Passion in Secret

“For God’s sake, Jake! You know Colette’s feelings on this. We’re trying to put the past behind us.”

“With altogether more speed than decency, if you ask me.”

“Nevertheless, under the circumstances, I hardly think—”

“I agreed to your taking charge of all the funeral arrangements because I couldn’t be here in time to handle them myself,” Jake cut in. “But may I remind you, Fletcher, that although you were Penelope’s parents, I was her husband. I believe that entitles me to invite whom I please to this reception honoring her memory.”

“No, it doesn’t. Not if it adds to anyone’s grief.” Sally, who’d been edging back toward the foyer, spoke up. “I came to pay my respects, Mr. Burton, and now that I have, I’ll leave.”

“Thank you.” Poor old Fletcher, henpecked to within an inch of his life, cast an anxious glance across the room to where Colette held court. “Look, I don’t mean to be offensive, but I’m afraid you’re no longer welcome in our home, Sally. If my wife should see you, she’d—”

But the warning came too late. Colette had seen them and her outraged gasp had everyone looking her way. Handkerchief fluttering, she fairly flew across the room. “How dare you show your face in our home, Sally Winslow? Have you no sense of decency at all?”

“She came with me.” Not only was he beginning to sound like a broken record, Jake was growing thoroughly tired of repeating the same old refrain. It was his own fault, though. He should have stood his ground and insisted on postponing the funeral until he could have taken over. A few more days wouldn’t have made any difference to Penelope, but if he’d hosted her wake in the house they’d shared as a couple, he might have been able to circumvent the present scene.

“How could you do that, Jake?” Colette wailed, her baby blues swimming in tears. “How could you hurt me by desecrating Penelope’s memory this way? I’ve suffered enough. I need some closure.”

“We all do, Colette,” he said gently, moved despite himself by her anguish. Colette Burton might be a diva of the first order, but she’d truly adored her daughter.

“And you expect to find it by bringing that woman here?” She let out a tortured sob. “What kind of son-in-law are you?”

Fletcher would have caved at that line of attack, but Jake wasn’t about to. “One trying to put back together the pieces of his life.”

“With the help of your wife’s murderer?”

The shocked reaction brought on by that remark—because there wasn’t a soul in the room who hadn’t heard it, including his parents—bounced back from the walls in a throttling silence broken only by a faint whimper of despair from Sally.

Caught again in the urge to leap to her defense, he said, “Perhaps you’d like to retract that accusation, Colette, before it lands you in more trouble than you’re able to handle right now.”

“No!” Sally overrode him, her voice thick with emotion barely held in check. “Don’t blame her.” She turned to Colette, and touched her hand contritely. “Please forgive me, Mrs. Burton. I shouldn’t have come. I just wanted to tell you again how very sorry I am that Penelope’s life ended so tragically. I truly feel your pain.”

Colette snatched her hand away as if she’d been singed by a naked flame. “Do you really, Sally Winslow! Are you trying to tell me you’ve walked the floor every night since she was killed, wondering what that strange noise is and realizing it’s the sound of your own heart breaking, over and over again?”

“No, but I’ve—”

“Of course you haven’t! You’re probably glad Penelope’s dead, if truth be known, because you always resented her for being prettier and smarter than you. But now, you don’t have to live in her shadow anymore, do you?”

“Colette, that’s enough.” Fletcher tried steering her away, to no effect.

“Leave me alone! I’m not finished with her yet.” Like a wild thing, she flung him off and rounded on Sally again. “Do you have any idea how it feels to see your child lying dead in her box? Do you know what it’s like to finally fall asleep from sheer emotional exhaustion, and do so praying that you’ll never wake up again? Do you?”

Sally, pale enough to begin with, blanched alarmingly and pressed her lips together to stop their trembling. Perspiration gleamed on her brow. Her eyes, normally dark as forest-green pools, turned almost black with distress.

“That’s what you’ve done to me, Sally Winslow.” Colette’s voice rose shrilly. “I’ll never know another moment’s peace, and I hope you never do, either! I hope what you’ve done haunts you for the rest of your miserable days!”

Again, Fletcher moved to intervene. “Hush now, Colette, my darling. You’re overwrought.”

She’d also fortified herself with more than one brandy and was three sheets to the wind, Jake belatedly realized. Her breath was enough to knock a man over. But it was Sally who suddenly fell limply against him and, before he could catch her, crumpled to the floor at his feet.

Drowning out the chorus of shocked exclamations, Colette teetered in Fletcher’s hold and shrieked, “I hope she’s dead! It’s what she deserves!”

“Sorry to disappoint you,” Jake said, stooping to feel the pulse, strong and steady, below Sally’s jaw. “I’m afraid she’s only fainted.” Then, although he shouldn’t have, he couldn’t help adding, “Probably too much hot air in here. Where can we put her until she comes to?”

“The library,” Fletcher said, handing a sobbing Colette over to one of her hangers-on. “She can lie down in there.”

“I’ll take her, Jake.” His father materialized at his side. “You’ll never make it with that injured leg.”

“I’ll manage somehow,” he muttered, wishing his parents hadn’t had to witness the scene just past. There’d never been much love lost between his family and the Burtons, and he knew they’d be upset by Colette’s attack on him.

“You don’t always have to be the iron hero, you know. It’s okay to lean on someone else once in a while.”

“Can the advice for another time, Dad,” he said, a lot more abruptly than the man deserved. But cripes, his leg was giving him hell, and that alone was enough to leave him a bit short on tact. “It’s my fault Sally’s here at all. The least I can do is finish what I started. If you want to help, get Mom out of here. She looks as if she’s seen and heard enough.”

Clamping down on the pain shooting up this thigh, he scooped Sally into his arms and made his way through the crowd, which parted like the Red Sea before Moses. There might be some there who felt sorry for her, but no one except possibly his relatives dared show it. Colette had cornered the market on any spare sympathy that might be floating around.

The library was a man’s room. Paneled in oak, with big, comfortable leather chairs and a matching sofa flanking the wide fireplace, some very good paintings, a Turkish rug and enough books to keep a person reading well into the next century, it was Fletcher’s haven; the place to which he retreated when things became too histrionic with the women in his household. Jake had joined him there many a time, to escape or to enjoy an after-dinner drink, and knew he kept a private supply of cognac stashed in the bureau bookcase next to the hearth.

Just as well. Sally needed something strong to bring the color back to her face. Come to that, he could use a stiff belt himself.

Depositing her on the couch, he covered her with a mo-hair lap rug draped over one of the chairs. She looked very young in repose; very vulnerable. Much the way she’d looked when they’d started dating during her high school sophomore year. He’d been a senior at the time, and so crazy in love with her that he hadn’t been able to think straight.

Even as he watched, she stirred and, opening her eyes, regarded him with dazed suspicion. “What are you doing?”

“Looking at you,” he said, using the back of the sofa for support and wondering how she’d respond if he told her she had the longest damned eyelashes he’d ever seen, and a mouth so delectable that he knew an indecent urge to lean down and kiss it.

Get a grip, Harrington! You’ve been a widower less than a week, and should be too swamped with memories of your wife to notice the way another woman’s put together—even if the woman in question does happen to have been your first love.

Her glance shied away from him and darted around the room. “How did I wind up in here?”

“I carried you in, after you fainted.”

“I fainted?” She covered her eyes with the back of one hand and groaned in horror. “In front of all those people?”

“It was the best thing you could have done,” he said, limping to the bureau and taking out a three-quarter-full bottle of Courvoisier cognac and two snifters. “You upstaged Colette beautifully. Without you to lambaste, she was left speechless.” He poured them each a healthy shot of the liquor and offered one to her. “This should put you back on your feet.”

“I don’t know about that,” she said doubtfully. “I haven’t eaten a thing today.”

“I wondered what made you pass out.”

“I haven’t had much of an appetite at all since…the accident.”

“Feel up to talking about that night?”

She sat up and pushed her hair away from her face. “I don’t know what else I can say that you haven’t already heard.”

Cautiously lowering himself into the nearest chair, he knocked back half the contents of his glass and, as the warmth of the brandy penetrated the outer limits of his pain, said, “You could try telling me what really happened, Sally.”

The shutters rolled down her face, cloaking her expression. “What makes you so sure there’s more to tell?”