Barbara Dunlop - A Secret Life

“Mr. Kane,” she acknowledged, swallowing against a tight, dry throat.

“Who is it?” Heather demanded.

“I think you know why I’m here,” he said.

Heather shouldered her way between Joan and the doorjamb. “Well, I don’t know why you’re here.”

“Heather,” Joan warned, stepping back, opening the door wider. “Please come in.”

“You’re letting him in?” Heather squeaked, glancing from one to the other.

“She’s letting me in,” said Samuel.

Heather looked him up and down. “You sure that’s a good idea?”

Samuel perused Heather from head to toe. “You afraid I’ll steal the silver?”

Heather crossed her arms over her chest and tipped up her chin. “I’m afraid you’re a stringer for a tabloid.”

Samuel’s lip curled, and he gave Heather an insolent look few men would have dared. When she didn’t flinch, he turned his attention to Joan. “I need to know if it’s true.”

“Please come in,” Joan repeated.

“Joanie.”

“Back off, Heather.”

Heather’s delicate nostrils flared for a second, but she stepped out of the way.

Samuel ambled through the doorway, ducking reflexively to accommodate his height.

Joan closed the door behind him.

“It’s true,” she admitted, bracing herself for his anger.

For a split second, his expression went blank. Then he blinked and drew back. “You have proof?”

“Proof?” What an odd question.

“Of my father’s innocence.”

Joan instantly understood, and her mouth formed a silent oh.

In her novel, Samuel’s father didn’t murder his wife and then commit suicide. In her novel, his father was framed by criminals who were after hundreds of thousands of dollars concealed in the walls of his house.

Samuel thought the entire book was true. And she’d unthinkingly given him false hope.

She swallowed past the lump in her throat. “I’m afraid the story is fictional.”

Samuel’s meaty hands slowly curled into fists.

“I made it up,” she clarified, taking a step backward. Maybe Heather had been right about letting Samuel in.

Just then the front door opened, and Anthony strode into the hall. He stopped short, his eyes darting from one person to another. “What’s going on here?”

Samuel ignored his arrival, pointing a finger in Joan’s direction. “That book is about my parents.”

“Whoa.” Anthony stepped between Joan and Samuel. “We are not commenting on an accusation like that.”

“It’s true,” said Joan.

“Joan,” Anthony warned.

“The premise was based on his parents’ deaths,” she said, poking her head around Anthony’s broad shoulders.

“Joan,” he rumbled between clenched teeth.

“But the story is fictional,” she said.

Anthony gave a sharp nod. “There you go. The story is fictional.”

“I’m really sorry,” Joan said to Samuel, inching around to where she could see him again.

She’d love to be able to give him some peace of mind. Throughout the inquiry, she knew he’d insisted on his father’s innocence. But nobody had listened to a teenager. And the evidence had been pretty compelling.

It was still pretty compelling.

She wished it wasn’t.

“You didn’t go over the inquiry?” asked Samuel. “The transcripts? You didn’t piece together the police report and-”

“It’s fiction,” Anthony repeated.

Pain flashed through Samuel’s brown eyes, but he blinked quickly, as if to banish it. “I thought-”

“You thought wrong,” said Anthony.

“Stop,” said Joan, putting a hand on Anthony’s arm.

“He was innocent,” Samuel insisted.

Joan didn’t answer. There was nothing she could say or do to help the big man. She was a fiction author, not a criminal investigator.

Samuel glanced at all of them in turn, his voice dropping to a raw rasp. “He was innocent.”

“Maybe so,” Joan lied softly.

Samuel’s lips pursed and his eyes squinted down to slits of mistrust. He knew she was humoring him.

Then he squared his shoulders, glared once at Anthony and turned to walk out the door.

“Lawsuit,” breathed Anthony as the door clicked shut.

“Tabloid,” said Heather, ditching her martini glass and marching for the door.

ANTHONY WAS TOO GRATEFUL to finally have Joan alone to care what Heather might do or say to Samuel.

“That man will sue us for royalties,” he said, pulling out his cell phone, searching his memory for the direct number of the Prism legal department.

“Then he’ll win,” Joan returned, gliding her fingers through her thick, brown hair as she moved toward the breakfast bar.

“I don’t need you talking like that.” Anthony gave up on his memory and punched in the number of the main receptionist.

Joan lifted her long-stemmed glass. “Talking like what?” She pivoted back toward him. “Oh, you mean telling the truth?”

“You don’t get to decide the truth. A judge gets to decides the truth.”

Joan scoffed at that and finished her martini. Then she promptly refilled it from the shaker.

“Whoa.” Anthony snapped his phone shut and moved toward her. Though he could relate to the impulse, a drunk Joan would only make matters worse. “Slow it down there.”

“It’s weak,” she said as he drew close. “The ice has melted.”

“What is it?”

“A cosmopolitan.”

“There’s no such thing as a weak cosmopolitan.”

She ignored him, draining a second drink. “You want one?”

“No, I don’t want one.” Well, actually he did. But he was exercising restraint.

She waved the empty glass in the air, walking around the end of the breakfast bar and into the kitchen.

“You shouldn’t drink when you’re upset,” he pointed out.

“Why would I be upset? Just because you’ve trashed my reputation, ruined my family and probably got me kicked out of Indigo?”

“I’ve already told you I can fix it. If you’ll just listen-”

“Don’t you think you’ve done enough?” She popped the silver lid off the martini shaker.

“I wasn’t the leak.”

“Right.” Her voice turned sing-song. “It was some mysterious mole with the secret files.” She poured in a few ounces of vodka and reached for the cranberry juice.

“The confidential files. Every business has to keep them.”

“Whatever.” She capped the shaker and swished it from side to side.

He rounded the breakfast bar and commandeered the shaker. “Getting drunk is not going to help.”

“Who’s getting drunk?”

He popped the lid with one thumb and dumped the martini mix down the sink.

“Hey!”

“Read my lips-”

“No, you read mine.” She mouthed a pithy curse.

“I can’t believe you just said that.” Anthony had never imagined a word like that forming in Joan’s brain, never mind coming out her mouth.

She reached for the shaker. “Believe it.”

He snagged her wrist. “Oh no, you don’t.”

“Let go of me.”

He didn’t. “We need to focus here, Joan.”

Her green eyes sparkled in the sunlight streaming through the window. “I am focused.”

“Not on cosmopolitans.”

“I was talking about the tea.”

“Well, I’m focused on how Samuel is going to sue us.”

She moved a little closer, her perfume wafting around him. “Done deal, Anthony. Samuel’s already won.”

“Because you’ll feel compelled to confess to the judge.”

“Exactly.” She compressed her lips. “I tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.”

Anthony paused. “Say that again.”

“Huh?”

He had an idea. It was a wonderfully simple, yet brilliant idea. “You’re going to stand up and tell a judge Bayou Betrayal is based on an Indigo murder scandal?”

“Yes, I am.”

Merry Christmas, Anthony.

His grip loosened on her wrist, and he had to fight himself to keep from turning it into a caress. This wasn’t the time to think about her soft skin, the scent of her perfume, the sweet puff of her breath or the rounded curves beneath her tailored clothes.

He took a step back. “I know how we can skip the judge part.”

“We write a big fat check?”

“You tell it all to Ned Callihan.”

Her coral lips pursed, and for a split second he imagined kissing her. It was a fleeting, intense fantasy, where he pulled her flush against him and tasted that tender mouth for the very first time.

“From the News Network?”

Anthony nodded, tamping down his inappropriate reaction.

“How would that-” Her eyes went wide, and she took a step back. “Oh no, you don’t.”

“You tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth to Ned on camera. Five minutes. Then whiz, bang, we cut Samuel a check.”

She shook her wrist out of his grip. “I can’t believe you would suggest that.”

“It would solve two problems.”

“You have no soul.”

While that was probably true, it didn’t mean this wasn’t a great idea. And he sure wasn’t giving up on it without a fight.

HEATHER HAD NO IDEA where to find Samuel. His blue pickup truck had turned the corner of Cypress Street two minutes ago, but by the time she got there, he’d disappeared. There were no tire tracks, no dust, nothing.

She slowed her rented Audi to a crawl and checked out the parking lot of the general store and scanned the streets around the town lawn. Then, just when she was about to give up, she caught a glimpse of a blue tailgate. The truck was tucked beside the old Indigo opera house.

She shifted into second.

The man might run, but he couldn’t hide from Heather Bateman. She followed the crescent around the town lawn, pulling into the opera house parking lot. She shut off the engine and set the park brake, exiting into the sharp sunshine and deep humidity of the Indigo afternoon.

The pillared front porch of the old building was covered with building materials and equipment-a circular saw, two-by-fours, a box of hand tools and bundles of cedar shakes. A machine chugged away on the gravel at the corner of the building, with a hose that wiggled all the way up the white siding. Loud, rhythmic cracks came from somewhere on the roof.