Believe in Me: A Rosewood Novel (3 page)

Carrying two refilled mugs of coffee back to the table, Margot resumed their conversation. “You should think of what you and Richard might like to do in addition to dinner over the weekend. We’re completely free—” She was interrupted by the ring of the telephone. “Hey, Travis, can you answer—”

“It’s okay. I’ve got it.” Jordan turned and crossed over to the other counter where the telephone sat in the corner. “Hello?”

“Hey, babe, it’s me. You weren’t picking up on your cell.”

“Richard, hi! Sorry, I must have left my phone upstairs when I was changing Olivia. It’s Daddy,” she said to the kids, then held out the receiver so he could hear their happy cries of “Hi, Daddy!”

Putting the phone back to her ear, she said, “Kate and Max had a terrific morning. I’ll pass the phone so they can tell you all about it. I’m stuffing a turkey for tonight’s dinner to celebrate our first weekend away since Olivia’s birth. When do you think you’ll get here?”

“Oh, babe. You’re roasting a turkey for me?”

She smiled. “Well, not
just
for you, but mainly—”

“Thing is, I can’t make it to Rosewood for dinner tonight.”

“Oh, Richard!” She couldn’t hide her disappointment.

“I know and I’m really sorry. But we’re drafting this proposal for a new client—a huge account, babe—and the company just called and said they want to move our meeting up to Monday, so the you-know-what’s really hit the fan. I’m pretty sure if I work late, I can get this thing in decent shape. Then I’ll grab a few hours of sleep and set out for Rosewood tomorrow bright and early. That’ll still give us time together and I won’t be preoccupied by office work hanging over me. I’ll be able to focus on you, Jordan. On us.”

She drew a deep breath. She wasn’t going to make him feel worse by complaining. She knew how important his work was. “Of course, I understand. But make sure you get some sleep before you drive.”

“I will. Maybe you and I can take a nap once I reach Rosewood.”

She felt her cheeks warm. Richard and she used to steal away for “naps” in the beginning of their marriage. Very little sleeping had been involved. “I talked to Margot.
They’re fine with watching the kids by the way. I thought we might go to dinner at the Coach House.”

“Great idea. We haven’t been there in years. Listen, babe, I gotta get back to this leviathan.”

“Oh, sure. You want to say hi to the kids?”

“Definitely.”

She passed the phone first to Kate and then Max, listening as they told him about the baby horses they’d seen. After they’d said, “Bye, Daddy,” she took the receiver back. “As you can see, they’re having a great time. But we all miss you.”

“Same goes for me. I’ll see you tomorrow. Bright and early, I promise.”

“Okay. Bye, Richard.”

Placing the receiver back in its cradle, she turned back to the turkey. Oh well, she thought with a small sigh, Richard liked cold turkey, too, and she could always reheat the stuffing. She grabbed a drumstick to hold the turkey steady, scooped up a generous handful of stuffing and inserted her hand into the turkey’s cavity. At her elbow the phone rang again.

Damn it!
“Hey, could one of you get that?” she asked, unwilling to pick up the receiver with raw turkey on her hands.

But her request went unheeded as chaos erupted around the kitchen table: Max knocked over his cup of milk; Olivia, deciding the baby seat was hell on earth, started wailing in outrage; and Kate suddenly realized she needed to go peepee. The refrain of “Mommy, Mommy!” echoed around the kitchen.

The heck with it, she decided. The kitchen phone had an answering machine they routinely used to screen calls.

Hurrying to the sink to wash her hands she called out, “Just coming, sweeties,” but stopped as Richard’s amplified voice came over the answering machine’s speaker device. Why was he calling again? Had he forgotten to tell her something? “Shh, guys, be quiet for just a sec. It’s Daddy. I
need to hear what he’s saying.” She walked over to pick up the phone.

“There. It looks like you and I have another night together, Cyn.”

She froze, her hand mere inches away from the receiver. What was going on? Richard wasn’t talking to her. Had he pressed the redial button on his phone by mistake?

“So she believed the story about your needing to work late?” The voice was a woman’s.
Cyn … Cynthia
.

“Yeah. I only wish I could fix it so I could have an excuse to spend the entire weekend with you. Damn, I can’t wait to make partner. I am literally counting the days when I can tell her it’s over for good. Until then I’m just going to have to make Jordan believe I’m shooting for Hudson and White’s MVP award.”

Richard’s laugh, joined by a second, higher one, filled the kitchen. Then came his husky command of “Come here, Cyn baby. That wraparound dress has me hungry for lunch. Yeah, that’s it. Sit yourself right down. Oh God, baby, you have the finest tits.” A muffled, suckling sound followed.

A new noise crowded out the ones coming over the answering machine. Jordan couldn’t figure out where it was coming from. Everything was so strange all of a sudden, so difficult to process.

She saw the shock stamped on Margot, Travis, and Jade’s faces but it only vaguely registered. And she couldn’t comprehend why they were suddenly springing into action, why Travis was scooping Max out of his booster chair and racing out of the kitchen with the toddler, or why Margot was bending over the baby seat, fighting with the straps to free Olivia. Cradling the baby, she grabbed hold of Kate’s hand and rushed out, too, shouting something to Jade as she went that Jordan couldn’t make out. That awful noise, like an agonized keening had grown intolerably loud. It ricocheted off the walls.

Then Jade was running over and wrapping her arms
about her, holding her tight, which was just as well, as the bones in Jordan’s legs seemed to have liquefied. Together they crumpled to the kitchen floor.

The kitchen was empty save for her and Jade. She wanted to leave, too. The noise was unbearable. The high, rending wail rocked the walls, pummeled her brain.

Make it stop
. Jordan rocked, clutching her ears to block out the sound. But it kept coming, on and on and on.

And even after her throat was raw, her vocal chords lacerated, the cry continued mercilessly inside her.

J
ORDAN RECHECKED HER MAKEUP
. Thanks to Kristin, a stylist friend of Margot’s, she had become an expert in the uses of concealer. She’d learned not only how to erase the violet smudges beneath her eyes, but also how to use blush and the right hues of lipstick to emphasize her cheekbones and mouth. By employing a subtle mix of tones around her eyes, she’d discovered that she could fool people into thinking that the shadows lurking in them were exotic, mysterious, rather than a darkness that threatened her soul.

She raised her ringless hands to smooth her hair, which she’d decided to wear loose today. Better to look feminine than professional: in Nonie Harrison’s world not too many women actually worked.

Rising from the small bench in front of her vanity table, she checked the floral print crepe de chine skirt and ivory sleeveless silk knit top in the mirror and wondered what was missing. Jewelry, of course. She bent down and opened a square leather case and found a pair of antique gold earrings that had belonged to her mother and a delicate diamond pendant that Margot and Travis had given her for Christmas.

There, she looked understatedly elegant, exactly how Nonie would expect Jordan Radcliffe to appear. Meet people’s expectations and they rarely bothered to look deeper.

No need to take a sweater or a light jacket, she thought,
as she picked up her purse off the white bedspread. It was a glorious spring day … wasn’t that funny, how the days had slipped by? The Virginia air was mild, sweetened with the perfume of sunshine-kissed flowers. This year’s crop of foals was frolicking in the pastures with their dams. The breeding season was upon them. Nocturne, the stallion they had standing at stud, was eager to meet his mares in the breeding shed. All around her Rosewood was bursting with life. How sadly out of step with the farm she was, so blighted and dead inside. But that, too, Jordan had learned to conceal from the world.

She left her room on the third floor and went into the adjacent attic bedroom shared by Kate and Olivia, a smile lighting her face. Olivia and Miriam Banner, their housekeeper Ellie’s niece, were sprawled on the pale blue and pink hooked rug building a tower with Olivia’s cardboard nesting blocks. As soon as Miriam placed the last block atop the slender pyramid, Olivia lurched to her feet and kicked the tower with a happy cry.

“Hi, there, Olivia,” she said.

At the sound of her voice, Olivia’s face lit up and she tottered over on stubby legs, her short arms held out—a blond, mini-Frankenstein with a cherub’s smile.

Jordan scooped her up and kissed the sweet hollow of her neck. “Let’s get you changed so you’ll be nice and clean when you and Miriam go and pick up Kate and Max at school, okeydokey?”

Miriam rose to her feet. “I can do that—”

“That’s okay. I’ve got her,” she replied, already setting down her purse. She laid Olivia upon the changing table, pulled down the elastic waistband of her blue-and-cream-striped leggings, and undid the tabs on the diaper. Moving with the precision of a pit stop mechanic at the Indy 500, Jordan shucked the diaper, dropped it into the garbage pail by her feet, cleaned Olivia with a baby wipe, sprinkled her
bottom and thighs with baby powder and, for good measure, her rounded tummy, too, and then fastened a fresh diaper. Up went the leggings, down went the dancing dog printed T-shirt, and Olivia was good to go.

“All done,” she announced, hefting her powder-fresh baby in her arms. “Now, Miriam, are you sure you’re okay with picking up Kate and Max?”

“Absolutely.”

“Okay. I left the minivan’s keys on the tray in the front hall. For lunch there’s mac and cheese. It’s in the fridge, wrapped in foil. For dessert you can—” she stopped in mid-sentence at Miriam’s grin.

“It’s cool, Jordan, I’ve got the routine down. We’ll be fine. Remember, you’re only going out to lunch. It’s not like you’ll be away for a week.”

The thought of being separated from her children for an entire week made her slightly faint. “I’ll be back by three. If you could get Max to nap when Olivia goes down, that would be great. Tell him if he does, he’ll have a better riding lesson with Jade. And I have my cell in case you need me.”

“Of course you do,” Miriam nodded gravely. “And in case all the satellites get taken out by an asteroid, Aunt Ellie might be able to give me a hand. Don’t know whether I can count on Margot coming to the rescue, though, since after lunch she’ll be all the way down at the main barn.”

Jordan managed a weak laugh. “Right. Thanks for the reality check.”

“Have a good time at lunch. You’ll knock Mrs. Harrison off her feet, I’m sure. Now, give Mommy a kiss bye-bye, ’Liv, and then you and I are going to build the biggest tower ever.”

“Bye, bye,” Olivia said.

Bless her for being a happy, carefree baby and not a neurotic mess like her mother, Jordan thought, squeezing her daughter tight and kissing her cheek.

“Okay, all I have to do is grab my tote with the fabric swatches I picked out for Nonie, and I’m gone, really.”

“Good. So go already.” Miriam shooed her off with a grin before dropping down to the rug to play with Olivia.

She took the back staircase down to the kitchen. As she’d hoped, Margot was there, fixing an overstuffed sandwich for Travis and a salad for herself.

Margot looked up. “Hey,” she said, smiling. “You look great. Too bad you’re wasting such a pretty skirt on Nonie Harrison.”

“Mmm, that looks delicious.” She picked up a pitted black olive from Margot’s salad and popped it into her mouth. “And the outfit won’t be wasted on Nonie. I wouldn’t get past her front door, let alone be considered for the job of decorating her guest house, if I were to show up for lunch dressed in mommy gear. Even with my hair bushed, lipstick applied, and my blouse free of baby drool, it’ll be a minor miracle if she gives me the commission.”

Margot picked up a knife and sliced the thick sandwich in half. “Why wouldn’t Nonie pick you? It’ll probably take all of ten minutes of listening to your ideas to recognize how good you are. If she doesn’t hire you, it won’t be because you can’t do the job. It’ll be because she’s jealous that you’re beautiful and talented.”

Jordan laughed. “That’s sweet of you. But we’re talking about
me
. Let’s remember who’s the successful model here.”

Her sister stopped crumbling goat cheese on top of the salad to glare fiercely at her. “You of all people shouldn’t buy into that hooey, Jordan. I’m not any more beautiful than you—or millions of other women. The reason I’m successful as a model has nothing to do with my being especially beautiful and far more to do with the fact that the distance between my earlobe and my jawline is just so and my eyes happen to be spaced exactly thus far apart.” She held out a cheese-coated thumb and index finger to indicate
the width before picking up the crumbled mound and scattering it over the dark greens. Salad finished, she took the thick sandwich she’d made for Travis and transferred it onto a plate. “I’m paid ridiculously good money because of a lucky roll of the genetic dice and because my face happens to photograph well. Oh, and also because I haven’t let even a crumb of one of your ‘death by chocolate’ brownies pass my lips no matter how much I’ve craved a bite. Big whoop,” she said with a bored sniff.