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THE PARTY WAS in full swing. Vehicles, mostly expensive ones, lined both sides of the street. Slowing his SUV out front, Cedar could see the shadows of people milling around behind the sheer drapes that covered the massive windows. Men, women...indeterminate ages.
He could almost hear the laughter and the conversation. Figured most of it would be sincere.
Heather wouldn’t surround herself with fakes.
In black jeans and a new button-down, black-and-white striped shirt, he started to feel underdressed. Thought about taking off.
Judging by the quiet surrounding him outside, there were no other late arrivals. His entrance could cause a stir.
She’d invited him to her engagement party.
As someone who paid attention to people—although, admittedly, he’d used what he got to his own advantage—he was curious why his ex-lover and, he privately suspected, the one woman he’d ever loved, had issued that invitation. Curious enough to maneuver into a spot between two sparkling-clean SUVs and pocket his keys.
He’d have stayed anyway, curious or not. His goal was atonement.
It didn’t come easy.
* * *
“YOU LOOK BEAUTIFUL...”
In a figure-hugging, short black dress and matching wedge heels, with her blond hair in a sophisticated updo, Heather smiled as yet another of her parents’ friends spoke to her as she passed by on her way to somewhere else. She’d occasionally worn the dress clubbing in LA, but had little reason to put it on now that she was back in Santa Raquel full-time. She exchanged a few more pleasantries, acknowledging that, yes, her independent polygraph business of five years was thriving, and moved on.
She was looking for Charles. She’d seen him a total of five minutes max since they’d arrived at her parents’ beachfront home, just down the road from Charles’s house—and ten minutes from her own beachside bungalow.
Fifteen years her senior, her fiancé was handsome. Fit. A dentist who was actually popular with his patients. He had a way of putting people at ease. She’d known him since he’d moved into her parents’ neighborhood after his divorce ten years before; she’d been home visiting while on break from college. And she’d started dating him the previous summer, when they hooked up at a neighborhood Fourth of July bash she’d attended with her folks.
Because she’d been too lame to have plans of her own.
Or a date.
She thought she saw his thick, slightly graying hair on the other side of the living room and moved in that direction, hoping she could make it to him without being waylaid again. The party had been her mother’s idea. And the guest list pretty much comprised the people invited by her parents and by Charles.
Heather’s friends had mostly faded into lives of their own when she’d started dating Charles—and before that, too, after the “big breakup.” She’d been part of a couple for almost six years, and while mutual friends had stuck by her—and him—she’d been the one to pull away from the group.
She’d been the one to break things off with him.
Thinking she’d go through the kitchen and enter the living room from the other side, Heather slipped away from the party and walked into a much smaller gathering—the two guests she’d invited, Lianna, her closest friend from elementary school on, and Raine, her college roommate. They stopped talking the second she came in.
“What’s going on?” she asked, wondering if there was a problem with the food. Not that they were in charge of it. Her mother’d had the party catered. But they were in the kitchen and...
“I’ve been looking for you two,” she added, glancing from green eyes to blue, red hair to blond. “You’re supposed to keep me sane here!” She was only half joking. She couldn’t wait to marry Charles—sometime after the year engagement she’d insisted upon—but this gathering was not her favorite part of the festivities.
If it hadn’t been for Charles’s need to introduce her to his large circle of acquaintances, she never would’ve agreed to have the engagement party, no matter how much her mother nagged her about social etiquette and doing the right thing.
Lianna and Raine exchanged a glance, Raine cocking an eyebrow at Heather’s closest childhood friend. Almost as though conceding best-friend status or something.
“What’s going on?” she asked again. The two had met a few times, but didn’t know each other well enough to be involved in some big heart-to-heart. If this was about which of them was going to be maid of honor...
Her mother had been after her to make a choice—strongly preferring Lianna, of course, since the redhead had been part of their family since grade school. But Raine had seen her through the best, and then the worst, times of her life. The ones that had defined the woman she was, and would be.
Still, she couldn’t imagine getting married without Lianna, her rock, by her side. And Raine was her safety net...
It was all too much. She’d decide later. Right now, she had to get to Charles.
“We’re worried about you,” Lianna blurted when Raine gave her a far-too-obvious silent nudge.
Heather chuckled. “About me? Are you kidding? I’m finally at a place in my life where there’s no need to worry.” She looked from one to the other, knowing that what she said was true. “Seriously.” And then, when they both looked unconvinced, she added, “A year ago, yes.” She’d come close to the brink of despair, close to not caring if she lived or died, when she packed up and moved out of the home she’d shared with Cedar. “But I’m fine now. Great, even. Or I will be as soon as this party is over.”
“This engagement is so sudden...”
“Charles and I have been dating for more than six months. I moved in with Cedar three weeks after I met him.” The math was important to her. She wasn’t jumping into love ever again. Hadn’t figured herself for someone who’d ever have done so.
She’d allowed herself that mistake, with the promise that she’d learn everything she had to learn from it, so she wouldn’t have to repeat the lesson.
“And I insisted on a yearlong engagement,” she reminded them. And herself. Charles wanted to get to the justice of the peace as soon as possible and start a family together.
Understanding that he wanted to be young enough to play ball with his kids, to coach Little League and soccer teams or move stage sets for dance competitions, she’d shortened the engagement from two years to one, but because of the oh-so-painful past, a result of the three-week courtship, she was holding firm on that year.
“He’s fifteen years older than you.” Raine acted as if she was making some big announcement. Heather slowed down for a second and stared at her two best friends.
“Surely the two of you aren’t having a problem with our age difference? My God, Raine, your stepfather is closer to your age than your mom’s, and you love him to death. Because, for the first time in your life, she’s happy. Truly happy.”
In colorful leggings that hugged gorgeous legs and a black formfitting shirt that defined hips that were just about perfect, Raine withstood Heather’s intent look without fidgeting. Or answering.
“And you...” She turned to Lianna. “Dexter’s only five years younger than Charles.”
“We fit each other,” Lianna came back without a second’s hesitation. She took a step closer. In black dress pants and a cream-colored silk blouse, she could command any room she entered. “Charles fits your parents, sweetie. Look at him in there. He’s having the time of his life.”
“And you’re in here.” Raine came closer, too. “Trudging through a party you didn’t want and counting the seconds until it’s over. Is that really how you want to spend the rest of your life? Counting the seconds away?”
So she’d been watching the clock. But she’d been counting minutes, not seconds. And only because she’d never been a big partier. She liked to spend time with people in small groups—not coming at her all at once.
“Charles is good with large groups of people,” she explained. “It’s a strength he has that counters my weakness in that area. He covers for me there, and I cover for him in other areas, where my strengths counteract his weaknesses.”
“He has weaknesses?” Lianna’s droll tone wasn’t lost on her.
“Come on, you guys.” Heather looked from one to the other, pleading unabashedly. “You just need to spend more time with him. Get to know him like I do.”
Well, not quite in that way, but...
“Seriously,” Lianna said. “What strength of yours counteracts a weakness of his?”
“He sucks at anything to do with aesthetics. I have a talent for creating beautiful spaces.”
“Your greatest talent is your ability to read people.” Raine’s tone, softer than Lianna’s, was no less compelling. “Does he even know that?”
“He knows what I do for a living.”
“Strangers know what you do for a living, sweetie,” Raine said. “Every time you appear in court, everyone there knows you’re a polygraphist. One trip to your office would tell someone that you administer lie detector tests, are a certified criminologist and also have a degree in psychology. I’m talking about your gifts, not your training. You deserve to be with someone who respects your ability to see inside people and relies on it. Someone who needs you in particular for what you have to offer. Someone who values your specialness.”
Like Cedar had? She felt the familiar sensation of lead falling in her stomach, and she quickly diverted her thoughts before she sank down with it. She’d gotten over all of that.
Was beyond it.
Had moved on.
Her friends were staring at her. Raine had once told her she believed Heather was empathic. Heather’s take was that other people could see what she saw if they just slowed their own thoughts and feelings enough to hear and see those around them.
Which was why she’d failed so miserably where Cedar was concerned. She’d been unable to get beyond her own feelings for him when he was around. She could now. And was ready to prove it.
“Being used isn’t my idea of happiness,” she said, as if any of them needed a reminder.
She’d had her doubts about Cedar, had seen what he was becoming, but she’d let passion cloud her judgment.
“So why did you invite him here tonight?”
No one had said the name aloud. They hadn’t needed to. It was as if the renowned defense attorney was standing there, in the room with them...
“He didn’t show.” So the whys didn’t matter.
“But why did you invite him?” Lianna pressed.
“It’ll be easier if we find a way to be friends. Because if we ever run into each other professionally...”
“That’s weak, Heather.” Lianna again. Sometimes Heather wondered how she’d remained friends with her for so long, but deep in her heart, she knew. Lianna understood her. Well enough to see when she was faltering—and to give her the hard truths when she needed them. Lianna had always been a source of strength.
Just as she’d been one of Lianna’s few sources of unconditional love.
“I heard he’s still in the area,” she said now, in her own defense. He’d sold the house they’d bought together, had paid Heather her share of the proceeds, which she’d used to buy the little bungalow within walking distance of the beach. She’d assumed he’d moved back closer to LA, but when she’d had lunch with a mutual friend from the city the month before, she’d found out differently.
Apparently he’d given up the apartment they’d kept in LA, too, but she assumed he’d bought another one there. Probably twice as nice.
Back when they’d been together, they’d spent some days in the city and some in Santa Raquel every week. Since the breakup, she’d quit staying in the city, choosing to make the hour-plus commute on the days she had to be in court. Or to interview someone who couldn’t come to her Santa Raquel office. She’d figured Cedar had done the opposite—left Santa Raquel, making the commute from LA for as long as he kept his Santa Raquel office. Apparently she’d been wrong on that one.
“Just being in the area doesn’t explain why he’d be on your guest list.” Lianna wasn’t dropping this.
“Because I’m over him.” The words sounded slightly pathetic. Her reasoning was not.
“Again, no reason to party with him.”
Raine’s hand was fidgeting against her thigh. A sign that her college friend was truly upset...and holding back. “What do you think?” Heather asked her.
“I don’t know,” Raine told her. “But I think it’s important that you do. So far, I’m not sure that’s the case.”
“I’m over him.” That was the reason. Period.
“Are you?”
“Of course!”
Raine, of all people, knew that.
“You said yourself that I’m a different person now than I was a year ago.”
Raine nodded. Licked her lips. Another sign of agitation.
Lianna’s gaze was softer than usual as she stood there, watching the two of them. Her silence was more telling in that moment than anything else. She clearly thought that this was bigger than frank talk was going to solve.
“He didn’t show, and I’m not even upset. What does that tell you?”
“That you didn’t expect to see him here.”
She hadn’t really. But she’d been prepared, just in case. And she would’ve been fine.
“I invited him because I am over him,” she said again. “Because I knew I could handle it. And because I’d like us to be able to be friendly. If he’s still in town, we’re bound to run into each other at some point.” As Raine had said, she was a criminologist with an undergraduate degree in psychology. A polygraphist who used the test as one of various methods of assessing the truthfulness of the people she tested. One of the skills that made her different from the rest was that she didn’t just use a predetermined set of questions. When something raised a dubious response, she listened to what wasn’t being said and asked more questions until she got a response that gave the signs of being truthful. The scientifically based insights she offered, coupled with the opinions she wrote, made her unique—and valuable. In the state of California, because of the track record she’d quickly built, she was considered an expert witness.
And Cedar defended criminals.
“Charles was okay with you inviting him?” Lianna asked.
“Yes.”
The girls exchanged another glance.
“Now what?”
“Don’t you find it the least bit odd that a guy doesn’t mind if his fiancée’s ex is at their engagement party?”
“Charles trusts me.” That part sounded a bit weak, even to her, but... “And I think he wants Cedar to see that I’ve moved on. He wants him to know that I’m with another man now.”
He hadn’t actually said so, but she’d read that into the conversation that had taken place between them. When she’d asked if it bothered him that she wanted to invite Cedar, he’d lied to her. He blinked more rapidly when he lied—making him an easy man to read.
One of the many things she loved about him.
She’d continued talking to him until she got to a semblance of the truth.
“Listen, you two, I promise you, I’m over Cedar Wilson. Completely. I’ll do whatever you need me to do to prove that to you.”
Instead of looking convinced, or even somewhat placated, her two best friends suddenly looked stricken.
“I’m guessing turning around ought to do it.” The voice came from behind her and Heather froze. If it was possible to live without a heartbeat, she was doing it.
She knew that voice. Had heard it in her dreams for months after he’d betrayed her.
And woken up with wet cheeks every time.
But no more. She’d cried her last tears for the man who’d purposely manipulated her, who’d used her skills to set a guilty man free.
