The Perfect Letter (19 page)

Still, Gene hadn't left her out of his will: he'd set aside almost a million dollars in a trust for Leigh, along with enough cash to pay for Harvard. He'd wanted her to be able to get a start in life without relying on anyone. She'd hardly touched it—she'd never really been able to bring herself to think of it as hers—but it was always there if she needed it. It had offered her a measure of comfort and independence, even if it was only psychological.

Now this creep wanted her to just hand it over? Out of the question. It was her grandfather's money, the result of her grandfather's hard work and determination, and this man didn't deserve a dime of it.

“No,” she whispered hoarsely. “I don't care what you think you have on me. I won't do it.”

The man knocked again on the table, as if this was the answer he'd been expecting. He grinned at her almost with pleasure, almost as if he were looking forward to the damage he could do now that he had his answer. “You sure about that?” he asked. “Wouldn't you prefer to stay out of jail?”

“They won't put me in jail.”

“Oh, sure they will. When they see your confession in your own handwriting? You better believe it. And just think what a good time a beautiful girl like you will have in prison.”

“You don't have my letters. I have them. I have all of them.”

“Now, you don't think Huntsville prison had a copy machine? I could plaster the state highway with copies of you confessing to Dale's murder if I wanted to. You think the county prosecutor won't notice something like that?”

Leigh couldn't speak.

“And there's your nice rich boyfriend to think about. You think he'll still want you after you've done time? Your boss, that fancy British dude? You think they'll still respect you when they find out what you did? You won't have much of a career to worry about then, little lady.”

“I can't even get the money,” she lied. “It's all been spent.”

“No, it hasn't. You rent your apartment. You don't own a car. Your boyfriend pays whenever you travel, so I know you're not blowing anything on that. Let's see. Did I leave anything out?”

No, he hadn't left anything out.

“If you won't pay up, I'm willing to bet there are plenty of other editors in New York who would. Tabloid editors. Gossip columnists. You think I'm wrong?” Silence. “No? I'm right, then? Well, I'm glad to know I haven't wasted my time with this project. Guess I'll jump on a
plane to Manhattan and start making some connections. See you in the funny pages, Miss Merrill.”

“Wait . . .” Leigh said, weakly, but he was already on his way out the door with the envelope—her future, her past—in his hands.

Dear God,
she thought.
What am I going to do now?

S
he climbed the hill of the vineyard to her cottage once more, staring up at the line of live oaks lining the hillside, the bluebonnets waving in the breeze. The stone path felt like jelly under her feet, like the world was no longer solid. On her back she could feel several long red scratch marks from Jake's fingernails. Had that only been the night before?

She felt like collapsing to the ground, crying out—anything. The smug look on the face of the man with the ponytail when she'd told him no, she wouldn't give him her grandfather's money, when he'd said that he'd turn her in to the police, humiliate her in front of her colleagues and friends. How arrogant he'd been, how gleeful, as if he relished ruining her reputation. He'd said he could plaster the state highway with copies of her letter if he wanted to, and she had no doubt, really, that he wanted to.

There was absolutely no way she could pay him off. It would leave her with nothing, and who's to say he wouldn't make her letter public anyway, just to spite her?

He'd never told her his name. She couldn't look him up on the Internet, couldn't see what she was up against. He'd known everything about her, including how much money she spent and on what, and she didn't even know something as simple as his name.

Leigh's phone was ringing when she reached the door of the cottage, but she didn't answer it. It had to be Joseph or Chloe, and neither of them could help her out when the problem was blackmail. She pressed ignore on her phone, trying to resist the impulse to look behind her. If the man with the ponytail knew about what had happened in the barn with Dale Tucker, what else did he know about? He said he'd been at Huntsville with Jake, but what did that mean exactly? How did he know Jake, really?

She opened the door to the cottage and dropped her bag inside, near the closet, feeling an immense weariness come over her, her limbs heavy, even her head. She didn't want to talk about the past anymore, with anyone, but it wouldn't leave her alone. The prospect of chewing over ancient history with Jake, now, also was unappealing to her. She still didn't know, in the end, what she truly wanted.

Jake was asleep on the bed, his head thrown back, snoring softly. She lay down beside him as quietly as possible, trying not to move the bed, but he shifted and stirred; waking, he pulled her to him. “Mmm,” he said. “If I keep waking up in your bed like this, you'll never get me out of here.”

She sighed and leaned down to kiss him. “I missed you.”

“Already?” he said, undoing the buttons on her blouse one by one, kissing lower and lower with each new button.

“Please.” Leigh closed her eyes, feeling the tears squeezing out of them. She felt completely exhausted, wrung out. She didn't want to
think anymore, didn't want to make decisions or plans or anything. Right now the only thing that made sense was herself and Jake in this room. “Please, can you hold me a minute? I just need a minute. I can't—”

His arms went around her immediately, cradling her against his long, lean body. “Of course,” he said. He brushed her hair from her face. “Are you okay, Leigh? What's wrong?”

Her heartbeat slowed, her breathing calmed. Nestled in Jake's arms, she was thinking of the man with the ponytail, of Huntsville prison, of what Jake had written in his letter to her all those years ago, that the guards had made jokes about prisoners being raped there. She shuddered, not wanting to imagine such things happening to Jake, to the boy he'd been back then. “You were gone such a long time,” she said. “I don't know how you managed. It must have been awful.”

He looked up at the ceiling. “Some of it. Most of it was manageable, at least. Lonely, but manageable.”

She touched his face and said, “What about the parts that weren't manageable?” She brushed a finger over his cheek, his neck, but he was as still as a deer that's scented a wolf.

“You don't really want to talk about that.”

“Maybe I do,” she said. “Maybe I'm wondering what happened to you there. The people you met.”

He stood up suddenly, dislodging Leigh. His skin flushed with anger and embarrassment, Jake stalked to the bathroom. Leigh got up and followed him, watching him turn the shower on, hot. “I don't want to talk about that,” he said. “It was bad, okay? You don't want the ugly details.”

The bathroom was filling with steam. Jake got in the shower and let the hot water run over his head. Leigh leaned against the counter, folding her arms across her chest. “It was just a question. We don't have to talk about it until you're ready.”

“Maybe I'll never be ready, did you think about that? What's the point?”

She was staring at the shower curtain. Jake was just a shape behind it, moving. “You did ten years. That's a lot of your life I don't know anything about.”

“And what about you? I haven't heard a word from
you
in six years. You have anything you're dying to tell me about yourself? About what you did in all that time?”

She looked down at her hands. “I'll tell you whatever you want to know.”

Jake turned the water off, then grabbed a towel, wrapping it around his waist. When he came out his skin was so red it looked like it had been scalded. “Okay.” He took a breath and then said, “Tell me about what's-his-name.”

Leigh felt her face burn. She did not want to talk about what's-his-name, especially not now, and not with Jake, of all people. “What do you want to know?”

“Start with when you decided to sleep with him.”

She went back into the other room. She'd known they were going to have this talk eventually, but she would have preferred that Jake wasn't so bitter, and that she wasn't so scared.

“That's what matters to you? That I slept with him? I slept with other people before him, Jake. It's not like he's been the only one.”

“Anyone serious?”

“No. I didn't want them to be.”

“Okay, then. How did this one get serious?”

She sat on the edge of the bed. “You have to understand, I was young, I didn't know anyone in the city. When I first got to the company, I was trying to prove myself. He took an interest in me.”

“I'll bet he did.”

“It was never like that. He was helping me with my career.”

“You know, strangely enough, listening to you defend him doesn't make me feel any better.”

“After I got my promotion, I don't know. Maybe he thought it wouldn't be a problem if he asked me to coffee. I said no, the first couple of times. But waiting around for you started to feel so . . . futile. I hadn't seen or heard from you since that day in court. It started to seem like a kind of insanity, all that waiting. The next time Joseph asked me to coffee, I didn't see any reason to keep saying no.”

“He seems pretty uptight, if you ask me. I can't believe you'd pick him, of all people.”

She felt anger explode inside her—Jake didn't have the right to criticize Joseph, not after so many years of conspicuous silence.

“You don't know anything about him,” Leigh snapped. “Anyway, we work together, we have a lot of the same friends, the same interests. It made sense to me then. It still does.”

“Does it? Does that mean you're still going to go back to him?”

Leigh hugged her arms more tightly around herself, as if doing so was something strong enough to repel the emotions that suddenly threatened to overwhelm her. “I don't know,” she choked. “I haven't had a chance to think clearly yet. I didn't plan any of this.”

“And you think I did?”

She made a dry laughing sound, but there was no mirth in it. “Some of it. You planned to show up at the conference with those letters, at least. You must have known that it would throw me for a loop. You wanted a reaction, or you wouldn't have shown up here.”

“A
reaction
?”

She couldn't believe they were having this argument again. She could see where this conversation was going already, devolving into a litany of recriminations and old resentments, and yet she couldn't stop herself from pushing him a little more, just a little more.

“Give me a break, will you? You had no intention of staying out of
my life, no matter what you wrote in your note. If you had, you'd never have showed up here in the first place. You wanted to see what I would do, Jake. Admit it.”

“Hell yes, I admit it. I wanted to see if there was still something between us. I haven't thought of much else in a decade! And I was right. We still belong together, Leigh. Why can't you admit it?”

“I never told you that sleeping with you meant I was leaving Joseph. I—”

“—want to have your cake and eat it, too. I get it, Leigh. Boy, do I. You want to keep both your ex-con boyfriend and the rich respectable guy from Manhattan who's promoting your career. Who goes by
Joseph,
too.”

Leigh felt her anger boiling up again, the same anger she'd felt the day she wrote Jake and told him she was through waiting, that four years without a word was long enough. Why did he have to be so damn
stubborn
?

“Lots of people don't like nicknames.”

“Yes, rich East Coast pricks with a country-club membership and a big, fat bank account.”

He was being impossible. He was picking a fight—for what? To force Leigh to make a decision right here, right now? Was that the idea? Well, he was in for more than he bargained for if that was the case. She was an adult now, with connections and responsibilities he didn't know about and couldn't understand. If he wanted to punish her, she could punish him right back.

Jake came up close and grabbed her by the shoulders, hard. “If you think I'm going to wait around for months while you go back and forth between us—”

“That's not going to happen,” she said, taking a step back. “Joseph's not just some rich boyfriend from Manhattan, Jake. He's my fiancé.”

The color seemed to drain from Jake's face. He sat down hard on the
bed, his voice very small, very young. If Leigh hadn't been so angry, she would have gone to him immediately.

“You're
marrying
him? Really?”

“He proposed right before I came home. Had a ring and everything.”

He looked at her hand, ringless, before she had a chance to hide it behind her back. His eyes narrowed. “You didn't say yes.”

She was still angry, still determined to punish him for picking a fight with her. “I will, though. I already decided, before you dropped off all those letters, that I would. I'm telling him as soon as I get home.”

Jake stood. The towel around his waist fell to the floor, and he stood before her completely naked, his body flushed, strong—a mountain she couldn't or wouldn't climb. She wasn't sure where to look: at him, his body? His face? She stared straight ahead; she wouldn't give him the satisfaction of letting him see how the sight of him charged her.

“And now?” His voice dropped an octave; his eyes were a hot, sizzling blue. “Nothing has changed? After last night, this morning?”

“I don't—I mean, I haven't had a chance—”

“Right,” he said, reaching for her. “Let me tell you how much I think you're going to marry that guy.”

He kissed her, his mouth soft, searching, but insistent. Leigh dropped her hands; she wouldn't reach up and embrace him, not now. She was still too angry. “Don't,” she whispered. “Stop it.”

“I don't think you want me to stop,” he said.

“I do,” she said. “Please. Please.” She put her hands up to push him away, took a step back.

He took a step toward her. “I don't want to stop,” he said. “Not with you. Not after so long. You're what I want, Leigh. You're everything. I hate that guy. I hate that you'd even think of marrying him.”

She couldn't see past his shoulder—Jake was everywhere, blotting out the sun. He was so much bigger than she was, so much bigger than
he'd been back in the days when they loved each other, when they used to be happy, and she was suddenly realizing how little she knew about him. Everything she had been feeling was based on some old picture of Jake that may or may not match with present reality.

Leigh's mind was swirling; she couldn't see, couldn't think. She took another step back. “I have to go back to work,” she whispered.

“Work can wait.” He pulled her toward him again and kissed her, hard.

“It can't. I have appointments I have to keep.”

“They can wait. I did.”

“Jake. I—I need . . .” she said, turning, as if there were any way for her to get away from him. “I need . . .”

“You need
me,
” he said, kissing her neck.

But right now she didn't need more lovemaking, she needed a little comfort and safety. She pushed away from him and crossed the room. There, on the dresser, were the letters Jake had delivered to her the day before. Several of them were open, lying in plain sight. Only now they weren't just a remnant of a long-ago past, they were a threat, a noose around her neck. Someone had read them besides Jake. Someone knew her most intimate secrets.