Can't Buy Me Love (26 page)

An arm’s length from him, she stopped, the heat from his body something she imagined to be real, holding her there.

“Let me go.”

He shook his head. “Not until you tell me what’s going on, Tara. And no more bullshit.”

“I’ve told you. Victoria—”

“You.”
The word jabbed her in the chest. He stepped forward and now she wasn’t imagining the heat from his body, it was there. So close she could put her numb hands against him and feel its warmth. “What is going on with you?” He lifted his eyebrows. “I won’t let you leave, Tara. Not until you tell me the truth.”

“Oh please—”

“Stop it!”

She jerked back, stunned by his sudden ferocity. He rubbed his hands over his face, into his dark hair, putting every strand on end. “Just talk to me, Tara. I want to help and you know I can, otherwise you wouldn’t have been staying here. Now, I know this has something to do with Dennis. And I know it’s not good, so cut the crap and talk to me. I can help you. I want … I want to help you.”

He sounded tired, like he was dealing with a petulant child and sick of it. Her lip curled and her breath suddenly heaved in her chest.

He was going to … what? Save her?

Idiot.

She was past saving. So far past it, she couldn’t remember what innocence felt like.

Her bag fell to the ground like a thousand-pound weight. His eyes went wide at the sound and she had his attention.

Good, because she was only going to tell this story once.

“I met Dennis when I was sixteen. I was …” She licked her lips, unable of course to tell the whole truth, because some things she just couldn’t put into words. “I was in trouble and broke. Dennis had a job as an orderly at a nursing home and he had this scam going. He’d befriend little old ladies who had no family, no visitors, and he’d charm them into giving him gifts. Money.”

“I knew I didn’t like that guy.”

She put up her chin, braced for the left hook of his disdain. His disgust.

“He convinced me to do the same, but with the men.” He started to shake his head, his eyes as wide as if she’d told him she killed baby seals in her spare time, but she kept talking, a stone rolling downhill. “I’d go to a nursing home wearing a short skirt and my mother’s crucifix and I’d pretend I was looking for my grandpa so I could read him the paper. And …” She swallowed. Whoever said confession was good for the soul was a goddamned liar. She felt sick. “The first guy, his name was Mr. Beanfang.”

“You mentioned him before.”

“Well, he was rich. So rich. He had money just lying around, like it didn’t matter. And he didn’t have any family and he was … he was lonely. So I read him the paper. Or one of the books from his room. And he started giving me money.”

“And you took it?”

There it was—the trace of judgment, of disbelief—on the fringes of his voice. The destruction of everything he felt for her would begin like this—a trickle of doubt. He’d fight it, because he was the kind of man who would try to rationalize her behavior, see all the reasons behind the evil she’d done.

Pointless. Because in the end he’d abhor her.

She’d make sure of that.

“Of course I took it, Luc. That was the whole point. I was a thief and a liar. And I got enough money to get myself out of trouble and on a bus to California, and I left.”

“Dennis—”

“Followed me. He found me a few months later. I’d been kicked out of my apartment, my stuff had been stolen, and we started it all back up again. The nursing homes, the old guys with no family. And as soon as I’d make enough to get myself out of trouble, I left. Again. And a few years later he found me. My mom was sick. There wasn’t any money—”

“I get the idea—”

“Really? I doubt it. Because I did it four times, Luc! Four times I preyed on those men. I pretended to be something I wasn’t so they would give me their money!”

Her voice shook in the rafters and she felt herself falling into pieces. Luc reached out to her and she stepped away, appalled that he would try to touch her.

“Why is Dennis here now?” Luc’s voice was careful, slow and sure, like bedrock under her feet, and she pulled herself back from the brink.

“I … I gave the money back to the last old man. I couldn’t … I couldn’t do it. He’d given me ten grand and … I was twenty-nine and sick of what I was doing. But Dennis was in trouble with some people and he needed to get out of town. When he found out I’d given the money back, he beat me up. Put me in the hospital. Where I met Lyle.”

She saw the moment when her words hit home. His face sharpened, every inch of his fierce nature brought to bear against her, and she wanted to cower behind a lie, some fiction she’d created to keep her distance from
the ugliness of her past. But she’d pulled down all her walls and she stood here, naked.

“You conned him.” His words were a blowtorch against her skin.

“I told Lyle every single thing about myself,” she said. “I told him about the old guys and the money.” And more. And more and more and more. But Luc would never know. Never.

Luc was shaking his head, disbelieving, and she didn’t blame him. “And you read to him and you accepted his gifts—”

“No gifts. He gave me the job. Straight up.”

It was the truth; she had nothing else to offer Luc, nothing else to sway him. He’d believe her or not.

Please
, she thought, surprised that it mattered so much what this man thought of her.
Please believe me. Please
.

“So Dennis is here for the money?” His voice gave away nothing and she fought the urge to scramble in front of him, offering justification. “For you? You brought him here?”

“He just got out of jail.”

“Jail!”

She nodded and he swore. “He needs money and then he’ll go.” This was her hope, her fervent dream, but she doubted her words even as she said them. She would never get rid of Dennis, not unless she went to the police.

“How much?”

She bit her lips, the words
none of your business
on the tip of her tongue, but it
was
his business. By coming here, by bringing her long tail of poison with her, she’d made Dennis everyone’s business.

“How much?” he thundered.

“Two hundred thousand.”

“The bonus?”

She nodded.

“Why haven’t you called the cops? This is extortion—”

“Are you kidding? What I did is called fraud. Dennis would and could put me in jail.”

“How much did you take from these men?”

“Including the ten grand—”

“You gave that back.”

She shook her head. “Doesn’t change the fact that I conned him into giving it to me. All told, around thirty grand.”

He whistled, and her stomach shook with guilt.

“I doubt anyone is going to put you in jail for thirty grand in gifts from men who were grateful for the company.”

“Dennis got arrested for fraud. Sent to jail for five years for doing the same thing I did but with less money.”

“Somehow I think they had more on Dennis than that.”

Tara was pretty sure of it too. He’d gotten busted a few times for stealing medication from the nursing homes and selling it on the street. He always had someone after him. Cops. Criminals. It hardly seemed to matter.

“Do you honestly think he’ll go away when you give him the money?”

She shook her head. “This is … this is the cost of what I did, Luc.”

“Bullshit, Tara. You want to make it right?”

“Of course I do, Luc. I’m paying—”

“Paying him money won’t do anything. You know that. You’re not stupid. You want to make this right, man up and go to the cops.”

For a moment she let the coward in her scramble, searching for another way, but then she took a deep breath and took a good, hard look at the truth.

She needed to go to the cops.

That woman who Dennis had described—the coward—was it possible she could just choose to not be that woman? Could she choose to be better? The idea was like a light going on in a dark room.

Right now, her own actions—not a new name, a different job—could change things for her. Forever. Suddenly the fear of going to jail was not as large as her hope that she could be different. Better. Someone she could be proud of.

She could go to the cops. She didn’t have to be scared and selfish Jane Simmons anymore. She could do the right thing.

Her bones felt broken. Everything felt broken, as if telling this secret after so many years had blown a hole right through her. It was going to be hard work pulling herself back together. But she could do it. She would do it.

“Where is he now?” Luc asked.

“Why?”

“Why do you think? If you’re not going to handle him, I will.”

Fear that he’d go charging into this situation like John Wayne on skates made up her mind. This wasn’t just about keeping herself safe anymore. She had an obligation to this family.

“Forget it, Luc. There’s no way you’re going to go threaten a guy like Dennis. He’ll take it as a challenge.”

“I can handle it.”

“I’m sure you can, but your career might not. Your public image. Your family. I’m going to go to the cops. Get a restraining order. Something.”

He stared at her a long time and like the guilty little con artist she was, she looked away, unable to meet his eyes, because she knew that the way he used to see her, as that woman of worth who’d risen above a background too bad to speak of, was gone.

That version of her couldn’t survive this. Nothing could.

It was why she’d never told anyone except Lyle.

“You want me to go with you?”

“I don’t need a babysitter. I said I’ll do it and I’ll do it.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

Right. “This is my business, Luc. I’m not going to get you any more tangled up in this.”

“You sure as hell got my sister tangled up in it.”

“I know. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I should go. Honestly, he won’t bother you if I’m not here.”

“You’re staying. It’s safe here.”

“Luc—”

“Fine. It’s none of my business. But don’t be this proud. It doesn’t make any sense.”

He was right. If she went home, there weren’t enough locks on her door to keep Dennis out. “Okay. Thank you.”

The silence was thick and heavy, like being buried alive under pounds of her own dirt. Outrageously, she wanted to ask him if he hated her. Despised her. And she knew it was ridiculous to care; she certainly never had before. No other man’s opinion had mattered, except for Lyle’s.

For a second, she hung onto the idea that Luc’s opinion mattered because he was Lyle’s son. Or maybe it was just the fact that she’d told him the truth, and she was so desperate for forgiveness she was ready to look for it in him.

But then he turned and walked away without another word, and the truth was impossible to ignore.

His opinion mattered, because
he
mattered.

Previously frozen and suddenly reckless with the painful spasms of feeling, her heart thudded a quiet agreement.

Luc watched the
sun come up on Tuesday morning, a pink glow in the east-facing window that over time lost its rosiness and burned through every cloud in its way to becoming a bright globe suspended over the glass roof of the greenhouse.

Tara Jean, her hair pulled back in a ponytail, a loose white T-shirt blown against her stomach by the wind, walked across the gravel of the parking area like a woman headed toward a firing squad. Shoulders back, chin up, daring the whole world to take their best shot.

It was impossible not to admire her guts.

She got in her car and started down the driveway toward the Springfield Police Station.

She was really going to do it.

Pride warred with his anger.

He wasn’t upset about the money or the old men. Hell, he almost felt sorry for her and the load of guilt she carried over her mistakes. Alone was no way to die, and she’d brought some happiness to those men in their last days. Maybe he’d see it differently if it was his old man and his money getting conned by a pretty blonde with a great rack—but he doubted it. Truth be told, if he were dying alone somewhere, he’d like a woman like Tara coming to read him the Sports page.

No, the wellspring of his anger was that she had brought Dennis—this threat—to bear against his family.

His sister. His nephew. And she had lied and would have kept on lying about it if he hadn’t forced the truth out of her.

And that she honestly thought he was going to sit back and do nothing while Dennis circled like a vulture was ludicrous.

She didn’t know him. At all.

He tapped the business card in his hand against the window.

Gary Thiele, the private investigator who’d uncovered Tara Jean’s real name.

Funny, he’d thought at the time that her name change was the worst of her crimes.

He grabbed his phone and dialed the number.

It was time to find out a little bit more about Dennis Murphy.

Those episodes of
CSI: Miami
she used to watch had misled her. The kindly receptionist at the front desk at the Springfield Police Station had to direct her to the county courthouse in Wassaw to get the protection order—it wasn’t even called a restraining order in Texas. You just couldn’t trust TV anymore for a proper education. A forty-minute drive later, and a very bored county clerk had her fill out three forms and then made copies at a glacial pace.