STORM: A Standalone Romance (16 page)

              "I'm not sure. When we meet with each other in the law office again, I suppose."

              "Why don't you reach out to them?" Cara suggested. "The same way they're reaching out to you now. No matter what the judge decides, it might benefit the three of you to keep meeting and getting to know one another. At the end of the day, I can't help but think they really do understand that you tried to save their son. Everyone made mistakes that night, and now all that there is left to do is attempt to pick up the pieces with the help of the people who still remain."

              "How would you suggest that I reach out to them?" Simon inquired. She looked thoughtful for a long moment.

              "Well, why not throw them a party?"

The idea of a "party", as both the college student and the billionaire understood it, was scratched in favor of a sort of memorial gathering for Stetson Pembrook. Cara stressed the importance of keeping it as light as possible, more of a celebration of the boy's life than a eulogy. "This is going to work," she emphasized, "because deep down, I don't think anyone actually thinks you're responsible for his death except for you."

              "What is that supposed to mean?" the man inquired. Cara crossed her arms.

              "It means exactly what I said. But I don't have any hope of convincing you of the fact."

              "Yes, probably because me being responsible for the death of their son is the entire basis of their lawsuit." His tone was wry, but Cara knew the depth of the pain that still lurked behind it. She could only hope that one day very soon, he would be able to forgive himself and move on.

              As Simon prepared to follow through with arranging the event at an expensive hotel in London, Cara returned to her research into Melinda's death. She still didn't have much to go off of other than a gut feeling, and that was one that not even the people who had investigated her suicide seemed to share. She was able to draw conclusions from various statistics online—the very slim likelihood that someone would choose suicide by poison, for example—but there was just too little she still knew about what had been found at the scene of the crime. Simon was pulling strings to try and grant her as much access as he could, but even his wealth and influence could only extend so far. That, and she could tell already that the Connecticut police department located in that county weren't exactly the most organized in their procedures.

              She hit a wall in her research in the first hour after they had parted ways. Cara sat hunched over the downstairs dining room table, pulling at her hair and scrubbing her face in frustration. Simon was counting on her to come up with something—he was counting on her to find justice for a woman that had intended all along to throw him under the bus. He believed in her skills as a journalist in a way that Cara herself did not, and she couldn't afford to disappoint him.

              But she was going to go crazy if she kept at it now, so she wandered up the grand staircase to the east wing to find him. Simon had wanted to share quarters officially, but something was still holding Cara back—maybe it was Gerald's continued presence, or the scarce presence of the other servants in the mansion, that made her feel (uncharacteristically) as if propriety must be upheld. Maybe it was just the old English feel of the mansion getting to her.

              They had settled for rooms right next door to each other, with a shared bathroom space that also granted them access to each other's beds. A part of Cara enjoyed the thrill of sneaking between rooms at night, even though she knew it was silly and everyone probably saw right through them.

              She found Simon in his own room. His shirt was off, and the front of his pants were undone, and there were shed articles of clothing everywhere. A line of deflated black suits were arranged on his bed. She had to assume by the state of his hair that he had been vigorously going through his wardrobe options for the past hour.

              "It's on," he said without looking up from a tangled snake's nest of ties on his desk. "I have spoken with the Pembrooks, and the memorial will be held next week at the Grand Stanley hotel in upper London. They've already had the funeral and the wake, of course, officially, but the idea of a casual affair delighted them."

              "So what's the problem?" Cara crossed her arms and leaned in the doorway. Clearly there
was
a problem if Simon was trying to decide on an outfit a week in advance. He had never struck her as the type to put much thought into his appearance; he was lucky to be athletically built and effortlessly handsome already, and to be surrounded by servants who put more stock into their master's image than he did.

              The billionaire sighed gustily. "I'm not nervous about the Pembrooks, if that's what you're wondering. I think you were right to encourage me to keep in contact with them despite everything. It's just… I haven't been out in London society in a while, Cara. I'm out of practice with how to go about it."

              "Don't tell me you actually miss being a hermit?" she asked with a raised eyebrow. Then she remembered the horde of reporters who had met their arrival on the tarmac, and realized that being a shut-in probably wasn't such an unattractive idea in Simon's world.

              "I do, actually." Simon pulled a tie from the tangle, and Cara made a face at the paisley pattern. He promptly discarded it for another option. "Most of my days at the mansion were spent in excruciating boredom. But all of that changed once you came around. Don't you miss it?"

              "Yes," Cara said automatically. It felt like exposing a secret, but she had just told the man earlier in the garden that she loved him—admitting that she had loved their time together didn't seem like such a stretch. "But that reminds me of something else I've been thinking of, Simon. You realize that if we do wind up being able to prove that Melinda was murdered, you would probably be one of the prime suspects."

              Simon lowered himself down on the edge of his bed. "How so?"

              "Well, you found out she was threatening your privacy, for one thing," Cara mentioned. "And you told me that she had been employed under you for a very long time. That's a huge betrayal of your trust that a jury isn't going to easily overlook. You definitely have motive."

              "They'll think it a crime of passion, you mean?" Simon asked. Cara pulled a face at the awful mental image his words conjured, but nodded all the same. "I see. Well, I'll just have to risk looking like a murderer in both our countries, then." He rose to start folding his things, and Cara moved to the bed to help him. "I have to get to the bottom of it, Cara. Whatever she may have done, or intended to do, Melinda didn't deserve what became of her. I was her employer, and I feel personally responsible that it happened under my roof."

              "I know." Cara reached up to cup his face, and Simon stopped folding his clothes. She kept the connection going until someone cleared their throat in the doorway behind them; evidently Gerald wanted a word with his master, so Cara retracted her hand and strolled into the next room to finish unpacking her things.

#

She was in the room with Melinda's body.

              Cara stared in horror at the lackadaisical corpse laid out on the floor. Melinda looked thinner in death, and her skin was paper-white; her limbs were splayed at awkward angles, but there was no way the owner of said limbs was feeling any discomfort at this point.

              Cara was a serious journalism major. She had always suspected that she might wind up in this situation one day, but she had never expected that her first reaction would be to open her mouth and scream.

              No sound came out. She was paralyzed, as voiceless as the dead woman on the floor. She wanted to cry with wordless horror, but she also wanted to shout the most pertinent question of all:
who did this to you?

There was powdered residue covering everything like snow. As Cara revolved to take in the state of the room, she realized she couldn't move without stepping in it. This was evidence, she realized—she had to remain where she was or risk contaminating it. Her ability to find the identity of Melinda's murderer depended on it.

But Melinda wasn't dead, she realized in sudden horror. The body on the floor was stirring, spindly white limbs pushing to lift itself up without any living blood to power its muscles. And then Cara really did scream.

She bolted upright in bed and flung the covers off her. She hurdled into the next room as if she thought Melinda's body had been bedded down beside her. Her heart was racing; she thought it would burst. It was running an emotional marathon the rest of her had never been trained for.

Simon was halfway out of bed already; she had intended to join him in his room for the night, but she had fallen asleep while researching, and he hadn't come to disturb her. Now, the Englishman wore a bloodless expression that told her he was extremely disturbed. Cara realized the truth: when she had screamed in her dream, she must have screamed out loud for the whole house to hear.

She propelled herself into his arms, and the billionaire clutched her close against his bare chest. "Cara! What is it? Are you all right?"

There were no tears in her eyes, thank God—she wasn't as upset as he probably thought she was from the way she had come charging into his bedroom. She allowed herself to cling to him a minute longer, before pulling back with a sigh. Her throat definitely felt raw. She had
definitely
been screaming.

"Sorry, I… nightmare." It wasn't exactly a coherent sentence, but it would have to do. Cara was still only vaguely aware of where she was and who she was with. Her subconscious episode where she had been standing over Melinda's body was enough to make her long for the days when it had only been her memory of Simon visiting her at night.

The Englishman sat her down on the side of his bed and skimmed his hand across her forehead, pushing the sweat-tangled hair from her eyes. "Lord, Cara, you gave me a fright." She could see his chest slowing, and realized that he had been breathing as hard as she was. When he was done stroking her hair back, she slapped an embarrassed hand to her forehead.

"Sorry," she said again. "I guess I shouldn't look over crime scene photos and try and work things out right before bed."

"You had a nightmare about the murder?" he asked incredulously.

"Alleged
murder," she corrected. "We're the ones doing the alleging."

"Cara, I can't have Melinda's death disrupting your sleep like this." He squeezed her shoulders, hard, and Cara winced despite herself. "If I'd any idea it would do this to you, I would have never involved you. I ought to call the whole thing off. In fact, I am calling it off, starting now. You aren't to look any further into this. We'll accept what the coroner has said and move on."

"Yeah, right." Cara pushed his hands off her to make her point, but she didn't want to completely give up her present closeness to him. "You should know me better than that, Simon. After all we've been through? I wouldn't be doing this at all if I wasn't one hundred percent certain it's what I wanted to be doing."

"I don't know, Cara." His finger returned to her hairline, stirring a yellow-blond lock of her hair. "I'm not sure I can stand to see you like this again."

"So we agree that it's you."

Simon lowered blue eyes to her, and Cara smiled faintly. She was only making a joke, but she was sure he got the message by now. Just in case, she decided to tell him pointblank: "I'm not going anywhere. And if I'm going to be here while you sort the most difficult part of your life out, I may as well make myself useful. Right?"

"You are the most useful woman in the world," Simon praised her. It occurred to Cara in that vast, darkened bedroom that she could find other ways to be useful… ways that she had been contemplating showing him before she had fallen asleep.

"Lie back on the bed," she murmured. Simon seemed surprised by the change in subject, but complied, shifting himself back onto the mattress. She followed after him, her hands sliding up the chiseled expanse of his chest until she could feel him shivering beneath her. "Why didn't you wake me earlier?" she whispered into the darkness. "Did you think I didn't want to spend the night with you?"

"You seemed tired." His hands alighted on her waist as she positioned herself over him. Cara had fallen asleep earlier in nothing but her T-shirt and underwear, and that was how she came to him now; she could see that the skimpy outfit was already beginning to have an effect on him. His drawstring silk pajama pants were starting to look conspicuously tight in certain areas of interest.

"Well, I'm not tired now," Cara offered. She smoothed her hands along his pectorals, and Simon sighed into the darkness.

"I can see that."

"Can you?" she asked.

"I could afford to see more of you, Cara." His hands smoothed up her exposed belly, playing a concerto on her ribcage and moving upward until they alighted on her breasts. "You're not wearing a bra," he noticed. He fondled her chest until her breathing became ragged. His dexterous fingers pushed and pulled and worked her voluptuous flesh until she could feel the aroused peak of each nipple pressing hard against the palms of his hands.

Cara made an appreciative noise in her throat and allowed her eyes to fall shut as she reveled in the sensation of his touch. Once he had satisfied himself, Simon slipped Cara's shirt off over her head.

"God, you're lovely," he intoned. She moved against his ever-growing erection, grinding against him through their clothes and inspiring his body to harden rapidly. "I can't look at you for long without wanting to shag the daylights out of you. You look like an angel, Cara. You could wear a brown paper bag and I would still fall to your feet and worship you like a princess."

"You're laying it on a little thick, don't you think?" Cara murmured with an upwards stroke of her hips. She lowered herself down, flattening his erection against his stomach and between the heated crevice between her legs. Simon groaned and went rigid beneath her.