I moved closer to him and he put his arm around me, pulling me close to his chest. I put my hand on his stomach, my fingers tracing lazy patterns as his muscles twitched beneath his t-shirt. “What else did you do?” I asked.
“I went down to the vineyard office to see if they'd searched there. Jacques was still there. He said he'd come in to check the wine just a few minutes after the cops arrived and figured he'd better stick around. It was a good thing he did because they did try to get into the office, but he read the search warrant and it was only for the main house.”
I let out a breath I didn’t know I'd been holding.
“He also found a copy of Allen's letter and a print-out of what looked like an email between Allen and me.”
“I made copies and took them to the office, just in case,” I admitted. “I just wish I would've copied that medical file too so you could see it.”
“That would make things easier,” Jasper agreed. “But I did read the email and I don't know who wrote it, but it wasn't me.”
“I believe you.” I looked up at him so he could see my face. “And I should have believed you before.”
He kissed my forehead. “Forgiven and forgotten.”
“Do you know who could've written it?” I asked, returning my attention to the firm muscles under my hand. I was tempted to pull up his shirt so I could feel his skin, but I didn't want to distract him.
Yet.
“I'm not sure,” he said. “I mean, it was sent from my email account, so I suppose someone could've hacked it. I just don't know who.”
“Do you think the Lockwoods could've hired someone to do it?”
“I thought about it,” he said. He wasn't exactly frowning, but he had that little crease between his eyes that he got when he was thinking hard about something. “But there's something about it that I can't put my finger on, like I should recognize it even though I didn't write it.”
I reached up and took his hand in mine. “We could tell the cops that you didn't write the email and they should be able to do some techie thing and figure out where it actually came from, right?”
“I suppose,” he said. “But they might want my laptop for that.”
I looked up and was surprised to see a flush creeping up his neck. I pushed myself up so that I was sitting. “Would that be a problem?”
His thumb was making circles on the back of my hand, and he was watching it intently. “Since I didn't send it, there wouldn't be anything on the hard drive, and they could check my email account from anywhere. They wouldn't need the laptop.”
“But you don't want them to have it?” I pulled my hand away from his and gripped his chin, bringing his face up so I could see his eyes. “What, do you have porn on your computer?” I teased, wanting him to see that I wasn't accusing him of anything.
His flush deepened.
“Seriously?” I laughed. “I'm sure they'll find some on Allen's too.”
“No.” He shook his head. “That's not it.”
Now I was intrigued. “What then? Why wouldn't you want the cops digging in your laptop?”
“I write things.” His eyes slid away from mine. “It's not a journal or anything – or maybe it is – I don't know. When I can't think, I write stuff down to clear my head.”
“Okay?” I'd never seen Jasper this uncomfortable before. “I still don't understand.”
His gaze came back to mine, carefully guarded. “You've always been the reason I can't think clearly.”
My hand dropped from his chin. “Oh.”
He tucked my hair behind my ear. “From the moment I met you, you've been in my head. And since I could never do anything about it, I wrote. Wrote about you. How I felt.”
My stomach tightened. He'd recently admitted how he'd been in love with me even when Allen and I had been together, but hearing it this way...it was different.
“There are files in there all the way back to the beginning,” he said. “Places where I write how jealous I was of Allen and how hard it was pretending that all I felt for you was friendship. How torn I was because I loved Allen, and knew what a great guy he was, how much he loved you, but that I wanted you for myself.”
He twisted a strand of hair around his finger, his expression taking on a faraway look. I stared at him, unable to imagine how I could've missed it. Had he been that good at hiding or had I really been that blind?
“So, I think the cops will see what I wrote as evidence that either I killed Allen because of how I felt about you, or that the two of us were having some sort of affair. More than that, I don't want them reading the things I wrote about you.” His finger stroked down my cheek.
“I understand,” I said softly. He was right. If the cops read anything about how he wanted me before Allen died, they'd think the same things I thought when I first found out how he'd felt.
“No,” he said. “You don't.” His fingertip traced my bottom lip. “I don't just mean how I felt – how I feel – about you. If it was only that, it'd be different because it would only be me being exposed. The fantasies I used to have about you would have been bad enough...”
Something clicked. “You have new entries.”
He nodded, looking away again, his cheeks suffused with color. “I write down everything. Every moment with you because I never want to forget it.”
I thought about the first time we'd had sex. When he'd gone down on me in the living room. Making love outside. Me taking him in my mouth. The different positions...blood rushed to my face as I remembered how his cock had felt in my ass.
“Hey.” Jasper cupped the side of my face. “Don't worry about it. I'll get rid of it. All of it.”
I shook my head. “We'll figure out a way to keep those files away from the cops, but I don't want you to throw them away.”
His eyebrows went up as I got onto my knees. I leaned forward and brushed my lips against his.
“I believe you said something about fantasies you'd had?” I gave him a wicked smile. “I think I'd like to hear a bit more about those.”
His eyes darkened as his mouth curved into a grin. “Well, there's this one I had involving whipped cream...”
“I think we have some left over from last week.”
Chapter 17
Jasper offered to stay home with me until this was all worked out, but I told him to go back to the clinic. He'd already taken off the day I'd been released and I knew I'd want him there if the DA decided to take this to trial. Home by myself would be a lot easier than going to trial by myself.
I didn't want to think about that though. I knew if I stayed in bed late, that's what would happen. I wouldn't be able to stop thinking, and then I'd start to wallow and I'd be miserable.
When the alarm went off for Jasper to get up, I let myself doze a bit, but as soon as he came out of the bathroom, I forced myself up and into the shower. He was gone by the time I got out, but he'd left a heart drawn in the steam on the mirror. I was still smiling about it while I made myself breakfast.
It was funny, I thought, how I'd known Jasper for nearly a decade and never realized what a romantic he was. Because he'd never brought a lot of girlfriends around, and rarely the same girl twice, I always assumed he preferred to play the field. Yesterday, however, I learned that the real reason was that he'd never been able to find a girl who'd made him forget me, and he'd felt it wasn’t fair to them to be in a relationship with someone whose heart was somewhere else.
Heat swept through me as I remembered the other things we'd talked about yesterday. Talked about and done. The whipped cream had only been the beginning and I had the aches and bruises to prove it. He was much more imaginative than I ever realized.
Once we'd showered and made our way back into the bedroom, I told him that he hadn't needed to share anything with me he wasn't comfortable having me know, but he'd pulled out his laptop and had let me read everything. More than once I'd been moved to tears by the things he'd said, the way he'd seen me. Then there had been the entries where he'd talked about how he was grateful I'd found someone like Allen, how I deserved someone so much better than he was. My heart had broken at the way he saw himself, and I promised I'd do everything in my power to make sure he understood how special and amazing he was.
One way I'd decided to do that was to give Jasper every fantasy he'd had over the years, sexual and non-sexual. It would take a while to get to them all – eight years was a lot of time to fantasize – but we'd gotten a start last night. The whipped cream had been first, but it hadn't been the last. He'd taken me in a couple new positions, and had made me scream so loud that my throat was scratchy this morning.
A couple of his fantasies would have to wait until summer since they involved things like making out on the beach and skinny dipping at midnight, but there were a few that had involved Christmas and New Year's, and that was where I was determined to go next.
First, that meant seeing how much decorating I could handle. Step one to that was going into the attic and taking a look at the boxes up there. It was a full attic, complete with heat and air so it could be used as an extra bedroom. Allen and I hadn't really needed the extra space for anything specific, so we'd used it for storage instead of the smaller crawlspace attic above the garage.
A dusty love-seat still sat against the wall, its fabric worn and faded. It had been the first piece of furniture we'd bought together for Allen's apartment near UCLA, and when he'd moved in here, he'd brought it with him even though his uncle had left all of his furniture to Allen along with the house. We'd come up here more than once to make love on it.
I picked up one of the boxes of decorations and carried it over to the love-seat and sat down. I opened it, bracing myself for the tide of emotion, but when it came, it wasn't as strong as I'd feared.
I pulled out garland, smiling as I remembered the first time Allen and I had tried to wrap it around the hand-rail leading up to the second floor. I still wasn't entirely sure how we'd managed to get it so wrong, but we'd ended up sitting on the stairs, tangled up in garland, laughing so hard that tears had been running down our cheeks. And then we'd had sex right there on the stairs.
I set the garland aside. I could use it.
I reached back into the box and found the wreath we'd hung on the front door of the vineyard office. It was hideous, a gift from May Lockwood after she'd made some comment about our taste in décor. Allen hadn't wanted to offend his mother, but neither one of us had wanted it on the house, so we'd put it at the office and Allen had told his mother that he'd thought it was perfect to greet his clients.
Neither one of us had ever mentioned that we didn't see clients in December, or that we barely went to the office ourselves in the winter either, so no one was really going to see it.
I put that to the other side. There was no way in hell I was keeping that thing now. I was half-tempted to burn it outside for the irony.
The house lights were at the bottom of the box and I put the garland back on top of them. I'd have to ask Jacques for help with those. I wasn't going to attempt to put them up on my own. I'd tried it one year, wanting to surprise Allen, and had fallen off the ladder and broken my arm. I knew Jasper would remember the incident, and be furious if I attempted to hang the lights myself again.
I pushed that box over to the stairs for me to take down when I was done. At least we'd have lights up and garland on the stair railing. It was a start.
I picked up another box and began to go through it. I was pleasantly surprised at how many decorations prompted fond memories, but nothing that made my heart ache badly enough that I couldn't bear to see them. I knew I wouldn't be able to handle the Christmas ornaments or the tree Allen and I had bought together, but at least the rest of the house would be decorated.
I was down to the last item in the last box when I found it.
Tucked inside the mouth of the nutcracker Allen and I had found at a garage sale two years ago was a small piece of paper.
Clue #1: Inside out. Upside down.
I stared at it, unable to believe what I was seeing. I blinked. Closed my eyes, and then opened them again. It was still there. Six words in Allen's handwriting. A clue. We'd always liked playing games. Board games, trivia games...we even liked watching detective shows together to see if we could figure out who the killer was before the detective did. Then, last year, during a conversation I couldn't really remember, Allen had jokingly threatened to hide my Christmas presents and make me solve clues to find them.
And now I couldn't believe that he'd done it. But it didn't make any sense. Allen and I would've found it together the day after Thanksgiving if he'd still been alive. If it had been my Christmas presents he'd wanted to hide, he would've wanted to wait until closer to Christmas to hide the clues so I couldn't find anything early.
Unless this wasn't about that. It hit me hard enough to make me gasp. Had Allen hidden these clues before he'd killed himself, knowing that I'd find them at Christmas and they'd lead me to something he wanted me to have?
One thing was for sure. I wasn't about to let it go. No matter what showed up at the end, even if it was nothing, I owed it to Allen and myself to go through with it.
The first clue was simple enough. I hadn't brought much with me when I'd moved in, but I had brought a couple boxes of childhood keepsakes, including my favorite books. One of which used the two phrases from the note.