Best Kept Secret (Rochester Trilogy 3)

Marjorie’s tidying the living room when I get back to the inn. Her eyes widen at my suit. “Hello, Mr. Rochester.”

“Hi. Where’s Jane and Paige?”

“Paige went to get ice cream with Mateo.” She smooths a blanket over the back of the sofa. “Jane went out.”

“Went out?”

“She didn’t say where. I was about to go to the grocery store—was there anything Paige wanted for dinner?”

“I don’t think so.”

Marjorie leaves, and I’m left alone in the front room. I should go change out of this damn suit, but worry squeezes at my stomach. She left without telling me. Joe could be watching her, waiting for her. He could have gotten ahold of her. He could have her right now. Why the hell am I still standing here?

I’m reaching to open the door when it opens into my face. Jane steps in. My heart races. Her hand flies to her throat. “Beau,” she gasps. “What are you doing?”

“Where were you?” I reach around behind her and shut the door. Lock it. “I got home, and you were gone. I didn’t know where the hell you were.” I pull her into my arms, grip tight, and kiss her before she can answer. Hard. So hard it backs her up against the door. My hands go to the lines of her jaw and I look into eyes that are wide and dark and astonished. “Tell me where you were.”

“I can’t say anything when you’re kissing me like that.”

“Say it now.”

“I went to see Noah.”

She risked her safety to go see him. I try to hold back a surge of jealousy and anger and fail. From the moment I saw her in the rain, I haven’t wanted her to leave my side. That feeling has doubled and tripled since I sent her away, and since she came back. I don’t want her out in the world, where any dirty cop could get to her. Where any old friend from Houston could talk her into—I don’t even know what. Could take advantage. “What the hell did you do that for? You don’t owe him anything.”

Jane lifts her chin. “I owed him a conversation, so I went to his motel and had it with him. We talked. Then I came back here.”

My blood pressure is so high I can feel my pulse banging at the insides of my veins. I wish she would just say it. I wish she would just say that she went there and slept with him. I wish she would tell me what the fuck actually happened in that motel room. Owing someone a conversation has to mean something other than sitting and chatting. Owing means a transaction.

I’m losing my mind.

“Beau.” She doesn’t pull her face out of my hands or elbow past me. No guilt creeps into her eyes. She puts her hands over mine and holds on tight. “We talked. Then I came back here.”

“Nothing happened?” It comes out more like an accusation than anything else.

Jane’s lips part in shock. “Are you asking me if I—” Her anger softens almost immediately into understanding. I can feel it through her touch, in the way her hands tense and then soften on mine. I hate it. It feels like pity. It feels like being scorched, or having my head shoved under the water. “Oh,” she says softly. “No wonder you don’t trust people, after what happened with Emily.”

All the old betrayal surges up again, thick and choking. It was worse than a slap in the face. Worse than Emily turning her back on me. If she’d walked away for anyone else, it might have been different. But Rhys? I fucking hate him. I still hate him for it. Guilt covers my hatred like the incoming tide. I hate him, but he was still my brother. He’s also a part of Paige.

“Emily has nothing to do with this.”

“I think she has everything to do with this. It hurt. What she did to you. It hurt, and it never stopped.”

“I don’t care—”

“And your brother shouldn’t have done it, either. He should have known better. He wasn’t a good person, but he was your brother, and if he could turn on you like that, why couldn’t I?”

She’s digging through the deepest parts of me and casting them aside. The whole structure’s going to come down. Like the cliffs at Coach House. Eventually the rain and the waves will beat against the rock until it’s all part of the sand. This thing I’ve been hanging on to—it’s like those cliffs. But even stone can come down. Even rock is no match for the ocean.

I need more of her. I want to let it all go. I can’t do it here, when anyone could walk in.

“Upstairs.” I let go of Jane to point a finger at the staircase.

She goes.

I follow her.