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“Come on, Senator,” he said softly. “What did she do? Was it blackmail? Did she keep pushing and pushing, wanting more and more?”
The senator must’ve seen the certainty on Eric’s face, because the next words brought the interview to an end. “I want my lawyer.”
Eric sighed and nodded. “I’ll have someone bring you a phone.” It would have been nice to get a confession, but it wasn’t necessary. They had the evidence, and they had Taite’s confession. Other people might have started singing, but Dennison was a politician. He knew all about lawyering up. This was something else that was rarely as easy as it was on television.
Eric left Dennison in the interview room to stew, while he waited for a phone to call his lawyer. He caught sight of Garvey talking to a very distraught Fayre Dennison. He hated that she’d be hurt by all of this. He doubted she was one of those stand-by-your-man types—she was too tough, too realistic—but it would hurt her.
Eric walked toward them, and as he approached Mrs. Dennison’s head snapped around and she stared at his battered face. “Is this really true?”
He nodded once, and that was enough. Mrs. Dennison was going through so many emotions, and they all showed clearly on her face: disbelief, hurt, acceptance, and then rage. She’d loved her husband, once, maybe still did, but that strong streak of realism kicked in fast.
“Did you know?” he asked.
“That he’d killed Carrie? No. I’m still not sure I believe he could do such a thing.” She somehow managed to remain regal, put together in spite of her pain. “About Taite … I knew there was someone. We haven’t had a real marriage in years. But I had no idea he’d taken up with someone so young. Good heavens, Taite’s younger than our son.”
“He’s asked for a lawyer,” Eric said.
“That’s too bad,” Garvey said under his breath.
Fayre seemed to regain some balance. She lifted her chin. “I need to make some phone calls of my own. I’ll be damned if Douglas will use my family lawyers, or my family money to pay his legal fees, or Ms. Boyne’s. My husband doesn’t have much money of his own; he’s always been content to live off mine. I want him to feel every penny he has to pay out for lawyers. By the time he goes to prison, he won’t have a dime left.”
Nope, Eric thought. Not a stand-by-your-man kinda woman at all.
There had been interviews to give and paperwork to fill out, but finally, Jaclyn was home. She turned on the lights as she walked through, since it had been dark for a while. It was late, past her usual bedtime. Nothing made you appreciate home like having it taken away for a couple of days. Her couch, her chair, her kitchen. Her own bathroom. Her bed. Home. Knowing that the woman who’d tried to kill her was locked up added to Jaclyn’s appreciative mood. For the first time in days, she could relax.
Garvey had picked her and Eric up at the scene of the accident and had transported them back to Hopewell, where Eric had very quickly managed to get another city car. He’d refused to go to a hospital to be checked out, of course, but Garvey had given him an order—the city’s insurance demanded it—and he’d given in with bad grace. Garvey had also offered to arrange for a new rental car for her, but he also said he thought her Jag would be released tomorrow and he’d be happy to take her anywhere she needed to go until then. She declined the rental car. Who was she kidding? She’d been running from this for days, and the time for running was over.
Jaclyn walked into the kitchen and reached into a cabinet for a bag of decaf coffee. It was late, it had been a long day, but there wasn’t any way she’d be going to bed anytime soon. She was absolutely too wired to sleep. She intended to just sit here, in her home, and be. It was over.
She was measuring the coffee into the filter when her doorbell rang. Mom, she thought, because of course she’d called Madelyn and given her the lowdown on everything. But when she looked through the peephole, it wasn’t Madelyn on her doorstep. She opened the door and stepped aside so Eric could enter. He had on a clean shirt, and butterfly bandages closed the cuts on his forehead and across the bridge of his nose. He had two black eyes. He was the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen.
Silently she put her arms around him, and his closed tightly around her. Deep inside she felt herself surrender, let go of the fear that had all but paralyzed her life. She’d been fighting this since she’d run into him at city hall, and she wasn’t fighting it a second longer. The
re was something real between them, and she wanted to find out what it was, where it might lead them. Maybe they’d had a rocky start, but he’d saved her life; without hesitating, he’d rammed his car into Taite’s, put his life in jeopardy to save hers. How much more trustworthy could a man get? He was a good guy, her own Studly Do-Right. Hell, all he needed was a white hat.
She eased away from him, tried to think. It was so hard to know what to say to make this right. She’d been pushing him away for days: falling for him, holding on to him, then pushing as if her life depended on it. She didn’t want to push anymore. This could be an important moment, a turning point in her life, and she didn’t want to screw it up. She didn’t have a plan for this, no chart, no neat list to check off.
“You snore a little,” she finally said. “That might take some getting used to, but I’m willing to give it a shot.”
His eyebrows rose, a bit. “You make the worst coffee I’ve ever tasted in my life, but you’re worth the pain.”
Her head jerked up. “I do not!”
He looped his arms around her waist. “Yes, you do. I spit it out. What the hell was that shit, anyway?”
“Hazelnut raspberry. It’s one of my favorites.” Well, not really. She could tolerate it, but mostly she’d just been using up what was in the bag. He could find that out later, though. But she really did like flavored coffee, just not that particular one.
She couldn’t help but smile. “I work really strange hours, some days.”
“So do I.”
“Lots of weekends.”
“Ditto.”
She laid her head on his chest, listening to the sturdy thumping of his heartbeat. He held her tightly, but she could feel the difference in the way he held her, the very subtle shifting of his body. Already, she knew him surprisingly well.
“Sore?” she asked.
