Secrets (9 page)

Sarah cuddled back up with Cookie in the truck glad at least for the company. After a few more minutes, Scott and Vanessa came out of the trailer together. Sarah wished she could crawl into the bed of the truck. They separated at the hood of the truck and opened the doors on both sides of the truck, at the same moment. She shivered at the night air, she had no jacket. She scooted to the center of the bench seat. Where else was there to go? So there she was now in the middle of them like some kind of wayward child between their parents. Scott threw Cookie into the back of the truck.

Scott glanced at her in the darkened interior. He settled in and started the truck, the silence thick now between all three of them. She was wedged close to Scott. Far closer than she was to Vanessa. She made every attempt to discreetly scoot her body parts far away from Vanessa. Vanessa hogged the passenger seat, sprawled as if she were six foot, not the barely five foot she was. Scott’s entire body was pressed against her. She could feel the flex of his thigh as he worked the accelerator. His elbow and forearm kept bumping into her as he turned the steering wheel.

When they hit the main road and were cruising comfortably, Scott slipped his hand off the steering wheel to squeeze her lower thigh. Her heart leapt from her chest with wild beats. Why had he done that? Was that his way of telling her he wasn’t annoyed? That it was Vanessa who was annoyed? And as Sarah was quickly learning, whatever Vanessa’s mood was, she spilled it onto everyone around her.

“Angie will be home by now. Take me straight home, Scotty.”

Vanessa’s snide voice set Sarah’s teeth on edge. She almost snapped,
now you care so much for your daughter’s welfare?
At eight o’clock at night?
She clenched her teeth from uttering what a bitch Vanessa was, and what kind of mother she was.

Scott didn’t argue or point out the obvious that Vanessa could have skipped the boyfriend’s house and gone straight home with her pregnant daughter. Instead, he merely nodded and said, “Of course, that’s fine.”

Sarah gritted her teeth, seething with anger at the bird-like woman who ruled over Scott with an iron fist. After another few moments of strained silence Sarah asked under the cover of the darkness, “Don’t you want to know how your daughter’s doctor’s appointment went?”

Scott’s leg muscle tensed.

“I talked with her.” Vanessa’s tone was tight.

“Then you know the baby’s a girl?”

Vanessa sucked in a breath. “I know now.”

“Sorry. I assumed she’d have told you.”

“Why do you care what my daughter tells me?”

The truck was too small for this. Sarah felt claustrophobic all of a sudden, sandwiched in between two people who must be together in every sense of the word, otherwise why the devotion? The embrace? She was the interloper here, not Vanessa. And no matter what Scott claimed about Vanessa, he sanctified how she was by his devotion to her and her lack of mothering for Angie.

Before she could answer, Scott mumbled, “Not now, Vanessa.”

“But—”

“But nothing! You don’t have a leg to stand on today, and you know it. You weren’t there, Sarah was.”

Vanessa shifted and leaned into the door, her glare fierce on Scott. “I don’t need this shit from one of your three day conquests. You may think you’re something special, Sarah Langston, but you, and many more like you, are in and out of his bed on a weekly rotation.”

The heat started in her neck and rose up her cheeks. Sarah stared straight ahead. She was glad for the darkness. She really didn’t want to know this about Scott. She didn’t want to learn that he wasn’t the man she admired so far in his devotion toward his young niece. She really didn’t need to know how much he had sex or who he had it with. Tonight, Scott was suddenly far more attractive than any man she had ever met. She didn’t want to contemplate Vanessa’s version of him.

“Cut it out, Vanessa,” Scott said his tone quieter, threatening almost, after a few moments of chilly silence.

“Why must I be subjected to your sex life telling me how I should mother?”

Because she was there for said daughter when her mother wasn’t.
Sarah wished she had the guts to say it out loud. But she didn’t. She tightened her fist to keep from saying more. And why did Vanessa keep insinuating she was having sex with Scott?

“Shut up. I mean it.” Scott’s tone was tight.

Vanessa shifted again. “Oh, I get it, I’m embarrassing you, aren’t I, Scotty? Well, isn’t this interesting.”

Sarah pressed into herself as much as space would allow, trying now to not touch Scott, and keep away from Vanessa, the strain of which was killing her muscles. The only saving grace was they were pulling into a destination that she hoped was home for these two.

It was an older Victorian house, a few blocks off Main Street in Seaclusion. It was a quaint, well established cul de sac sitting between town and the sand dunes leading to the ocean beach. The house that Scott owned was a graceful two story Victorian, yellow in color and in need of paint, and sprucing up, but clean, and well maintained. It sat on a large grassy lot with three old fir trees decorating the lawn space. There was a detached two car garage with a breeze way attaching it to the house.

“Look, Scott, we’ll talk about all this tomorrow. Just drop me off and go finish your ass catching and we’ll figure out Angie tomorrow.”

“No.” Scott spoke through clenched teeth. “We’ll talk when I get back.”

“I’m not waiting for you to fuck her. I’m going to bed.”

Silence. Then Scott muttered, “I’ll be back in a half hour.”

****

Sarah scooted to the far side of the bench seat. The truck slid out of the driveway, and the silence was as thick as ice dripping from the air. What was there to say after Vanessa? The stink that was Vanessa in Sarah’s opinion.

Scott finally cleared his throat. “Vanessa was—”

“Horrible.”

“Yeah, she was.”

“You’re not going to argue with me?”

“How could I?”

“You should have dropped me off first.”

He nodded in the shadows. “Obviously.”

“I’m sorry I barged in the trailer. I got a little nervous out there alone.”

“She’s not always like that.”

“That she is at all would be more than enough for most people.”

Scott suddenly slowed the truck. “I don’t approve of her doing that. I can’t stop her though. That’s why I was in such a hurry to get to her tonight. I can’t stand when she is vulnerable to one of her current asshole boyfriends. So that’s why I didn’t drop you off and you were subjected to Vanessa at her finest. And as soon as I drop you off, I’ll get back for Angie.”

“Is this a usual occurrence?”

“Sometimes. Tonight was probably stress over the baby finally being blown off. It’s not right, but it’s Vanessa.”

“And Vanessa means a lot to you?”

He didn’t hesitate. “Yes.”

She didn’t like his answer. His certainty. She sighed, disappointed in Scott. “Could you just drop me at my apartment? I’ll grab my car tomorrow. I don’t want to bother with it.”

“Sure.”

They were quiet the rest of the short ride. Main Street was nearly deserted as per a weekday night. Sometimes it disturbed her to live downtown alone. There were only one or two other apartments over shops in town, so she had few neighbors at night. And it was disturbingly quiet after dark, after crowds went home and back to hotels for the night, leaving her isolated in this kind of creepy, ghost-like town.

Scott pulled his truck over and shut off the engine.

“I’ll walk you up.”

She found her keys and walked around the back side of the building where a separate entrance existed. Scott followed her up, letting her fumble with her key ring until she managed to get herself in. He followed as she located the light and sent the tiny apartment ablaze. Finally, she dispelled the spooky feeling of being watched.

Scott looked around. She felt awkward with him. Things Vanessa said ran through her mind—the three day conquests, the rotating women, the fact that Vanessa assumed Scott was having sex with her.

And it made her feel increasingly weird. And ill at ease. Obviously, there were things about Scott she might not have picked up on. Okay, things she’d totally, hopelessly, completely missed about Scott Delano, like that he was a womanizer. Of course, to date she had been completely wrong in every respect about Scott. As much as Scott seemed wrong about her.

But then again, he didn’t really look at her other than as a science experiment he was figuring out if he was right about. So how could she have picked up on Scott being a player? It’s not like she witnessed him in a pickup kind of environment. He stood looking around, his hands on his hips. He finally turned toward her.

“Are you comfortable with Angie coming to work tomorrow?”

Work? Tomorrow? She was thinking of Vanessa’s parting words and he was thinking about Angie?

“What do you mean?”

“After tonight, what you saw of us, I don’t blame you if you don’t want Angie in your shop. We’ve come across pretty bad. I don’t blame you if you don’t want her there. You have a business reputation to keep up.”

“No, that never occurred to me. And I don’t have a bad opinion of you or Angie. Really. I had a great time with you, I mean, you know at dinner, until Vanessa called. And Vanessa, well I didn’t have that high of an opinion of her to start with.”

“Really?”

“Really, I never liked her from the first time I heard she called Angie fat.”

He finally smiled after looking so grim for the last ten minutes. “I know what you think of Vanessa. I meant, really, that you could still remember the nicer part of the evening?”

“I do.”

He was looking at her closely. This time like he might even notice she was a woman, and not the prom queen who snubbed him a decade ago. But did she really want that intenseness focused on her?

“Can I ask you something?” she whispered. Why was her voice suddenly gone?

He shrugged. “Try me.”

“You go home to Vanessa, and what?”

His eyebrows drew together. “What do you mean, and what?”

“You just live there? Together?”

“I live there. She lives there. She’s lived there for sixteen years. We raise Angie together.”

“You’ll go home and all’s forgiven?”

“You mean all as in tonight? No. She’ll hear about this. But yeah, I’ll forgive her. And we’ll talk about Angie. And eventually figure out what we should do for her.”

“You help raise Angie?”

“I do.”

“So you’re my age, and you’re responsible for a sixteen-year-old girl, and have been since you were twenty.”

“Basically.”

“That’s impressive.”

“I wouldn’t call it impressive. But thanks. Anything else you’d like to know?”

She shrugged.

He smiled, his tone soft and taunting as he said, “You’re too afraid to ask me, aren’t you?”

“Maybe.” Of course, she really wanted to know if he went home and slept with that evil bitch of a roommate he so cared about. But, of course, she couldn’t ask that.

“You sure? You don’t want to ask?”

Sarah looked away. He was baiting her to ask about Vanessa, and all the stuff Vanessa said in the truck. But she couldn’t do it. She didn’t want any of it to be true, and she didn’t want Scott confirming what she knew was true, yet she didn’t want to be true.

“I don’t need to know.”

Scott suddenly smiled at her,
and her heartbeat increased to double time. Had she ever really seen him smile like that? No way. His face lit up, his eyes flirted with her, and lord help her if she didn’t feel hot in areas that his smile should
not
have the ability to make her feel anything in.

“I gotta get back to Angie.”

“She’s lucky she has you,” Sarah said as she walked toward the door. He’d already crossed the threshold when he turned back and said, “Thanks for coming today.”

She was six inches from him. Her head was tilted back to speak with him and suddenly there they were staring at each other, the moment perfect and heated. Finally, he was noticing her! He leaned in, and those soft looking lips that had set her heart racing were hovering over hers.

Without warning, he stepped away, bent down and back up, handing her an envelope as casually as if the moment hadn’t happened. Sarah looked down at the stupid envelope someone had left on her stoop. Embarrassment shot through her like a shot of alcohol, stinging and potent. She had misjudged his sudden leaning.

“Good night, Sarah,” he said, after a moment.

“Goodnight,” she mumbled as her cheeks turned hot. Did he realize what she’d thought? What she’d about done? She closed her eyes in horror. She’d been a second from puckering up to kiss him.

She slammed the door with perverse delight, now relishing that he was gone. She shoved the distracting envelope on her counter, and went to bed. She needed to forget about Scott Delano and his golden hued eyes, his quirky smiling lips, and his dog that he loved as he loved a teenage girl and her mother.

It wasn’t until Sarah was leaving for work the next morning that she opened the sealed envelope. Inside was a picture of her sitting next to Cookie, in Scott Delano’s truck outside the red trailer. A color picture, shaded by the night, a digital picture someone had taken not twenty or thirty feet from where she had sat alone. The chill that coursed through her was finally potent enough for her to admit this might be more than a prankster heavy breathing at her.

Sarah went to work. She was polite and friendly and didn’t say a word about the picture now tucked in her purse. She was shaking with chills. She didn’t know what to do. She didn’t know who she should talk with or what to say. What did the picture mean? Why would someone do something like this? And what exactly were they doing? That’s what had her so stymied. She felt violated, incredibly, horribly violated. Yet, she had no idea what the picture meant or why it made her feel so violated. What was she supposed to do? Report it? What would she say? That someone had taken a picture of her sitting in a truck?

But no matter how she tried talking it away, there was no lessening the severity of the picture. Someone had taken a lot of time and effort in following her, to take a picture, print it, and deliver it at her apartment. Her home. Her space. Her easily accessible space.