Secrets and Seduction: 5 Romance Novels (3 page)

Unable to find anyone else who’d stood with the Wentworths on the promenade, Nick interviewed bystanders. Some had seen Carolyn Wentworth sucked under the train. One person had seen her fall, but that had been from fifty yards away and from an angle behind the Wentworths.

So Nick was left to wonder who was right: Scott Wentworth or the Voglers and Marisa Avalos? He’d like to help Marisa discover the truth.

• • •

“I’m sorry about Carolyn,” Kevin said once they arrived at Marisa’s apartment in the green and white Victorian up the steep hill from the pier.

“I can’t imagine not being able to talk to her again.” It had been hard enough living in separate cities. Marisa caught back a sob as she led him out onto the second-floor smoking porch. She didn’t want to be cooped up inside.

“Do you want me to drive you to your office so you can be with your mother? You probably don’t want to be alone right now and, well, things are kind of awkward between us at the moment.”

His reminder brought fresh pain. Her chest tightened. She didn’t need to add more pain on top of what she was already feeling, but she had to know.

“How long have you been planning to move?”

“You know I’ve wanted my own practice since I got my vet’s license. I never made any secret about that. And frankly, I miss the big city. Marisa, I can’t stand it in this two-bit town anymore.”

She’d worried he would change when he went off to college, but three years ago, he’d asked her to marry him. And when he’d graduated he’d come home to Watkins Glen. She’d thought he wanted a life with her in this little town. But she didn’t really know what he wanted. She didn’t understand him at all.

“You never said anything about wanting to live in a big city.” Marisa tried to keep the accusation out of her voice.

“I liked living in Syracuse. I didn’t realize how much until I came back home. There’s nothing to do here, Marisa. My idea of dancing isn’t moving to the sound of a jukebox at the bar. I thought I could fit back in because this is my home. I’ve tried really hard these past months, but I’m suffocating. I’m stagnating. I want out.”

He walked to the outer wall and looked down the hill toward the lake. “I’m giving my two weeks’ notice today.”

Marisa sucked in her breath. This man she thought she knew well enough to marry was a complete stranger. He didn’t share her values, didn’t share her dreams. What had they shared beyond some lukewarm sex? Not a lot apparently.

“If I didn’t own a business with my mother, what would you do?” she asked.

“It wouldn’t make a difference, Marisa. You won’t leave her or this town.”

It hurt to learn Kevin had grown beyond her. He’d actually left her behind when he went off to college, but it had taken them eight years to figure it out. He’d left her in suspended animation, his ideal of a high school sweetheart. But that ideal hadn’t survived the separation.

She slipped the diamond solitaire off her left hand and held it out to him.

Kevin hesitated, and then took it. “I’m sorry to do this to you today.”

“It won’t be any easier if we wait. I’ll box up your stuff and leave it at your apartment with your key in the next few days. I’ll come by while you’re at work.”

“I’ll leave your stuff by the door. Marisa, I … ”

She held up a hand to stop him from destroying any more of her illusions. If anything else had been a delusion, she’d rather not know. “I hope you’ll be happy in California.”

“Thanks, Marisa. Are you sure you don’t want me to drive you to work?”

“No. I need to pull myself together before I tell Mamá about Carolyn.”

He asked in a hesitant manner. “May I kiss you good-bye?”

She’d kept the home fires burning for eight years. Even now, when he couldn’t hurt her any worse, she still loved him. “Sure, a good-bye kiss.”

He took the few steps to her, the distance that had seemed insurmountable only moments before. Sliding his hand gently along her jaw, he lifted her face to his.

His lips were warm, firm and familiar, the kiss relatively chaste. It was over before it began. There was regret in his brown eyes. His hand lingered for a moment against her cheek, then dropped away.

“Good-bye, Marisa.”

“Good-bye.”

Long after Kevin’s car pulled out of the driveway, severing him from her physically as well as emotionally, Marisa sat on the porch trying to absorb the Indian summer heat. She felt cold and wished she felt numb. As she tried to come to grips with Carolyn’s death, tears tracked down her cheeks.

She couldn’t get the graphic vision out of her mind. It hurt so much to remember Caro that way. Yet, having seen it firsthand was the only way she could accept that something so horrible had occurred. Things like that didn’t happen to the people you loved.

When Carolyn’s parents had died in an auto accident last year, Marisa had been able to accept that. Car accidents were common. A train accident was a surreal nightmare.

When this bout of weeping was done — she knew there’d be more — she headed down to her office on Franklin Street. The beautiful, handmade clothes of her mother’s business, Designs of the Heart, gave Marisa’s spirits a small boost. Her mother had sewn her clothes all her life. When Caro’s parents had died last year and left her mother without a housekeeping job, Marisa had leased this office space and invited her mother to take up the unused portion in the front. It was a strange mix, but it worked for her and her mom. In fact, her mother had thrived as a shopkeeper.

Marisa wondered why she hadn’t inherited her mother’s creative genes. Surrounded by Seneca Lake and the gorgeous waterfalls and magnificent rock gorge of Watkins Glen, she should have had some artistic ability. But she loved numbers and was good at math. She was an accountant, what some people considered the most boring and dull profession on the planet. Doubt gripped her — had Kevin thought she was as dull as her job?

Her bare ring finger mocked her. Swallowing the lump in her throat at his desertion, Marisa opened the door to her office. The old-fashioned bell happily jingled her arrival. Anjelita Avalos looked up from the counter and smiled. She was slender from years of hard, manual work as the Easterlings’ housekeeper. At forty-six, her brown skin had recently begun to show lines, but the beautiful Latina girl she’d been was still visible. Her mother’s black hair was curlier than Marisa’s, her skin darker, but they shared the same dark brown eyes. Marisa was pretty certain her father had been white, although her mother had never said.

“That was a long lunch,
mi hija
. Did you discuss the wedding? Did you finally set a date?” Anjelita still spoke with an accent even though she’d emigrated from Chile forty years ago. She addressed Marisa with the Spanish word for daughter.

Oh, God, this was going to be hard. “No, Mamá, we didn’t.” Marisa tugged her mother to the visitor chairs in her office.

As they sat, her mother scrutinized her face. “Tell me,
mi hija
.”

“Mamá, there was an accident … ”

Anjelita sucked in her breath. “Was Kevin hurt?”

“No, not Kevin. It was Carolyn. Mamá, I saw it happen. She was standing at the train crossing. The train was coming.” Marisa’s throat closed.

Anjelita crossed herself. Then she covered her mouth with her hand. Her eyes were huge, her skin pale brown.

Marisa cleared her throat. “She’s dead. It was awful. And her husband says she threw herself in front of the train.”

“
Madre de Dios
. Not suicide!”

“No, Caro wouldn’t do that. I know her.”

Her mother looked away. “The Easterlings were not the kind to take that way out.” She sighed. “She was the last. I did not expect it in my lifetime.”

What an odd thing to say. But Anjelita had been part of the Easterling household for more than a quarter century.

“I’m not going to let Scott Wentworth get away with saying those things about Caro. I knew her longer than he did. She didn’t suffer from depression. There has to be a way to prove she didn’t kill herself.”

“You do not know all that goes on between a man and a woman,
mi hija
. You and Kevin have not lived together. It can be hard on a woman to wait for her man to come to her after a long day at work. We do not know how Carolyn filled her days.”

Marisa was distracted from her mother’s intriguing view of relationships to defend Caro. “She didn’t sit around moping, Mamá. She did charity work.”

“Still, volunteer work does not fill all a woman’s hours. She should have had children to give her love to.” Anjelita’s gaze on Marisa stressed her point.

“Scott said Caro had had a miscarriage.” Although the idea was unpalatable, Marisa repeated it.

Her mother sucked in her breath. “Was this true?”

“She never said anything to me about it, and we were as close as sisters.”

Anjelita’s gaze snapped to Marisa’s, filled with pain. “Marisa, there is something I need to tell you … ” Her mother stumbled to a halt, her hands spread wide as though in supplication.

Marisa decided there would never be a better time. “There’s something else. Mamá, Kevin called off our engagement.”

“Called off?”

“He’s moving to California. He doesn’t want to marry me.” The last words came out on a sob.

“Oh,
mi hija
.” Anjelita rushed to take Marisa in her arms.

“I don’t know if he ever loved me,” Marisa sobbed.

Her mother stroked her back. “I think he loved you with a boy’s love. Now that he is a man, well … ”

“When did he change, Mamá? And why didn’t he tell me? Why didn’t I know he didn’t feel the same?”

“You were both so young when he went away to school. You both had years apart to grow into a man and a woman.”

Marisa shook her head, denying, “But I haven’t changed.”

“You have, but you cannot see it. You are a respectable business owner now. You are involved in town decisions. You have a home of your own.”

Marisa wiped her eyes. “But I’m still the same person inside that I was at eighteen. I still want the same things I did back then — a man to stand beside me, to be a partner to me, to be part of this town, and to raise my children here.”

Anjelita brushed curls back from Marisa’s face. “You are still young,
mi hija
. Do not give up on your dreams yet. There is that handsome sheriff’s deputy, Brian.”

But Marisa’s mind flew to Brian’s dark friend. There was a man to dream about.

• • •

“What do you think of the friend’s claim that it wasn’t suicide?” Nick accepted the cold Diet Coke Brian handed him.

His friend swung into his desk chair. As Nick popped the tab and took a long swig, he leaned against Brian’s desk at the sheriff’s station.

Brian sipped for a moment. “I think it’s grief and denial talking. Marisa may have grown up with Carolyn Wentworth, but Mrs. Wentworth has lived away from Watkins Glen for several years. People change.”

“And you think Mrs. Wentworth changed the fundamental aspects of her character in that time?”

“A miscarriage could cause depression.”

“We only have the husband’s word about that.”

Brian raised one sandy eyebrow. “You don’t believe him?”

“The man just inherited a salt plant and who knows how much money and property. I think the least you should do is investigate to make sure he didn’t push her to speed up that inheritance.”

Brian frowned. “You’ve grown cynical, Nick.”

“Yeah. Living in New York City can do that to people.”

“Maybe it’s time you got away.”

“I am away.”

“I mean permanently.”

“I’m an EMT. It’s more than what I do. It’s who I am.” Nick wished the department shrink had understood that.

“You can be an EMT anywhere. Hell, you could do that here.”

Nick tried to make a joke of it. “In podunk? What kind of emergencies do you have here? Dog bites?”

But Brian didn’t play along. “Women falling in front of moving trains.”

Nick frowned. “There is that.”

“I’m serious, Nick. If the city’s affecting you like that, it’s time to look around and see where you can get back to the man you were in college. Like I did. Your leave is a wake-up call. Plenty of cities and towns need experienced EMTs.”

Nick hedged, staring out the window at Franklin Street. “So many people in New York City need my help.”

“People everywhere need your help. Think about where you’d go if you could live anywhere in the country. Like someplace warm, where they don’t have New York winters. Or you could live in a ski town and learn to ski. There are plenty of fishing towns between here and Minnesota. You could pick someplace beautiful so you can take plenty of photographs in your spare time. Just think about it.”

Spare time, ha. Lately Nick’s whole life had been consumed by work. Hobbies and friends had taken a back seat to his obsession to save as many New Yorkers as he could. Because of that obsession, Nick now had the time to pursue friends and hobbies.

He’d like to pursue one dark-haired woman in Watkins Glen. “I’ll think about it.” He sat in the visitor’s chair on the other side of Brian’s desk. “Who was the blonde man with Marisa Avalos?”

“Her fiancé, Kevin Johansson. He’s one of the town vets.”

Fiancé. Too bad. Well that was to be expected with a woman as striking as Marisa.

“She’s never dated anyone but Johansson,” Brian continued. “They’ve been together since high school. Maybe in the face of today’s tragedy, they’ll finally get married.”

“Tragedies tend to make you re-evaluate your life.” Nick’s father’s death had done that to him. He’d decided if he couldn’t save his father, he was going to try to save everyone else.

Brian leaned back in his chair. “It’s good that Marisa has someone to comfort her. She’s got to be devastated. She lived on the Easterling estate and her mother raised the two girls together.”

“I thought you said Carolyn’s mother was alive until last year?”

“She was paralyzed during Carolyn’s birth. Afterwards she had only one functioning limb. That’s why Mr. Easterling brought Marisa’s mom in to be housekeeper. Of course, the town gossip says he brought her in to be his mistress too.”