhalation. After a rustle and swish of material she lay down, too, the heat of her upper arm lingering at the point between his biceps and elbow.

  “I suppose it is.”

  Jay closed his eyes. “It’s probably easier if you start with a question and have me answer it. Knowing where to start when you messed up for more than two years is hard.”

  She exhaled a shaky breath. “Okay, but first I want to apologize for my reaction when you told me about the drugs. I didn’t know what to say, think or feel when you threw it out there like that. I wasn’t... I’m not judging you, okay?”

  Jay turned his head, his cheek brushing the fleece. Her eyes darted over his face, lingered at his lips and slowly raised upward. Her eyes were the darkest green imaginable, almost black in the fading light and Jay suddenly wanted to drown in them.

  “You don’t have to apologize.”

  She turned away and looked back to the sky. “So, let’s start with a question. How does the man I once knew, Jay Simon Garrett, confident, masculine, hungry for the taste of whatever he wanted at any given moment, end up hooked on a class-A drug?”

  He followed her gaze toward the sky. Typical Cat. Straight for the jugular. He’d expected nothing less and it made it so much easier to speak. “Earlier you asked about my singing. Remember?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “I failed.”

  The telltale shuffle of clothes again and Jay knew she watched him. He didn’t look at her, didn’t want to see her eyes. He needed to get everything out in the open in the shortest time possible.

  “I left town after a year of getting no further than gigging in the local pubs in and around Templeton. Dad told me it was time to give it up, they’d supported me long enough. I look back now and can’t believe he didn’t say it sooner. God, if any kid of mine was still living at home without a job and thinking he was the next big thing at twenty-four, I’d like to think I’d kick him out on his ass. I was a jerk back then and didn’t realize the opportunities my family could give me.”

  “You weren’t a jerk. You had a dream that used to eat you up. Your singing was everything to you. Money or no money, when you feel like that about something, it should be your focus.”

  “Yeah, well, like I said, nothing was happening, so Dad said it was time I grew up and did something worthwhile. To him, that something was following in his footsteps. At the time it was like asking me to stand in front of a firing squad.”

  “So you left.”

  “So I left. Eventually I hooked up with a band. We had the enthusiasm and talent but never did more than support bigger bands, but still small-time. We all wanted something bigger, acknowledgment we were good, but not a single producer gave us the time of day.” He blew out a breath, as the memory and feeling of his youthful arrogance reeled up inside him like an ugly stain, seeping into his blood and making him want to sink farther into the grass.

&n
bsp; “So then what happened?” Cat’s warm, soft hand stole into his, and Jay’s breath shuddered out as he closed his fingers around hers.

  “Someone in the band convinced me the only way to keep the momentum going, to keep the belief we’d make it in the industry, was to snort half a gram of coke up my nose every time I felt myself waning.” He finally turned to look at her. “For the following two years I thought it was working.”

  She raised her eyebrows and met his eyes. Incredulous disbelief shone in the darkness of her eyes and her mouth dropped ever so slightly open as though she wanted to say something but had no idea what. Jay stared back, disbelief he could handle, but disgust and disappointment like he’d seen from his family, and Sarah, was a whole lot worse.

  “If coke does nothing else, it makes you believe you’re capable of anything.” He swallowed. “The trouble is, the only thing you’re really capable of is hurting people.”

  She closed her eyes and Jay’s heart sank in his chest like a lump of lead. Was she shutting him out? Unable to look at him? Both were justified. Unease rippled through his body. What should he do next? Keep talking or keep his mouth shut and let her process the gargantuan fact that he wasn’t the man she thought him to be? Not the man she once trusted enough to sleep with, to give her most intimate gift to and give it gladly.

  Shame seared his face as he opened his mouth, closed it, opened it again. She brought his hand to her lips and pressed a lingering kiss to his knuckles. Her strength and forgiveness absorbed silently into his skin.

  The rare heat of tears burned his eyes and he squeezed them shut. “I’ve made some really bad choices, Cat.” His voice came out low and deep, revealing every emotion battling around inside him, but there was no one else he trusted his vulnerability with. “One of the biggest is believing that working my ass off, making more and more money for the family business would somehow fill the bullet wounds every gram of coke I took made in my parents’ hearts.”