Just Evil (20 page)

“St. John just assumed I knew about the affairs—and cared
enough to kill her or have her killed. I swear I didn’t know about the affairs
until after she died; I didn’t know that every day while I was at work, she was
sleeping with her aerobics instructor, or her tennis coach, or her personal
trainer. And I paid for all of them. I paid for her lifestyle, the car she
drove, the house; I picked up the tab for every goddamn thing she did because I
just didn’t care enough to get a divorce. How stupid is that?”

“Oh Jake, I had no idea.”

“I’m convinced one of the men she was seeing killed her. I
tried to get St. John to follow that logic, but he refused to go there. It
didn’t stop me though. I hired a private detective, and for almost seven months
I hoped he’d turn up something, anything at all to show everyone I hadn’t done
it. But as it turns out it was a waste of time and money. He found no new leads
and eventually, I had to let it go.”

A stressful sound escaped his throat, as he admitted, “I’ve
finally let it go, Kit.”

“I’m glad, Jake. Life takes turns we’re not always
comfortable with and we can’t change the past, can’t go back. It is what it is.
You were right to let your past go. I’m sorry you went through that kind of
hell.” She waited a beat before looking into his eyes. “I was pretty upset when
I got an invitation to the wedding.”

“An…an invitation to the wedding? Claire must have…ah, I
see.”

“Do you? Needless to say I passed. But when I read about it
in the paper, I cried for days. I assumed the infamous Claire was the love of
your life.”

He stared at her, speechless. What was she telling him? But
when he looked into the depths of those deep, green pools, he saw the answer in
her eyes. He saw the honesty, the truth of what she was saying. The knowledge
humbled him. He thought about all the pain and hurt she must have suffered as a
child, considered what his rejection must have felt like back then.

And then it hit him. She hadn’t been a teenager when he’d
gotten married. “You had to be what, nineteen or twenty?”

“Twenty. When I came out of my funk I decided it was time I
lost my virginity, time to quit waiting for—” With a toss of her head, she took
a stab at lighthearted. “I picked a very serious-minded geomorphology student.
It lasted two months before he bolted to South America.”

She smiled as she stood up to check the steaks, but wasn’t
quick enough; Jake had her wrapped up in his arms, settled on his lap. He
rested his forehead on hers. “Kit, I don’t know what to say to that, other than
I wish with all my heart that I had never met Claire, let alone married her. I
wish I could change the past for both of us, change what’s happened to both of
us over the years. All I know is that we can start fresh right here, right now,
and go forward from here. If you want to, that is.”

“Okay.”

He didn’t need more incentive than that. He turned her mouth
up to his, gently parted her lips. She opened, slipped her arms around his
neck. The kiss started tender, gentle, until he deepened it. Desire stirred
within, filled her with longing.

This is exactly what she’d wanted. She was pretty sure she’d
never felt this kind of aching need, and it felt so right. When Jake’s hand
moved to her breast, Kit broke the kiss, reluctantly pulling away, and said
shakily, “I have to check the steaks…” Her voice trailed off with a sigh.

Jake dropped his head and for several seconds just held her
in place on his lap. With a sharp sigh of his own, he let her go, but said,
“Any man that prefers the jungle to spending time with a woman like you is
nuts. He didn’t deserve you, Kit.”

She forked the steaks onto a plate. “And you do?” She saw
the hurt look on his face. “Well, with me, it seems men are always running off
somewhere.”

“I’m done with running.”

“You think so?”

It was time to level with her. “I was attracted to you—and
mortified to know that attraction was to someone so young. A grown man
shouldn’t—isn’t supposed to have thoughts about someone so young.”

Amazed at the revelation, she turned to him. Holding the
plates with the meat, she wanted to know, “That’s why you were such a jerk.” It
wasn’t a question.

“You were fifteen but you didn’t look fifteen. You were tall
for your age. One day I saw you in the file room and thought wow, maybe you
were a young-looking eighteen. Eighteen wouldn’t have been so bad; at least
eighteen is legal. But when one of the lawyers mentioned that he thought you
were just sixteen, I―”

“Ran the other way,” she finished for him.

“Exactly. And then a week later, Morty mentioned that you
had just turned sixteen. I wanted nothing more to do with you. I couldn’t
afford the office gossip. So I deliberately discouraged you anyway I could.”

“Actually, I was fourteen. I thought…I thought it was
because…of…what happened to me, the abuse. I thought you knew and you didn’t
want to have anything to do with someone like me. I thought Gloria might have
said something.”

He stood, went to her then, and set the plate on the table
before taking her chin in his hand. “Aw honey. That wasn’t it at all. I didn’t
even know. If I’d known, I’d have…” What, what would he have done about it?
“Why didn’t Gloria help you?”

She shrugged. “What could she do? She moved out here, kept
an eye on me as best she could after I was twelve.” She desperately needed to
change the subject. “I’ll get the salad. The meat’s getting cold. We need to
eat.” Uncomfortable, she hurried off to the kitchen.

Over the meal, they laughed about some of her and Baylee’s
choices at making money during college. “Hey, don’t knock it. We were eighteen
and didn’t have much of a skill-set back then. It was either that or work the
drive-thru at McDonald’s. We both loved art, both loved to draw and paint. It
made sense to go that route. In addition to working at Morty’s law firm in the
summers, Baylee and I painted houses on the weekends.”

“Blondes Paint, I remember.”

“That was us. We had business cards printed up and
everything. At first, we painted houses, inside and out, then we started
painting murals. The murals were my idea. Who would have thought that painting
murals on the walls of nurseries for pregnant moms could be so lucrative?” She
laughed just thinking about how many Winnie the Poohs and Barneys she’d painted
back then. “Granted, it was a little unorthodox, but the fact is it was a
pretty good way for two college students to work their way through school.”

He sat a little straighter at the table. “Alana didn’t help
you with college at all?”

“Not a penny. Baylee and I started saving every cent we
could get our hands on. We weren’t brilliant like Quinn who got an academic
scholarship. If Baylee and I were going to college, we’d have to put in extra
work to make the grade. And after one particular nasty argument too many with
her stepfather while still in high school, Quinn moved out on her own. Of
course, it didn’t take long before she discovered she needed help paying the
rent. When she approached us about moving in with her, we jumped at the idea. I
couldn’t wait to get out of Alana’s house and Baylee couldn’t wait to leave
hers.”

Prone to rattling on, she realized she’d drifted from the
point of the conversation and got back on track. “Anyway, since the painting
business was just a sideline, so to speak, and not much of a business, when I
found out Gloria intended to close the bookstore here, I jumped in with both
feet. I knew I didn’t want a regular nine-to-five, structured, corporate kind
of job.”

At that, she shot him a solemn look, adding, “Sorry, but
it’s just not my idea of bliss, spending nine hours every day in a stuffy
setting where other people tell you what to do, file this, e-mail that. Sitting
at a desk for hours unable to get outside when you want to would drive me over
the wall. It didn’t take long to discover that every time I found myself stuck
inside that file room for hours at Morty’s.”

“It isn’t for everyone.”

“No, it isn’t. This afternoon at your office, the idea hit
me that if I had to work in your environment for very long, I’d go mad.” She
puffed out her cheeks and blew air out. A habit, Jake had come to realize, she
had when she was nervous or exasperated and didn’t know what else to say or do.

“It is pretty stressful.”

“It isn’t that, Jake. It’s confining. Take your receptionist
for example; the woman can’t even get up and walk around, can’t leave her post,
not even to go to the bathroom when the urge hits. I’d go crazy surrounded by
four walls, chained to a desk all day. I feel sorry for her.”

Hearing this confirmed, once again, her sweet nature. Her
empathy for the receptionist Deidre was just another example of her even
temper. And then something else occurred to him. “Kit, by any chance are you
claustrophobic?”

Her face went white. Oh, God. She’d said too much. She
stammered, “Well. I’m…not sure…I’m…maybe. I don’t know. Why?”

“It sounds as if you don’t like small, cramped spaces, don’t
like to be confined indoors, love doing things outside.” He reached across the
table and took both of her hands in his. “It’s okay, honey. Lots of people are
claustrophobic.”

Flustered now, she realized she’d drifted from the topic yet
again. She tried to pick the story up where she’d left off. “Well, once I got
the idea in my head to add the coffee shop, it just wouldn’t go away. I knew I
didn’t want to design websites or something equally boring; that’s what some of
the other art majors wanted, but not me. So, I bit the bullet, put a proposal
together for a business loan, made a trip to convince the nice loan committee
at the bank I was worthy of a loan.”

Impressed, he asked, “How’d it go?”

“What I did was make a total ass out of myself asking those
stuffed shirts for a loan. They turned me down flat. Well, why wouldn’t they
turn me down? I was a college senior, a woman at that, with no real business
experience other than freelancing as an artist painting a bunch of storybook
characters on walls and working another part-time job at a coffee house. I left
the bank in tears, cried on Glo’s shoulders, not knowing she’d interpret my
pathetic existence as something she could fix. She offered to co-sign the loan
for me, but that didn’t sit well. I didn’t want her to go out on a limb like
that. What if I couldn’t make a go of it and the bookstore went bust; it was
already in trouble. What if I lost her money and she didn’t have anything left
for retirement? I just couldn’t let her take a risk like that.”

Jake didn’t have the heart to tell her that he was pretty
sure Morty Gandis had left Gloria in a position where she didn’t have to worry
about money.

“Still, the idea of getting the bookstore back on track
appealed to me. So, I dug into my hard-earned savings and took the plunge.
Quinn was dating a contractor at the time. He came up with a bid I could
afford.”

She paused and looked skyward, held up her wine glass in
salute. “Thank you Steve Harper, wherever you are. I’m just glad Quinn kept him
around long enough for him to finish the remodeling.” Her laugh came from deep
down in her throat. “With my investment in the coffee house, Gloria made me an
equal partner. And once again I have Gloria to thank for being there when I
needed her.”

“What do you mean?”

“She’s been coming to my rescue, been my saving grace for so
many years, ever since, I…when I…well, for a long time.”

She’d almost said something else. He was sure of it, but
then he remembered what he’d found out that afternoon and the moment was lost.
“By the way, I found out a little more about John Griffin’s death.”

Telling her was difficult. “I think maybe, your mother, uh,
Alana that is, told you the truth on this one. John Griffin’s date of death
came up as November 2. The cause of death is listed as accidental. He fell from
a horse doing his own stunts while on location in Santiago, Spain, suffered a
head injury, and died about six hours later at the hospital.”

“I never knew when he died. She never told me…November 2
would have been three weeks after my fourteenth birthday. He missed my birthday
because of the shooting schedule.” Tears filled her eyes, ran down her cheeks.
“But he sent me a birthday present, an autographed poster of the last movie we
saw together in July when we went to a premier showing of
Men in
Black
.
He was like that. He knew how much I enjoyed the movie.”

Jake put his hand over hers.

“I should have been curious enough to find out for sure
before now when he died. Instead I spent all these years hoping like a silly
child that Alana had been trying to hurt me by telling me he was dead. I
thought he’d come back, you see.” She wiped at her eyes. “How stupid is that? I
always thought he’d come back.”

“It isn’t stupid to hope for a different outcome, honey. But
Kit, your father had a son. He’s been receiving his residuals since his death.
His name’s Ben Griffin. He lives in Galway, Ireland.”

The stunned look on her face and the tears running down her
cheeks made Jake feel like the biggest heel. Why did he have to be the one to
tell her this?

When she just sat there, as if in shock, he pulled her onto
his lap, wrapped her up in his arms, and rocked her. “I’m sorry. I guess I
could have thought of a better way to tell you.”

“No, it’s okay. He had a son. Where has he been all this
time? Ireland, you say, he lives in Galway. Imagine…a brother, six thousand
miles away. That’s the second time today someone’s mentioned Ireland to me.
How’d you find out all that?”

“You crack the right database you’d be surprised what you
can learn if you know where to look.”

“I should contact him, this Ben Griffin, get in touch. If I
didn’t know about him, he probably doesn’t know about me. He’d be family, Jake,
my only family besides Glo, of course.”