“No, he never wrote anything down,” she said, but of course that had nothing to do with Lew’s wife, Sharon. Ellie put her hands over her face for a second; then when she looked back up at Jessie, she tried to be calmer.
“Look,” she said. “I’d like to help, but I can’t. I don’t have time. I have to change my own . . . destiny, I guess you’d say. I thought I could afford to take a weekend off and have some fun, but I can tell you that this weekend has turned out to be very much not fun.”
“All of it?” Jessie asked softly.
He had those eyes. He had those male eyes that Ellie hadn’t seen in a long, long time. When she’d first met Martin, his eyes were always like Jessie’s were now. Those eyes made every female hormone inside you start to vibrate and . . . and . . . giggle, she thought. Like a silly little girl. Like . . . Well, certainly not like the nearly forty-year-old woman that she was. And not like the mega-successful writer who managed her own career that she was either.
With all the resolve that she could gather, Ellie turned on her heel and walked away from him. If need be, she’d walk all the way back to the ranch.
Instantly, Jessie was beside her. “Don’t leave,” he said; then he put his hand on her arm.
Ellie looked down at his hand. It was strong and brown from the sun, and she could feel the warmth of him through her shirt. Don’t look at him, she told herself. Focus on his hand. Don’t look at him.
But she did look at him. He still had those eyes, and in the next instant she was in his arms and he was holding her.
Part of her wanted him to make love to her right there by the lake. She wanted him to take off her clothes and touch her and—
She was crying! She didn’t know when she started, but she was clinging to him as though he were her life-support system, and she was quietly, but deeply, sobbing. Maybe it was seeing those male eyes of his. Maybe it was being around a man again after all those years of being alone, but all the emptiness of the last years came flooding back to her. She didn’t want to yet again go through that divorce. She didn’t want to have to hear herself accused of cunning and treachery. She didn’t want to hear her sanity questioned.
Jessie didn’t seem surprised by her tears, and he certainly wasn’t at a loss about what to do. Bending, he swept her into his arms and carried her back to the lake where he sat down on the ground, his back against a tree, and he held her while she cried.
She didn’t know how long she cried, but it was enough. The shoulder of his shirt was soaked.
He handed her a clean handkerchief. “Better?” he said softly.
Blowing her nose, she nodded, and Jessie gently pushed a tendril of hair out of her eyes.
“Is he trying to kill you?” Jessie asked quietly. “Is that how you know about Lew?”
With her head bent, Ellie nodded. This was something that had taken her a long time to face. The jealousy and hatred Martin felt toward her was not something that Ellie could comprehend fully. “I don’t know for sure, but I think that’s what he was after. My therapist thinks he was trying to get me to commit suicide. He made me feel like a failure, as though nothing I accomplished meant anything. No matter what I did, according to him, it wasn’t good enough. And he said I had taken away his chance at success. And he tells people that I’m selfish and money-hungry. He spends his life telling people bad things about me.”
She blew her nose again and took a deep breath. “If I were gone, he’d have the money and his freedom.”
Jessie pulled her back into his arms so her cheek was on his wet shoulder. She was beginning to recover herself. “I’m sorry I’ve made such a fool of myself, but—”
“Did anyone believe you?” he asked. “When you told them that he was trying to drive you to suicide, did anyone believe you?”
“I’ve never told anyone before. You’re the first,” Ellie said, wiping her nose. “People think that if they’ve met a person, he couldn’t be evil. And since my ex spent most of his life telling people how much he loved me, they thought he did love me. Most people aren’t the liar that he is; most people have never met anyone like him.”
“So poor Lew got pushed past the final step, from suicide to being murdered.”
When he didn’t say any more, Ellie pulled away from his shoulder to look at him. All in all, they had had a very strange relationship. In one way, they were as physically familiar with each other as longtime lovers, but in another way, they knew nothing about each other.
“You haven’t given up, have you?” she asked. She was sitting on his lap and his face was inches from hers.
“Not in the least,” he said matter-of-factly. “But I need your help. I think you know more than you think you do.”
She moved her legs so she was no longer sitting on his lap; then she stood up, but Jessie continued leaning back against the tree.
“I don’t know anything,” she said. “Nothing at all. And neither do you. Maybe she drove him to suicide, or maybe she killed him. But then, maybe she’s a very nice woman and everything happened just as she said it did.”
“That Bowie went to her house last night and that Lew threatened him with a shotgun?” Jessie asked, his hands behind his head.
“That’s probably what made her decide to do it now,” Ellie said before she thought, then she put her hand over her mouth.
>
But Jessie gave a little smile and closed his eyes. “I figure that with all the research that you must have done for those books of yours that you know a great deal about the criminal mind.”