Stepping Up To Love (Lakeside Porches 1) (2 page)

Hidden message? he wondered. So she was giving him the right answers and she had integrity? He’d see about that.

Joel’s eyes bore into hers, but he kept his voice casual. “Figures don’t lie; liar’s figure. Is that how it goes?”

“Got it in one.”

He held up his right hand, and she gave him a high five. He challenged, “What famous person said that?”

“No clue. But she was right.”

He laughed and threw her a curve. “Are you one of the liars?”

She shook her head and held his eyes. “I’m just one of the figurers.”

“So, you love numbers but you didn’t pick Math?”

“Too theoretical for me. I like to see how things operate.”

“Do you like what you do here?”

She nodded with enthusiasm. “Being in the middle of a business is interesting, and Dan is a great supervisor. Well, you already know that. He is always willing to explain why things are done the way they are and to give me new work to challenge me.”

Joel wanted to sip coffee and banter with her all morning. Too bad they had a pile of problems to fix right now. Maybe after this was over, and it would be over, he would see to that, maybe they could try this again. He shifted in his chair, and she seemed to pick up on his signal that the easy part was over.

“Thank you,” she began, “for breakfast and for making me laugh. It’s been a long time. And I’m sorry I snapped at you earlier. The day wasn’t going real well for me.”

“I got that.” Her hair had dried in loose curls, and a few fell onto her forehead. He watched her push them back and saw them fall forward again. Part of him wanted to mess them up. He pulled himself up sharply.

Manda took a deep breath. “About your question,” she prefaced, “the terms of my employment changed after Lorraine—Mrs. Kristof—left, and I didn’t know how to handle it. What changed first is that she had paid me an allowance for groceries, and that stopped.”

“So, Kristof never paid you? How did you pay for food and books?”

“I paid for them myself. Sometimes—" she hesitated.

“Go on,” Joel ordered.

“I do people’s taxes for them sometimes, and they pay me in cash. That helps.”

He didn’t care if she was being paid under the table. “I understand. What else changed after Lorraine left?”

“I was stupid and all alone out there and I let myself be pressured and threatened into being . . . available whenever he wanted me.”

“Sexually?”

She nodded, without meeting his eyes.

His heart raced with anger. “Threatened how?”

“At first it was about kicking me out of his house, but it wasn’t long before he realized that wasn’t much of a threat, and I know I shouldn’t have stayed. But by the time I realized it, he had me convinced he’d fix it so I’d lose my scholarship if I didn’t do as he said. I was just so scared about that. I started drinking more, drinking a lot, to just get through another night; to just keep the lid on, get the grades, and graduate.”

She took a deep breath and put one hand on her stomach, as if willing it to settle down.

Joel knew James would have a fit if she hurled on the white linen cloth.

“And I guess I wasn’t properly humiliated or degraded enough or who knows.” She had lined up three spoons, and now she flipped one off the table. “So,” she started to say and had to catch her breath. “It got physical and then violent and then sick and,” she shook her head, unable to go on.

Joel consciously relaxed the white-knuckle grip he had on his coffee mug. “Manda, did Kristof give you the bruises I saw in the shower this morning?”

A strangled sound came from across the table.

He watched Manda’s composure disintegrate and tried to detach from her anguish, knowing they had to name it and deal with whatever had happened. And yes, they both had to deal with it. Partly because it was his responsibility as her boss, and partly because he served as a trustee of the college, although he wasn’t going to tell her that. They’d be lucky if she didn’t sue the whole college.

“Manda, have you talked with your parents about what’s been going on?"

She shook her head. “They're both dead,” she managed to say.

He knew how that felt.

“My aunt took care of us before college. She died a few years ago.”

“How old are you?”

“Twenty-two.”

“You said your aunt ‘took care of us.’ Who’s ‘us’?”

“My sister Lyssa. She’s in Austin, at UT in a doctoral program in economics. Also heavy into weed. It’s hard to have a conversation with her, and, well, she’s not able to help.”

“You said weed?”

Manda nodded. “Since she stopped drinking. She calls it her marijuana maintenance plan.”

“Where have I heard that before?”

“I thought she made it up.” Manda’s face was wet with tears again. She’d saturated her napkin, so she snuffled her nose. “I just wanted to finish college and that’s all I knew how to do. I know I messed up.”

She looked him in the eye and he saw no guile there.

“Joel, I need help. I don’t know how to fix any of this.”

Joel fought against his inclination to put an arm around her, comfort her pain. He wished he could erase whatever had happened to hold her prisoner and finally drive her out of the swanky million-dollar house on the lake into the icy rain to spend a sleepless night in her wreck of a car.

Manda’s hands were shaking even though they were clasped together on the tabletop. Joel reached across the table and covered her hands with his warm ones. She did not pull away. “Manda, it will be all right,” he reassured. “You will be all right. People will help you.”

She choked, “I am so sorry. I have disrupted your work and Remy’s and probably embarrassed you in front of everyone here.”

He squeezed her hands. When she winced with pain, he pulled his hands away but let his fingers just touch hers. “This is not about me. And no one is watching us.” He had seated them so he had full view of the dining room and she had as much privacy as possible. “There are two diners reading their newspapers, oblivious, sipping their coffee; everyone else has left; and the staff knows to leave us alone.”

He thought he heard her whisper, “Thank you.”

He tapped her right hand with his finger. “And I know you are afraid of a lot more than being fired.”

She met his eyes, and he saw how intensely blue they were and how filled with fear and something worse.
Desperation
. He knew how that felt as well.

“I am going to get us fresh coffee. Then I need you to help me lay out some next steps. Another croissant?”

She nodded. “And butter and strawberry jam, too, please.”

He smothered a laugh. “That’s my girl.”

He took his time, stopping to ask the remaining diners about their breakfast and their stay. On his return he juggled two mugs of steaming coffee and a plate with a buttery croissant so fresh and appetizing he wished he hadn’t banned all pastries from his food plan.

He saw that she had commandeered a stack of crisp white linen napkins. A soggy pile beside her plate gave evidence she’d blown her nose with gusto using half a dozen of them. She had soaked one napkin in her glass of ice water and was holding the compress tight against her eyes. James would have a fit if she left mascara stains.

“These are the world’s best croissants,” he announced. He scooped the pile of soggy napkins onto her empty plate and set it aside. He watched with relief as she set down the makeshift eye compress, free of makeup.

He knew he needed to be scrupulously professional right now. He sat down with deliberate slowness, unbuttoned his cashmere jacket, and crossed one elegantly tailored leg over the other, a Joel Cushman trademark move. A question flashed through his mind. Which Joel did Manda like better, the one that was smooth and in control or the one that mangled paper clips and made her laugh and pushed her to be honest?
Get over yourself, Cushman.

“Are you going to fire me?” Manda wanted to know.

“I’m not sure yet.” He took a long drink of coffee, and set down the mug. “Either way, you are not off the hook.”

“I know.” She pulled off one flaky layer of her croissant and slowly ate it.

He watched in fascination. He didn’t think she was toying with him, just being methodical as accountants were.

“I just started with the easy one,” she said, and spread butter and jam on the rest of the croissant.

“Are we talking the easiest layer of the croissant or…”

She laughed and shook her head.

Encouraged, he said, “Let me start with a simple question, and I’m looking for a brutally honest answer here.” She had the most beautiful eyes. Why had he ever thought she was a frump? Manda Doughty had sounded like Manda Dowdy to him, and it fit. He’d never looked past the baggy, shapeless clothes and the over-sized eyeglass frames. “You’re not wearing your glasses,” he realized.

“I think I left them in the shower. And least I hope that’s where they are. But that wasn’t your question.”

He sat up straighter and tried to put his mind back on business. Where was he going? Ah, the drinking.  “Manda, I know that most nights you go directly to the bar with some of the staff and have a strong scotch before you leave the Manse. The bartender jokes with you when you ask for another and says he’ll have the cops tail you. You laugh and leave without a second. And probably have more when you get home—am I right?”

She nodded, stunned. “A lot more. More all the time.”

“But last night you stayed late in the office. What were you working on?”

“I hadn’t been productive for a couple of days,” she confessed, “and I wanted to finish some work Dan needs by the end of the week.”

“Did you finish?”

“Yes, I left a note for Dan and went home around nine or a little later.”

“I understand you didn’t stop at the bar for a scotch, even though your friends were still there.”

“Do you know what everybody drinks?”

“I do. It’s a habit that has paid off.”

Manda looked like she wanted to ask him about that sometime.

Joel went on, “I’m thinking whatever went horribly wrong last night—that explosion—had been building up. And you’d had enough. Last night when you went home, you walked in there sober and put an end to it for yourself, no matter what. Does that sum it up for you?”

Manda sat rigid in her chair like a bird trying to be invisible to a hawk. Joel knew he had nailed it for her.

When he let out his breath, she answered, her voice incredulous. “Exactly. That is exactly what it adds up to. How could you know that?”

“Why yesterday?”

“I was done. I knew the only possible way my life could change was if I didn’t have that first scotch after work and then get drunk when I got home. Does that make any sense?”

He nodded. “Tell me more about that.” He sat back and saw her relax.

“I had to stop living the way I was living, doing what I was doing. And yesterday—" she shook her head. “I don’t know why it was yesterday. Nothing was different. Except I…” Her voice trailed off. When she spoke again, it was with conviction. “I just knew if I didn’t stop drinking nothing was going to get any better.”

She shook her head, apparently at a loss to explain it any better. “When I saw Kristof was home, I left my coat and my purse in the car, and I was hoping I could grab my laptop and get out without any trouble. Dumb me, I didn’t plan it any better than that.”

“Not much of a bail-out plan,” he said lightly.

There was that soft smile of hers again and those eyes, sad enough to melt a heart. She was looking past him now, toward the display for the wine cellar, not seeing the hand-picked bottles on the velvet-covered perches and the hand-lettered signs, seeing instead whatever had happened after she went through the front door of the Kristof house on Cady’s Point.

Joel gave her a minute and then prompted, “So you went home sober and everything exploded?”

“Yes, he was there, and there was no escaping a confrontation.” She tried to meet his eyes but looked away, shame dulling her gaze. “It was so clear this time. I could see how he operated. I refused to play the sordid game. He got angry. And I still refused.” She was breathing in little gasps now.  “And refused. And finally he exploded, and I fought. I fought for my life. No matter what, I was going to get out of there, and I did.”

Joel reached his hands toward her without touching her.

“When I finally got free, I ran and didn’t look back.”

“So is that the end of it?” he asked, meaning the end of the relationship with Kristof. Because if it wasn’t, he was going to be really sad with the realization that this beautiful, smart, funny woman was a lost cause.

“It has to be the end of it. I can’t live my life that way. It’s not who I can be and should be and want to be.”

That wasn’t the answer Joel needed to hear. “So you’re not going back to Cady’s Point?”

She looked like she was considering it.

“Or are you?”

“I will figure out a way to reconstruct the work on my laptop and how to finish my courses without books or notes.”

“Or clothes or makeup or a warm bed.”

Manda rolled her eyes as if he was being dense. “I have a bigger problem.” She looked him straight in the eye. “What I meant when I said it had better be over is that my parents were both alcoholics, and it killed them, and I’m pretty sure I’m one, too.”

From the way her voice shook on the word “alcoholic,” he knew it was the first time she’d identified herself as one.

“What I became in that house this past year, drinking more all the time to pretend it wasn’t happening… I need this nightmare to be finished.” She looked him in the eye. “That’s not what you wanted to hear from the Manse’s accounting assistant, is it?”

He let out his breath all at once and gave himself a mental slap. Manda Doughty wasn’t looking for a date with Prince Charming. She needed a substance abuse counselor, and she was looking for an employer’s response. He gave her the best one he had. “If you start drinking again, you’re history here. If you do the footwork to stay sober, I will support you in any way I can.”

“What footwork?” she started to ask.

“Sir, will there be anything else for you and the lady?” James called from the doorway.

Manda said under her breath, “The lady, right.”