Home Before Midnight (22 page)
Read Home Before Midnight Online
Authors: Virginia Kantra
Tags: #Contemporary Romance, #mobi, #Romantic Suspense, #epub, #Fiction
Paul would make sure someone else took the blame.
BAILEY couldn’t wait to go home.
Okay, not home, exactly. The feng shui hall and blue-flowered bedroom in her parents’ house no longer felt like home, and her studio apartment in East Village had been sublet to a massage therapist from Ohio named Ken.
But away from here.
The house was silent now. The guests were gone. Regan was somewhere. Upstairs, Bailey hoped. Dorothy had shown up with a covered casserole made with Campbell’s cream of celery soup. She stayed the requisite half-hour, finally leaving Bailey with a hissed reminder to reapply her lipstick.
As if she should be trolling for hookups at Helen’s funeral reception.
Her mother had also given Bailey a hug and the keys to her car. Bailey appreciated both, even though accepting the keys reminded her sharply that at twenty-six she had nothing to call her own but a few pieces of furniture in storage and a three-ring notebook with the rough draft of her first novel inside.
She sprinkled powdered detergent into the dishwasher door and slammed it shut to run another load. She wanted better.
She wanted to matter. Somehow. Somewhere.
Not here.
It was hardly a choice. More a realization, whispering at the back of her mind, coalescing, heavy and cold, in her belly.
She shook a dish towel over the sink. She wouldn’t find what she wanted here.
She’d thought she had. Or that she could. She did intellectually stimulating, well-paid work for a man who professed to admire her mind and support her goals.
And told her—again and again—her work wasn’t ready to show to anyone but him.
Bailey twisted the towel in her hands.
Steve’s dark drawl joined the whisper at the back of her mind.
It wouldn’t be the first time an employer took advantage of an employee. . . . Seems to me he does it all the time
.
It wouldn’t be the first time an employer took advantage of an employee. . . . Seems to me he does it all the time
.
No, she didn’t belong here. Not anymore.
She draped the dish towel over the bar of the oven to dry. But how could she leave so soon after Helen’s death?
The heaviness settled in her stomach. How could she stay?
She set the coffeemaker to brew in the morning and propped the note for the cleaning lady in its usual place by the phone. Flipping off the kitchen lights, she made her way through the darkened first floor to the front door.
“Bailey.”
Just her name, spoken out of the darkness, stopped her at the base of the stairs. She turned her head.
Paul slumped in one of the big leather chairs flanking the fireplace, cradling a brandy glass in his hands.
Bailey cleared her suddenly dry throat. “I was just leaving.”
He didn’t say anything. The light from the hall cast shadows on his haggard face and hollowed eyes.
She should go. She was going.
But habit and compassion made her say, “Can I get you anything first?”
“You left,” he accused.
Bailey blinked. She hadn’t gone anywhere yet. “It’s late.”
“Before,” he said, a hint of impatience in his tone. “You didn’t ride home with me from the funeral.”
Bailey was relieved, both because he sounded more like himself and because he was making sense now. Sort of. “I told you I got another ride.”
“And this offer, this ride, from—someone—was more important to you than the fact that I needed your support.”
Bailey’s heart plummeted to join her stomach. Obviously, he’d been drinking. And she’d had enough dates that began or ended in bars to know you couldn’t reason with a drunk.
She tried anyway. “I didn’t think it would look right, my being alone with you like that.”
“And avoiding me looked so much better.” Paul shook his head. “You drove off from my wife’s funeral with the detective trying to frame me for her death.”
“It wasn’t like that.” Her voice sounded shaky. Defensive. Could he hear it?
“What did he want?” Paul asked.
Bailey’s heart pounded.
Maybe I wanted to warn you
.
.
“To talk, I guess,” she said.
“What did you tell him?”
Did she really want to blurt out her confession of misplaced devotion and thwarted hope?
No shame in not coming right out with it.
No shame in not coming right out with it.
No
. Bad enough Steve knew about her stupid crush. Telling Paul would only make the situation worse. Not to mention unbearably awkward. She couldn’t stand his pity. And she wouldn’t know what to do with anything else.
. Bad enough Steve knew about her stupid crush. Telling Paul would only make the situation worse. Not to mention unbearably awkward. She couldn’t stand his pity. And she wouldn’t know what to do with anything else.
She hedged. “Nothing much. We talked a little about my work.”
“About me.” Paul rose impatiently. “What did you tell him about me?”
Bailey took a deep breath. “I said you were devoted to your wife.”
“Dear Bailey.” Paul touched her cheek. “Always so loyal.”
She jerked her head back. Was he mocking her?
“Look, it’s been a long day,” she said. “I should—”
“It has been. A very long, very difficult day.” Paul’s hand dropped, skimming her arm, brushing her hand.
Bailey started.
“A difficult week.” He braceleted her wrist. “A difficult year.” He tightened his grip.
Bailey backed into an end table. “Uh . . .”
“It will get better,” Paul promised. “Soon. When we’re back in New York.”
She could not believe this. Did not want to believe this could be happening now, when he was free and she was—literally, finally!—on her way out the door.
“I don’t know how I would have made it through without you,” he whispered. His breath was warm and laced with brandy.
“Always happy to help,” she said, insanely perky.
Oh, God,
she wanted to go.
she wanted to go.
He smiled. “That’s what I’m counting on,” he said, and lowered his head to hers.
His mouth was hot and wet. Invasive.
Shock kept her still for one second. Two. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move, while her mind raced in panic.
He was grieving. Drunk. He didn’t know what he was doing.
She didn’t know what to do.
She felt the bulge of his erection as he pressed against her, and revulsion rose in her, sharp as nausea. She flattened her palms against his chest to push him away.
“This is cozy.” Regan’s voice rattled into the overheated atmosphere like hailstones in July. “Are we celebrating something?”
Bailey stumbled back, almost knocking over the table. Regan stood at the base of the stairs, her blond hair blazing in the light of the chandelier, her face contorted.
“No, I . . . it’s not what you’re thinking.”
“Gee, really?”
“I was just telling Paul how sorry I was.”
“Sorry?” Regan’s voice cracked. “You’re not sorry. You’re pathetic. He doesn’t get anything, you know. Not if he killed her. And not if he remarries, either. So you’re wasting your time.”
Unreality gripped Bailey. “I’m not . . . It wasn’t . . . Paul, tell her!”
But he looked at her as if he’d never seen her before. “He didn’t get anything in a divorce, either,” Regan said. “But I guess he told you that.”
“No, he didn’t. We never . . .” This was a nightmare. “Paul?”
He roused himself to speak slowly. “Helen’s death was an accident.”
Under the panic, under the disbelief, anger grew. “Of course it was.”
“She was in the pool when you found her.”
“Yes!”
Oh, God, he didn’t think . . . he didn’t suspect . . .
He did. He and Regan thought she had killed Helen because she wanted Paul and Paul wanted Helen’s money.
She was screwed.
“I don’t believe you,” Regan said. “And the police won’t, either. Not when I tell them what I saw tonight.”
She could deny it, Bailey thought. Steve might believe her.
Your mother told me you weren’t romantically involved. Which is what you would have told her whether you were or not
.
.
She shivered. Or he might not.
I’m keeping an open mind,
he’d said.
he’d said.
But that was before Regan went running to him with the news that on the night of Helen’s funeral she’d caught her stepfather kissing his personal assistant.
Bailey was the first one to find Helen dead. It wasn’t that big a stretch to imagine she was the last person to see Helen alive. That she was the one who killed her.
“Regan.” Even as she spoke, Bailey felt the hopeless-ness of her appeal. Except for the hectic color in her cheeks, the girl’s face could have been carved in stone. “You’re upset. We’re all tired. Maybe we should talk in the morning.”
She looked at Paul, willing him to get involved, but he wouldn’t meet her gaze. His face was strained and pale.
He could still say something to support her. To protect her. All he had to do was tell the truth.
Why didn’t he say something?
“I don’t have anything to say to you,” Regan said. “I want you the fuck out of my house.”
Bailey struggled not to fall apart. “Okay,” she said with as much dignity as she could muster.
Which wasn’t much. Her knees wobbled as she crossed the marble floor to the front door. She tugged it open, her hands shaking.
She was never coming back.
SHE had to go back.
Bailey hugged her knees and stared at the blue-flowered wallpaper and faced facts. She couldn’t duck her responsibilities. She still had Paul’s backup files and the evidence boxes. She had to give them back.
She could go in the morning, early, when she wouldn’t have to face her mother and her questions, when there was a good chance Regan would be asleep. She would stack the cartons in his office and leave her letter of resignation on his desk.
Under the circumstances, she didn’t think he would require two weeks’ notice. And if he did . . . well, he wasn’t going to get it, that was all.
No more half-measures. No more going with the flow and hoping for the best and imagining things would somehow work out if she didn’t ask for too much, if she made other people happy, if she made them like her.
She was quitting. Tomorrow. And then she would get on with her life.
Assuming she wasn’t arrested.
Okay, she couldn’t think about that right now. Later she would figure out what to do about what Regan saw and what she would say and whether to talk to Steve or immediately hire a lawyer. Right now she just wanted every vestige of Paul Ellis out of her life.
Scrambling off her bed, she gathered an armload of loose papers, printouts of articles and clippings of reviews, promotion schedules and sales reports, notes and maps and lists. She hesitated over the notebook on her bedside table, the one with the purple cover. Her fingers traced the bold black words: TANYA DAWLER. MY DIARY. KEEP OUT.
She flipped it open.
The guys who have sex with you at a party on Saturday night won’t even talk to you at school on Monday morning. But they’ll talk about you. In the locker room, in the hall. You can act like you don’t care. I mean, they’re assholes, right? But it hurts! It hurts.
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