“Sara?” Mike called, and she felt her heart give a little jump of pleasure.
When did that start happening? she wondered. “In here,” she answered.
Mike came in and nearly fell onto the chair across from the couch where she was sitting. Sara thought he looked as though he’d aged ten years. When she started to get up, he said, “I need to tell you some things.”
“I know. But first I’m getting you something to drink.” She’d learned that Mike’s workouts made him drink twice as much liquid as other people. “Replacing the sweat,” he’d said.
He looked at her in gratitude, and minutes later, she returned with a tray she’d already prepared for him. There was a big glass of red currant iced tea and a large piece of raspberry crumble she’d made the day before. Mike emptied the glass in one long drink but set the pie aside.
“How bad is it?” she asked as she sat down across from him on the couch.
“I guess that’s all in how you look at it. I have some … some truly awful things to tell you.”
Sara’s hand went to her throat. “Someone’s been hurt.”
“No,” Mike said. “At least not recently.”
With a sigh of relief, Sara fell back against the couch. “You have something to tell me about Greg, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
“It’s okay. I’ve already decided to call the wedding off.”
“And when did you decide that?”
She wanted to say “this minute,” but didn’t. Instead, she shrugged. “When I realized I was hoping he’d never return, I knew I couldn’t go through with it. My life is much more pleasant when he’s not here.” Sara was hoping Mike would be glad of that, but his face didn’t lose its look of worry. “You can tell me,” she said. “Whatever it is, I can take it.”
He wished he had the time to tell her everything slowly, but it had all become urgent. He took a deep breath. “Brian Tolworthy didn’t marry someone else. He died right after he got to England.”
In the hours she’d been waiting for Mike’s return, she’d imagined a lot of things, but this was not one of them. “Brian is dead?” she whispered. “But his parents …”
“Are still alive. And they’ve wondered why you never responded to their attempts to contact you to tell you about Brian.” That was as kind as he could put it.
“But I didn’t receive anything, not a call, nothing! And I called Brian a hundred times, but he never picked up.” When Mike was silent, Sara let out her breath.
“There’s more, isn’t there?”
“We don’t think his death was an accident.”
“Not an accident? It wasn’t suicide, was it?” The look on Mike’s face answered that question. “Are you talking about murder?”
“Yes,” Mike said softly, his eyes boring into hers.
For a moment, Sara could do nothing but look at him, and when what he was trying to tell her hit her, she almost couldn’t breathe. “You think he was murdered because of me, don’t you?” she whispered.
Mike said nothing, just kept looking at her, and his eyes confirmed what she’d said.
“I don’t understand.” Tears began to roll down her cheeks. She wasn’t sobbing, her face wasn’t wrinkled, but tears were gliding down her cheeks. “His poor parents. They loved Brian so much, and he was to inherit and—”
Mike left the chair to sit on the couch and pull her into his arms. As they had before, her tears wet the front of his shirt. He handed her tissues.
After a while, she pulled away and blew her nose. “I’m always crying on you. How did you find out about Brian?”
“I asked Tess to do some research on him and she called his home in England. Brian’s mother answered the phone.”
“Oh, Brian,” she said. “He was such a sweet man. I thought—”
“That you two were going to get married and live in England.”