Anabel Unraveled (8 page)

And then, of course, he was there. “Hey.”

I looked at him through the pile of my hair. “What?”

“I heard what Sam said. You didn’t deserve that.” Jared stopped, and then asserted, “You definitely didn’t deserve what happened.”

“I don’t want your pity.”

“Still, it was uncalled for. Anabel . . .”

“What?”

Jared was smirking at me. Again. “I can’t believe you told them that.”

I turned my head back so it faced the table. “I had to tell the truth, right?”

“You just didn’t show yourself in the best light, is all. I’m surprised that you would do that for me.”

“I didn’t do it for you. I did it because it was the right thing to do,” I muttered.

“Well it was nice of you. Made me look a little less awful. Made you look a little less pure.”

I sat up and looked at him. “Jared, I was behaving like a horny schoolgirl, I don’t think there was any way to portray myself so I looked good.”

“You could give your own revisionist history.” He was smiling at me now. I smacked his arm.

“Stop that,” I ordered. “It doesn’t work on me anymore.”

“I doubt that very much, love.”

“Leave her alone, Sorensen,” came a voice. I smiled hopefully at Matt. He didn’t smile back. “Anabel, I’ve been instructed to take you to eat.”

“I’m not hungry,” I grumbled, but I got up anyway and left Jared there, staring at the both of us openmouthed.

Which was what he deserved, after all.

I had to almost run to keep up with Matt. His legs were longer than mine. “Thank you for getting me out of that. I was uncomfortable.”

“I bet,” he agreed. “What do you think you can keep down?”

“Um, there’s a smoothie place around the corner, I usually—wait,” I stopped, realizing that he knew. “Did Sam tell you?”

He gave me a curt nod, and I wasn’t quite sure why, but I felt a sense of disappointment. Even though I couldn’t quite explain it to myself, for some reason, I didn’t want him to know. I looked down at my shoes, suddenly unsure. “How long have you known?”

“I knew it the moment I saw you,” he admitted. He leaned in a little closer, and in an undertone said, “I don’t think this is the best place to be discussing this, Anabel.”

I agreed. So I let him buy me a strawberry banana smoothie, and I sipped it in silence as he walked me back. I kept looking at him, puzzled. “What do you do for my brother again?”

He caught my eye briefly, and then looked straight ahead. “I’m a bodyguard.”

“Are you Secret Service?”

Matt looked down. “I was. Now I’m private.” He gently slipped his arm around my shoulders to guide me away from an oncoming mob. “We should get you back into the hearing. There aren’t quite so many onlookers in there.”

“Thank goodness for that,” I proclaimed. “A much smaller audience to see me make an idiot of myself.”

He raised an eyebrow. I continued, “It’s bad enough that I’m making poor Sam relive this again, but—”

“Sam can take care of himself. Just tell the truth, Anabel. It will be fine.”

I nodded, and then smiled at him. “Thanks. It’s nice to have a friend. Even one that my brother has to pay for.”

He laughed then, and I was pleased as I sat back down next to Sam, whose color had returned. “I’m sorry I left you like that,” he told me.

“I’m sorry I pained you like that,” I offered.

“It’s because I care about you,” he said.

“I know,” I returned. “But this is going to get a whole lot worse before it gets better, and you know that.”

He nodded, and we both looked up as Jared stood to tell his side of the story.

Chapter 7—Jared

After Anabel left me, I nearly lost control. Watching her retreating figure, I kicked a chair in frustration. I was incredibly mad at her display of . . . well, what was that? I turned and leaned against the rail, breathing heavily, until I had pulled myself together.

Sam had totally underestimated her. If he knew what she was doing, he’d lose it. “Who does she think she is?” I muttered aloud. If she thought she could get away with that, she was gravely mistaken. How dare she pretend she was this sweet, innocent, little girl, and then turn around and behave like that?

I’m not going to sit here and claim to be an expert on morality, but I’ve never pretended to be something I’m not. Anabel knew what I was, she’d said it herself.

She, on the other hand, had fooled me, and for that matter, her brother. It’s no wonder her dad wanted to lock her up. In my mind, she was as bad as I was. Worse.

But even as I decided that, I also felt furious at myself, and all sorts of recollections of how Sam had explicitly told me how much he trusted me with his sister’s welfare were running through my head. I could just imagine explaining the whole thing to him. I did not do this. She did this. I just came here to do a job, and she got mad because I was going through her desk to make sure her father hadn’t bugged her room. Sam hadn’t been kidding about her temper. She had screamed at me and thrown me out of there before I knew what was going on.

That wasn’t what bothered me though. The worst part was she had gotten under my skin, and I had never allowed that to happen before. She wasn’t even the sort of girl I would normally go after—if I had seen Anabel on the street, I would’ve just kept walking. No. I knew it then. She was off limits, and that’s what this was about. Nothing more than a reaction to her brother telling me to leave her alone. It’s not like she was special. She was pretty, and rather smart, but there were ten million other girls like that in the DC area alone. It was obvious that I wanted her because my every instinct was to stay away.

There would be no more of this, I told myself. Just do your job.

Needless to say, I immediately took a very cold shower.

I avoided Anabel for the rest of the afternoon. When I arrived to dinner that night she had put away the sexy white dress in favor of something much more puritan. Part of her hair was pulled back and the rest flowed around her face, making her look softer and sweeter than she had earlier. I thought I had my temper under control, but I got annoyed when she refused to make eye contact with me and only said, “Good evening, Jared,” by way of greeting.

“So Mr. Sorensen,” began Jonathan Martin, deigning to notice me, “have you found any useful information for Sam? Or has my stepson sent you here to merely make me uncomfortable?”

“Daddy, Sam’s what, ten years younger than you? I don’t really know if you can call him your stepson,” pointed out Anabel, dabbing at her mouth with her napkin.

“That’s enough, Anabel.”

“I’m just saying,” she continued, “it’s not even like you were ever really his parent, he never lived with you.”

“I said that’s enough.” The cold rage behind those words seemed to intimidate everyone at the table but Anabel, who looked like she was about to retort. However, last thing I needed was Jonathan and Anabel starting an argument at the dinner table, so I jumped in. “Mr. Martin, I’m not here to cause any trouble. I have my orders, and it looks like I’ll be leaving here even sooner than anticipated.”

“What? Why?” asked Anabel, dropping her fork. Then she froze. I think that question had escaped her lips before she could think, and she tried to cover it by saying, “When I talked to Sam, he said you’d be here for at least three weeks. I mean, you’re here on behalf of the United States Government. Shouldn’t you do a thorough job?”

“I think I’ve seen everything that I need to,” I told her, and she blushed a bit. She looked uncomfortable—and upset. Excellent.

“Have you come to any conclusions?” Her voice trembled a little, and her eyes gave away everything. I knew she was scared I would tell her brother what she’d done. And I had no interest in putting her mind at ease—I wanted to torment her a little. Like she had done to me.

“Well, I’ll call Sam in the morning, report to him what I’ve found, and we can go from there.” I smiled cordially at Jonathan Martin. “I really appreciate how kind you were to me during my stay, sir. Your daughter is lovely, and she has provided me with wonderful company. I do not regret the amount of time I spent with such a charming hostess, but I wish I had seen more of the business side of the facility. Perhaps tomorrow morning you could give me a tour?”

“I could come with you,” Anabel offered.

“That won’t be necessary, Miss Martin,” I cajoled. “I believe I’m familiar with your opinions on everything, but I would like to get to know your father a little better.”

Jonathan had been watching this discourse with interest. When she slumped back in her chair, defeated, he frowned and said, “I hope Anabel hasn’t been too much of a bother for you, Mr. Sorensen. She’s a good girl, and she means well, but sometimes she forgets her place.”

Ouch. That was cold. Anabel was fighting tears, so I relented.

“I think very highly of your daughter, sir,” I acknowledged. “I regret that I won’t be spending more time with her. Nonetheless, business is business.”

She looked at me through her teary eyes, unsure of whether or not she should believe me.

“On second thought, perhaps you should come with us, Anabel,” I suggested. “You may be able to lend your own unique perspective to our discussion tomorrow.”

“I’ll be there as well,” added Charlie. The look he gave me let me know that he intended to keep an eye on my interactions with her, and I shot him a glance, trying to communicate to him that I was not the problem where Anabel was concerned.

Of course, now I know that I was only the start of her problems, and I completely regret the way that I treated Anabel Martin. I would like for the record to state that I, Jared Sorensen, completely failed this girl—this woman—who I was supposed to help out of a terrible situation, one that was destructive to her sense of well-being and mental health. I regret even more that the night after that conversation, I became intoxicated and forced myself on her, an act which is reprehensible and also one for which I know she will never forgive me.

Chapter 8—Anabel

Of course, the room exploded with Jared’s statement. Sam jumped out of his chair and began shouting at him, Charlie and Marilyn appeared out of nowhere and tried to put their arms around me, there were cops who had to keep people from rushing us, Ms. Fischer was banging her gavel . . . while I sat in my chair and mulled over Jared’s words.

He was sorry he raped me, huh? I wasn’t expecting that. I didn’t know he could feel sorrow, that he actually cared that he had hurt another person.

The thing is . . . well, let me back up. In order to get to that part of the story, we need to go through what happened in the hallway after dinner and what happened the next day. See, this is what I hated about Jared. He always had to rush to the end and leave out the details. In this case, the details were important. Unlike Jared, I understand that you can’t give away too much information at once. Like my big secret. I also haven’t even alluded too much to the death of my father, which you know is coming up. So, here’s some foreshadowing for you: Jared is about to rape me, my father is about to die, and things are about to fall spectacularly to pieces.

But anyway, back to dinner. I had tears in my eyes and was fuming at Mr. Sorensen. Jared. He hadn’t liked the way I had behaved and in spite of swearing up and down that he cared about me, he was going to punish me by telling Sam everything was fine and just leave me in this godforsaken hell-hole. Can you see why I was so upset? I don’t even remember what we ate that night; I just remember that I had it in my head that it was necessary to get to the phone before Jared. I had to call my brother and tell him that sending Jared Sorensen had been a huge mistake, that Sam had made a drastic lapse in judgment when hiring a rat bastard like the snake sitting across from me to work for him, and that he had to get me off this island. Or I was going to become crazy. I probably already was crazy.

As soon as I could, I excused myself from the dinner table and made a dash for my room. I wanted to go in there, lock the door, and blast the most depressing music I could find. Maybe watch Bridget Jones’ Diary.

I guess I should mention that the end really was in sight for me. Despite my mother’s poor choices at the end of her life, she had left me a significant amount of money in a trust fund, which was mine the moment I turned twenty-one. When I had that money I could pay for my own transportation off the island, which my father refused to do. Jonathan was, of course, opposed to me leaving, and I worried that even when I had the funds to leave, he would find a way to keep me there. As I stamped down the hall toward my shelter, all sorts of thoughts ran through my head. Even though I had initiated everything on the top of the piazza, Jared’s response to me—and mine to him—frightened me. A lot. It also hurt me the way he had acted at dinner, blowing me off. I shook my head. I couldn’t let him get to me; after all, I was the one who was supposed to be using him. But then I reconsidered. What on earth was I doing, making pretend advances at some guy who was more than ten years older than me? I was far too inexperienced with men to be indulging in this insanity. This was the sort of behavior that gave my father justification for preventing me from attending college! This was the sort of behavior that would leave me dead in a gutter!

I then had another horrifying realization. “And now I’m justifying his lunacy?” I started to bang my head into the wall.

“Stop that.”

I didn’t even turn around. “Hi, Daddy.”

“What are you playing at, Anabel?” My father came up next to me. “I saw your exchange with him. I even watched the security tape of you two going into Cottage 4.”

“Yes, God forbid I follow your instructions and I do what you tell me to do. You told me to show him around. I did that!” I glared at him with my full fury. “Yes, we went into the cottage. But there are security cameras in there, too, so you saw that nothing went on between us that wasn’t perfectly kosher!”

“Perhaps you’ve forgotten where else there are cameras? Not to mention other people looking around and watching?”