Secrets and Seduction: 5 Romance Novels (31 page)

Christian couldn’t believe it. But guilt was written in every strained line of his brother’s face.

“My God.” It was only a breath of sound. “You had an affair with Brittany?” Christian felt betrayed. That was why Pam had filed for divorce. It made sense now.

“Kit, it’s not true … ” Paul’s protest petered off.

“You told me you and Pam were getting divorced because you didn’t spend enough time together. You lied to me.”

“I made a mistake.”

“A mistake is ordering the wrong color of paint. You’re happily married, or you were.”

“I was lonely. Pam was never at home. She’d joined all those charities, so she was out every night. Then one evening Brittany’s car needed a tow, and it was raining, so I gave her a ride home.”

“And another kind of ride.” Christian had believed Paul was a tower of strength, a man of steel. Now what was he?

“It just … happened. I didn’t plan it.”

“You must have been thinking about it,” Christian said. “Probably every time you came to the office.”

“I’m married, not dead. I look at pretty women, especially when they’re built like Brittany.”

“But you did more than look, and now Pam’s divorcing you.”

“I made a mistake. Who are you to judge me? Look at the mistake you made.”

Christian sucked in his breath. The accusation hurt terribly. He’d known his brother doubted him, but to hear that doubt voiced aloud made it doubly painful.

“I didn’t,” he said on a flare of heat.

“Christian didn’t make a mistake.” Gabrielle’s voice came clearly from the back seat.

“What?” Paul’s head whipped around again.

“Someone forged his signature to the altered drawing. Was it you, Paul?”

Paul’s face slowly drained of color. “What are you accusing me of?”

“I can see why you might have done it. You were caught in an adulterous affair. Your wife lashed out. You fell apart. You had deadlines to meet, but the rain kept falling. Work fell behind schedule. You needed to make up the time somehow. Christian’s design took a lot of care to build, time you didn’t have. If you substituted shorter material, the building could go up a lot faster. There was just the tiny detail of the drawing. You already had his signature on the original. All you had to do was trace it. Did Brittany help you forge the test results?”

“I’d never do that, not to any architect and sure as hell not to my brother.” He turned to Christian. “Kit, I’d never do that to you.”

But Christian hadn’t thought Paul would cheat on his wife or sleep with Brittany and cover it up. If he did those things …

“It’s not true, Kit. I swear to God.”

This was his brother, who’d held Christian as he cried for their dead parents. His brother who had found Kit nearly catatonic with depression and saved him, not once, but twice. Paul, who had protected Christian and smoothed the way for him, so he could have everything he’d ever dreamed of. Paul, who was his only family, his rock. His rock with a crack in it.

“You swear?” Christian was pitiful in his need to believe Paul was still Superman, still the Lone Ranger who came riding in to save the day. His brother had been his hero since his earliest memories. Christian needed him to be that hero again.

“I swear I didn’t do it.”

Christian swallowed and nodded. “I believe you.” Then he had to bring up something equally painful. “But you believed I’d made a mistake on the Densmore drawing.”

Paul looked away. “Yeah. I believed it. People make mistakes, even you.” There was a bite of accusation in the last two words. Paul hadn’t forgiven him.

“I wouldn’t have made that kind of mistake, not with that design.”

“You’re human, Kit. Just because you believe your design is infallible doesn’t mean it is. Just because the great Christian Ziko designed it, doesn’t mean it’s impervious to disaster. Things happen.”

“It had help,” Gabrielle said.

Paul glared at her. “What are you talking about?”

“Christian had the signature on the drawing analyzed by an expert who will testify in court it’s not Christian’s signature.”

“My God, it’s true?” Paul looked at Christian for confirmation.

“Yeah.”

“And you’re pointing fingers at everybody who had anything to do with the Densmore … or just at me because of Brittany? Did she accuse me, too?”

“No, she didn’t say anything to us.” Christian stared at Gabrielle, suddenly uneasy. How had she known about his brother and Brittany? His secretary hadn’t said a word while he was in the room.

• • •

Gabrielle knew the moment Christian suspected her. His black eyebrows drew together. Wariness darkened his blue eyes to navy. She knew her secret was safe — no one’s first thought was she was psychic. Even though she’d wanted him to take off his rose-colored glasses and not trust so freely, she didn’t want his first reticence to be with her. She felt the loss of trust like an empty hole in her chest.

“You actually believed I’d hurt you like that?” Paul asked Christian.

“No. But we have to rule out everybody.”

“She made you come here, didn’t she?” Paul jerked his thumb toward Gabrielle.

Christian looked weary all of a sudden. “Yes.”

Gabrielle reclaimed Paul’s attention. “It’s my job to find the guilty party, Mr. Ziko. Are you willing to submit handwriting samples for the expert to compare?”

Paul’s sigh gusted out into the confines of the car. “Yes. Whatever it takes to prove to my brother I’d never do that to him. Since my love isn’t enough to make him trust me.”

Christian reached out to Paul, but Paul waved away his hand. “No. Don’t try to make up for it just yet. I’m not ready.”

“I didn’t want this to come between us.”

“How did you think it wouldn’t?” Hurt coated Paul’s words.

Gabrielle slid the tablet and a pen to Paul and told him what to do. Paul glared at her, then looked mulishly at his brother. But when he glanced down at the paper, Gabrielle caught the hurt he tried to hide.

Despite the difference in their ages, these two men shared a tight bond she envied. She hoped they could forgive each other and be close once more. She’d give anything for someone to love her the way they obviously loved one another. Even with Paul’s doubts about Christian, Paul hadn’t stopped loving him.

She couldn’t resist one last touch when Paul handed her the tablet.

At first she thought the picture was blurred. But the sound of heaving breaths and the jolting scenery clued her to someone running.

“Hurry!” a young man’s voice, tight with strain, yelled from ahead.

“Sean, look out,” someone yelled.

A young man, about twenty, with mud-brown hair stumbled over a fallen log in the knee-high weeds. Another young man with thin blondish hair and light blue eyes grabbed the one named Sean’s arm to steady him, then urged him to keep running. It was Roger Barrett, in his early twenties.

The lead runner looked back. In the near darkness, Gabrielle thought it was Christian. But his face was rounder. Paul.

“You guys gotta hurry. He’s in trouble.” His voice was nearly panicked.

The three young men broke through the weeds into the water of a lake, splashing loudly. There was a wooden cage of some kind sticking a few inches out of the water, and Paul Ziko dragged futilely at it. Sean and Roger helped him pull.

A knife in Roger’s hand flashed in the moonlight. He dived into the water. A moment later, the crate bobbed to the surface. The sound of gasping came from within it.

“Get him out of there,” Paul cried.

The three men dragged the cage off the fourth bedraggled man. Whatever color his hair was normally, was coated with muck. His eyebrows were dark blond. They pulled him out of the water and onto the flattened grass where he lay gasping.

“I told you,” Paul said.

Roger knelt by the man, who was spitting out water. “What made you think they’d pledge you, Gannon?”

“I thought they were my friends,” the young man gasped.

“They’re not. They would have left you to die.”

“They lied to me.”

“We’d never do that to you,” Paul said in a quiet voice.

The others nodded. The look in the downed man’s eyes was eloquent as he grasped their offered hands.

Gabrielle slid her hand from Paul’s. He opened the car door, letting in the moisture of the falling rain and the smell of damp earth.

“Paul … ” Christian grabbed his brother’s arm.

“Don’t, Kit.”

Christian let go and Paul left the car, slamming the door with a solid thud. He ran across the muddy lot to another vehicle and climbed in.

“I should hate you for what just happened,” Christian said in a low voice.

Gabrielle’s chest tightened. “You knew it had to be done. I told you not to come. It would have been better if you hadn’t been here. Then your relationship with your brother would have remained intact.”

He stared out the front windshield into the pouring rain. The windows were fogged from their breathing, but she didn’t recommend turning on the defroster. He was a powder keg looking for a reason to explode.

“I’ve alienated the people I depend on most. I didn’t know how much support I had until I lost it.”

No platitudes would help him, so she didn’t mouth any. But she wondered what would help. She hated the slump of his shoulders, the desolate blankness of his face, his white-knuckled grip on the steering wheel.

So she shared her own pain. “My mother is fifty-four years old. She had a massive stroke in December, right before the holidays, and was paralyzed on the right side. The doctors said she was lucky she didn’t die. Even after months of therapy, she has trouble talking. She can’t walk. She lives in a nursing home. I don’t think she feels very lucky she lived, but I’m glad she did, because otherwise I’d be all alone.”

“My parents are dead. Paul’s all I have.”

“I know. I’m sorry.”

Christian turned to her. His blue eyes were bright with unshed tears. “I can’t lose anything else.”

Her heart went out to him. She had the strangest desire to hold him in her arms and stroke his hair back from his forehead. From almost the moment she’d first seen him, he’d evoked feelings in her she didn’t expect or want. This man wasn’t for her. But she felt like she was in tune with him, and she’d never felt that way with anyone else before.

“We’ll find the forger and clear your name. Your brother and your partner will understand, and if necessary, forgive you for doubting. They both seem to be under a lot of stress right now.”

“Yeah. Rain’s bad for construction. I think it’s bad for people’s tempers, too.”

Now that Christian seemed calmer, Gabrielle felt easier discussing the case. “I left a message for one of the interns, but I haven’t had a chance to call the other one yet. Let me do that now.”

She found out Bryan Tuckerman was about a mile from their present location and he agreed to meet with them. Before she could get out of Christian’s Jeep, he spoke.

“Gabrielle?”

She hesitated, drawn as much by the quality of his voice as his unvoiced question.

“I don’t hate you.”

Gabrielle pondered the ramifications of his statement all the way to the next location. The rain stopped midway there, so she could spare her concentration from the road. No, she didn’t want Christian to hate her. But she didn’t want anything more from him, either. Liar, her conscience taunted her.

So she wanted to watch his face as he made his dreams come to life on paper. Her arms ached to give a loving harbor to someone, and Christian needed such a harbor. She needed someone to understand how alone she felt, and Christian would. He needed someone to believe in him. So did she. He needed to heal. So did she.

Gabrielle sighed. The thought tantalized that together they could heal one another. She’d never know if she didn’t rise above her fear. But it almost choked her to think about being dumped again. It had been almost two years since the last dating fiasco that had soured her on men. Maybe she should have tried again sooner because now the fear was all out of proportion.

At her next stop, Bryan Tuckerman swore up and down he hadn’t signed any Densmore drawing during his internship at Barrett and Ziko. He gave them a handwriting sample and slogged through the mud of the construction site back to work.

As Gabrielle turned back to her car, she noticed Christian’s shoulders were slumped again. “Something bothering you about Bryan?”

“I remember him. He seemed in awe of me. He hung on every word I spoke. Now he thinks I’m a killer.”

“Not now he doesn’t.”

“I was some kind of hero to him. Now I’m not. Even if he no longer thinks I’m a killer, he doesn’t think I’m a hero either.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Yeah.”

The impulse grabbed her and wouldn’t let go. She wanted to extend this time with him and lift that heavy weight from his shoulders.

Before she could stop it, the words tumbled out of her mouth. “Would you like to have dinner with me?”

Christian couldn’t believe he was having dinner with his enemy. Well, she wasn’t his enemy exactly. But just because Gabrielle Healey wasn’t trying to put him behind bars anymore, didn’t make her his friend, either.

He wished to God she was his friend. He could use one right now on a day when he’d alienated his last one. Even more, he wished she was more than his friend. What he wouldn’t give to lie naked in her arms and let the solace of her warm body soothe him.

He’d seen the sympathy in her eyes. At first he’d thought it was pity and he’d hated it. But after she’d told him about her mother and the stroke, he realized she knew what he was feeling. Then her sympathy warmed him and made him ache to be held in her arms.

Boy, was he a slow learner. Hadn’t he realized yet the world wasn’t what it seemed? Gabrielle wasn’t romantically interested in him and this wasn’t a date.

But their dinner conversation had touched on many aspects of their lives, almost as if this was a first date and they were getting to know one another. They discussed their plan of attack for the following day, and then the conversation swung back to the personal again. That’s when the uncertainty of his future nagged at him.