One More Time (27 page)

Leslie understood that this outburst proved not only that the chief had been dead on the money, but that she’d only make things worse by insisting on it. “Everyone awake now?”

“Shit. Thanks a lot.”

Leslie opened her mouth to protest that his outburst wasn’t her fault, but decided against it.

“Let’s talk about something else.” Matt said dismissively, his tone businesslike and indifferent.

As if she was a check-out clerk who’d slipped up on his change.

And that tone, as much as anything, made Leslie determined to not let the really good questions slip away unanswered. “I don’t think we’re done talking about that Christmas card,” she said, forcing the words out. It wasn’t like her to be confrontational, but she wanted to know the worst of it. “There was a time, maybe in that small apartment on Inman Square, when you would have told me your secrets.”

“Well, the roaches weren’t going to listen.”

Leslie refused to be deflected by humor, not now. “You might have told me, instead of Sharan, that you intended to lose that court case.”

“But I was sure you knew.”

“I didn’t know. I never guessed.”

“I’m sorry then. I thought I just had to lose to set everything right between us again.” He half-laughed. “But I had it backwards, didn’t I? You wanted me to win and sell myself into slavery in my father’s business.”

“You make it sound as if I don’t want you to be happy...”

“Well, it sure doesn’t sound like you do.”

Leslie acknowledged the silence and the hardness of his tone, but she couldn’t let this go. “Or you could have told me about your novel.”

He let out a long breath. “Oh, right. I forgot that she mentioned that, too.” An awkward silence followed, one that Leslie didn’t fill.

Finally, Matt spoke, his words spilling over each other in a very un-Matt-like way. Was he embarrassed? That he had written a novel or that he had been caught? “It’s just a work in progress. I don’t even know if it’s going to come together. I just had an idea and started working on it, and I guess I knew that as an artist, Sharan would understand the challenge of it. And the joy of it.”

This little speech did exactly nothing to reassure Leslie.

In fact, she thought she might be sick.

When she didn’t say anything, Matt continued. “We’ve made some atypical choices, Leslie, but we’ve done it on purpose, to get further together than we ever could alone. And I didn’t mind, because I didn’t know what else I wanted. Now I know what I want and you’re not going to tell me that I can’t pursue it, just because it doesn’t leave you with complete freedom to do whatever you want.”

“That’s not what I’m asking of you!”

“Aren’t you? It sounds like it from here. Well, newsflash, Leslie.” He was angry again, his voice rising. “Something has finally caught hold of me and won’t let go. I need to do this. I’m going to do this. And that’s why I left. I have to protect this. I have to give it my best shot and that means being with people who understand the impetus behind it. I don’t trust you to not sweep me into your agenda and whatever my assigned role is there.” He half-laughed. “And I don’t trust myself to say no to you when you have that light in your eyes. It’s that simple and that complicated.”

The news that Matt believed she couldn’t be relied upon to supply any encouragement for his dreams, after he had done so much to support her own, was shocking, but Leslie had no opportunity to argue her side.

Because this time, Matt hung up on her.

She stared at the receiver, dumbfounded. Why wouldn’t he have at least tried to talk to her first? Had she really been such a crummy partner? Leslie couldn’t believe it. Her glance fell on the call display,
S. Loomis
and the New Orleans telephone number gleaming in red, and she felt sick.

She waited, watching the phone, but Matt didn’t call back and she knew he wouldn’t. He had left because he didn’t believe she would help him reach for his dream.

It was the most depressing thing anyone had said to her or about her in a long time, and with Dinkelmann in the accounting, that was bad news.

Aubade, today, Leslie decided as she got out of bed. Definitely Aubade. She’d wear that black lace undershirt that she’d told him about, as a gesture of optimism if nothing else. It had no wires, nothing but excellent cut to shape and support.

Thank God it was Friday.

* * *

Well, that had gone well.

Matt congratulated himself on his smooth delivery as he snagged another glass of orange juice. This one got a double dollop of rum, just to take the edge off.

“A bit early for drinking, isn’t it?” Sharan asked.

Matt pivoted to find her leaning in her bedroom door, a silky kimono tossed over her shoulders. She was naked beneath it and her long hair was tangled.

Her expression was guarded though, all the words of the previous night still between them.

“It’s not early to start if you never stop.” Matt saluted her with his glass and drank.

The stud du jour slipped past Sharan, gave Matt a nod, then ducked out the back door. He started to whistle when he was a dozen steps away, but Matt and Sharan didn’t look away from each other.

Sharan swallowed, looked at the floor, then met Matt’s gaze again. “There was a time,” she said softly, “when I loved you more than anything or anybody. And you know, even though you left, there was something to be said for just having ever felt that way about someone.” She tilted her head to study him. “Why did you come here? Why did you have to steal that from me?”

Matt shook his head. “I didn’t mean to. I thought...” he gestured as words failed him. “I thought that we could pick up where we left off.”

Sharan shook her head. “But we’re not the same people anymore. You know that as well as I do. There’s something in there that’s still the same, but a lot of other stuff has shaped us since.”

He looked into his glass, knowing she was right.

She moved to stand in front of him, perfume and her own scent engulfing him. Her voice was unsteady. “I could still love you,” she said, then shook her head. “But we’d have to start again.” She raised her gaze to his and something in him twisted at the shimmer of tears in her eyes. “The question is, could you still love me?”

She stood there, trembling and vulnerable, the woman he’d once believed to be tough and resilient and certain to succeed. He lifted one hand and touched her jaw, and she looked away, her tear splashing on the back of his hand.

“Why did you stop painting?”

She shook her head, lost for words.

“Tell me.”

“I’m no good.” Her tears started to flow. “No, I’m not good enough. That’s the truth.” She stared at him and he saw the depth of her wound, then the words began to fall from her lips in a torrent. “I’m not daring enough or talented enough or visionary enough and when push came to shove and I had my chance, I just couldn’t offer anything good enough. I failed.”

“You make it sound so final.”

“It is final. It’s over! I’m going to be painting fucking palm leaves for the rest of my life because I don’t know how to do anything else!” She glared at him, moving away from his hand. “And I can’t even manage to get into bed with a man who comes thousands of miles to me. Failure, Matt. I’m a failure!”

She spun away, but he caught her elbow to halt her. On impulse, he pulled her into his arms. He was shocked by how she melted beneath his caress. She was crying, he could taste her tears, and he caught her closer, finding familiarity in her embrace if not passion.

“You need to paint,” he told her with low urgency. “You need to try again.”

“No, no, I don’t think so.” She tried to pull away from him as well as his suggestion. “I don’t know what to paint...”

Matt caught her chin in his hand and compelled her to look at him. “Yes, you do. You know what to paint. You can only fail if you quit.”

She blinked and he knew he had her. She swallowed and looked toward the dining room and all those stacked canvases. “I’m not sure.”

“I am. You have talent. We both know that. Now all you need is luck and hard work.”

She smiled then. “That’s all?”

“That’s all.” He smiled at her. “I’m looking for the same thing, if it’s any consolation.”

She studied him for a long moment and he wondered what she saw that made her sober. Then her gaze slipped to the clock. “Hey, I’ve got to go to work.” She darted toward the bedroom, pausing to glance back, yearning in her eyes. “Will you be here tonight when I get home?”

“Do you want me to be?”

She smiled crookedly, as if she’d heard a joke. “Yes,” she said, her smile turning impish. “I’d like to talk.”

Matt looked around the kitchen. He thought of his phone call with Leslie and deliberately tried to shut the door on his past. Nobody had ever promised him that he could get the good stuff for free. Sharan wasn’t who she had been, but neither was he. That didn’t mean that they couldn’t find at least friendship together.

“No guarantees,” he said.

“Where were you getting those all these years?”

They smiled at each other, then Matt cleared his throat. “Any requests for dinner?”

“No. Whatever you want to make.”

It was long after Sharan had left that Matt realized she hadn’t said anything about dessert.

And that that was okay with him.

L
eslie thought she strode into the department with some verve, though her confidence faltered when Charlotte MacPherson gasped at the sight of her. When Charlotte scampered away in the direction of Dinkelmann’s office with nary a greeting, Leslie figured she was due for a visit from the great man.

Might as well get the scolding over with. She unlocked her office door without spilling her coffee, dumped her books and booted up her computer.

She had, predictably, a zillion emails to download.

Give or take.

No surprise there, since she’d pretty much forgotten to check it for the week. She wasn’t exactly a Luddite, but could never remember that email was one more place to check for correspondence.

It often seemed like one more place to find work.

Leslie adjusted her glasses and sifted quickly through the notes from students—she thought of them collectively as pleas for clemency of one kind or another—stuffed the two messages from Dinkelmann into a separate folder for later viewing, did the same with the condolence messages from friends and associates, and was left with two messages.

One was from her brother-in-law, the devil himself. She could tell, not just by the j.coxwell of his address, but by the fact that the server was the district attorney’s office. She clicked to open it, bracing herself for a bomb of some kind.

The message was typical of James.

“Call me at your earliest convenience, please.”

That polite terse imperative was followed by a telephone number, presumably his cell phone. His message was only half an hour old and she disliked the sense that she was being commanded to do anything. Rebellion roiled within Leslie, but she wasn’t prepared to drop the box
Social Niceties
.

It matched
Keeping Up Appearances
so well, after all.

She might as well get this over with, too.

James answered immediately, as if he had known exactly when she would call. After cursory greetings, he got right to the point. “Have you talked to Matt lately?”

Leslie found herself bristling. “Yes, why?”

“How did you find his attitude?”

Leslie preferred to not answer that. “Why do you ask?”

James sighed. “Because I’ve had a call from the Chief of Police in Rosemount—”

“Me, too. I thought he reached Matt.”

“I spoke to him afterwards. He didn’t think Matt was taking his suggestion of counseling very seriously.”

Leslie bit her lip, not wanting to reveal what Matt had told her about his inclinations.

“And I had a call from Zach last night. He thinks Matt is cracking up.”

“Why?”

“Well, for one thing, Matt has refused to defend Zach. He told him to solve his problem himself.”

“That’s past due, I’d think,” Leslie couldn’t help noting.

“Maybe so.” She heard the smile in James’ voice. “But Zach said that Matt was angry...

Leslie felt the need to interrupt and defend Matt. “But you know, Zach does have a tendency to be irritating. And maybe he’s just annoyed that Matt isn’t doing what he wants him to do.”

“And so Zach is calling names in order to prompt me to do something instead,” James mused. “That would be consistent with the past. Zach has a hard time accepting that his way isn’t the only way.”

“Funny how the youngest of you would end up thinking himself the crown prince.” The words were out before Leslie could stop them, although she didn’t usually say such things aloud. She clapped a hand over her mouth, wondering what had gotten into her lately.

Oh right. She’d dropped that
Family Diplomat
box.

To her surprise, James laughed. “You’re right. Although the youngest is sometimes the most indulged.” He sobered then. “How are you doing with my mother, by the way?”

“I think we have a ceasefire,” Leslie found herself saying. “Certainly she and Annette have come to some kind of agreement, which makes life easier.”

“Don’t tell me that either of them compromised?” James feigned shock and Leslie found herself smiling. It was easier to talk to the shark than she’d expected. “They’ve got more in common than just their looks.”

“Here I thought it was just the poodles.”

There was a beat of silence, one that told Leslie that James didn’t know what she was talking about. “What poodles?” he asked carefully.

“The girls, of course. Your mother’s new wards.” Then, just because she seldom had a chance to leave James with anything to think about, Leslie did. “Oh, gotta go. Give my best to Maralys and the kids. Have a good weekend.”

James sputtered incoherently as he never did, and Leslie indulged herself a good chuckle after she hung up the phone.

Maybe she should bite her tongue less often.

It might, at the very least, make life more interesting.

* * *