All That Lies Broken (Ashmore's Folly Book 2) (69 page)

“Can’t,” said Jake. “Sue, I mean. She’s made herself a public figure. It’s a lot harder for a public figure to claim privacy rights. Besides, she’s got a big reason in him not to sue.”

Angie had closed her eyes, because the buzz was starting to spread pleasantly through her limbs. She only mumbled, “Why?” so that he’d tell her and stop talking, and maybe they could make sure the evening didn’t completely go to waste.

“Because he’s married, that’s why.”

“Huh?” That got her attention. “No. He didn’t have a wedding ring.”

She was certain about that, because the guy’s hands had particularly caught her attention. She had taken a drawing class as an elective last semester, and she had spent a month sketching hands. She’d have loved to sketch
his
hands. Long, beautifully shaped, elegant – probably like the rest of him. Hands to send a shiver down a woman’s spine. She was dead sure she’d have noticed a wedding ring.

“She said she was his mistress,” Jake reminded her. “Single men don’t have mistresses.”

That seemed like an unfair rule.
Mistress
sounded so much more – hmmm, sinful and sexy than just
girlfriend
or, as Jake had called her at the barbecue,
old lady
. “He didn’t act married.”

Jake gave her a look that expressed his opinion of her observational powers. “Of course, he didn’t act married. He was with his girlfriend. What do you think – he’s going to wear a sign that says, hello, I’m cheating on my wife with this hot babe?”

Angie thought privately there had to be more exciting places to cheat than Monticello and hotter babes to cheat with than Cat Courtney, but then what did she know? What had the woman said – Jefferson himself had had a mistress? She reached for the wine bottle. Maybe enough booze would deaden the sheer boredom of Jake blabbering on and on about two people she didn’t know and didn’t care if she ever saw again as long as she lived.

“I don’t care. I’m sick of hearing about Cat Courtney. Sorry, I don’t know his name, I don’t know his address, I don’t know his Social! I just remember he was an architect, and he knew all about the place because he wrote a book—”

Jake shot upward. “What?”

“I told you. She said how he wrote a book, and then she marched off like she was just too damn good for us—”

But Jake was thinking aloud now. “Architects have to register in their states,” he said. “Probably Virginia or a surrounding state. And you say he wrote a book about Monticello?”

“Yeah.” Angie just barely remembered the architect mentioning some Italian guy.

“I don’t suppose he mentioned the title?”

She shrugged.

“Well, hell.” Jake settled back and lit another cigarette. “So we’re looking for some tall guy who looks like he’s in his thirties, and his initials are R.A., and he’s an architect, and he wrote a book about Monticello. Well, this should only take a couple of hundred years—”

Angie didn’t even know where her next words came from. “He had a V on his shirt.”

“A what?” Jake came to attention. “A logo?”

“Yeah, like this.” She held up her fingers in a victory salute and then circled the area over her left breast. “Right there. Orange. His shirt was black, and the V was orange.”

“Hot damn,” said Jake, and came over and kissed her with more enthusiasm than he’d shown her all day long. “See, you know more than you think you do.”

She said sourly, “And what do I know that I don’t know I know?”

“Your mystery architect,” said Jake, “went to the University of Virginia. How many graduates do you think have written books on Monticello?”

Plenty, as it turned out, with only a minute or two of research. A rudimentary search revealed that the University of Virginia was a veritable hotbed of Monticello-related authors. “Must be a cottage industry,” groused Jake, and then found that not one of the hundreds of authors had R.A. for initials.

“Maybe,” yawned Angie, “I’m not remembering it right.” She pretended to ignore the nasty look he gave her. Well, hell, was it her fault she didn’t remember every word from a boring conversation the week before? Nice hands or not. “Coming to bed?”

“Just a second.” He tapped on his laptop. “I want to see if that kid answered the question I left for her.” And then, a few seconds later, “Oh, shit!”

She didn’t crack open an eye.

“Damn kid deleted her blog!” Jake stubbed out his cigarette. “Shit, shit, shit… I wonder if someone got to her.” He swiveled around to face her. “Open your eyes, Ange,” he said, “we’ll go through this again. Start from the beginning, and don’t leave anything out. Let’s see what else you remember.”

If she survived this weekend, Angie decided, she was going to give serious thought to breaking up with Jake.

~•~

Late that night, after Angie fell asleep, her boyfriend got out of bed and went to his laptop.

The idea had come to him earlier. When facts were few and far between, Jake had decided, the smart thing to do was to put out the known in hopes that the unknown would come crawling out of the woodwork in response.

He opened up his political blog for the
Mass Observer
and wrote:

Tidbit of the day. Nada important, but who doesn’t enjoy some juicy dish?

Guess what Miss Cat Courtney is up to these days? Sources say that the Great Cat, known as much for her obsessive secrecy as she is for her wrap-‘em-around-my-throat auburn curls and her sultry let’s-spend-the-night-together voice, is keeping company with a long tall architect with an unwelcome accessory: a wife! Witnesses observed Miss Cat obsessively clinging to her man last weekend at Monticello in Charlottesville, VA, and gushing to startled fellow tourists: “I’m his mistress.” Well, at least, like a true poet, she got the words right. Naughty, naughty, Cat!

Chapter 18: The Pecking Order

MARK ST. BRIDE HAD ALWAYS obeyed the rules.

As a toddler, he’d learned that his place in the world depended on a strict observance of a hierarchy into which he, unfortunately, had been born out of order. The heir and the spare, a bank client had said to Matthew St. Bride, and his father had ruffled his hair and said fondly that Mark would make a splendid second-in-command to his older brother.

In prep school, he’d overheard one of his tutors commenting that no one could expect a family to produce a second genius. At that moment, it dawned on Mark that his excellence in math and his ability to make sense of the densest statistics did not and would not ever matter. He was the Younger Brother. He was not destined to Be a Great Man and Do Great Things.

As an adult, he toed the line. Ever the dutiful son, he joined the bank after his MBA. He adopted the lifestyle of an up-and-coming investment banker and learned to play a decent game of golf. He accompanied his mother to church every Sunday. He dined with his parents every week and invited his father to lunch every month. He dated suitable girls of his own class and steered clear of captivating cocktail waitresses, sweet shopgirls, and witchy women. He introduced one date to her future husband and suffered the ignominy of ushering at the wedding. “Mark,” burbled the bride, “I can’t thank you enough. You’re like my
brother
.”

He never gave his parents a moment of unnecessary worry – not like Emma, going through husbands like tissues, not like Cam, calling one winter night to announce that – surprise! – he was the father of a four-month-old daughter and he had married the child’s mother that day in a quick ceremony at City Hall. And did anyone thank him? Did anyone notice his strict adherence to the rules? Did anyone say that at least the St. Brides should be thankful for their one sterling offspring?

No, they did not. No one noticed him at all.

He was the perfect son, brother, brother-in-law. When his mother took to painting nudes, he winced but gamely went to the showing. When his father celebrated retirement by growing a mustache and buying himself a Harley, he didn’t blink. He never betrayed how ridiculous he found Emma’s temper tantrums, how offended he was by her up-and-down marital history. He never showed his distaste for his brother’s casual sexual ethic, equating stray women with fast food.

Not once had he shown his anger at the way his family overlooked his faithfulness to the Way Things Were Supposed to Be Done. Not once had he let them see how suffocating he found the life they had foisted on him. Not once had he stood up at a family dinner and announced that he’d had enough, he was throwing it all over and running off to Rio to live on the beach.

He had been a loyal lieutenant, first to his father and then to his brother. When Cam had asked him to be his CFO at St. Bride Data, he had jumped ship without a moment’s hesitation. Mark was thrilled, at long last, to be a player. To be in a position to Do Things Right.

He had kept his distance from his brother’s wife, but not for the reason everyone thought. No, of course he didn’t approve of the way their marriage had started and the way his brother brushed off the age difference and the belated wedding date, as if getting a teenage girl pregnant were no big deal. But the moment he met young Mrs. St. Bride and saw an unexpected flash in her mysterious green eyes, he felt a distinctly unchristian envy and the even more unchristian thought that here, at last, was the witchy woman who might make breaking the rules worth it all.

That was when he started to ask himself some hard questions.

Where was it written that he always had to come in last? Why, when it was he who designed and orchestrated the IPO for St. Bride Data, was it Cam who became the darling of Wall Street? Why did the business magazines fawn all over Cam for his brilliance and business acumen, when the trains ran on time because Mark was manning the switch? Why, when he couldn’t get a girl who didn’t fall for a friend or run off to Patagonia to find herself, did a tomcat like Cam so easily win
and keep
a girl like Laura?

The commandment said not to covet your neighbor’s wife, but what if your neighbor was your brother? And what if that wife felt passion for her husband – unmistakable in those first few years – but didn’t love him – also unmistakable? And what if your brother acted like a dissolute jackass, catting around like a single man, even taking up with her sister? What if you realized, as you passed her the yams at Thanksgiving dinner, that she too wanted to scream that she was running off to Brazil, and you knew that a flight left that night? What were you to do?

You kept out of the way, that’s what you did. You put family first, and you were loyal to your brother, and you were cool and formal to your sister-in-law. You remembered your place in the pecking order, because life had decreed that this witchy woman was not for the likes of you.

You followed the rules.

But what if, one day, the worst thing in the world happened? What if, in one bright, horrific morning, your older brother, the man you looked up to, worked for, admired, resented, would do anything for – what if suddenly he were gone? What if you now stood in his place, master of the universe, head of a successful company, a rich, powerful,
desirable
man? What if your brother had placed his wife in your safekeeping? What if you read a letter that stood your idea of that marriage on its head – the young unwed mother suddenly morphed into the woman of destiny you had glimpsed behind her eyes?

What if all you had ever wanted was suddenly yours for the taking?

And what if, just when you thought she would fall into your arms, she slipped away, with some cockamamie story about making things right with her long-estranged family? What if she met again the man you had always thought must be there somewhere, and she spent the entire weekend in bed with him? And what if you gave into temptation during that long flight home, and you looked up the GPS locater code you had promised yourself you would never use, only to find that, at 3:00 a.m. Virginia time, she – or her phone – was not where she was supposed to be? What if, when you drilled down on that unknown location, you found that she was sleeping at
that man’s
home?

That is, if any sleeping were actually taking place.

You might bide your time, swallow your anger, and obey the rules.

Or you might decide,
To hell with the rules.
Where had obeying the rules ever gotten you?

~•~

“Julie! Tone that down!”

Laura woke up to a man trying to make himself heard over the crashing chords of Wagner.

For the second day in a row, she was the last one up. In the music room, Julie was unleashing the Valkyries, the barely lowered volume signaling that a night’s sleep had made no difference to her desire to drive the invaders out of the house. In the solarium, Meg, headphones on, was working through her barre routine. Max was meowing for his breakfast, and Richard, cooling down from his morning run, was fixing himself a cup of coffee in the kitchen.

“Good morning,” he said unsmilingly. “Did you sleep well?”

“Yes, I—” She reached out to touch him, and he walked straight by her and sat down at the oak table.