She didn’t know what else to do except to keep talking. If she explained, maybe he wouldn’t be angry. Maybe he’d understand and forgive.
She forced herself to look into his eyes and that’s when she realized. “You already know something. That’s why you’ve been acting so strange. What is it you know?”
He gestured to his briefcase in the hall. “I also received a photo and a note.”
The blood in her veins ran cold. Her legs grew weak and she stepped back to the nearest chair, collapsing into it. “Go on.”
“The note said you didn’t pay up the first time so now the burden was on me. But the blackmailer didn’t want money. No, the terms were that I had to drop out of the race or the photo would be made public. Guess what my first reaction was?”
“What?” she whispered.
“To find you. To confide in you. To see if you were okay and to fix this together. That’s when I realized. If you didn’t pay the money the first time, you already knew about the photo. You were being blackmailed. But you hadn’t confided in me.” He turned away from her. “How in the hell do you think that made me feel?”
Sharon pushed herself to her feet. “Don’t you think if I thought I could confide in you, I would have?”
He stared at her in disbelief. “What is that supposed to mean?”
She straightened her shoulders and forced herself to face him head-on. “Just that every time I brought up my past with Tony, you brushed it aside. You said you didn’t want to hear about it.”
“I didn’t want to put you through reliving it,” he said, correcting her. His eyes flashed angry sparks.
She blinked away tears. “That isn’t what you said. You said you didn’t need to hear it. As if it disgusted you. As if I disgusted you.” Her voice broke on the last word.
“Disgusted me?” Suddenly he was in front of her. He tipped her chin up, making her meet his gaze. “Whatever gave you that idea?”
“You did! Every time you kissed me softly and started to get excited, every time I thought you’d become more aggressive, treat me like you wanted me, you’d back off. Get gentle. And it didn’t feel like you wanted me anymore. Not as much as you should,” she said, her voice rising.
She didn’t recognize the words coming out of her mouth. She didn’t believe she was saying them, yet she was. She was talking from the depths of her soul, admitting things to him she’d never even admitted to herself. Because she was afraid.
Afraid if she said them aloud, she’d lose him.
But, she realized now, she just might have lost him, anyway. So really, maybe she had nothing left to lose.
Nothing and everything, Sharon thought.
DEREK HAD LIVED ALONE for the past couple of years so he wasn’t used to worrying about others. He’d always known Marlene was taking good care of Holly and heaven knows his father took care of himself. But now that he had two women in his life, he thought about them constantly. At least Holly was safe with his father and uncle.
Where the hell was Gabrielle?
He glanced at his wristwatch. “Almost dinnertime,” he muttered. He tried her cell phone, but it went straight to voice mail and he left a message.
She said she would drop Sharon off at home and come right over. Thirty minutes from Boston with no traffic, an hour with traffic max. Half an hour tops to drop Sharon off, to walk her inside and chat with her parents. Five minutes to get here.
All told, an hour and forty-five minutes, two hours at the most. Instead three hours had passed since he’d gotten her call and rearranged his and his daughter’s lives in order to keep Gabrielle safe.
So he asked himself again. Where the hell could she be?
IT HAD BEEN OVER AN HOUR since Gabrielle had pulled up to Mary Perkins’s mayoral office, located in an old Victorian mansion on the border of the two neighboring towns. The house was painted a grayish blue with white trim, common in the New England landscape.
Grabbing both her handbag and her laptop for safekeeping, she walked to the front porch. The screen was closed, the main door open.
Taped to the screen was a typed note, not sleek perfect computer ink but old-fashioned typesetting, complete with dropped letters: Back soon. Let yourself inside. M.
Although Mary wasn’t expecting her, Gabrielle did as the note suggested and stepped into the front hall. There was no receptionist waiting behind the messy, paper-strewn desk.
“Hello?” Gabrielle called out in case someone was inside.
Nobody replied.