When You Are Mine (9 page)

“It’s okay.” She offered a papier-mâché smile, fragile and stiff. “Every girl loves a compliment.”

“What was so funny?” Jo stepped into the conversation like she owned it, followed closely by Sofie.

“I was telling Kerris about my father.” Walsh took half a step back from Kerris, governing his features before looking at Jo and Sofie.

“What a great man.” Sofie twisted the diamond bracelet around her narrow wrist. “I’ve always loved Uncle Martin.”

Jo snorted, exchanging a quick look with Walsh. He knew exactly what she was thinking. Sofie wouldn’t score any points with him complimenting his father.

“Walsh, that man over there wanted you to come see him after you were done…dancing.” Sofie said the last word as if Kerris and Walsh had been grinding in the middle of the ballroom dance floor, her mouth twisted with distaste.

“Which man?” Walsh followed the direction of Sofie’s finger. “Oh, Mr. Donovan. He’s a big fish. Let me go over there and see if I can close this deal. I’ll be back, ladies.”

Walsh didn’t allow himself one last look at Kerris. He didn’t want to see the mask she’d pulled in place now that they weren’t alone. He hated what she was hiding. Hated it because he had to hide it, too.

W
alsh walked toward the silver-haired gentleman Kerris had seen him talking with during dinner, leaving her alone with Jo and Sofie. Jo had been watching Kerris like she was the last clue on the crossword puzzle you could never figure out. The tickle session on the dance floor with Walsh probably hadn’t helped. Jo had eyes you couldn’t hide from. Not for the first time, Kerris wondered if everything she was trying to hide, Jo could clearly see.

“That dress is lovely, Kerris.” Sofie addressed the words to her French manicure. “Where’d you get it?”

“It’s vintage.” Kerris hated the note of uncertainty she heard in her own voice. She lifted her chin in a show of pride she didn’t feel.

“Is that what they call it? So quaint.” Sofie tossed a chunk of silvery-blond hair over one shoulder. “And how bold of you to wear something that…modest when all the other women are dressed…differently. I just admire you. I mean, you obviously have never been in an environment like this, and you’re just conducting yourself so well.”

Kerris noticed Jo widen her eyes at Sofie’s insulting tone and comments. Kerris zipped her mouth into a fine line, holding back her own retort. Her palms itched to smack Sofie. She balled her fingers into the delicate fabric of her second-hand finery, crushing the material.

“Thank you.” Kerris looked around the room for an escape, not sure if she was saving herself or the rude woman standing in front of her. “I think I’ll go find Cam.”

“He was talking outside with some of the guys smoking cigars,” Jo said, sympathy apparent on her face.

Kerris didn’t want sympathy or pity or whatever had her cheeks burning. She wanted out. She slipped off, stiffening her back against the urge to slump her shoulders. She had survived too much for someone like Sofie to break her, but she still felt the blows and wanted to lick the wounds in private.

She walked through the French doors, stepping down onto the dew-moistened lawn and heading for the gazebo. She slipped off her shoes, hooking the flimsy straps over her index finger. Glancing over her shoulder, she watched the clusters of glittering people chatting and laughing with one another in the makeshift ballroom. Her insides still stung from Sofie’s acid-tipped talons. She’d painted Kerris as some shabbily dressed misfit.

Who was she kidding? That’s
exactly
what she was.

Kerris wanted to go home, take off her Goodwill dress, curl up in her kimono, and fall asleep with the scraps of her dignity and confidence. She settled onto the bench inside the gazebo, leaning back to admire the delicate latticework trimming its frame.

Kerris blew a cool breath out, air hissing across her lips until her chest hollowed out and her body drained of the tension.

“That bad, huh?” a deep voice asked from the shadows.

Kerris’s head jerked toward the familiar baritone, narrowing her eyes in the dim light just beyond the steps of the gazebo.

“Walsh?” His name rested on her lips, mixed with hope and dread. “Where’d you…how did you…”

“I saw you leave and wanted to make sure you were okay.”

He stepped onto the platform and into the light cast by the small lanterns suspended from the ceiling.

She blinked against the sight of him, the sharp planes of his face softened in the glow to a beautiful symmetry she could have looked at all day. Their eyes held too long before she made herself look away. Her tongue felt twice its normal size in the dried out cave of her mouth. Delighted panic knifed through her. Her fingers played Twister in her lap.

“I’m fine.” Kerris answered the question in his eyes.

“You could’ve fooled me.”

“I thought you were closing a deal.”

“Check’s in the mail. Now stop trying to change the subject. You sure you’re okay?”

“I just…” She hesitated, looking up at him, lowering her eyes again, weighing how much she should tell him.

“You just…” He prompted.

He sat, scooting until he could rest his back against the wall and pull his knees up, feet on the bench. She felt his eyes on her profile.

Tonight had conspired with her past to pound her confidence into a fine powder.

“I don’t belong.”

“Belong where?”

“Here. In there.” She smoothed the silky material of her dress with a sweat-moistened hand. “With those people.”

“That’s ridiculous.” He leaned forward a little, resting an arm on his knee. “What makes you say that?”

“Everyone is haute couture in there.”

She hoped she didn’t sound as miserable as she felt in that room with the glitterati. She had thought she was doing fine until Sofie reminded her of why she always hated these parties.

“I’m Goodwill. My dress is from Goodwill, Walsh.”

“Let me get this straight.” Walsh’s mouth hitched up at the corner in the smallest of wry smiles. “After all you’ve endured with so many odds stacked against you, you’re out here alone because of your outfit?”

“Well, when you say it like that—”

“Is belonging so important?”

“It would be hard to find anyone who ‘belonged’ more than you.” She heard the bitterness in her own voice. Despite all she’d experienced, cynicism sat on her like an ill-fitting jacket, gaping under the arms and sagging at the shoulders. “You wouldn’t understand.”

“Try me. Tell me.”

She rationed her breaths for a few moments, asking herself if she actually could tell someone.

“I come from nothing.” A lock of hair had escaped the knot at the back of her head, and she pulled it over her shoulder, giving her something to do with restless fingers. “I mean, you know I’m an orphan.”

Walsh only nodded, eyes moving from the hair resting on her shoulder back to her face.

“I wasn’t like Cam. His mom was…awful. Negligent. Horrible, but at least she tried for a while. I don’t know if that ended up being a blessing or a curse, but my mom left me on the porch of an orphanage like a bag of old clothes.”

Kerris swallowed, searching for courage behind her closed eyelids.

“The orphanage where I was abandoned,” she said, feeling the last word settle on her tongue heavily, making her pause under its weight. “That orphanage was private, like the Walsh orphanages, and when the money ran out, all the kids were sent into the foster system.”

“How old were you?”

“Three. I was kind of shuffled around until I was ten. In the third home, one of the older kids there burned me with a cigarette.” She stroked the sunburst-shaped scar on her wrist. “The social worker saw it, and got me out. That was when I ended up at Ms. Jessum’s.”

Kerris smiled and felt her insides soften like warm butter at the thought of Mama Jess.

“It was like having a mom and a real home. Mama Jess made sure I had clothes, food, and a bed to sleep in. I wasn’t only a check to her,” Kerris said, as certain as she’d ever been about anything. “I could tell she
loved
me. Loved me like a mother loves her little girl. It was the happiest time of my life.

“For a while,” she added, lacing the two words with sudden bitterness.

“What happened?”

Kerris knew Walsh was keeping his voice calm and quiet to soothe her, but his hands gripped his knees.

“Her brother moved in. TJ.” She said his name like a curse.

Kerris’s words trailed into the silence of her memory. She had come home from school one day, somehow immediately sensing with her child’s intuition that a dark force had entered their safe haven. The curtains had been drawn, keeping out the bright after-school sunshine, casting shadows in the front room. TJ had been there, lounging in the corner, slumped in the lumpy recliner. His predator eyes had lingered on her long hair and her baby-fat cheeks. Kerris had clutched her backpack to her flat chest, feeling the hairs lift on her arms and the back of her neck. Feeling hunted for the first time.

But not the last.

At dinner that night, Mama Jess explained that her brother would be staying with them for a while. And wouldn’t it be good to have a man around the house? Kerris had pushed her peas around her plate, feeling TJ’s eyes on her like a tiger watching a rabbit. Waiting patiently to strike. She lived in fear of an unknown threat she could not articulate to herself or anyone else. Unknown, but real. Then finally he’d pounced, devouring her until the only thing left was the ravaged carcass of her innocence.

She had never spoken of it before; never been tempted to pull back the heavy covers shrouding this part of her past. Cam had unburdened himself to her today. She wondered if his office hadn’t called, would she have done the same? And why now? Why Walsh? She remembered her first impression of him. Dangerous, especially now with that sweet, wary, waiting concern on his handsome face.

“At first he only watched me.” She braced herself for the shame she knew would engulf her once Walsh knew the whole truth. “He watched me all the time, and I knew it wasn’t right. There were five girls in the house, but it was just me he watched all the time. He started…”

“Started what?” Walsh’s voice was warm and still, the eerie calm before a storm breaks.

“Started coming in my room at night.”

The words struggled their way up her throat, escaping in a tortured gasp.

“He was so quiet.” Kerris fixed her eyes on the gazebo floor, but didn’t really see it. “There was another little girl in my room, in the twin bed beside me. I wondered why she didn’t wake up; why she didn’t hear him. I thought maybe I imagined him, like the boogey man or a monster under my bed, but he was real. Just so quiet.”

A single tear streaked down Kerris’s face. She didn’t try to catch it.

“Ker, you don’t have to tell me—”

“He told me if I didn’t let him touch me, that if I told anyone, they would take me away from Mama Jess. And I didn’t want that.” She went on as if Walsh had not interrupted. “Someone finally loved me, wanted me, and I couldn’t risk losing that. So I didn’t tell. I
wouldn’t
have ever told.

“Then he…he…” The ugly truth hiccupped in her mouth.

“Did he…”

“Yes.”

Kerris methodically stripped the confession of the pain she would never forget. She looked at Walsh for the first time since she had started.

“Yes, he did.”

The muscles in Walsh’s face tightened around his horror-washed eyes.

“He said it would be our secret.” Kerris shifted her numb bottom on the gazebo bench. “And I would have kept it. I just couldn’t leave Mama Jess. I know it was sick, but I thought I could put up with that, with anything, if I could stay where I was loved and wanted. I couldn’t leave her.”

“I understand.” Walsh slid into the space beside her and entwined their fingers, thumbing tears from her cheek. “Of course you didn’t want to leave.”

“But the next morning, I could barely…” She licked her lips, tasting the shame and pain of her past. She had to close her eyes, finishing in a rush. “I could barely walk, and Mama Jess noticed. And there was blood. I didn’t know there was so much blood, but it was on my sheets. She called the doctor, and it wasn’t a secret anymore. They took me away, just like he said they would. All I could think was he was right. He was right.”

“Kerris.” Walsh’s fingers tightened on hers until she looked at him. “He wasn’t right. They didn’t take you away from Mama Jess because you told. They took you away because he was a monster. He had no right to touch you. What was his name?”

“What?” She blinked, dazed at the question, so specific, the tone low and deadly.

“I want his name. Tell me his name.”

A wild bloodlust colored his eyes, and she realized that was for her. That righteous vengeance all over him was for her. She squeezed his hand as he had done hers, finding herself ironically the one soothing.

“He died in prison.”

“Good. Saves me the trouble.”

She saw the truth of it. The hand not holding hers was clenched, and his jaw hardened to a stony angle. She reached a shaky hand up to his face, passing it over his eyelids, hoping to wipe away the violence she saw there, so at odds with his gentle hold on her.

“It got better from there.” She curved her lips into a smile for his sake. “I went to live with the Murphys.”

“You were happy?”

“I was safe. They were good people, they just never loved me. They weren’t mean. Just indifferent.”

“I wish I could reach back and undo what happened to you, but I can’t and you can’t,” Walsh said.

“No, I can’t.” She kept her eyes on her feet, barely visible in the darkness. She flexed her toes, curling them to hold on to the last of her courage. “And when I’m in a roomful of people like that, I just can’t help thinking I shouldn’t be there. There’s TJ, and the foster homes, and…Walsh, those people in there come from the best families and went to the best schools. Wear the best clothes. I come from nothing. Literally nothing.”

Walsh reached behind her ear, pulling out the orchid lodged there in her tousled knot of curls.

“You wear flowers in your hair a lot.”

She blinked and nodded, unsure what this had to do with what she had just shared.

“Which flower is your favorite?” He stroked the velvety petals of the flower he held.

“The orchid.” She didn’t even have to think about it.

“What would you say an orchid needs to grow?”

“Um, soil, water, sunlight.” She rattled off the list, trying to read the inscrutable expression on his face.

“Those are optimal conditions for growing, right?”

“I suppose so.” She frowned, unable to wrench her gaze away from the fragile flower cuddled in his strong hand.

“What would you call an orchid that sprang up out of thin air?” He leaned forward to look into her eyes, so close she could feel his breath on her own lips. “A flower that had no soil, no roots, the worst conditions to grow in, but just sprouted out of thin air, beautiful and exotic and perfect?”

She shrugged, dazed and unable to assemble words. His impassioned description and the heat of his eyes mesmerized her.

“I’d call it a miracle.” Walsh bathed the words in tenderness, sliding a finger down her neck like it was a delicate stem.

“Kerris, your childhood was a nightmare sometimes, but you managed to become this amazing woman. This smart, independent, compassionate, ambitious person who drives old ladies home and cries for little girls she barely knows. Your past haunts you, but it hasn’t twisted you, it hasn’t ruined you. If anything, it’s made you a stronger person. That’s a miracle.
You
’re the miracle, baby.”