Body Double (38 page)

“What?” Sarah’s forehead crinkled in a confused expression. She lowered herself back into her chair. “That’s not true.”

“It is true. You can ask his lawyer if you want. Whatever Andrea said to him made him realize that no matter what was still left unresolved between the two of you, he still loved you. He forgave you, even if you didn’t ask for his forgiveness.”

“No,” she whispered. “He can’t. He mustn’t.”

“He did.”

Sarah hung her head and cried. Blake didn’t know what had happened to inspire Sarah’s intense anger toward her father or her regret now, but he scooted his chair around, next to hers, and pulled her into his arms. At first, she leaned against him limply, but then as her sobbing intensified, she clung to him, grasping his shirt in her fists.

“It’s okay, sweetheart,” he whispered, not knowing what else to say. He was intensely curious, but now was not the time to drill her over the bad blood between father and daughter. “Everything’s okay now.”

“I’m terrible,” she said. “I’m a horrible person. I don’t deserve his forgiveness.”

“Come on,” Blake said. “You’re not a bad person. Whether you think you deserved his forgiveness or not, you have it and there’s nothing you can do about it except learn to forgive yourself. He might’ve been a jerk at times, but he loved his baby doll.”

She flinched, looking up at him. “I was awful to him. I was so dadgum hateful. Do you know why?”

He shook his head, hoping she would spill all.

“Because as a teenager, I couldn’t apologize for what I did. I couldn’t bring myself to say those two little words.” She sat up and blew her nose into her napkin.

What had she done? Run away? Burned the house down? “Isn’t that just a teenager being a teenager?” Blake asked.

“No,” she said, shaking her head. She stared at the orange silk flower in the center of the table. “I blamed him for everything, starting with my mama’s death. In my mind, everything that was wrong with my life was his fault. How could I possibly apologize to a man who was responsible for my misery?”

“That’s understandable,” Blake said. “He wasn’t a perfect father.”

“No, but I wasn’t a perfect daughter, either. I was more dreadful to him than he was to me.” She took in a sharp breath. “Oh, my God. How did I not see it?”

Curiosity was burning Blake up from the inside. He wanted to take her by the shoulders and urge her to tell him everything. “See that he loved you? That he was only trying to do his best as a parent?”

“It all makes sense now. Sometimes righteous indignation is really self-righteous indignation. It doesn’t stem from being morally right but from being wrong and too arrogant to admit it.” She buried her face in the napkin. “I’m so ashamed.”

Blake was only partly following her. “Of what?”

She lifted her chin and slowly opened her eyes to look at him. “Ashamed of how I treated my dad, Roxanne, Andrea, you. I’ve been afraid to apologize my whole life, because admitting something was my fault meant acknowledging it wasn’t his—starting with my mama’s death.”

He couldn’t help but admire her epiphany. Some people lived their entire lives without realizing such intensely personal things about themselves. “How did your mom die?”

“Cancer. She died of freaking pancreatic cancer.”

Blake shook his head sadly. How hard it must have been for her as a child to lose her mother, especially at an age where she needed the female bond, and especially for a girl who probably knew even then that she wasn’t like most of her friends who were developing crushes on boys. “That had to be rough on you, and I’m sorry you lost your mom.”

Sarah snorted a small laugh and blotted the tears from her eyes. “Psychology students in my class often joked that we were all there to diagnose our mental disorders. I claimed not to have any, but now I know better. Now I know why I needed so much therapy. Blake, for everything I’ve done to you—the lies, the bitchiness—I’m... I’m s-sorry.” She whispered the apology, and then seemed to take herself by the shoulders and square them. “I’m sorry,” she said more confidently. “I’m sorry.”

Blake nodded, smiling gently. “Do you feel better now?”

“I do. I feel like, well, like that proverbial weight is off my shoulders. I just wish I’d had this revelation before Dad died.”

“But he forgave you, and I forgive you.”

She put one arm around him and kissed his cheek. “Andrea’s a very lucky lady.” At some point, Richard had stepped out of the room, but he left his tablet on the table. It was nice of him to give them some privacy. “Now, if Richard would come back, we can wrap this up. I have some amends to make.”

Chapter 13

He wasn’t coming.

Andrea chastened herself for being silly. Of course he’s coming, she thought as she closed her laptop. She had checked her email, responded to the few that needed responses, and called Monica and her parents, assuring everyone that she was fine, that her trip to Hawaii was wonderful, and she was glad to be home. Telling them she was moving in with Blake would come later.

She packed a few plastic grocery bags with clothes and set them by the door, expecting him to call for directions any minute. The clock ticked off the seconds while she looked around her tiny apartment, seeing for the first time how small and cramped it was. Every corner, every inch of floor space along the walls was taken up by something. Chairs, couch, vases, tables, bookshelf, crates, and baskets. Every wall had multiple decorations she’d collected over the years—gifts from friends, items she’d found on clearance that she couldn’t live without, a macramé plant hanger her younger sister had made when she was in junior high, a hanging copper lamp her brother had made in his metalworking class. Though the apartment had been home for the last six years and had too much stuff for its size, it felt empty. She sat on a stuffed footstool and inventoried her belongings, many of which were special to her, and none of which would fit in Blake’s beautiful house.

He wasn’t coming.

He’d hired top-notch designers to choose the furnishings, art, and window dressings, giving the mansion style and flair. Bringing in her odd collection of clutter would disrupt that put-together look. The little horse statue, given to her by a girl she’d counselled at Delmar, wouldn’t look right among his eighteenth century Chinese pottery or the collection of Native American flutes. And where would she find a spot in his house for the tapestry her elder sister had brought her from her trip to India? What about the painting by eleven-year-old Lauren, the first child she’d ever reunited with the loving and grateful parents who’d never given up searching, or the quilt her grandma had spent two years stitching with her gnarled, arthritic hands? With every tick of the clock, her gaze fell upon something else that stirred a memory.

He wasn’t coming.

None of these things belonged in Blake’s perfect home any more than she belonged in his perfect life. She wasn’t a rich person, despite his instruction to pay her five million dollars. She didn’t know whether the money was in her account. Part of her was afraid to check, because if it was there, then that meant she was Blake’s employee. Maybe she could start her own business: Bride for Hire. Her slogan could say
I’ll marry you for money.

The wall clock read eleven fifteen. He hadn’t called as he’d promised. Something must have come up. He wasn’t Sean. He wouldn’t ditch her without at least an explanation, especially after what Sarah had done to him. He was a better person than that. But was she worthy of him? The clock answered with its mocking tick, counting the seconds while she sat there and waited for her man to show up, knowing he never would.

He wasn’t coming because he didn’t truly love her. He didn’t want to be with her because she wasn’t the kind of woman men wanted to marry. She was the kind they ditched.

She felt her chin quiver. No. She was not going to cry. He’d hired her to do a job, and she did it. That job was over now. It was time to put her life back on its tracks.

Her personal belongings were still at his house. She could run to the corner Walgreen’s to pick up a new toothbrush, and if the five million was in her account, she would swing by Wal-Mart in the morning to buy some new panties. Maybe while she was out, she would buy some new clothes or heck, a new car. Maybe she would go out to Phoenix to visit her parents.

Anything to get her mind off the fact that Blake had jilted her.

Andrea wiped her eyes, patted her thighs, and stood. It was late, and she’d had a long day. Maybe Blake had gotten carried away—
making love to Sarah
—with the conversation that he’d lost track of time and thought it was too late to bother her. She should get some sleep and call him in the morning if he didn’t call her first. Then she would know where he was, why he never called, how he truly felt about her.

It was a good plan, but easier conceived than carried out. She lay in bed for hours, alternately crying and steeling her heart, wishing for a way to still her restless mind. He could have called her at least. Why couldn’t he have just called to say he wasn’t coming? The clock read 2:53 the last time she checked, and eventually, she fell into a fitful sleep, plagued by dreams of Blake and Sean alternately promising to meet her and then standing her up.

Blake called Andrea once more on his way home from the restaurant. She would be anxious to hear from him, and he was eager to share the news with her that not only had Sarah agreed to the annulment, but Harold had left her a nice sum of cash and a car. He would never have disparaged her little Ford, but Harold’s Mercedes was a big upgrade, and a woman as classy as Andrea deserved finer things. Again, he got voice mail, and again, he left a message urging her to call him back as soon as she could.

If he knew where she lived, he’d have asked Steven to drive him to her apartment, but maybe she wasn’t answering her phone because she needed some space. Had he been too presumptuous in thinking they would be together after the annulment? She loved him. Didn’t she? She’d said she did. She’d certainly acted like she did.

She did. She loved him. Whatever explanation she had for not answering or calling him back was probably reasonable. If she needed one night apart, he could respect that. He just wished she’d told him so.

He lay in his huge bed alone, wondering if he’d done or said anything that had upset her. He went over their last conversation in Sarah’s garage in his mind, unable to imagine what he’d done that might have put him on her shit list. Sarah had been a bitch, but Andrea wouldn’t hold that against Blake. He’d stood up for her. Her last words to him were
I love you too
. No, if she’d been mad at him, she’d have let him know it. That directness was one of the things he loved most about her, along with the fact that being with her made him a better man, a better person.

Eventually, he fell asleep, but he dreamed of men in black hoods trying to abduct her. He woke with a start. What if she hadn’t called because those goons who’d attacked her on Monday had found her? He flung the covers aside and sat up, reaching for his phone. It was after three in the morning. If she was asleep in her bed, she would be irritated by his call, but he’d rather hear her annoyed voice than to worry about her safety. He dialed her number and waited anxiously for it to connect.

A Heather Hargreaves song began playing softly in the distance.

What the hell?

He got up, pulled on his underwear, and followed the sound downstairs. The music stopped when he reached the bottom landing, and he got her voice mail message again.

No. It can’t be.

He hung up and redialed, and again Heather Hargreaves’s angelic voice started, louder now. “
The love we had was once-in-a-lifetime, love.”
He followed it into the kitchen where they’d shared breakfast the previous morning before leaving to pick Sarah up at the airport. Isabelle had the day off, so she wouldn’t have called him to let him know her phone was there. “
But its time has come like we knew it would, and our memories, how bitter and sweet...”
There was her phone, sitting on the table where she’d left it.