All That Lies Broken (Ashmore's Folly Book 2) (43 page)

I’ll just bet he did.

“How old was he?” he asked abruptly.

She didn’t seem to find the question strange. “He was thirty. Don’t worry. I was eighteen by then. It was legal.”

Thirty. And she’d been made up to look like a woman of 25, singing smoky songs laden with sexual innuendo. St. Bride must not have had a clue.

Another thought hit hard. What St. Bride must have thought – what any man would have thought – was that a woman that age
did
have a clue.

He shifted into engineer mode – logical, scientific. The more he treated this as an experiment gone awry, the more likely she was to get through her story. “So you went to his hotel.”

She nodded. “We were in the elevator, going up, and he was kissing me, and he touched me – it felt – it felt really good.” A girl who had worked instead of dating, who should have been enjoying attention from the boys on campus, defensive because she had enjoyed a man’s touch. She loved being touched and stroked; she cuddled like a baby kitten. “He asked me if I liked it, and I – said yes, and he said, ‘Come upstairs with me, Miss Cat Colby’ – and then I—”

She buried her face in her hands.

“I asked him what he wanted, flirtatiously, you know, like I’d done this a hundred times before. And he said he’d really like it if I went—” He filled in that blank for himself. “Then we got to his room, and – I did.” She gulped. “What he said.”

He couldn’t begin to sort out his feelings. He wanted to beg her forgiveness for all the men who had hurt her – St. Bride for making such a crude request, himself for putting her in such a desperate position. Her father for making her feel so unwanted and unloved that running away was her best option. He sensed the beginnings of hysteria; he hoped he would not have to clamp down on her hard, for her own good, before she worked herself into too emotional a state to see her daughter.

He shifted into the technical. “How did you know what to do?”

That startled her. She must have thought he’d rip up at her, as if he had a leg to stand on when it came to sexual morality. She said, her voice muffled, “I remembered the tapes.”

He almost swore aloud. Those damn tapes. That ill-advised affair continued to ripple out and out.

“When did St. Bride discover you weren’t a sophisticated woman of 25?”

A long, telling moment of silence. “When I threw up.”

For the first time, Richard wanted to laugh. If ever a man had been served his just desserts…. “That must have surprised the hell out of him.”

“It did.” She sounded grateful for his matter-of-fact observation. “And he got suspicious, and he wanted to know if I’d ever done this before, and I tried to lie. But he didn’t buy it. He kept after me, and then, I don’t know, I started telling him the truth.” She crossed her arms across her chest defensively. “All of it. You, Daddy, Francie – everything. I told him my real name. I told him about running away. He asked if I was hungry, he ordered up dinner for us, and I talked and talked, and he listened.”

It was probably the first time in her life anyone had ever let her talk about herself. He felt deeply ashamed. This girl had been his devoted friend, his faithful little slave; she had carted his model airplanes around, steeled herself to clean his fish – she’d thrown up once doing that, too, and then gone right back to her task – and he hadn’t bothered to find out what she concealed inside her head.

She’d been hungry. He didn’t like the sound of that.

“He asked why I’d come with him, and I told him,” she gnawed at her lip, “how I’d thought he might give me some money.” He could imagine St. Bride’s reaction to that. “He said – well, he said obviously I wasn’t very experienced, or I would have known to get the money up front.” She shifted nervously in her seat. “And then – then I said I had to go, I knew Francie would be getting worried about me, and I had to get up early to take care of – things, and he said,” her voice sped up, “he asked how I was going to get home, and I said I’d take the bus, I did every night, and he said absolutely not, he’d take me home himself, because—” and now she did sound a little hysterical— “he always took a lady home from a date. I told him no. I just wanted to get away and never see him again. But he wasn’t having any of it.”

He grudgingly awarded St. Bride points.

“And when I got home, I just said, ‘Good night,’ I didn’t want to talk to him, and he—” She covered her face again. “He put two hundred dollars in my hand and told me to buy – a new dress.”

Whatever St. Bride had told her to buy, it wasn’t a new dress. He’d stake his life on that. Why had she so desperately needed money that night? Not to move to a new apartment. She’d already forgotten that excuse.

“I thought I’d never see him again. I didn’t want to. I felt so ashamed. You know I was brought up better than that, Richard, your mother would have been so disappointed in me.” She shuddered. “I never, ever,
ever
thought I’d turn into a whore.”

He said swiftly, “Don’t you ever call yourself that again.”

He hoped that St. Bride hadn’t held this over her head during their marriage. Surely a man who loved his wife hadn’t made her pay for that one act of desperation.

“He came back the next day.” He heard the faint echo of her horror when she had opened the door to find that her nightmare had returned. “He said he wanted to talk to me, and I told him to go away and leave me alone, I had things to do. He told me to – he said he wanted to see all my bills. Then he said to get my coat, because we were going—”

He turned off the freeway onto the airport road. The rain was lighter here in Richmond, a gentle fall instead of the heavy, slashing rain across the glass. “Not back to his hotel, I hope.”

“Oh, no.” Laura shook her head. “He took me to the store and bought me a month’s worth of groceries.”

Richard looked at her in surprise. Groceries. She really had been hungry, then. Cat Colby hadn’t been enough to feed – and an unpleasant thought crossed his mind. Formula. Diapers. Medicine. Baby clothes. All the paraphernalia necessary to raise a modern baby. Those items had hit his budget hard when Julie was born, but he and Diana had both had incomes, and his parents had been generous.

Bills. Food. St. Bride wasn’t the villain of this piece; he’d been the knight in shining armor.

“He came back the next weekend,” Laura said, “and he brought me a new winter coat.” She said in remembered wonder, “I’d never had a coat before that someone else hadn’t worn first.”

The lights of Richmond International appeared in the distance. “Almost there.”

Laura laced her fingers together and stretched out her arms. “It got to be a joke between us. Every Christmas, he gave me a new coat. I have a closet full now in London. I should probably donate some of them. How many cashmere coats does a woman need?”

As many as she wanted.

He understood very well now why she had married St. Bride, why she had stayed married in the face of his infidelities. He must have seemed magnificent to her – a handsome Viking who paid attention to her, fed her, clothed her, made sure she stayed warm – took care of her as the girl she still had been. She must have always remembered how grateful she was to him. And, of course, there was the factor she so deliberately did not mention – Meg. Cameron St. Bride had stepped into the vacant role of father. Had she and Meg been on their own by then? Where had Francie gone?

Laura Abbott was never going to tell him.

“There’s one thing I want you to know.” She turned to him, and her voice had taken on an urgent note. “You really have to know this, Richard.”

He switched lanes for the terminal where Meg was waiting.

“When – when I got my first payout from Cat Courtney, first thing – I wrote a check to Cam for two hundred dollars. He asked what it was for. He had forgotten, you see, that money had meant so little to him he didn’t even remember. I don’t think,” she hesitated, “he knew what to do. He was completely at a loss. He never did cash it.”

Priceless. The beggar maid had handed Cophetua a check, and the king had seen the balance of power begin to shift. He put himself in the man’s shoes and suspected, uncomfortably, that in the same situation he might have resisted just as much as St. Bride.

But he understood her gesture. He would like to hand over a check for every dime St. Bride had spent on her and Meg, if the idea of reimbursing Cameron St. Bride’s estate were not ludicrous beyond belief.

He pulled into the garage opposite the terminal. The garage was almost empty at this time of night; he found a spot right near the door. Laura pulled down the passenger vanity mirror and ran a brush through her hair. She looked composed again, her serene mask back in place, everything back to normal. The confession in the night disappeared into the ether.

He came around to her door, and opened it for her. She hesitated, and then took his outstretched hand and let him help her out. They stood there against the car, looking at each other. She seemed tired, vulnerable, relieved. She had needed the catharsis of confession. She had borne a heavy burden for a long time.

He remembered his mother, coming home from Saturday afternoon confession. When he, in his infinite teenage wisdom, had asked why she bothered when God wasn’t even listening, she had said merely, “Sin is a heavy burden. You’ll find out how heavy as you grow older. It’s a relief to put it down.”

She had been right. He had found out for himself just how heavy a burden it was.

“Have you ever told anyone this? Francie, Lucy?”

Laura shook her head.

“Did you—” He stopped. “Laura, did you have anyone to talk to? Any friends?”

“No,” she said. “I really didn’t know people. Cam didn’t like us to mix much.”

People had liked her at the party, remarking after she left how natural and unaffected she was. She’d seemed at home with the Queen Bees. Mel McIntire had told him bluntly that he could hardly do better. Just how much had St. Bride isolated her, in his zeal to protect her?

“Tell you what,” Richard said, and framed her face in his hands. “You can share my friends. You can
have
Mel.”

She put her hands on his chest, and he kissed her, gently, deeply. No hesitation as she kissed him back – the concern had crossed his mind that, reliving the past, she might remember the principal architect of her trauma, but she was nestling into him, without blame or recrimination. He loved her with his mouth, his arms pulling her into himself, offering what healing he could, too little, too late.

She was incredible. And he hadn’t seen. He had passed her up – twice! – for women an inch deep.

Another mistake he wouldn’t make again.

Richard leaned his forehead against hers. “Laura. Listen.”

She touched his face.

“I want you to know,” time to overcome the reserve of years, “that you are loved. Laura, you deserve everything in the world, but – you were right tonight, I don’t have a choice, I don’t want a choice. It’s a lot less than you should have, but you do have my heart.”

She looked up at him mutely, her eyes shining.

“I wish,” he said lightly, to head off the tears, “selfishly, but I wish Meg had waited another five minutes.”

“Me too,” Laura whispered, and flashed a smile at him. “Except – shouldn’t it have been ten?”

He grinned back at her. “Five. Don’t be greedy.” He smoothed her hair back. “Are you all right?”

She nodded. “I’m fine.”

And she was. Laura St. Bride was always going to be fine.

Richard slipped his hand down her back to pat her on her pretty backside, a comfortable lover’s pat. “Then come on. Introduce me to my niece.”

~•~

There had to be a mistake.

Meg St. Bride couldn’t be thirteen years old.

She was tiny. Barely five feet, slight and fragile as she and her mother flew into each other’s arms. Nine, ten, perhaps… her picture had not indicated how small she was. In this little thing, the Ashmore genes had taken a short walk off the pier.

She had straight dark hair like his, cut short and feathered around her face, and the porcelain skin of the Abbott women. She also had Francie Abbott’s eyes. Forest green, framed by long lashes, appraising, shrewd, and full of the devil.

She was Francie’s, all right. And his. They had stamped themselves all over this child’s face.

“Hi,” she said. “Who are you?” She turned to Laura, who was wiping away a stray tear. “
Mom!
Is this your boyfriend?”

Laura’s eyes flew to him to gauge his reaction. He took matters into his own hands. “Hello, Meg,” he said, and stuck out his hand. “Glad to meet you. I’m Richard Ashmore.”

She laid her hand in his, flashed him a smile calibrated to be adorable, and then – imp – sank into a deep ballerina’s curtsey. He barely stifled a laugh. What a showoff. “Mr. Ashmore, I am
so
pleased to meet you. Are you Julie’s dad? She sent me an email. I am so looking forward to meeting her.”

Laura must never have had a peaceful moment with this one. If he’d had no clue walking into this airport terminal, he’d still have known instantly that this was Francie reborn. “Julie will be very pleased to meet you,” he said. “She’s always wanted a cousin.” Actually, she’d wanted a sister.
Be very careful what you wish for, Julie, I do not believe you will enjoy what you are about to get.
He took a practical hand. “Is this all your luggage?”