Ever After (48 page)

To Braden's mind,
all
of this was Shelly's fault. If Ruby
hadn't been obsessed with her daughter, Hallie wouldn't have needed protection, which meant that now…

As Braden got into his rented car, he made himself stop thinking in that direction. The truth was that he was angry at Shelly for what had happened at his office.

He'd had a friendship with Hallie all her life, but he'd paid little attention to the stepsister. As a child, she'd looked at him with big blue eyes, a teddy bear clutched to her, and rarely said a word. But then, Ruby said enough for both of them. She constantly yelled at little Shelly to come inside or she might hurt herself.

One time Braden asked Hallie if the kid was accident prone.

“Nah,” Hallie said. “Scabs mess up the photos.”

At the time, Braden figured the kid just liked having her picture taken. It wasn't until later that he realized Hallie meant the photos taken at all the modeling agencies, TV auditions, whatever Ruby came up with. She and Shelly would drop Hallie off at school, then get on the commuter flight to New York. Hallie would return to an empty house and a bowl of canned soup for dinner.

He hadn't paid attention to Shelly until he saw her in a bikini—and after that he stayed away from her totally. Inviting her to work had been an impulse.

That day, he'd enjoyed her company. When they'd gone to a mall to buy her clothes, she'd asked him a lot of questions about his work, and he was surprised to find out that she understood everything he told her.

Braden's original goal in taking Shelly to work was to throw his ex, Zara, into a jealous fit. But by the time he and Shelly got to his office he'd forgotten about that.

At the office, she'd been charming to everyone. She was so tall and beautiful that she was a bit intimidating, but she soon set people at ease. As for Zara, she and Shelly had hit it off like
best friends, talking about clothes and shoes and the earrings Zara was wearing.

When one of the partners demanded that Braden go over a brief right then, he'd been annoyed. But Shelly had assured him that she'd be fine on her own.

He'd just finished when the partner who'd dumped the work on him flung his door open and bawled him out about Shelly. Seems she'd slipped into his office and made lewd suggestions to him, had even unbuttoned her blouse in a suggestive way.

Braden had been livid! He'd apologized profusely, then gone to find Shelly. When he saw that the silk blouse he'd bought her was missing a button, his anger made him unable to speak.

All the way back to Hallie's house, he didn't say a word to her, and barely slowed the car to let her out.

Now, he parked in front of Hallie's Nantucket house, then got out and slammed the door loudly.

What was he going to do with Shelly once he got her out of here? Take her back to Plymouth's house for the night? She'd probably come on to one of the Montgomery men.

When Braden found the front door locked, he got even angrier. He knocked but there was no answer. He went around the house, tapping on windows, but all were locked and silent. Finally, he reached the far side and saw double doors. One of them was standing open.

Just as he touched it, there was a crack of lightning followed by a boom of thunder and rain started coming down hard. He barely made it inside before he got soaked.

It was dark in the room and when he flipped the switch, nothing happened. “Great!” he muttered. Lightning showed another door and the windows, but when he checked, they were all locked. He was trapped inside the room.

“This is ridiculous!” he said aloud and picked up a heavy metal vase. He was going to throw it through the window and get out that way.

“It won't work,” said a voice behind him and Braden gasped.

Still holding the vase, he turned to see Shelly sitting on a small couch in a corner of the room. She had on jeans and heels and the Chanel jacket he'd bought for her. She looked fabulous.

But her good looks only made him angrier. He threw the vase at the window hard. It hit the glass and bounced off onto the window seat, then rolled onto the floor.

Behind him, Shelly lit a candle. “I told you it wouldn't work. I've thrown six things at that window, but the glass won't break.”

“That doesn't make sense.”

“I read that half the houses on Nantucket are haunted so it's my guess that there are ghosts here and they're protecting Saint Hallie. But then everyone does, don't they?”

“Why not?” Braden said. “She needs it.”

“Of course. Dear, persecuted Hallie. She's only loved by everyone who meets her. I guess you know she's thrown you over for some rich ex-soldier.”

Braden was rattling knobs and he put his shoulder to a door, but nothing moved. Outside, the rain was pelting down hard. He went across the room and plopped down in a chair across from Shelly. “What did you do to Hallie
this
time?”

“Tried to get out of being sued.”

“Funny thing about the law. You steal something and you get punished.”

“And Hallie's loving entourage will see to that, won't they? Tell me, will I go to jail?” When she looked at him, he saw that she'd been crying.

“A little late for remorse, isn't it?” He got up and tried the door again, but it didn't budge.

Shelly held up the ring Braden had bought in the candlelight. “This from you? For Hallie? She turn you down?”

Braden didn't like the way she put that, but he wasn't going to explain his motives. “What makes you think that?”

“Just a guess. Did she know how cheap it is?”

Braden sat down again and glared at her. He wanted to yell at her. How could she have done that at his office? Did she think the man was going to leave his wife for her? Or that he was rich enough to keep a mistress?

Shelly looked up from the ring. “Why?” she whispered. “What happened that made you so angry at me at the office?”

He couldn't keep from sneering. “Did you think I wouldn't find out? Hedricks told me how you came on to him.”

For a moment, Shelly closed her eyes, then she got up and got her bag off the big dresser. She opened it, pulled out a business card, and handed it to Braden.

“So? You got Hedricks's card.”

She was still standing in front of him and she turned the card over. Handwritten on the back was an address and a phone number.

It took him a moment to realize what they were. The address was of the corporate apartment, the one used by out-of-town clients. He didn't recognize the number.

“If you call it, you'll find that it's your boss's private cell number.”

“How did you get this?”

Shelly sat back down on the couch, looked at the candle, and didn't answer him.

But Braden had a lawyer's brain and he figured it out. He'd seen the way Hedricks looked at Shelly when she was introduced. At the time, he'd felt nothing but pride. Later, the man had sent Braden away to do work and that's when he must have done whatever caused Shelly to lose a button.

“How did you get away?” Braden asked softly.

“I told him no in a way that let him know I meant it,” she said. “I've had a lot of experience doing that.”

All the anger left Braden and he fell back against the chair. “I'm really sorry.”

“Good,” Shelly said. “Maybe you'll remember that when you're trying to get me sent to prison.”

Braden winced because all day he'd worked to do just that. He'd spent a lot of time thinking about how he could persuade Hallie to press charges against her stepsister. “Why?” he asked.

“Why did your boss see me as an easy mark? I don't know.”

The rain was slashing outside and the darkness of the room with the single candle made them seem isolated, just the two of them.

“That's not what I mean,” he said. “For all those years, I saw and heard what went on in the Hartley house, but it was all from one side. I've seen you do mean things to Hallie. You buried her toys. I saw you pour grape juice on her new dress. You bent the spokes on her bicycle. Why?”

When Shelly looked up, there was something deep in her eyes, a kind of emptiness. “No one knows this, but I don't know how to ride a bicycle. I used to watch you and Hallie riding together and my jealousy nearly devoured me.”

“What did
you
have to be jealous of Hallie about?” He was incredulous.

Shelly snorted in derision. “You want to hear the truth? The
real
truth?”

“Yes, I do.”

She took a moment before speaking. “No one seemed to understand that my mother was obsessed with using my looks to make money. How I
looked
was everything to her. While Hallie was
liked
. Loved even.” Shelly got up from the couch and began to pace.

“I was jealous of Hallie from the second I went to live in her house. She had grandparents who adored her. They cared about her so much they grew food in the backyard. But my mother was dragging me around to auditions for everything she could find and I was lucky if I got a candy bar for dinner.”

She stopped to glare at Braden, who was sitting there listening intently.

“Mom didn't bulldoze their garden to put in a swimming pool. She did it because she knew it would make the grandparents so angry that they'd leave. They were beginning to say things like ‘Oh, Ruby, let the child stay home. I made a nice butternut squash soup.' I
wanted
to stay home. I was hoping that maybe they'd start liking me as well as Hallie.

“Mom saw it all, so the garden had to go. And of course when the grandparents left, they wanted to take their beloved Hallie with them, but Mom said no. Hallie was free babysitting.”

Shelly took a breath. “Yeah, I did rotten things to Hallie. I remember one day Mom was yelling at me because I couldn't memorize lines from a Shakespeare play. Hallie was on her computer with her grandparents in Florida. They kept saying how they loved her and missed her and couldn't wait to see her again. That night I went into Hallie's room and poured Diet Coke on her keyboard.”

Braden was watching her with interest.

Shelly took a breath, her hands in fists at her side. “Then Mom and Dad died when I was still a minor. After that, I was at Perfect Hallie's mercy. She quit college and took on lots of jobs so I wouldn't be put in a foster home. All I heard was what a martyr Hallie was. While
I
was reviled.
I
was the one who'd caused poor, dear, sweet, lovable Hallie to have to give up her career.

“So, yeah, I acted out. Between no longer being under my mother's thumb and having to live with Saint Hallie, I went wild. I admit it.

“The day after I graduated from high school, I told Hallie what I thought of her. I left with some no-good dirtbag just to make her angry. I went to L.A. and tried to get jobs in movies, but I wasn't any good.”

“So you returned home,” Braden said.

“Yeah, I did, and people rushed to tell me every wonderful thing Hallie had done, then they asked me what
I
had achieved. And the answer to that was a big fat nothing.”

She paused for a moment. “And then one night I was watching TV and Hallie was, of course, at work, and an express envelope was delivered. I put it on a chair and it fell down the side and I forgot about it. A couple of days later, when I saw the corner of it sticking up, I panicked. I thought Hallie would throw me out on the street. I only opened it to see how much trouble I'd be in for not giving it to her right away.”

Shelly took a few breaths to calm herself down. “When I read that she'd inherited a house from a guy she'd never even met, I went crazy with anger. It was all so deeply
unfair
. Why did she get everything
good
in life?!

“I didn't think about what I did. I wrote Jared that I was Hallie and I had lots of degrees and I would gladly accept the house. It threw me when he told me some rich guy wanted me to do physical therapy on his son, but what was I supposed to do? I couldn't back down, so I agreed to take him on as a client. Hallie's such a do-gooder, I figured that once I was there I could get her to write me out a plan for how to work on the guy.

“Most of all, I saw the whole thing as my once-in-a-lifetime chance to take another path. Just for a while I'd pretend to be Hallie, a person who never screwed up, who never got weak-kneed at the sight of a guy in black leather sitting on a big Harley. I'd have a highly respected career—and I'd be
liked
. Loved.
Just like Hallie is
.

“But it all backfired and I may be sent to prison. Yet again, Hallie is the good one and I'm bad. But then she probably won't prosecute me even after I tried to steal an entire house from her! What does it take to knock her off that holy cloud she lives on?!”

Braden was staring at her. He'd never heard this many words
from Shelly—and her anger had taken away his. “I think we should ignore the rain and get out of here.”

“All right,” she said.

When Braden tried the doorknob, it turned easily and outside the rain had stopped. He led the way to his car across grass that was quite dry and opened the door for Shelly. When he got in, he paused for a moment to look at her. Even though he'd known her since she was a kid, he was feeling that he didn't know her at all. “Mind if we get carryout and go back to the house where I've been staying? I think we should talk more. All right?”

“I'd like that,” Shelly said and smiled at him.