Deception (17 page)

Julian scanned the restaurant and then pulled her along. They walked through the French doors at the back and out onto the patio where Mr. David and Everett sat. As soon as they saw her with Julian they stood and hugged her.

“It’s always a great day when I get to have lunch with a beautiful woman.”

“Thank you. I’m so happy to be here. Julian and I had our first date at this place.”

“We sure did. You had shrimp scampi.” They shared a knowing smile.

“What can I get you to drink?” Everett asked.

“I’ll have an iced tea, please.”

“I’d like the same.” Julian added.

“So Maura, how are the tigers looking for this year? This will be Donovan’s last year to play. How’s he playing?”

“Donovan?”

“Ezekiel Donovan, LSU quarterback.”

“Oh, of course. Well, I think you’ll be pleased because he looks great.” She smiled.

“Does he now?” Julian offered.

“Sure does.” Maura snapped the paper from a straw.

“And what does dear Ezekiel look like?” Julian asked.

Maura felt her face heat. She frowned at Julian. “Well he’s big and…well broad.” Maura used her hands for emphasis.

“How’s his hair?”

“It’s nice. Why?”

“His head is shaved bald. Just admit you don’t know him.”

Maura didn’t want to have Julian catch her in her fib. Why had she even started down this road? Fuck. She offered Mr. David a nervous smile. “I’ve seen him, I’m sure of it. I know he was at convocation, but I’ve never actually met him, sir.”

“That’s quite all right.” Mr. David assuaged.

Beneath the table Julian clasped her hand. “It’s okay not to know.”

“I just wanted to make your dad happy.”

“He’d be happy if you told the truth.”

“Don’t sweat it, Maura. There’s only one ass in the family—his name is Julian,” Everett said.

She smiled nervously.

Mr. David cleared his throat. “Maura, I need to ask you a question…have you ever heard of Helios Energy?”

“No.”

Everett pushed a stack of papers across the table. “Is this your signature?”

“Yes.”

Mr. David pulled papers from the bottom of the stack. The header read:
Helios Energy
.

“But I didn’t sign this.” She looked up into Mr. David’s eyes so green they pierced her heart. She pleaded, “I didn’t.” She locked gazes with Julian. His serious scowl made her cringe. He nodded and she began to cry. “I didn’t,” she whispered.

“Jesus, Julian.” Everett stood and came to sit next to her. He clasped her hand in his. “Of course you didn’t willingly or knowingly sign something you had no knowledge of.”

“No, I wouldn’t have.”

“Think hard, Maura. When is the last time he had you sign anything?”

“When he was at the house a few weeks ago he had me sign some papers.”

Everett’s gaze turned sharp with caution. “What papers?”

Maura’s face contorted into pain from the realization that she had been so dumb. She placed her hands on her face and cried. “Papers he said were for Bailey. I don’t know. Some medical stuff.” Mumbled speech filtered through her hands.

“
Stuff
? You signed without reading the documents?” Julian said in disbelief.

Maura looked up from her hands and into the discouraging eyes of Julian. “I’m used to signing things for him. Quite regularly he’d bring home papers for me to sign.”

Julian clicked his tongue. “He’s a crook, Maura.”

“I didn’t know!” She threw her hands in the air.

“Son, that’s not helpful. Obviously Maura is a very trusting person. There’s nothing wrong with that.”

“I’m sorry.” She looked across from one vibrant-eyed David to the next until she met Julian’s gaze. “I’m really sorry, Julian.”

Mr. David offered her a handkerchief. “That’s all right. Everybody makes mistakes. What I’ll need you to do is learn from this.” Maura nodded her absolute understanding.

“What have I signed?”

She watched Everett and Mr. David have a silent conversation with their body language and facial expressions.

“What?”

Everett turned to a page in the document that read:
Helios Energy Balance
$212,762,051.89. Beneath the balance was the account holder and signatory:
Maura Douglas
. Tingles at her scalp had her running a finger through her hair. “I don’t understand what I’m looking at.”

“Helios Energy is a solar panel company with lots of investors with deep pockets.” Everett explained. “Dad even has friends who have invested. The thing is, we drove down to Lake Charles to get a look at this place and we found the grounds, the warehouse, the signage, but the interesting thing is that there are no employees and no product.

“No product,” she repeated.

“Racketeering,” Julian said.

“He’s racketeering.”

“No. Actually, you are.”

“Julian’s right, it’s rigged to look like you are.” Mr. David leaned back in his chair, crossed his arms and stroked his chin, seemingly in thought. “I’ve got a proposed solution.” He glanced around the table.

“Let’s hear it.” Julian offered.

“I know about half of these investors—they’re friends of mine. The others are out of New York. I’m not familiar with them. I don’t think that matters as long as they get their money back, but it’s going to be a delicate operation.” He leaned forward and took a sip of water, wiping his hands on a napkin. “You’ll have to go into the bank and break up the account. Issue the money back to the initial investors. The tricky part is that this is all done in the shortest amount of time possible and without Alan Douglas finding out. When the investors have their money, they’ll come to understand you’re just a victim. Statements regarding their collaboration with Alan will be enough to put him away for a long time, if everything goes according to plan.”

“What if it doesn’t go according to plan?”

“It has to go according to plan,” Julian commanded.

“Alan’s going to find out you’re going to New York.” Mr. David continued, “Instead of acting like you have something to hide, blast from social media that you’re excited to go to New York, Coney Island, your hometown. If Alan were to become privy to your trip, it would just seem like a mini vacation. It’d be great if you had a friend that could go with you to drive home the fact that the trip is a fun getaway. Everett, myself, and Julian will be going as well, but don’t draw attention to it. Your friend should be equally excited for an upcoming trip to New York.”

“Do you think Fiona will accompany you?” Everett asked.

“I think she would do anything to help me.”

“So do you plan to ask her?”

Maura smiled, happy to be focused on something other than her crazy messed up life. “Yeah Everett, I plan to ask her.”

“Awesome. Maybe don’t mention me.”

“I’ll consider it.” She smiled.

“And Maura?”

“Hmm,” she looked Everett in the eye.

“Don’t worry about any of this. I’m going to clear your name.”

At least she had one fan at the table. “Thank you, Everett. You can’t possibly know how much it means for me to hear you say that.” Mr. David said something similar, but Julian sat stoically, scowling at her.

***

Julian sat in a rocking chair on the porch that connected to his room. It was his own private hideaway, but he knew Maura couldn’t stay away long. She loved to swing and watch the setting sun. He wanted to believe Maura, but she was always using the old lack of information trick to have people believe she knew less than she did or to get out of a situation that she didn’t want to be in. He couldn’t understand why she wouldn’t be one hundred percent truthful with him and the rest of his family.

“Hey.” As if on cue she appeared.

She was consistent and disciplined—he could practically set his clock by her behavior. She sat in the swing and looked out across the lawn.

“Why were you trying to lie to my father?”

She sighed and her peaceful face morphed into pain. “I wasn’t.”

“You were. You would have him believe you knew Ezekiel Donovan when you’d never even met the man.”

She pressed her fingertips to her forehead. “It was harmless. I just wanted to appear knowledgeable about something that interested him. He’s done a lot to help me and I didn’t want to be lame.” Her lips tightened. “I just want him to be happy with me.”

“He’d be happy if you told the truth.”

“Is that what he said?”

“No, those are my words.”

“I told the truth. I felt like Ezekiel would want to do well for your father, especially if he’d seen the enthusiasm on his face.”

“You also lied about the rental home and it got you into trouble. And need I remind you about the time you forgot to mention your ex-husband’s conjugal visits? What else have you lied about?”

Her shoulders hunched as he watched the vibrancy deflate from her. “Julian, you’re so caught up in wanting to catch me doing wrong that our trust in one another can’t be built. It stagnates, and do you know what happens to things when they stagnate?”

His eyes widened at her question. She stood. “They die, Julian. I love you, but I can’t tolerate being accused of lying and not having your wholehearted trust. I’m a good person. A loyal one. I would never betray or humiliate you.” Tears streamed down her face. “But I’ve told you all of this before and yet, here we sit, discussing an old argument.”

“You lied. Just like Karina. Lies of omission—the worst.”

She sighed. “Fine. I lied. I only wanted to make your father happy and to protect myself from the embarrassment of having you see me in the motel.”

B-I-N-G-O
. Finally she admitted it.

“I’m only saying what you want to hear. But hear me when I say this, Julian…”

What? Now she was giving him an ultimatum.

“
You’re not going to change me. This is how I live my life. And yeah, I have a few little harmless quirks. I’m not going to become like you—obsessed with obtaining absolute truth in all things. Christ Julian, if I were to ask you if I looked fat in a pair of jeans that I did in fact look enormous in, would you say yes even if it hurt my feelings?”

“Of course I would. You asked for the truth.”

“Wow, that really sucks. You need to learn to let go. Your scars are making you ugly.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

She shook her head at him. “You’re the one who’s wrong here. When you’re ready to quit the obsessive human-lie-detector behavior and when you can whole-heartedly trust me, then you can come back to my bed. Until then, as Bailey would say, you can go fuck yourself.”

His jaw was on the ground. Dr. Douglas had just told him off and used slang to accomplish her goals. His eyes followed her inside as she glided along with her head held high.

So that was it then. They were over. No more awesome sex that made him want to crawl inside of her chest and live forever. No more caressing just behind her ear to find the one spot on her body with the most concentrated scent of gardenia. No more silky smooth skin.

Fine! He’d just as soon be done with her if she couldn’t be disciplined enough to tell him the truth. He pulled his quantifiable list from the book in his hands.

The beauty of a woman could so easily blind him, and he never wanted that to happen again. He’d created a list of the most important attributes he sought in the opposite sex. Top of the list: honesty, above all things. Item number one knocked Maura out.

Second item on the list was loyalty. Maura had that in spades. Third item: no interest in money. Maura had too many other interests to waste her time worrying about money. She could have done with some money, however. No, he couldn’t believe she had any involvement in Helios Energy or believe that she liked him solely because of his family money.

Item four: ability to truly love him with her body. This little nugget had steered him wrong before. Karina had been interested in having lots of sex for the sake of having sex and to curb needs and desires. Love hadn’t entered the bedroom.

With Maura, when they had sex, she poured every ounce of love she had into it. God, he could live the rest of his life on the love and emotion she’d already poured into him. His vessel that was now full again, thanks to her. Again, she met that quality and then some.

The last item on his list wasn’t just one item: gentle, caring, kind, and genuine. Karina had been confident, but also demanding, tedious, and just plain selfish. In comparison Maura was none of those things. In fact, she was the most gentle, caring, genuine and kind person he’d ever met—except for that
go fuck yourself
bit. Why was he smiling at the memory of her suggestion that he do the impossible? He shook his head to clear it.

In summation, Maura possessed all qualities with the exception of the most important: truthfulness. However, he supposed she was mostly truthful. She hadn’t come out and said she was renting a house and embellished the lie with details. The same was true of the whole Ezekiel mess. It would be so easy to repair this little misunderstanding in their relationship that had snowballed into a chasm of mistrust. Well, he trusted her—he just didn’t understand her sometimes. Of course his father would say he still didn’t understand some of the things Mom would do, but he trusted her all the same.

Whatever. She’d refused to change to accommodate his presence in her life. They were done. That realization was opposite of what he wanted and in a fit of frustrated rage he hurled his book, along with the dreaded list, out into the air. He watched as the book flew across the yard and landed, open-faced, in the pool.

“Ouch!”

Julian leaned over the banister. Parker and Bailey were in the pool. She reached for the book as she looked up and spotted him.

“Hey! I just found my sister in the bathroom all upset. You better hope that has nothing to do with you because if it does I’m enlisting your mother and your sisters and we’ll get to the bottom of this right now.”

Julian looked at Parker who just shrugged in helplessness.

Julian cleared his throat and prepared to yell back at Bailey. “Maura’s had a long, hard day is all.”

She regarded him for a while before she said, “You better hope that’s all it is!”