Anabel Unraveled (39 page)

She sighed. “I’m sorry.”

“I think it’s best if we don’t talk,” I muttered.

She gave me a sad little smile. “I remember saying the very same thing to you.”

And I was reminded yet again of what I had done to her, and I was shamed into silence.

“I need you to not be mad at me,” she pleaded.

“It’s hard to be mad at you when you’re all pitiful in your hospital bed,” I offered.

“There’s the Jared I know! Much better.” Anabel leaned forward. “Look, it’s just . . .” She searched for words. “I guess a lot of people around me, I view in black and white, you know?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well,” she continued, “it’s like, who’s good and bad, you know? Like I see Sam as a good person, Matt as a good person, your sister as a good person.” She stopped.

“Alexis not so much?”

She laughed a little. “She really hates me, doesn’t she?”

“I don’t see why,” I said.

“You know what the weird thing is? We were actually quasi-getting along for a little bit there, before I started telling everyone about the baby.” She paused. “Maybe that’s it. Maybe it’s the embarrassment I caused. But anyway, the point is everyone else I see in black and white. But not you.”

“And how do you see me?”

“You’re like me,” she smiled. “You’re somewhere in the gray. And like I can deal with all of my faults and failings, I can deal with yours.”

“So you see me like you see yourself? That’s hardly a fair comparison,” I protested.

“Maybe so. But I think maybe being with Matt . . . someone who’s not in the gray . . . might make me a little less . . . dark,” she explained.

“So we’re too alike?”

“In certain ways, yes,” she agreed.

“Wow.” And once again, she had me at a loss.

She looked thoughtful. “It’s rather a breakthrough for me, to admit that. Isn’t that exciting? I think I’m making some progress.”

“It would be exciting if the mother of my child wanted to raise my daughter with me,” I retorted.

She sighed. “What do you want me to do, Jared? What do you want me to say? I can’t just make my feelings magically change.”

“No, but you could give us a chance,” I argued.

“Why?” Now she was wide-eyed. “Give me a good reason, Jared, one that does not involve Emma, and I will consider it. But you have to give me a darn good reason, and telling me you love me just does not cut it.”

“You are different, Anabel, just so different from any other woman I’ve ever been with. I care about you so much. I was scared out of my wits when I thought you might be dead. I spent months trying to contact you, and now that we are actually talking, I am afraid to leave you because I worry that you won’t be here when I come back.”

She smiled at me. “Oh Jared, you gave me a cell phone, remember? You can always contact me now.”

“Matt hates me. It’s only a matter of time before he sways you to his side.”

“Matt goes out of his way to be respectful of the fact that you and I are having a baby,” she pronounced. “Also, I do not know if you have noticed this, but I have a tendency to have my own opinions, no matter how much they differ from those closest to me. Since you’ve known me, I totally defied my father, I haven’t listened at all to my brother—the man who was once the leader of the free world— and in spite of the fact that my bodyguard does not like your presence, I still keep you around.” She grinned at me and I felt the knot in my stomach unclenching.

“You still keep me around, huh?” As usual, it was hard to be mad at her.

“Now look,” she lowered her voice, “I need you to do me a favor.”

“What’s that?”

“Look at this food.” She pointed to her untouched breakfast tray. “It’s disgusting, and there is no way I can eat it. This is where you come in.”

“I’m not supposed to leave you, Anabel—”

She waved a hand. “Oh please, has anything happened to me? I just want you to run down to the Burger King in the cafeteria and please bring me a Croissanwich.”

“That sounds just about as disgusting as your tray of food looks,” I told her.

“No, they’re delightful,” she sighed. “Please, Jared?” And she shot me the big blue eyes.

“Alright,” I groaned, getting up.

Anabel clapped her hands. “Thank you so much.”

“Just do me a favor, okay? Don’t tell Matt about this,” I warned her. “He’ll kill me.”

Anabel was the picture of innocence. “Of course not. I’d like some hash browns as well. Oh, and a glass of orange juice.”

“I take it you’re over your morning sickness.”

“Jared, I’m so hungry,” she wailed.

So against my better judgment, against Matt’s warning, I left her.

Chapter 43—Anabel

It was way too easy to manipulate Jared. I shook my head at the thought. I sat up in my bed and started to pull my hair into a braid. It was greasy, and I briefly contemplated how much I desperately needed a shower.

After Jared had been gone for about ten minutes the door swung open, and I was about to greet the nurse when I realized that it wasn’t her at all. It was someone whose presence made me very uneasy. She closed the door, and then I was face to face with Alexis. She quietly entered the room and came to stand next to me. “Hello, Anabel.”

“Hi, Alexis,” I stammered. “I have to say, you were the last person that I expected to come visit me.”

She cocked her beautiful head, and glanced around the room. “This isn’t a social call. It’s a business one.” I did not like her tone at all.

“What do you mean?” I felt a slight adrenaline rush, and I wanted to be anywhere but here. Alone with Alexis.

“You understand why I’m here, don’t you, Anabel?” She eyed me speculatively. “You and I have never gotten along, so I’m not going to play at pleasantries with you. Besides, we don’t have a lot of time.”

“Time? For what?” I squeaked.

“You’ve ruined my life, you know” she went on, slipping on a pair of gloves. “I didn’t think that it was possible that someone so…inconsequential…could do something like that. I’ve spent so many years worried about my enemies here, but you…in a matter of weeks you have destroyed everything.” Her tone was so matter of fact; she could have been talking about the weather. “You’ve turned my husband against me. You’ve taken my children away from me. Sam and I are probably going to get a divorce.”

I was shocked. “I had no idea.”

“Mm,” she said. It was so unnerving, she was completely emotionless. But I felt my heartbeat racing and I started to wonder if it might be a good idea to yank out my IV and run for it.

“But you know, Anabel,” she continued, edging closer to me, “that’s not what got me. What bothered me the most is the fact that you have taken away from me the only person who I ever truly loved.”

“Alexis, I’m sorry about Sam, I—”

“Sam?” she stopped, and then laughed. A high, cruel laugh. “No, it was never Sam. I just used him to get to where I wanted to go. And then you destroyed all that we built.”

“I don’t understand.”

“You don’t have to,” she returned. “He’ll be back soon, won’t he? He won’t leave his precious Anabel alone for long.” The disdain dripped from her voice, and it was then that I fully understood the depths of her hatred for me.

So I began to panic. “No, Jared will be right back.”

“We haven’t much time then.” She gave me another icy smile. “You know, I’ve never done anything like this before, but to tell you the truth, I think I’m going to enjoy it, Anabel.” And then she shoved me against the bed, hard.

“Alexis!” I gasped. She was pressing right on my chest. “Alexis, the baby—”

“Shh, Anabel,” she whispered, taking a pillow and pressing it against my face. “It’ll all be over soon.”

So this was it. I was going to die. Well, I wasn’t going to go without a fight. I kicked her, managing to knock Alexis away from me and against the wall, and I attempted to get myself extricated from all the medical equipment that was binding me to the bed, but I knew she was coming, and—

“Lexie,” I heard a low voice say.

I looked up as she turned. “Jared?” she asked. The hatred was gone from her voice; it was now soft and gentle.

He stood in the doorway, but this wasn’t a Jared I had ever seen before. His eyes, normally so cool, were full of feeling—and even compassion. “Lexie,” he crooned again, in a voice that was almost a caress. “What are you doing?”

She trembled, and it dawned on me then that Alexis’ biggest problem wasn’t what I had done to my brother. It wasn’t even that I had made a mockery of everything they stood for. Even now as she stood inches away from me, wanting to kill me, it suddenly hit me that while she had never been all that great to me, she hadn’t turned nasty until that night at Blair House when she had heard Jared admit that he might be in love with me.

Because at the heart of it, while she missed the power and her status, nothing had blown Alexis away more than the fact that Jared could feel that way about me. Me. Not her.

I swallowed. That’s what all of this was about. For the first time, I saw how she stared at him, her expression raw. I could feel it and, probably more than anyone else had ever been able to, I understood it.

Alexis was in love with Jared. Every emotion that manifested itself on her beautiful face betrayed that. I had never seen her like this—so weak, so tremulous and fragile. So needy.

My eyes went to Jared, and I saw he wasn’t any better off than she was. His face was pained, and again, in that voice that was almost sweet, he said, “Lexie, why are you doing this?”

“She’s nothing, Jared,” she told him, and her voice almost broke. “She’s nothing. So why her? Why her and not . . .” But she couldn’t finish.

So Jared did it for her. “Why her and not you?” He came closer to her. “You know why. I couldn’t do it to Sam.”

“He hates you,” she whispered, touching his arm. “He hates you, because of her. So what does it matter anymore?”

It was gut-wrenching, watching this. I watched him touch her face. “Once upon a time you loved him, you know.”

“She ruined everything,” she declared, and her voice hardened.

“No, it was before Anabel.” Now his arm gently went to her waist. “Look, I was flattered, but I never took it seriously, and I thought you never did either. But I had to back away after that night in Vermont.”

“Why?” Now she sounded like a child. Her tone was soft and pleading. “I wanted it, Jared. And you did, too.”

“Of course I did,” he murmured, slipping his other arm around her. “But what did you want from me? No good would have come from it.”

“If you leave her,” she began, reaching up to him. “If you leave her, I won’t hurt her. But Charlie will. He knows she knows too much.”

Charlie. Oh my gosh, Charlie had killed my dad. I gripped the rails of my bed, reeling from this knowledge.

But it didn’t look like it had even registered with Jared. “Alright then, Lexie,” he agreed. “I’ll leave with you, right now. And I won’t look back.”

“Oh, Jared,” she breathed and then kissed him.

Now when I kissed Jared, I was always a bit hesitant, but Alexis kissed him with complete abandon. It was all I could do to just watch and feel the electricity that passed between them. It shook me to my very core. How could I have missed it before? The chemistry between those two . . .

But then suddenly Jared broke apart from her, and in a flash pinned her against the wall. “Anabel,” he barked. “Call security.”

But I couldn’t. I just stared at Alexis’ face, pressed against the wall, and I saw the hurt, anger, and betrayal that overwhelmed her as she realized Jared had used her to protect me. Then I watched as everything drained out of her and she deflated, and all of the hope left her.

I know she would’ve killed me without a thought. But I couldn’t help but feel extreme pity for her.

“Anabel!” he snapped. “Push the call button, if nothing else!”

So I did. I sat there in silence and watched the scene unfold: the nurse immediately came to my room and when she saw Alexis and Jared, called security. I watched as two police men handcuffed Alexis and led her away. I watched Jared call my brother and tell him what had happened, and I saw the pain that flashed across Jared‘s face at Sam‘s angry response.

And then we were alone, and I think Jared realized I hadn’t said anything to him. “You okay?” he asked, taking a seat next to me.

“What happened in Vermont?” I whispered.

He sighed. “Your brother was in Vermont when he found out he was to assume office. He and Alexis and I celebrated, and Alexis especially drank too much.” He paused.

I kept my eyes on the floor. “Okay.”

“She kissed me and then apologized in front of Sam,” he continued. “And then as I was leaving to go to my hotel room, she insisted on walking me out, and kissed me again.” He swallowed. “I just laughed it off, especially since we had never really gotten along. I figured it was just because she was high on the alcohol.”

“Jared, that sort of thing doesn’t erupt from two previous kisses. Get to the point.”

“After I went to bed, she came into my room.” He stopped again. “Do you really want to hear this?”

I nodded mutely.

“She climbed into my bed, but—” he stopped. “But we didn’t. I could never betray Sam.”

“Was that the only time?” My voice was small.

“Lexie was persistent,” he admitted.

“See? You even have a nickname for her.” I attempted to swallow the lump that was forming in my throat.

“We never—” and he searched for a word—“consummated it, if that’s what you mean.” He shook his head. “Look, Anabel, I know what you’ve heard and what you probably think of me, but I couldn’t do that to your brother. I‘ve never slept with Alexis. And what happened between you and me stopped her from chasing me around anymore. She put me on her hate list the moment you arrived here.”

“You should have told me,” I whispered.

“Why? And make you think even worse of me? I didn’t want to press my luck,” he persisted.

“Did you love her?” I asked. “And do you still?”

“Anabel, no,” he denied, trying to hold me, but I pulled away.

“Then explain to me what I just saw.” Now I sat up. “I’ve never seen anything like that. There’s something between you two.”