Body Double (34 page)

“I’m pretty sure he’d rather have Richard by his side than the son of the man who sullied his wife.”

“Are you saying Richard isn’t the child of that affair?”

Blake nodded, and together they walked through the hospital corridors toward the front entrance. “He’s not my half-brother. Harold acknowledged that he chose Richard primarily because he looked like he could be my brother, especially with the green eyes.”

Andrea exhaled with relief. “I’m glad he was honest with you.” They reached the elevator, and she pushed the down button.

“They both were. It’s a shame people have to be practically dead to realize what’s important in life.” He pulled her closer and glanced down at her. “Some people, anyway.”

“We should call Sarah,” she said. “To keep her updated on her dad.”

The elevator doors opened and they stepped in, along with a couple of people in purple scrubs. Blake waited until they’d reached the ground floor and exited before he answered her. “She didn’t want us to come. I think it’s best if we don’t tell her.”

“She would want to know.”

“No, she wouldn’t,” he said. “Trust me. She was adamant that we not come. Have you ever seen Sarah mad?”

Andrea shook her head. She barely knew her look-alike, the woman she was supposed to be portraying.

“It’s best we keep this visit between you and me and Harold.”

“Well, if she asks whether we went to the hospital to see him, we can’t lie to her.”

“Agreed, but we can wait for her to ask and hope she doesn’t.”

Blake waited until they were on the road again before asking Andrea what she and Harold talked about.

“Father-daughter stuff,” she said, not wanting to betray Harold’s confidence. “I don’t feel I should divulge their private matters.”

“I understand. What about after that? You said he guessed you weren’t Sarah because of their personal history. What did you talk about after that?”

“We talked about holding onto pain and the healing power of forgiveness. People sometimes think forgiving others means accepting their transgressions as being okay. It doesn’t. Not at all. Forgiveness means acknowledging that others are human, that people make mistakes. And for the person doing the forgiving, it can be immensely healing. It’s a way of unburdening oneself from the emotional damage the transgression caused. It’s like drawing a line on the ground to mark the last point at which we’re going to let that transgression or the perpetrator hurt us, and then stepping over that line.”

Blake nodded, his intense gaze directed at the traffic around them. “There’s something I want to tell you. Something Harold and I discussed.”

“Oh? If it’s between you and Sarah, it’s none of my business,” she said, though she was intensely curious. “Was it about the thing between your dad and Anna?”

“Yeah. There’s a letter, apparently written by my dad to Anna. I’ve never seen it, but Harold claims it has evidence of their affair. He found it tucked under her side of the mattress after she passed away.”

“Oh, dear. So he was threatening to show it to your mom?”

Blake nodded. “What you said to Harold sank in. He seemed ready to let go of his anger toward my dad.”

“Oh, that’s wonderful. So he’s going to destroy the letter?”

“He promised to give Richard instructions to destroy it under one condition.” Blake pulled up behind a car stopped at a red light and reached over to take her hand. “I have to invite Sarah to consummate our marriage.”

Andrea stiffened, and her mind froze, his words echoing within.
Consummate our marriage. Consummate our marriage. Consummate our marriage.

“Andrea? Babe?”

She startled, her mind breaking free. “Yeah.” Still, she shivered at the thought of Blake kissing another woman, touching her, feeling pleasure at receiving her touch.
That other woman is his wife
, she reminded herself, but it didn’t help.

“She’s going to refuse,” he said. “You and I both know it, but I have to ask her. I have to make an effort in good faith.”

It was wrong to feel such intense jealousy, but she couldn’t help it. She’d let herself pretend too deeply that Blake was hers. She’d let herself hope—no,
believe
—that they’d be together once the business deal was signed and Sarah divorced him as promised. And now Blake was planning to make love with his wife and stay in the marriage.

“When she does refuse,” he said, “I’ll file for an annulment. It’ll be like the marriage never happened.”

She heard the words, but they didn’t register. All she could think of was that she and Blake had already shared their last kiss, that she’d never get another or feel his touch on her bare skin or his mouth or his body joined with her own. She wouldn’t wake up beside him, share breakfast in the mornings or showers or late night swims or intimate talks about their future or discussions about why their child isn’t sleeping through the night or misbehaving at school or dating an unambitious loser. The future she’d hoped for would never happen, and Hawaii would seem like a distant dream. She would return to her apartment alone, just like she had after Sean jilted her, and cry into the same pillow. Just like before.

The car stopped, and Blake got out. Andrea’s mind kept turning, her stomach kept churning, and her hands trembled at the thought of what was to come. Her door opened, and Blake took her by the arm to help her out. She looked around, confused and disoriented. This wasn’t his house. This was a strip mall parking lot.

He pulled her into his arms and held her close. “Listen to me. Andrea, we’re going to be okay.” His voice was muffled by her hair, but she could feel his breath against her ear, his arms holding her close. “Don’t worry, babe. She’s not going to contest it. She’ll be just as glad to put this behind her as I am.” He held her face in both hands, directing her to look into his eyes. “Okay?”

She nodded. “I’m sorry. When I imagine not having you in my life—”

“Shhh,” he said. “That’s not going to happen. It’s a formality, that’s all. She’ll say no, we’ll get the marriage annulled, and then you and I can talk about what happens next for us.”

“Okay.” She sniffled, feeling better now. He was right. Sarah had no interest in Blake as a romantic partner and would likely welcome the chance to slip neatly out of the marriage without having to share her fifty-million-dollar wedding gift with him. His statement that there would be something next for them, that he was including her in his future, put the fear of “what if” out of her mind.

He kissed her, warmly and expertly. Though she knew they shouldn’t, that their agreement had been breached, she didn’t care. She needed the reassurance of his lips, his sweet mouth, the feeling of his prickly face against her upper lip, his strong arms holding her too tightly to risk losing her. The problem was that she wanted more. She wanted to tear off his clothes and make love to him right there, in front of the nail salon in the strip mall on the faded asphalt lot stained with old oil and transmission fluid. She giggled against his mouth at the thought of pebbles pressing into the skin of her back and buttocks and Blake getting road rash on his knees.

“What’s funny?” he asked.

“Nothing. Let’s go home.” When she realized what she’d said, she felt heat fill her cheeks. “To your house, I mean.”

He kissed her again and stepped back to help her into the car. “I liked ‘home’ better.”

Chapter 12

Blake hung up the phone and let out a deep breath. It was over. Harold was dead.

Though he’d never liked the man, he couldn’t deny that Harold’s presence in their lives had brought some amount of joy. Gloria had shaken off her grief, and Blake had met Andrea. In the end, he knew Harold had done the right thing, or rather, he would, as soon as Richard got the word that Blake’s marriage to Sarah was canceled.

He put the dumbbells back on the stand, wiped off the sweat with a hand towel, and went upstairs to shower. Clean and dressed, he headed downstairs for a protein-heavy breakfast and ran into Andrea exiting her room, dressed in shorts and an embroidered t-shirt. She’d taken out the green contact lenses and put on glasses with heavy, dark-red frames, which gave her a pleasing sexy-geek look.

“You were up early,” she said.

“Been feeling like a slug lately, so I worked out. Richard called a few minutes ago.” He broke the news to her about Harold’s death, knowing she’d wanted to return this morning to sit with him a while.

Andrea put a consoling hand on his arm. “I know you didn’t care for Harold, but I also know you didn’t wish him ill. I’m sorry.” Even behind her thick glasses, the compassion in her beautiful blue eyes was plain to see.

“Thanks. He was only my father-in-law for two-and-a-half weeks, though I can’t help but think I missed out on something. In the end, he wasn’t all bad.”

“Harold stumbled through life, fueled by pain and grief and love. He might have looked like a wrecking ball at times, but I don’t think he was a bad person. Had circumstances been different with his wife, we might not be burying him now.”

He put his arm around Andrea, and they walked downstairs. His mind drifted back to his own father, to the day they’d said goodbye.

Blake Sr. had wanted to confess his affair to someone, but he hadn’t been a religious man and so he’d chosen his son to entrust with his worldly secrets and sins. What Blake heard that day had shaken him. The man he’d grown up admiring for his strength of conviction, his loyalty, and his impeccable moral fortitude had been flawed. He’d been human—and worse, he’d put the stability of his family at risk.

Keep your mother safe, Ben,
he’d begged with tears in his eyes.
Don’t let Harold Gentry break her heart by using my failure as his weapon.

Blake had asked his father to come clean about the affair, to tell Gloria himself so that she wouldn’t be devastated by the news if someone else thought to use it against her, but Blake Sr. had refused, fearing she would hate him.

Since watching his friends marry and split up, Blake had come to the conclusion that children who were raised by both parents in the same household were more likely to have successful marriages than those who weren’t. Though his heart had settled on Andrea, he knew it wouldn’t matter if her parents were still together or not. He wanted to know everything about her, not just her food preferences and career goals, but the home she grew up in and the events and people in her life that made her who she was. “Tell me about your parents,” he said. “You mentioned they live in Arizona. Are they happily married?”

“I think so. They argue like any other couple, but they’re still loving toward each other. Even more so since my younger sister moved out.”

“They must be amazing people to have raised such a warm, beautiful person as you. I can’t wait to meet them.”

She smiled up at him. “They’re going to love you.”

He bent to kiss her lips and then pulled out a chair for her at the kitchen table. “You know my mom loves you. My dad would have too. Since I was about twelve, he always told me to follow my heart instead of my—uh...”

“Head?”

Blake laughed. “Yeah. He loved my mom. Really loved her. Most of my friends’ parents are divorced, but mine always seemed to find a way to forgive each other and work things out. That affair he had—he swore it was the only time—was the exception. Thinking back, I could see how guarded he became right around that time. He went from being the coolest dad among my friends’ parents to being distracted and almost disinterested. It took him a couple of years to get back to his old self, and during that time, he and my mom argued constantly, when they talked at all. I wondered constantly whether they were going to get divorced.” He put his hand on her forearm and squeezed gently. “I would never do that to you. I’d never betray you.”

“Except with your wife,” she said quietly.

“Not even with her.”

“Blake, what if she says yes? What if she decides to give your marriage a try? She has no family left now, except for aunts, uncles, and cousins—if she even has any. Nobody wants to feel alone. She might decide to stay with you so she won’t have to.”

Blake couldn’t imagine it. Sarah was a headstrong, independent woman who’d barely seen or spoken with her father before he died. “Why would a lesbian marry a man she doesn’t love when she can legally marry a woman she does? Especially with twenty-five million on the line. If she stays in the marriage, she’d have to split her fifty million with me.”

“But didn’t you tell her about the amended prenup?”

“Not yet. And now, I won’t have to. When I explain the benefits of annulment, I don’t see how she’d want it any other way.”

“So, tell her now or when she gets home?”

Blake checked the time on his phone. “I’ll bet she’s getting ready to board a plane if she isn’t already in the air. Might as well wait and tell her in person. She’ll be home in a few hours.”

“Did she ever call you back yesterday after the deposition?”

“No.” Hopefully, she hadn’t called Richard. He picked up his phone and dialed. “Let me call Richard and ask him not to mention our visit if she calls him.” He waited for the call to connect and for Richard to answer. “Hey, man, it’s Blake again. Listen, have you talked to Sarah yet?”