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“Now you have a new plan. I called. Irena answered, not Juliette.”
“Juliette is gone.” Kingsley sat on the bed next to Sadie and scratched her ears.
“Gone. Where has she gone?”
“Haiti. She left today.” He kept scratching Sadie, refusing to meet Søren’s gaze.
“You never let Juliette go to Haiti alone.”
Kingsley raised his chin. “Special circumstances.”
“How special?” Søren pulled his legs off the bed and set his feet on the floor. With one movement Søren signaled their conversation had ceased to be of the casual variety.
“I saw a ghost.”
Søren raised his hand and mindlessly rubbed his bottom lip with the tip of his thumb. Kingsley bit his own bottom lip in a sympathetic response. Those lips … both cruel and sensual … the damage they’d done to him he couldn’t even begin to calculate. And yet he craved them as much now as he had a lifetime ago.
“I don’t believe in ghosts and neither should you, Kingsley.”
“Why not? I’ve been in love with a ghost for thirty years.” Kingsley strolled over to the armchair and sat on the ottoman between the other man’s knees.
Søren narrowed his eyes at him. “The body’s not even cold yet. Eleanor’s been gone one day and you’re already trying to get me into bed again?”
“Again?” Kingsley laughed and rolled his eyes. “Always. Are you surprised?”
Søren shrugged. “Not really. Tell me about your ghost.”
On the nightstand lay a folder. Almost reluctantly, he picked it up and carried it over.
Søren eyed him for a moment before taking the black file folder from him and opening it. He studied the contents before closing the file again and looking back at Kingsley.
“It’s us at Saint Ignatius. Eleanor has a copy of this photograph. What of it?”
Kingsley took the file and opened it. Thirty years disappeared in that foot of space between his eyes and the photograph he gazed at. Thirty years gone in a heartbeat.
Kingsley still remembered the day it was taken. His closest friend at St. Ignatius, a native Mainer named Christian, had gotten a camera for Christmas and decided some day he would work for National Geographic. The first animals he’d stalked with his lens were his fellow students. That day, the day the photo had been taken, Kingsley and Søren had disappeared into the woods by the school and had argued. Underneath his school uniform Kingsley’s body had sported bruises and welts over nearly every inch of his back and thighs. The only marks visible were two small fingertip-shaped bruises that remained on his neck from the act that had ended the fight.
“I have a copy of the photograph, too,” Kingsley confessed. “I’ve kept it all my life.”
“And?” Søren crossed his ankle over his knee and waited.
“And …” Kingsley slid the photo out of the file and turned it over. On the back someone had inked their initials. The white of the celluloid had faded and yellowed. “This isn’t my copy. This is the original.”
Søren narrowed his eyes at Kingsley. “The original?”
Kingsley nodded. “I received this in the mail yesterday. No note. No letter. No return address on the envelope. The photograph in the folder and nothing else.”
Søren said nothing for a moment. Kingsley waited.
“Postmark?”
“New Hampshire—your home sweet home.”
Søren came slowly to his feet and walked to the window. Pushing back the curtains, he gazed out onto the Manhattan skyline. Kingsley would have written the man a check for a million dollars then and there to know what he was thinking. But he knew Søren too well. Money meant nothing to him. Secrets were a far dearer currency.
“It isn’t Elizabeth,” Søren said. Kingsley stood next to him and watched his gray eyes watch the city.
“Are you certain of that?”
“What possible motive would she have for this? For stealing Eleanor’s file from your office? For sending you that photograph?”
“You know Elizabeth better than I. She’s devoted her whole life to helping abused children.”
“And?”
“You and your Little One? How would she feel if she learned about you two?”
“Eleanor is thirty-four.”
“She wasn’t thirty-four when you fell in love with her. I know you did nothing wrong with her. I know you kept her safe and protected her even from yourself, even when your own pet begged you not to. But would Elizabeth see it that way?”
Søren exhaled and furrowed his brow.
“No. No, Elizabeth would not. She’d assume the worst, assume I was like our father.”
“Your sister is even more damaged than you are, Père Stearns. She would destroy you first and not even bother to ask questions later.”
“Possibly. But she certainly wouldn’t go to these lengths to do it, not when a phone call would suffice.”
“Elizabeth would do everything in her power to destroy you if she knew about you and your pet. But yes, this doesn’t seem to be her style. Or your pet’s.” When he said “pet” Sadie lifted her massive head and stared at him with worshipful devotion. If only all the women in his world were so easy to control …
Kingsley glanced at the photograph one more time. Elizabeth, Søren’s sister … a beautiful woman even at age forty-eight. Beautiful but broken. No, far more than broken—shattered. Kingsley had been in her presence only a few times, and he’d met French soldiers—war veterans, men who’d liberated death camps and watched the Nazis put Paris under their heels—with fewer ghosts in their eyes than Søren’s sister. If she’d merely been raped by her father as a child, she might have survived without the damage she carried inside her. But she’d turned her darkness onto her own brother. When she’d ceased to be a victim and become a perpetrator herself … there was no telling what such a broken soul was capable of. Kingsley knew broken souls—he possessed one of his own, after all.
“Who else then?” he asked, sliding between the window and Søren. Søren glared down at him. Kingsley only grinned and waited for him to move. He didn’t.
Søren stood in silence. Kingsley knew not to speak, knew not to rush the answer. It would come in time. Patience. Søren always rewarded patience. Eleanor had learned that as a girl. Had she tried to force his hand, Søren would have walked away from his obsession with her. She seduced and teased, challenged and defied, but all the while she waited, wanting answers but never demanding them. Until the day Søren told her everything and gave her everything. And then she’d had the audacity to walk away from it all. Søren laid out feasts for her that she merely picked at, while Kingsley lapped up the crumbs that fell to the floor.
“It’s not Elizabeth,” Søren said again. “But she might know something. After all, Lennox is entirely populated by Elizabeth and her two children. If it was postmarked from there, then …”
“Then what, mon père?”
Kingsley waited, hoping Søren would say exactly what he wanted him to say. Eleanor gone. Juliette gone. Just the two of them once more. It could be perfect again, like it was when they were boys in school together. If only Søren would say what he needed him to say.
“Then we should go talk to her—you and I.”
Kingsley nodded. “Oui.”
Perfect.
SOUTH
At moments like these Wesley wished he was as fluent in profanity as Nora. A good “fuck” would have summed up his feelings pretty well right now. From the look on his father’s face Wesley could tell that this wasn’t the first time he’d heard the name Nora Sutherlin. But how did his dad know who she was? Two types of people knew that—erotica readers and kinky people. Wes didn’t like to think his father fell into either of those camps.
“Um … Dad?”
“J.W…. Where’s Bridget?”
Wesley glanced down at Nora. He hadn’t quite told her about Bridget yet.
“I don’t know. At her house, I guess. We broke up.”
Wesley’s father gave him that look—that skeptical, eyebrow-half-cocked look that never boded well for anybody on the receiving end.
“When? You two were out here on the porch a week ago, laughing so loud I thought I’d have to turn the garden hose on you both to cool you down.”
Wincing, Wesley immediately stopped looking at Nora. Last thing he wanted was to see the expression on her face at that piece of news. But she must have taken it well, for Wesley felt her palm on his lower back. She gave him a quick pat before sliding her hand into the rear pocket of his jeans. As much as he liked having her hand on his Levi’s, her groping his ass might not be the best way to say hi to Dad tonight, given the mood he was in.
“We broke up after that. It wasn’t working. It—”
“Mr. Railey, I’m sure this is kind of a shock to you, me showing up out of nowhere,” Nora said, pulling her hand away from Wesley and taking a step forward. “The whole thing’s something of a shock to me, too. But Wes and I have known each other a long time. And—”
“My son is twenty years old, Miss Sutherlin. He hasn’t known anybody for a long time.”
Wesley watched Nora plaster a smile on her face. He’d seen that smile before. She usually used it on men she was trying to con into performing for her. That smile had gotten her out of more speeding tickets than Wesley could count—two on this trip alone. He wished he could communicate telepathically with Nora. The first thing he’d tell her would be stop smiling. Trust me on this.
“I feel like we’ve gotten off to a bad start, Mr. Railey,” Nora continued. “Can we talk inside for a few minutes? Wesley used to work for me back in Connecticut. He—”
Wesley’s father started forward at a leisurely place. Nothing new with that. Jackson Railey was well-known for doing everything at a leisurely pace. Back when he was a kid, Wesley had thought it meant his father was the laid-back sort, never in a hurry, never rushing himself or anybody else. As he got older, got smarter, he realized his father moved slowly because he liked making people wait for him. He’d make his mind up in a second, but make you wait a minute for the answer. He’d spend hours on something that should take only minutes, to prove he had the time and money to waste … even if nobody else did.
“I know who you are, Miss Sutherlin.”
Wesley’s heart raced harder with every step his father took closer to Nora. Things had started out ugly and were getting uglier by the second.
“A fan? How nice.” She kept smiling.
“Not quite, madam.”
“Dad. Let’s go in the house and talk.” Wesley took a step to the side, trying desperately to put himself between his father and Nora. His dad wasn’t the violent type, but he didn’t need to be. Words were weapon enough for his father, especially when he was angry like this.
“That woman is not allowed to cross the threshold of my home, J.W. And quite frankly, I’m shocked that you’d even suggest it.”
“That woman?” Wesley stood up straighter and stared into his father’s blue eyes. He’d gotten his brown eyes from his mother, his temperament from her. Most days it was only the similar set of their jaws that betrayed Wesley and his father were even related. “‘That woman’ is my best friend, Dad. She’s also a four-time New York Times bestselling author.”
“Five, actually,” Nora interjected with a sly wink at him.
That wink gave Wesley the courage to keep going. No matter what his dad said to her, Nora could take it. In their fifteen months apart, he’d almost forgotten how much fun she had getting yelled at.
“Sorry, Nor. Forgot about the new book. Multi-NewYork Times bestselling writer. She’s also—”
“A whore.”
The word came out of his father’s mouth and hung in the air between them. Wesley’s right hand balled up into a fist. His dad might not be violent, but he was coming damn close to getting Wesley to that point.
“Ohh …” Nora said with that wicked smile of hers, that smile that made men either fall at her feet or run for their lives “… he totally went there. I can respect that.”
“Take that back, Dad.” Wesley leveled his coldest stare at his father. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I know exactly what I’m talking about, J.W. Did you think your mother and I believed it when you said you just wanted to come back home to Kentucky because you were homesick? You spent two years telling us how much you loved it at Yorke, how much you wanted to spend your whole life in Connecticut, how happy you were, and then one day it’s ‘I’m ready to come home.’ You think we bought that? Your mother did, because that’s what she wanted to believe. I knew better. Did a little digging—”
“Jesus, Dad, you investigated me?”
“Had to be done. And I did it for your own sake.”
Nora laughed softly. “Can I take a moment here to tell you both how cute your accents are when you’re angry?”
Wesley and his father both looked at her, Wesley in shock, his father in disgust.
“Okay, that’s a ‘no’ then. Carry on.” She took a step back and waved her hand at them to continue.
“You think this funny, don’t you, miss? Well, it’s not funny to me. Or to my wife. Our son was a wreck when he dragged his tail back down here. I had an uncle come home from Vietnam looking less shell-shocked than my boy did that day he turned up here.”
The smile fell from Nora’s face. Nodding, she stepped forward again and took Wesley’s hand. He squeezed her fingers and found them surprisingly cold, as if she was nervous or something. His Nora? Nervous?
“I’m sorry, Mr. Railey. I know I hurt your son. And I’ll regret it until the day I die. But I—”
“Hurt my son?” Wesley’s father shook his head and gave a horrible, cold laugh. “You didn’t hurt my son. He falls off a horse and gets hurt. You broke that boy’s spirit. Crushed him. I know about the smut you write. The wife’s got a whole case of trash like that in the library. From what I can tell, only thing different about your books and the ones she reads is that in yours they get a little more creative. Your books don’t bother me a bit. That you sell your body doesn’t even bother me. What does bother me is that you pulled your tricks on my son. You used him, chewed him up and spit him out.”
Wesley opened his mouth to protest, but Nora spoke up first.
“You say you know me, Mr. Railey, but obviously, you don’t. If you did, you’d know I don’t spit out.”
“Nora, please,” Wesley said, ready to drop on his hands and knees to beg her to let him handle this. Not that it would work. For a single second Wesley felt a pang of sympathy for Søren. Nora was lawless, unmanageable, uncontrollable. You told her one thing, she did everything but that. She laughed when others cried. Danced when others sat. She clawed her way to the top and didn’t even chip a nail on the way up. No one could break her. No one could handle her. No one could shut her up.
God, he had missed this woman.
Wesley turned to his father, stepped directly in front of Nora and raised his chin.
“Dad, my private life with Nora … what happened between the two of us isn’t any of your business. We worked it out. And she’s not a whore. I can’t believe you’d say that.”
“I said it, and I’ll say it again. What else do you call selling your body?”
“A good career move.” Nora peeked around Wesley’s arm. “Although technically, I was a Dom—”
“Nora, can you give me a minute here?” Wesley tried to ask as politely as his raw nerves would let him.
“Take your time, Wes.” She patted him on the back again.
“Dad, I love you. But you’re kind of pissing me off right now. Nora’s my best friend. She’s my girlfriend. She’s staying here with me while I figure out what I’m going to do next. If you’ve got a problem with that—”
