A Conflict of Interest (10 page)

“You couldn’t prove you’re innocent,” he said, reaching across the table to rest the tips of his fingers against hers. “Maybe I can.”

She felt as if she couldn’t breathe. She remembered his dark hair beneath her chin as he’d made her breasts ache. She felt a familiar emptiness that was growing too painful to bear.

“You and I are both doing things we’ve never done before. It can’t be right.” She found her feet.

“Why not consider that we both need to try something different to make our lives right?” Jake asked.

Maria shook her head. The familiar—and the safe—comforted her. “Let the board do its investigation, but leave everything—and everyone—else alone. Don’t jeopardize your place in this town.”

She marched to a table close to an electrical socket, but far, far from Judge Jake Sloane.

M
ARIA WAS CONCENTRATING
on not looking at Jake when her phone vibrated in her jeans pocket. She jumped up and hurried across the library, not daring to miss a call that might mean a job interview.

Outside, in the vestibule, she got a shock when she looked at the caller’s name. Gail Keaton. Maria hit the talk button. “Mother?”

“When are you going to fix all this, Maria? You were always my good girl. The one of us who knew what to do next. I saw another article in the paper today. It was disgusting.” She rattled the offending newspaper. “Oh, this is last week’s, but they seem to assume you—”

Another shock. Maria hadn’t realized her mother had ever noticed. She sighed, with the weariness that was rapidly becoming her constant companion. “I didn’t—”

“Sleep with a kid? Why would you do that? Even I—”

Sometimes
Even I
started a confession that made Maria want to set her own ears on fire. “I didn’t do it, Mother,” she cut in. “He lied. I’ve already told you that.”

“That jury believed him. Juries are smart.”

“But I’m not a liar. I don’t care who believed him. I didn’t do it, and I’m trying not to mind that my mother thinks I did.”

“I don’t, necessarily. I just wonder if you’d want to be honest with me. Why didn’t you tell me when all this first started?”

“I didn’t think you’d be interested. Most of our communication comes from…” She stopped.

“The checks you send me? I appreciate the help. You know I do, but, obviously, I want to hear if you’re having an affair with a younger man.”

“Mother, sleeping with a sixteen-year-old boy is abuse, not an affair, and you don’t have to assume that paper is telling the truth and I’m lying.”

“Don’t get mad at me. People do it all the time these days, and I called because I’m worried about you.”

“Okay.” She took a deep breath and let it go. Grudges against her mother never ended well for either of them. “I’m glad you called, because I needed to let you know I might have to stop sending you help, Mom. I’m suspended from working.”

“I’m worried about you,” her mother repeated. “I didn’t call about the money, although that does give me pause. You know I don’t have a retirement fund.”

“I’ll do what I can.”

“Your sister’s been helping me out, too. Clowns do a surprisingly good business.”

Maria shuddered. Clowns scared the crap out of her.
How kids didn’t run screaming when Bryony showed up in all her big-shoed, green-haired, maniacally smiling glory was beyond anything Maria would ever understand.

“You should maybe ask Bryony for help, Maria. She could show you how to do the makeup. Give you a few of her gigs.”

It was as if her mother had never made her acquaintance. “That’s certainly an idea, but I need to go. I left my laptop open in the library when I came outside to answer your call.”

“Oh, dear. Someone will steal that. You go back now, but let me know what’s going on with you.”

“Don’t worry.”

“If I were you, I’d get that diary back before it ends up in a paper or online somewhere.”

Maria turned slowly toward the white French doors that separated her from the library’s main collection room. And the comfort of being near Jake.

She just had to pray that her mother, Buck Collier and Griff Butler didn’t think alike.

“I didn’t do anything. Whatever the kid wrote is fiction.” But what if Jake thought it was the only place he could find the truth? What if he pressured Griff’s aunt and uncle for a look at that journal? They’d let him see it because he had power.

He could speak out for their nephew against a prowling cougar.

She couldn’t bear the thought of Jake reading lies the jury had believed.

“Maria, did you hear me? Get that thing back before someone sells it to a tabloid and you find yourself on one of those fair and balanced inquisitions.”

“I love you, Mom. I have to go.”

“You’re not listening to me.” Gail sighed. “Well, I hope that means you aren’t worrying too much. I’m sure you’ll get your work back soon.”

Her mother might have bad taste and not nearly enough respect for herself when it came to men, but she maintained a consistently sunny attitude that she was happy to share. Looking at the world with a little less optimism and a touch more acuity might have kept her out of gallons of her own hot water over the years.

But for today, Maria latched on to her mother’s point of view.

“Thanks for the advice, Mom. I’ll call you.”

She hit the off button and slid her phone back into her pocket, trying to catch her breath. The idea of the diary showing up in the media made her feel ill. But the thought of Jake hunched over that scratched-up, worn-out, thick-with-writing notebook made her nearly crazy with panic. She cared about him, and she wanted his good opinion. She’d hate for him to believe the ugly things Griff Butler must have written.

Maria pushed into the collection room. Jake hadn’t moved. He looked up as if he sensed her coming. Without taking her customary moment to consider repercussions, she slid into the chair next to Jake’s, not sure what she was going to say.

The librarian was up again. Maria ignored her. No one and no rules mattered. She didn’t even care that she was about to make herself look totally guilty.

“Jake,” she said, “please don’t try to get that diary from Griff’s aunt and uncle.”

He stared at her, his breath warm on her mouth, his
eyes sad and watchful enough to make her feel lost. At last, he lifted his hand and nudged her bangs out of her eyes.

“Are you all right? What’s wrong?”

She caught his hand, then pushed it away from her, because the thing she wanted most was to pull him close and confess that she was afraid and desperate enough to risk even the self-respect that had been her most valuable trait. “Don’t read that thing.”

“I won’t,” he said, and if they’d been anywhere except a library, she’d have thrown him onto his back and kissed him senseless. “If it matters so much to you.”

She didn’t know how to thank him. She felt too vulnerable to speak. He might not know she’d just admitted that clearing her name meant less than keeping him from even imagining Griff’s ugly fantasies might be true. With her throat as tight as a closed fist, she nodded and hurried to her own table.

T
HAT WAS A ROUGH NIGHT.
She had no idea if Jake was refusing to read the diary because he believed it was a lie, or because he hated the fact that Griff had written about her that way. She should have asked.

She should have done something. Any action might have saved her a night of tossing in her bed, wishing she could learn how to guard her dignity from the staid citizens of Honesty, who’d circled their small-town wagons.

In the morning, she dressed and steeled herself for another smack-down from a possible employer. Yesterday, walking home from the library after the stores had closed, she’d spotted a Help Wanted sign in the pharmacy, seeking a cashier.

Maria hadn’t bothered to call first. This job, she had a better shot at. Even without an M.D., she had some understanding of pharmacology. And she saw no reason to give potential employers the chance to turn her down over the phone. Let them do it to her face.

She sat on a blue chair opposite the counter while the pharmacist went to the back to read her application and résumé. It was a slow process as customers came and went. Some, she knew. No one said hello.

Mr. Baxter, a former client, darted into the shelter of the store’s crowded aisles the second he saw her. Despite the situation, she smiled at his efforts to break all speed records. Was he running from the horror of talking to her, or had he suffered a setback with his kleptomania?

She’d begun to assume the pharmacist was also avoiding her until he finally came to the counter. “Dr. Keaton?”

“Maria,” she said.

“I’m Robert Collins.” He held her application in both hands. “Why don’t you come on back? You deserve the truth.”

That sounded bad, but she didn’t know how to walk away. She had to stop expecting the worst.

The man led her to his office and offered her a chair. Maria sat, placing her feet neatly side by side on the floor. Funny how a scandal made you überaware of every little nuance.

“I’m glad to meet you, Maria.” Mr. Collins took off his glasses and placed them just as precisely on his blotter. “But I think you know this will be a fruitless visit. You must realize by now that no one in this town will hire you.”

She was becoming an expert on pretending the blows glanced off. “I don’t know that.” He didn’t smile. She fended him off with a lame joke. “I might get a persecution complex.”

He shook his head, a sage in a lab coat. “I’m more familiar with pharmacology than Freud, but I believe it’s only a complex when you just think everyone’s out to get you.”

“I don’t understand you, Mr. Collins. You speak like an honorable man. You asked me back to your office instead of throwing me out or making up something like ‘the position’s been filled.’ Why do you assume I’m guilty when I haven’t even been on trial?”

“I’m not so honorable. I tried to wait you out.” His skin turned pink beneath and around his thick mustache. “But you wouldn’t leave.”

“No.”

“So I’m going to explain, and I’ll repeat myself because I’d like to save you from future embarrassment. No one in this town will ever hire you.”

“Mr. Herbert at the department store said the same thing.”

“Why do you keep trying?”

“Because Honesty has been my home for two years, and I want to stay. I did nothing wrong, and I need to work. I cannot sit around and do nothing while people I don’t know decide my future.” She stood. “And I thought that maybe since you’re providing a service that deals with science and health, I’d stand a better chance with you. I took classes in pharmacology, and I’ve kept up my knowledge.”

“It doesn’t matter, Maria. You’re tied up in a scandal with a boy from one of Honesty’s oldest families. I can’t afford to discourage people from coming to my window. I have regulars who’d go all the way to D.C. to teach me a lesson if I hired you. I’ve even heard some suggest you drugged Griff.”

“What?”

“You might have hurt that boy so much you drove him to kill his parents. How does anyone here know?”

“But he was acquitted.”

“I’ve heard many testimonials about you before now, but I don’t think you understand the psyche of a five-generation Honesty citizen. No one on that jury wanted to blame their own small-town aristocracy. Even if they thought Griff was guilty, they’d acquit him if they could blame his crime on something you did to him.”

“I tried to help Griff. I’m not even sure I would have turned him in to the police if the law didn’t require it.”

“Forgive me for being salacious, but a lot of people here believe you tried to
help
him. They just don’t know when sex became part of a boy’s therapy.”

Maria stood, tucked her purse beneath her elbow and wished the little store had a public shower. “You didn’t have to bring me back here to tell me what you thought of me.” Before he could answer, “We Wish You a Merry Christmas” came jingling out of the PA system. Maria shook her head at the speaker above his desk. “That’s a laugh.”

“Hearts still beat around here. Just not for you,” he said. “I’m not trying to be cruel, and I don’t share my neighbors’ bad opinion. I don’t even know you, except for what I’ve heard people say.” He shrugged. “I feel bad for you because I’ve also heard other business owners talking about your job interviews. You need to stay out of sight and let this blow over. If Griff Butler’s guilty, he’ll show some other sign, and people will realize they’ve misjudged you.”

She stared at him. It was a funny way to help. “Thanks,” Maria said doggedly as she turned and walked toward his office door. “I won’t make this mistake anymore.” She paused on the threshold and looked
back. “You do realize if Griff Butler betrays himself, it might result in someone else dying?”

“I’m well aware. I don’t know how many of my friends are.”

Sighing with frustration, Maria turned, only to find Jake waiting at the counter, clearly trying not to listen. Had she swallowed some kind of magnet that dragged him to the site of her every humiliation?

“Hello.” She tried hard not to stare into his eyes, but when she was hurt, she wanted to go to him. It was ridiculous. He was not her friend. They had some crazy guilt-and-loneliness thing going on that made them want to have sex. Her awareness of him was so overpowering that she almost stumbled as she walked past him through an open space in the counter.

“Maria, are you all right?”

“Jake? How can I help you?” Mr. Collins asked behind her.

Jake seemed reluctant to break eye contact with her as he turned to the waiting pharmacist. Maria breathed out. How desperate had she become? She overanalyzed every move he made, each glance he spared her. She couldn’t afford to turn into a Keaton woman, who started looking for a man—any man—at the first sign of trouble.

The thought made her uncomfortable, both for its cruelty to her semireformed mother and sister, and for its possible truth about her.

She turned away from Jake.

“I need to pick up a prescription for my aunt,” he said to the druggist.

“Ah. Helen’s digitalis. I have it right back here. I’ll
go over the cautions with you, and you remind her of them. She’ll tell you she already knows how she’s supposed to take her medication, but you make her listen. Every time I cover the side effects with her, she acts as if she’s never heard of them. We wouldn’t want her to forget.”

Maria ducked behind the first aisle and stood with her back to the shelves, trying to calm her racing heart. She hadn’t been this rattled since the first time her mother had sent her and her sister outside while an “uncle” visited.

Jake and Mr. Collins spoke to each other like friends who cared. They’d lived in Honesty all their lives. Long enough to earn unconditional trust.

She didn’t notice Jake and the other man had stopped talking until Jake showed up, obviously searching for her.

Maria curled her hands into fists. She should go. His compassion was an intimate, tangible thing that wrapped her in its arms before he even came near her.

“What is happening to you?” he asked.

“Nothing. I’m fine.”

“Liar.” But he wrapped the ugly word in husky concern as he pulled her close.

“This is a public place.” Her tongue felt thick. She could hardly put the words together.

He shook his head as his mouth hovered over hers. “I don’t care. I need—”

So did she. She locked her arms behind his neck, trying to get closer, her only urgent longing to feel she belonged to someone.

And Jake kissed her as if he belonged to her. His
mouth opened hers. He tasted of morning coffee. His hands slid inside her coat, clenching in the small of her back to pull her into him.

She didn’t care about the vague memory of security cameras that flitted through her mind, or the far-off tinkle of a bell over an opening door. Even the new sound of voices didn’t bother her.

Wanting to be in Jake’s arms, wanting him to make her forget everything that had gone so wrong, frightened her more than any disembodied threat or disgusted but self-righteous store owner.

“I need you, too,” she said, finding sweet consolation in the hunger on Jake’s drawn face. “But I can’t have you if I don’t know why I need you.”

“That’s up to me, too, isn’t it?”

“I wish it were.”

She pulled away from him, her hands sliding over his cheeks as she tried to imprint the texture of his skin on her memory.

“Maybe, after I fix all my problems—” she began, but couldn’t finish. She hurried to the front of the store. As she turned toward the doors, she saw a mirror that reflected all the aisles. Her skin burned as she laughed, embarrassment mixed with skin-raking desire.

T
HE STORE’S BELL PEALED AGAIN
as Maria darted out the front. Jake stayed where he was, damn near unable to walk.

She kept telling him to stop meddling, and God knows he’d lived his entire life taking a neutral position in battles like the one she was fighting. But Maria
seemed to think she could cope completely on her own. She imagined her feelings were the only ones involved.

He hadn’t trusted his feelings for a woman in who knows how long?

Yeah, there’d been brief relationships. But what man even knew what the word
relationship
meant? There’d been nights with eager women who’d made him forget Kate had never been content to settle for only him.

Women he’d chosen in part because he believed in their discretion in a small town. Leila’s reaction to her father sleeping with anyone had never been far from his mind, despite the divorce. Maybe, deep down, he’d realized she hadn’t adjusted to it.

Now he was willing to risk everything for a few moments with Maria.

He had to understand.

He went to the front of the store, too, tucking his aunt’s medication into the pocket of his overcoat. Helen and her demon dog herd lived a few doors down from Maria.

“Jake?”

He turned back. Robert Collins was flapping after him, his glasses glinting, his white coat flying, his face determined.

M
ARIA PAUSED
in putting her icicle decorations on last year’s nails. One of them had worked far enough out to lean at an angle. Balancing on the railing, she leaned down for her hammer, but tilted mid-reach and managed to shove it into the shrubbery that lined her porch.

Above her swearing, she heard footsteps crunching up the icy walk. She almost fell as Jake stepped onto the
porch. After taking off his shoe, he climbed onto the railings beside her and used the heel to hammer in the nail.

“There’s a hammer down there.”

Pristine in his black overcoat and suit, he glanced into the yard. “I’m not climbing in the evergreens.”

“You make me conspicuous every time you beat on my door.”

“I didn’t get that far yet.”

If she were wise, he wouldn’t. “What are you doing here again?”

He jumped down, slipped on his shoe then reached up for her. Without thinking, she let him take her waist and covered his hands with hers. As he eased her to safety, she slid down his body and felt anything but safe.

“I’m not going away,” he said, reading her mind.

Would it be worse to fight or risk giving in to wanting him? He wasn’t about to back down.

“You’d better come in.” She twisted away from him and he followed her into the house. “It was a mistake in the store,” she said. “What we did.” The last came out in a whisper.

“No.”

“Yes, Jake.”

“We can’t help what we feel.”

“I’m trained to believe we can choose how to behave,” she said, though aching for him made her question every decision she’d ever made. Maybe she hadn’t ever wanted anything enough before.

Jake closed the front door and peeled off his coat. He threw it over the back of her sofa. “Robert Collins came after me in the store. He tried to explain why he’d spoken up.”

“Oh my God,” she said, taking off her own coat and hanging it in the closet. “It’s not bad enough we made out in front of a security mirror. You gossiped with the pharmacist.”

“I may have suggested he do several things most men couldn’t manage on their own, but I didn’t chat with him about you. Then I offered to break him in several pieces so as to make my other suggestions more manageable.” His rueful smile made Maria smile, too.

“I thought you were talking about your aunt’s medication.”

“It was after you left. At first he wanted to leave bad enough alone, but he thought I might be a friend of yours.”

“Everyone knows you are. We haven’t been particularly discreet.” The gossips probably thought they understood her relationship with Jake perfectly. It was ironic, really, because she didn’t understand it at all. She turned toward the kitchen. “Do you want something warm to drink?”

“No.” He took her hand and pulled her close. “I want to hold you.” He rested his forehead against hers, and she closed her eyes, knowing she should send him away.

But temptation was too strong, and she leaned into him, hungry for even another second in his arms. A second she would hoard in her memory. When life was normal again and Mr. I-Must-Wreak-Justice got over his guilt, there would be no more moments like this. Only their mutual need made them alike.