Righteous Lies (Book 1: Dancing Moon Ranch Series) (30 page)

***

Justine glanced
out the window in the back wall of the lodge and saw Brad's cabin, now covered
with fresh snow from the night before. The snow was undisturbed and her tracks
from two days before when she’d left his cabin were gone, with no new tracks
leading from the cabin to the lodge, so she knew Brad hadn't left the cabin
during those two days. Nor had he come for meals at the lodge during that time,
which she found troubling. She wanted to know he was okay, that he didn't need
her, at least not for the reason he had before. But she didn’t want to play the
corporate game anymore. Sean Elliot cured her of that. She'd hit her head so
hard on the glass ceiling she'd had enough. Still, she couldn't explain her
response to what Brad Meecham had done just before she left his cabin.
Absolutely nothing. Yet, he'd acted as if he cared what happened to her. Cared
about
her. She'd never felt that from a
man before. It was always about what he wanted. Granted, she had her reasons
for being with a particular man at a particular time. A step up the corporate
ladder. But men had been using women over the ages and turnaround was fair
play. But with Brad, it wasn't the same. He wasn't the same as the others,
though she hadn't known him long enough to know why. Only that she'd gotten
into his head in the book, and he was different. He'd empathized so profoundly
with strangers hanging on hooks that he was tormented by what he saw, years
after it happened.

She turned to
Grace, who was zipping up her three-year-old son Adam's jacket, and said,
"Why did you put someone in the cabin across the way? There are vacant
rooms in the lodge."

Grace
positioned a wool cap on the toddler's head, and replied, "The man who's
staying in the cabin is the author, Brad Meecham. He didn't want to be in the
lodge so he gave us double the rate to open the cabin."

Justine moved
in front of the window, wishing she'd see Brad. Wishing he'd see her and motion
for her to come. She wasn't sure what she'd do then, because she refused to
allow herself to be just another woman for him to get it on with between
writing chapters. She was through using men, or being used by them. And this
time she'd stand firm...

Unless Brad
needed her again to ward off dark memories. For that, she'd give him whatever
he needed. It was a strange feeling, wanting to give a man everything she had
without wanting anything in return. Always there had been a goal, another step
upward, toward the glass ceiling. It had taken years, and many men, but she'd
almost made it. But she had no goal with Brad. She'd gotten into his mind and
she understood him. "How long will he be here?" she asked.

Grace let the
boy scamper off and grabbed his brother, Marc. "He took the cabin for two
months," she said, shoving a little arm into a jacket sleeve. "He's
got about six more weeks to go. We don't see much of him though. He stays to himself.
I suppose he's writing. It's quiet out there... no one to disturb him."

"Then he's
never talked much to you and Jack?" Justine asked, wanting to know more.
The man had a grip on her. His mind had a grip on hers. Yet, she knew nothing
about his everyday life. How he slept, whether in pajamas or sweats, or maybe
nothing. What he looked like when he stepped out of the shower, chest wet,
water running down it. How he looked in the morning when he first opened his
eyes, hair rumpled, overnight stubble on his jaw...

Unless he
awakened troubled by night terrors. She knew little about post-traumatic stress
except that people became exhausted to the point of having hallucinations at
times because they had flashbacks during the day, and lay awake at night while
trying to suppress memories that gripped them, only to relive the traumatic
episode in dreams if they happened to drift off. So they paced, and tried to
make time pass until the soul-gripping images faded away.

 
She studied the cabin and saw no movement inside,
but it was daylight and there were reflections on the window. She wished she
could see inside. Maybe she'd see him writing. When she was in the cabin she'd
seen his laptop open on a table, and manuscript pages on the floor around the
printer, and an ashtray chock-full of cigarette butts, and coffee mugs with
sludge in the bottoms. She'd seen it all when she was there, but it was only
after she left that it registered. While there, all she'd been aware of was the
breadth of Brad's bare chest, and the cords in his well-muscled arms, and the
pulse throbbing in his throat, and the disturbed look on his face.

He'd been
humiliated by what happened. A man's man, international author, standing in a
flight jacket in the photo on his book, regressing to infancy. But she'd also
witnessed the horrors that haunted him. She'd slipped into his mind in his book
and seen it through his eyes, and she'd felt her own heart racing as she'd read
his description, and trembled some too, not like Brad had—the images he'd seen
were not permanently stamped on
her
memory—but she'd still been affected...

"He's
talked to Jack some," Grace said, "but not to me. He stays to
himself. Takes his meals with the other guests sometimes but always brings
something to read when he does, manuscript pages I guess. Then he either sets
them on the table beside him or takes his plate and sits in the great room.
Obviously he doesn't want to talk to anyone. Maybe that's the way writers
are."

"Do the
guests know who he is?" Justine asked. She'd had no idea herself when she
first saw him looking at her from across the great room. She'd seen his books
on racks in stores though, but when she took his book off the shelf at the
lodge and glanced at his photo on the back cover she hadn't connected the two.
Not even when he toyed with her about rewriting the ending. She wondered now
what she might have revealed about herself. But there was nothing he didn't
know about her character. He'd pegged her from the start. A woman who'd slept
with men and let them use her because she was using them...

"Some of
the guests know who he is," Grace said, "but whenever anyone tries to
start up a conversation he gives them a clipped response and goes back to
reading. Most people give up pretty quickly." Grace looked over the top of
the toddler's head, and said, "He's a troubled man, Justine, and you're
here to get your life back in order. Don't make another mistake. The man will
use you and dump you. And I can tell you right now, all he'd want with a woman
while staying here is for her to warm his bed. You don't need that. You need to
rebuild your self-respect so the next time you get involved with someone, which
should not be for a very long time, he will love you for who you are, not for
how you make him feel in bed. Any woman can do that."

"What does
Jack know about him?" Justine pressed, thinking she'd seen movement inside
the cabin. Maybe Brad's face at the window for an instant.

Grace gave a
long sigh and Justine knew she was becoming aggravated, but Grace didn't
understand the situation and there was no way to explain it. "I don't know
what Jack knows," she said, irritated. "The man talked to Jack in
confidence when he approached him about renting the cabin, and I didn't press
Jack to tell me what he said. But the man is troubled and you absolutely cannot
get involved with him. Don't even think about it."

Justine
continued staring out the window. "I read his book," she said.

Grace glanced
over the top of her son's head. "Why his book? We have others."

Justine
shrugged. "No reason. I just pulled it off the shelf."

Grace slipped a
mitten
over a little hand. "Jack mentioned he's
a good writer," she commented while maneuvering a tiny thumb into the
mitten's thumb.

"Is that
all Jack said?" Justine asked, wondering if Jack had also been drawn into
Brad's head. Or if she was the only one.

"Jack said
the story was riveting."

Justine glanced
at Grace. "Just riveting, nothing more?"

"I don't
know what else there is," Grace said, "but I wouldn't think it would
be your kind of book. Did you read it so you could get to know the man?"
Grace eyed her with suspicion and waited. A mother catching her child with her
hand in the cookie jar.

"No. Like
I said, I just took the book off the shelf," Justine replied. "I'd
seen his name on books on racks in stores and knew he was a best-selling
author, but I don't read those kinds of books. I didn't even know who he was
when—" she stopped short. Grace didn't need to know she didn't even know
his name when she lay half naked with him and held him in her arms until the
trembling stopped. Or afterwards, when he tongued her breast to prove a
point...

Grace pinned
her with knowing eyes. "When what, Justine?"

Justine tried
to act indifferent. "When we talked. It was when everyone was off
sleighing. I was in here reading and he came in. That's all. We talked a
little, and he saw what I was reading, but I didn't know he was the author, and
he knew that, but he didn't say anything, I guess because he'd rather people
not know who he is."

Grace looked
askance at her, and said, "How long did you talk?"

Justine didn't
like the direction the conversation was leading. Giving a little shrug, she
said, "Not long. He left right after that. But there's something I've been
wondering about for a long time and have been meaning to ask," she said,
steering the conversation away from Brad Meecham and Grace's probing questions.
"Have you and Jack decided what to tell the boys about how they were
conceived?"

Grace eyed her
dubiously. "We plan to leave things as they are," she replied.
"Marc and Adam are fraternal twins."

"Figuratively,
but not literally," Justine said, and she wondered how long the family
could keep the falsehood going. Susan would never want it known that the only
reason she'd conceived Marc was to save her other son who needed a cord blood
transplant. And Jack's brother, Sam, did whatever Susan wanted, just to keep
peace in the marriage. But Jack was clearly bothered by the righteous
conspiracy, but keeping Grace happy overrode that.

"Jack's
name is on Marc's birth certificate," Grace said. "He is his
father."

"They were
born a day apart," Justine reminded her. "How will you explain
that?"

"A time
error on Marc's certificate," Grace retorted. "But they weren't born
that far apart."

Justine looked
at the toddlers, who were playing a game of run around in a circle and try to
catch the other, and said, "I thought with artificial insemination the bio
father's name had to be on the birth certificate."

"It
does," Grace said, reaching out to grab Adam, who was about to tackle
Marc, "but that certificate's packed away. When we adopted Marc, Jack and
my names were put on his new certificate so there's no reason for Marc to ever
know any different." She looked directly at Justine then, and added,
"That is, if no one tells him."

Justine raised
her hands, palms splayed outward, and said, "Don't look at me like that. I
would never say anything. This is between the four of you. I just think it's
sad that little Marc will never know anything about his real father."

"Jack is
his real father now," Grace insisted. "Besides, it's more important
that little Marc grow up knowing he's just as loved as Adam than worrying about
a father who died two years before he was born."

"What
about when the boys are eighteen and Ricky's twenty-one?" Justine asked.
"Do you plan to tell them then?"

Grace shook her
head. "Savior babies have problems. One child lives because another needed
him to be born, so the savior baby feels like he's nothing more than a means to
someone else's end, which Marc is since Susan didn't want him. It's just easier
to leave things be. They're fraternal twins and that's that."

"Except
that little Marc has Susan's odd-colored eyes that change from hazel to smoke
gray and almost green at times, and everyone else's are brown," Justine
pointed out.

"We can't
worry about that," Grace said, her voice agitated.

Jack swept open
the back door and stepped inside. Seeing the boys, he crouched and opened his
arms, and both boys went rushing up to him. Bundling one in each arm, Jack
stood.

Grace walked
over to him and gave him a kiss, and said, "I love you sweetheart. Thanks
for giving me this hour of not-so-much-chaos."

"Honey, I
can take Ryan too, if you want," Jack said.

"He's
fine," Grace replied. "I'll be putting him down for a nap in a few
minutes."

After Jack left
with the boys, Grace said, with a twinkle in her eye, "Why do I want to go
to bed with the man every time I look at him?"

Justine smiled.
It seemed odd to think of Grace as lusting after a man, even if he was her
husband. Grace hadn't dated much in high school and when she did it was with
dull, studious boys, the kind of guys the elder Page sister wouldn't have spent
ten minutes with. But there was no question that Grace had the hots for her
husband. "Gracie, if you didn't want to get it on with a man like Jack I'd
know something was wrong with you."

A couple of
hours later, after Jack returned the boys to Grace at their house for naps, and
while Grace was giving them a snack before putting them down, Justine caught
sight of movement beyond the front window and saw Brad walking past. He was
wearing the fleece-lined parka she'd seen in his cabin, a wool hat with ear
flaps, and snow boots. She went to the window and watched to see where he was
going and noticed it was in the direction of the stables...

...confront your demons and get rid of
them... go back and look at that hook...

Grace stepped
up beside her and saw Brad walking off. "Don't do it, Justine," she
said. "You've got your eye on that man and he's no good for you."