Passion in Secret

“You and I were once close enough that we learned to read each other’s minds pretty well. I always knew when you were trying to hide something from me, and I haven’t forgotten the signs.”

She swirled her drink but did not, he noticed, taste it. Why was she being so cagey? Could it be that she was afraid the booze might loosen her tongue too much and she’d let something slip? “That was a long time ago, Jake. We were just kids. People grow up and change.”

“No, they don’t,” he said flatly. “They just become better at covering up. But although you might have fooled everyone else, including the police, you’ve never been able to fool me. There’s more to this whole business than anyone else but you knows, and I’m asking you, for old times’ sake, to tell me what it is.”

Just for a moment, she looked him straight in the eye and he thought she was going to come clean. But then the door opened and Fletcher appeared. “I expect you might need this, Jake,” he said, brandishing the cane. “And I wondered if Sally felt well enough for one of the chauffeurs to drive her home, before the cars fill up with other people.”

Masking his annoyance at the interruption, Jake said, “Can’t it wait another five minutes? We’re in the middle of something, Fletcher, if you don’t mind.”

“No, we’re not,” Sally said, throwing off the blanket and swinging her legs to the floor. “If you can spare a car, I’d be very grateful, Mr. Burton. I’m more than ready to leave.”

Frustrated, Jake watched as she tottered to her feet and wove her way to the door. Short of resorting to physical force, there was nothing he could do to detain her. This time.

But he’d see to it there was a next time. And when it happened, he’d make damn good and sure she didn’t escape him until he was satisfied he knew the precise circumstances which had finally freed him from the hell his marriage had become.

CHAPTER TWO

YOU’VE never been able to fool me, he’d said, but he couldn’t be more wrong. She’d fooled Jake about something a lot more momentous than the events leading up to Penelope’s untimely end. She was very good at keeping secrets, even those which had ripped her life apart, both literally and figuratively.

Guarding this latest would be easy, as long as she didn’t let him slip past her guard. And the only way to avoid that was to avoid him. Because, in her case, the old adage Out of sight, out of mind, had never applied to Jake Harrington. Just the opposite. No matter how many miles or years had separated them, he’d never faded from her memory. If anything, distance had lent him enchantment, and seeing him again had done nothing to change all that. The magic continued to hold.

He looked older, of course—didn’t they all?—but the added years sat well on him. The boy had become a man; the youthful good looks solidified into a tough masculine beauty. Broader across the shoulders, thicker through the chest, he cut an impressive figure, especially in his military uniform. A person had only to look at him to know he’d seen his share of trouble, of tragedy, and emerged stronger for it. It showed in his manner, in the authority of his bearing.

This was not a man to shy away from the truth or crumble in the face of adversity. And she supposed, thinking about it as she made her way along the crowded halls of Eastridge Academy on the following Monday morning, in that respect at least he wasn’t so very different from the-boy who’d stolen her heart, all those years ago, in this very same school. Even at eighteen, he’d possessed the kind of courage which was the true mark of a man.

Still, Sally couldn’t imagine telling him about Penelope. Male pride was a strange phenomenon. It was one thing for a man to climb behind the controls of a fighter jet and risk life and limb chasing down an anonymous enemy. And quite another to confront betrayal of the worst kind from the woman he’d married, especially if he discovered he was the last to know about it.

The senior secretary called out to her as she passed through the main office on her way to the staff lounge. “Morning, Sally. You just missed a phone call.”

“Oh? Any message.”

“No. Said he’d try to catch you later on.”

He? “Did he at least give a name?”

“No.” The secretary eyed her coyly. “But he had a voice to die for! Dark and gravelly, as though he needed a long drink of water which I’d have been happy to supply. Sound like anyone you know?”

Premonition settled unpleasantly in the pit of Sally’s stomach but she refused to give it credence. Plenty of men had dark, gravelly voices. That Jake could be numbered among them was pure coincidence. “Probably someone’s father calling to complain I give too much homework. If he happens to phone back, try to get a number where he can be reached. I’m going to be tied up with students all day.”

“Will do. Oh, and one more thing.” The secretary nodded at the closed door to her left. “Mr. Bailey wants to see you in his office before classes start.”

Oh, wonderful! A private session with the Academy principal who also happened to be her brother-in-law and definitely not one of her favorite people. The day was off to a roaring start!

“You asked to see me, Tom?”

Tom Bailey looked up from the letter he was reading, his brow furrowed with annoyance at the interruption of Very Important Administrative Business. “This isn’t a family gathering, Ms. Winslow. If you’re determined to ignore professional protocol, at least close the door before you open your mouth.”

“Good morning to you, too.” Without waiting to be invited, she took a seat across from him. “What’s on your mind, Mr. Bailey?”

“Margaret tells me you managed to get yourself invited to the reception at the Burtons’ on Saturday.”

“I prefer to say I was coerced—as much by your wife as anyone else.”

He leaned back in his fancy swivel chair and fixed her in his pale-eyed stare, the one he used to intimidate freshmen. “Regardless, let me remind you what I said when all this mess with Penelope Harrington started. Our school prides itself on its fine reputation and I won’t tolerate its being sullied by scandal. Bad enough you’ve been on staff less than a month before your name’s splashed all over the front pages of every newspaper within a fifty-mile radius, without any more shenanigans now that the fuss is finally beginning to die down. I did you a favor when I persuaded the Board of Governors to give you a position here, because—”

“Actually,” Sally cut in, “I’m the one who did you a favor, Tommy, by stepping in at very short notice when my predecessor took early maternity leave and left you short one art teacher.”

He turned a dull and dangerous shade of red. Subordinates did not interrupt the principal of the Academy and they particularly did not challenge the accuracy of his pronouncements. “You showed up in town unemployed!”

“I came home looking forward to a long-overdue vacation which I cut short because you were in a bind.” She glanced pointedly at the clock on the wall. “Is there anything else, or am I free to go and do what the Board hired me to do? I have a senior art history class starting in ten minutes.”

If it hadn’t been beneath his dignity, he’d have gnashed his perfectly flossed teeth. Instead he made do with a curt, “As long as we understand one another.”

“I’ve never had a problem understanding you, Tom,” she said, heading for the door. “My sister’s the one I can’t figure out. I’ve never been able to fathom why she married you.”

As soon as the words were out of her mouth, she regretted them. She’d been known as a wild child in her youth, but she liked to think she’d matured into a better person since—one for whom taking such cheap shots wasn’t her normal style. But “normal” had been in short supply practically from the minute she’d set foot in town again, beginning with the morning she and Penelope Burton Harrington had happened to run into one another in the Town Square.

“Sally!” Penelope had fairly screamed, rushing to embrace her as if a rift spanning nearly a decade had never crippled their friendship. “Oh, it’s wonderful to see you again! It’s been like living in a tomb around here lately, but now that you’re back, it’ll be just like old times, and we can kick some life into the place.”

The cruel irony of her words had come back to torment Sally during the long, sleepless nights since the accident. But thanks to Tom’s having hired her, at least her days were too busy to allow for much wallowing in useless guilt, which made her parting remark to him all the more unforgivable. To satisfy her own sense of fair play, the least she could do was seek him out later and apologize.

She had a full teaching load that day, though, plus a meeting at lunch with the nit-picking head of the Fine Arts department, and an after-school interview with a furious student who didn’t understand why copying an essay on Henri Matisse from the Internet was plagiarism and warranted a big fat F on his midterm report.

Somehow, the events of first thing slipped to the back of her mind and she forgot about Tom. She forgot, too, about that morning’s phone call from the man who hadn’t left a message.

But he didn’t forget about her. He came to her classroom just as she was stuffing her briefcase with the assignments she planned to mark that evening. By then it was after five o’clock and the building was pretty much deserted except for the cleaning staff. In fact, when she heard the door open, she was so sure it was the janitor, come to empty the waste bins and clean up the sinks, that she said, “I’ll be out of your way in just a second,” without bothering to look up from her task.

The door clicked closed which, in itself, should have alerted her to trouble. “No rush. I’ve got all the time in the world,” came the reply, and there it was: the dark, gravelly voice which had so captivated the school secretary earlier.

It didn’t captivate Sally. It sent shock waves skittering through her. The stack of papers in her hand flipped through her fingers and slithered over the floor. Flustered, she dropped to her knees and began gathering them together in an untidy bundle.

“I’d no idea teachers put in such long hours,” Jake said, his cane thudding softly over the floor as he came toward her. “Let me help you pick those up.”

“No, thank you!” Hearing the betraying edge of panic in her voice, she took a deep breath and continued more moderately, “I don’t need your help. In fact, you shouldn’t be here at all. If Tom Bailey finds out—”

“He won’t. His was the only car in the parking lot and he was leaving as I arrived. We’re quite alone, Sally. No one will disturb us.”

She was afraid of that! “Oh, really? What about the cleaning staff?”

“They’re busy in the gym and won’t get down to this end of the building for at least another hour.” His hand came down and covered hers as she scrabbled with the pages still slipping and sliding from her grasp. “You’re shaking. Are you going to faint again?”

“Certainly not!” she said, scooting away from him before he realized how easily his touch scrambled her brains and stirred up memories best left untouched. “I just don’t like people creeping up and taking me by surprise, that’s all.”

“I’m not ‘people,’ and I didn’t creep.” He tapped his bad leg. “It’s a bit beyond my capabilities, these days.”

“No, you’re the wounded hero come home to bury his wife, but if you insist on being seen with me at every turn, you’re going to lose the public outpouring of sympathy you’re currently enjoying, and become as much of a pariah as I have.”

“I’m not looking for sympathy, my lovely. I’m looking for information.”