The Soon-To-Be-Disinherited Wife

Eleven

Garrett stood on the tarmac at the private airport in Eastwick, waiting for the Lear to slide to a smooth stop and the doors to finally open.

The sky was fat with muddy clouds, the rain coming down in a steady downpour-matching Garrett’s dark mood perfectly.

Still, when the lone passenger clipped down the metal steps from the plane, Garrett hustled toward him. His sister’s husband was stocky, with blond hair and weather-ruddy skin, wearing a tropical khaki jacket and chinos that looked well slept in.

“Griff.” Garrett extended a hand first. Both were private men and too strong-minded to be close friends, but all Garrett wanted from his sister’s husband right now was to be a full-fledged ally.

Griff’s expression seemed to echo the same sentiment. “I’m glad it was you who arranged for the private plane and had me picked up. I don’t understand what’s going on. Your parents haven’t told me anything except that Caro was in the hospital.”

“Let’s get out of the rain. Then we’ll talk.”

“I haven’t slept in almost thirty hours. But I still want to hear-”

“You will.” Garrett drove, taking the south road where the highway snaked around curves, revealing views of the pewter bay. The windshield wipers could barely keep up with the steady, slooshing rain.

They passed the road to the Cartright house. After that came the secluded nest of homes that included the Baldwin mansion. In town, even this early in the day, all the store lights and streetlamps were already on because of the dark storm. A crackle of lightning promised more of the same. When they passed the Farnsworth house, Griff finally spoke up.

“You missed the road.”

“No. I think we’d better talk before you see my sister.”

The rolling country outside Eastwick had clusters of horse farms and stables-and nice little country roads where a car could pull in, cut the engine and not be noticed in the shadow of trees. Garrett put his head back and then just let the truth out. “She tried to commit suicide. Came damn close to succeeding.”

“What? Your parents told me she was critically ill from some kind of drug interaction. Which is what I found so confusing, because the only medicine I knew she was taking was birth control and an occasional aspirin. What-”

Garrett motioned him to silence. He turned, needing to look at his brother-in-law, needing to know this man better than he ever had before. “She’s not herself, Griff. She’s shaky and scared and she needs help. Not someone who’s going to crucify her.”

“You think I would? Hell, I’d never have left home at all if I’d realized she was depressed.” He stared at Garrett. “There’s more, isn’t there?”

“Yes. Way more.”

“Tell me. Now. I need to know exactly what’s wrong with my wife. And what the hell’s going on that no one’s given me a straight answer before this.”

Garrett didn’t move. His brother-in-law’s responding with anger was just what he’d have done if someone had dared to keep him in the dark. But he still worried how to handle the situation because he knew tact had never been his strong suit.

“I said, tell me. What’s going on? I demand to know.”

“And I want to tell you because I believe your knowing the whole picture could be a matter of my sister’s life. Otherwise I’d never consider breaking her confidence. But I can’t give you the whole picture at this exact minute.”

“The hell you can’t.”

Garrett didn’t smile, but he almost wanted to. It was so easy to deal with another man. Men understood each other. Men responded in predictable ways.

Men were nothing like Emma.

“This is what I want to do, Griff,” he said bluntly. “I need to give my sister a chance to tell you the situation herself. If you still have any questions two days from now, then call me. I promise to fill you in.”

“Not good enough,” Griff snapped.

“It has to be. Because I won’t betray her trust if I don’t have to. And right now I don’t want to even take you back to her unless I’m damn sure you’ll be good to her.”

“I love Caroline, for God’s sake! Why on earth would you think I wouldn’t be good to her? Because we had some trouble a couple years back-”

“No, that’s not it.” Garrett rolled down a window. Rain whisked in, but it was too hot and too tight in the car without fresh air. For that matter, right now his whole life felt too hot and too tight to breathe. And his sister’s mess was only part of it. “It took a long time for me to trust you-”

“That’s a likewise. I always thought Caroline loved you more than me.”

“She doesn’t. She loves you more than anyone or anything in the universe.” Garrett said it bluntly, to see Griff’s reaction.

“I feel the same way about her.” No hesitation. Only increased anxiety. “I need to know what’s wrong or how can I possibly know what to do or how to help her-”

“And one way or another, you will. I promise. But…Griff, you know our background. Our parents. You know Caroline never had the security of feeling wanted or needed.”

“You’re not telling me news.”

“I’m just saying…she was always more likely to make some mistakes that maybe another woman wouldn’t. Not because of lack of character. But because of lack of security, on the inside. And if you can’t deal with that, then I’d just as soon take you back to that plane. Fly you anywhere you want to go. Pay your way-”

“Shut up, Garrett. I’m not bribable. I thought you knew that.”

Finally Garrett’s pulse eased. “I hoped you wouldn’t be.” He added, “She’s scared to see you. Know that. And ashamed of this suicide attempt. Know that, too. And if you didn’t guess, our parents heaped more stress-and guilt-on her head rather than less.”

“Nothing new there, huh?” Griff said wryly and then sank against the passenger seat as if trying to process all the information and implications just given him. “Get me home, would you?”

“Yes.” Garrett, reassured, started the car and aimed toward their house. Barely another minute passed before Griff piped up again.

“What’s wrong?”

Garrett glanced at him. “You don’t think the scenario I laid out for you was enough?”

“I meant…what’s wrong with you? You look as if you haven’t slept in a week. Business troubles?”

“No.” Garrett hesitated. Normally he’d never have confessed a personal problem to anyone. But because he wanted a stronger bond with Griff-and because he felt so damned shattered he couldn’t think clearly anyway-he admitted, “It seems that my love life has a lot in common with a train wreck.”

“Someone in New York?”

“No. The where of it doesn’t matter. The thing is…hell, I guess I just assumed it would never happen to me. That I’d fall, like in the storybooks. I thought the whole thing was a myth. Until…her. I can’t believe how the whole world changed, that fast, that completely. Only…”

When Garrett didn’t immediately fill in that blank, Griff guessed, “She cheated on you?”

“No. Nothing like that.”

“She doesn’t care the same way you do?”

“I thought she did.” Garrett stopped at a red light, stared dead ahead until it changed. “Now I don’t know. I just found out that our getting married could mean a ton of money for her. I understand money. Believe me. And I’d marry her any way she’d have me, to be honest. It’s just…I thought her being with me was about-” He couldn’t, didn’t, say the word love. Not to another man. “I thought we were clicking. That we both felt the same thing exploding between us. So it hit me in the gut hard. That there was money behind it.”

“You’re sure there was?”

“Oh, yeah, I’m sure. She came out and admitted it.” Garrett kept replaying the whole thing in his mind. Her sitting there on his chair, wearing his shirt. His feeling so full of emotion for her, love, caring, protectiveness, lust, all of it. And then her so guilelessly spilling the whole story of her suddenly lost inheritance. Her knowing-because she had to know-that he was so wrapped up in her that she could have said anything in the universe to him at that moment.

He could feel Griff’s eyes on him. They were only a pinch away from pulling into his sister’s driveway. “Hell, that’s rough,” his brother-in-law said quietly and then slowly added, “It seems ironic that we were just talking about the issues that affect Caroline…and that you’re going through something the same way.”

“Come again?”

“I meant…I know how you two grew up. That cold household. Your parents into status and the prestige of their social life a ton more than they seemed to care about either of you kids.”

Garrett pulled into the driveway, braked. “That’s exactly why I need you to be extra good to Caroline. Need you to give her more rope than someone else. She has a ton of love in her, Griff. But I think, coming from where we did, it’d be unrealistic to think she could make a marriage work without getting lost now and then. I don’t mean that anything’s your fault. Or hers. Just that for sure the two of us are stuck with a longer learning curve than most people.”

“Yeah,” Griff agreed. “That’s exactly why I asked if you were positive about that woman’s feelings for you. Because possibly the Keating background influenced how you saw the situation.”

Garrett saw his sister’s face in the living room window, saw Griff’s eyes light up when he saw her. When Griff shot out of the car-completely forgetting his luggage-Garrett had to smile, had to believe those two had a real chance at making things right together.

But his smile disappeared as he backed out of the driveway.

His brother-in-law’s insight started clawing on his nerves-about his having the same dysfunctional background Caroline did. Garrett knew exactly how relationship-challenged he was. But that sure as hell didn’t mean he knew how to fix the shattering mess he’d made with Emma.

Before he could panic, though, he pulled over the side of the road and dialed her cell.

She answered-which was good. But he could hear heaps of noise and other people’s voices in the background, as well as the chill in her voice-which wasn’t so good.

“Look,” he said and then stopped. “I upset you.”

“More than upset me.”

“I was in the wrong,” he said immediately but couldn’t very well elaborate because he didn’t know exactly what he’d done.

“Not wrong,” Emma corrected him. “Not if that was honestly how you felt.”

He sensed a terrifying trap and shifted to what mattered. “I want to marry you. That’s how I feel. That’s what I thought you wanted, too…maybe not that very minute? I assume you’d have wanted to spend more time, have a chance to be more sure. But right then was when the money problem came up.”

“Garrett, I didn’t tell you about the problem because I was expecting you to solve it. I told you because it was something traumatic that happened to me and I thought-hoped-that you’d become someone I could honestly talk to when there was a problem.”

“You can. For God’s sake, you can.” He pushed on. “Emma, I don’t give a damn about money. I’ve got plenty of money. It doesn’t need to be an issue-”

“But it is,” she said so softly he could barely hear over the confounding noise in her background. “If you thought I was with you-if you thought that I slept with you-as a way of getting my inheritance, then we’re not just worlds apart. We’re a universe apart. I’m sorry I misunderstood.”

“Emma-” he started to say. But there was no one listening. She’d quietly hung up.

Out of nowhere, the rain had suddenly stopped. Clouds tumbled over each other to reveal patches of azure sky. A bunny peeked out from the woodsy roadside. The afternoon had turned idyllic. Everywhere but inside him.

He’d lost her. He hadn’t been dead positive until now, but this conversation sealed what he’d feared all day. He’d blown it. Apparently irreparably. He’d just found her-the one woman who’d made him believe in love, in himself, in a future. And now she was gone.

Without her, he felt a knife twist in his heart, so sharp, so raw, that his incredibly stupid heart actually felt broken. And that’s exactly how it was going to be, he feared.

Either he miraculously-quickly-found a way to heal this breach with Emma or neither his life nor his heart would ever be the same.

Several days later Emma slipped into a seat at the Debs’ table. The lunch had been scheduled a few days earlier than usual-technically to do a more formal welcome back for Mary Duvall, but Emma had private reasons for wanting this lunch over and out of the way.

After spending the last four days soul- and heart-searching, Emma had discovered all kinds of hidden sides to herself she didn’t know she had. Some were pleasant. Some not. But she’d surfaced from all that internal searching, made several painful major life decisions and was ready to act.

This lunch was hardly on the level of huge life changes, but it was still something that needed to be done. The girls all wandered in right at noon. Mary took the seat next to her. Outside, it was hotter than the devil. Harry was polishing glasses behind the malachite bar. Kids screamed out at the pool, and the golfers were hiking in for lunch.

Emma had chosen to wear ice-blue today, just silk slacks and a sleeveless tunic, but she’d added white topaz for jewelry. It was her version of power dressing for a hot day-and she knew she’d be grilled up the wazoo, so there was no way around being in the hot seat today.

Initially, though, the lunch started easily. Harry served a fresh-fruit salad, opened the wine, brought out the cheese and seafood plates. The group had opted for a munch lunch. Felicity had tucked in next to her, Lily across from her, with Vanessa Thorpe and Abby Talbot taking the far ends. Caroline had joined them, her first outing since she’d gotten out of the hospital.

When everyone settled down, Emma proposed a toast to Mary. “We were all so busy talking last time that we never really had a chance to welcome Mary back home. At first she thought she was only coming to take care of her grandfather, but now it looks like she’s hoping to stay permanently back in Eastwick. Right, Mary?”

Emma had hoped the group would be distracted by Mary-and they were for a few minutes. But they’d barely finished the first course before the group nose-dived on her.

Felicity led the pack. “Come on, Emma, you have to tell us what happened with Reed. No one knows anything! And now he’s disappeared for a while, so nobody can ask him. You were the one who never wanted to get married, but then you found Reed and seemed so happy. Come on, what happened?”

The question was exactly what Emma had expected-and why she’d been determined to face this lunch and say what needed to be said. “I’m sorry, everyone, but there was no big, dramatic, scandalous reason for the breakup. I think I realized a long time ago that we cared about each other as friends, which was great but not how two people about to be married should feel.”

“So who broke it off? You or Reed?” Vanessa asked.

“Emma, if you weren’t aware,” Abby poked in, “Reed may be flying under the radar these days, but before that he spread the word it was his fault about the broken engagement. That you didn’t do anything wrong. So did he cheat?”

“No, no. Reed didn’t do anything wrong.”

“That’s not what the gossipers are saying. Everybody thinks something big had to have happened to cause such a sudden breakup. So they figure Reed must have done you wrong in some way.”

Emma firmly put that to bed. “Well, he didn’t. If he’s been claiming responsibility, it’s only because Reed’s always going to do the gentlemanly thing and protect a woman. But this wasn’t about either of us doing something wrong.”

“I think you broke his heart,” Felicity said bluntly.

The accusation stung. It was just so ironic to have to talk about broken hearts when her own was crushed to bits and she couldn’t share that knowledge. “Well, I hope I didn’t. But for anyone who sees Reed, I hope you’ll give him sympathy. The only thing I really regret is that I ever took his ring to begin with, because I know now how completely wrong that relationship was.”

“You look pale,” Lily Cartright said gently.

“Not sleeping?” Abby guessed.

They let her off the hook. Once they all took a really good look at her, in fact, she got an immediate bossy list of orders about getting more sleep, seeing a doctor, arranging for a massage.

“Okay, that’s enough picking on me,” she said wryly. “We’ve got a lot more to talk about this lunch. Caroline’s finally out of the hospital. We should be having a dual celebration for both Mary and Caro.”

“To be honest, I have a huge secret to tell you all,” Caroline said, then glanced around to ensure no outsiders were close enough to hear this part of the conversation. When she tugged her chair closer to the table, the others pulled up closer, too.

“My husband wanted me to tell you this. So did my brother Garrett, which I’m sure Emma already knows.” Caroline took a huge breath. “I’ve been hiding something from everyone. I was being blackmailed.”

“What?” The question echoed through the whole group, everyone expressing shock except for Lily.

“That’s why I was so depressed. The blackmailer was threatening me, and I was afraid if the information got out, it would ruin my marriage, my life. But Garrett convinced me to tell Griff. And when Griff got home, I did.” Tears welled in Caroline’s eyes, but this time not tears of fears or sadness. Tears of relief. “It’s been terrible.”

“Oh, Caroline.” Lily reached for her first. “That’s exactly what happened to us. Jack was a blackmailer’s target, too. Jack took the blackmail letter to the police a few weeks ago.”

“Griff hasn’t done that yet. I haven’t, either.”

“Do it,” Lily urged. “Think about it, Caroline. Don’t you think it’s highly unlikely there could be two blackmailers in Eastwick? So this could well be the same person who was terrorizing us.”

Abby suddenly spoke up. “There’s a connection between the two. There has to be. Between my mother’s mysterious death and the theft of her journals and now two blackmail attempts. Whoever stole those journals is using the information.”

“That’s what it sounds like,” Caroline agreed worriedly. “But, Abby, your mom never published stuff that was so…damaging. She wasn’t into cruelty-”

“She published the truth. She never invented anything. But that’s part of what I think is the issue. She didn’t use everything she knew. There could have been all kinds of things in those journals that no one knew but my mother and, of course, the people involved. And now whoever stole those journals knows that kind of private information, too.”

“But who?” Vanessa asked. “It has to be someone in Eastwick. Someone we know. Someone who’d know enough about us all to know what would hurt different people, you know? A stranger couldn’t read any stuff like that and know it could cause damage.”

“Yikes,” Felicity said. “This is getting scarier and scarier. To think that someone we know and trust is the culprit.”

“Not just a culprit. A blackmailer and a murderer.” Abby drummed her fingernails on the table. “I hate it that you were a victim, too, Caroline. But it makes me feel even more convinced that my mother was murdered. I’m going back to the police. One way or another, we have to find out who’s behind all this.”

The girls buzzed, united as bees bringing fresh honey back to the hive-and Eastwick was their hive, so there was no question about their wanting to protect it. Any other time, Emma would have been roiled up as the rest of them, and she was relieved to hear that the reason for Caroline’s suicide attempt had finally come out in the open. Still, Garrett’s uncovering his sister’s secret stirred her own heartsick situation again. It was so like him to get that secret out of Caro no matter what it took. Garrett would go to the ends of the earth for those he loved. But knowing that only gave Emma a fresh taste of despair…until she suddenly realized that all conversation at the table had stopped.

That never happened. Not with the Debs. Even when there wasn’t a crisis of events, they talked each others’ ears off. So the sudden silence made Emma’s head shoot up. “What…?” she began to ask.

But then she saw the man wending his way from the doorway to their table. It was hard to guess why or how Garrett snared the women’s complete attention, but Emma wasted no time wondering about that.

He searched the crowd, searched all the faces-found hers.

Their eyes met.

He kept coming. His every footstep brought a new race to her heart. He never faltered, never looked away, never glanced at the other women. When he reached the table, he just reached out a hand and snagged her wrist.

“I’m sorry to interrupt your lunch, ladies, but I need Emma. Right now,” he said. “And this won’t wait.”