Deeper Than Need (26 page)

Even from hundreds of miles away and behind bars, Anton still managed to screw with her life.

The table shifted and she watched as Noah leaned forward, elbows braced on the table. Fine lines fanned out from his eyes and something that might have been temper continued to linger in his dark-blue eyes.

If he was hers …

A kick of lust burned through her at the thought, but she shoved it aside. No point in dwelling on that now. Those hopes lay behind her, burned to ashes. Refusing to dwell on it, she smiled and gestured to the bottle of wine.

“Ali suggested the red from that winery here … Lanthier?”

“Yeah. That’s the place.” He didn’t even glance at the bottle.

“Want a glass? If not, I’ll be tempted to have the entire bottle myself. It’s definitely been one of those days.”

A faint smile tugged his lips. “I don’t drink.”

“Ah. Sorry. I keep forgetting the preacher thing.”

“It’s not the preacher thing.” He shrugged. “I’ve told you a dozen times—I’m not a preacher anymore. The drinking thing is a me thing, not a preacher thing.”

There was something in his voice, she decided. Then he flicked a glance at the bottle and something glittered in his eyes. Something vivid and bright. Then he blinked and it was gone. Just like that. When he looked back at her, that edge of temper burned hotter, brighter. “I’ll agree with you, though. It’s been a monstrous sort of day—having Jeb show up like he did, that was just the icing on the cake. Leslie was about as pleasant to deal with in person as I imagine she was on the phone.”

“A bundle of joy, then, huh?”

He laughed softly. “Oh, yes.” Leaning back, he slumped in the booth and dragged a hand down his face. “We’re trying to make up for lost time on the job at the café and I didn’t get anything done out at your place.”

“I told you I don’t want you working yourself into the ground on my place.” She curled her fingers around the wineglass, staring into it. Was he going to ask? She wished he would, just so she could get it over with. At the same time, she didn’t want to even
talk
about this.

The silence continued to linger, brittle and tense, and Trinity felt like she’d snap. Snagging her wine from the table, she tossed it back and poured herself another half glass. “Should I turn in my resignation?”

“Your … what?”

“You heard me.” She shot him a narrow look.

“Yeah, I did, but I’m not really following you.”

Drumming her fingers on the table, she met his gaze and held it. No matter how hard it was to look at him, or anybody, she wasn’t going to let the shame she felt over
somebody else’s
actions drive her down. Not anymore. Enough was enough.

“You heard what Micah said. It’s pretty obvious what Detective Sims thinks on the matter.”

Noah curled his lip. “Yeah, well, screw what Jeb thinks.
He
didn’t hire you and
he
doesn’t run my place.
I
do.” He watched her, his eyes unreadable, his face a smooth, blank mask. But there was temper underlying his voice. A lot of it, almost hot enough to burn. “I heard what the boy said, yes. What I fail to understand is why what his
dad
did should have any impact on
your
ability to do the job.”

Her fingers trembled. In an effort to stop it, she hid her hands in her lap and curled them into fists. Outside of that, no sign of the turmoil she felt inside showed. She knew how to hide it when she was falling apart inside, when she was a twisted mess of emotion. When she was scared … when she was confused.

Twisted and confused
summed it up pretty well just then. Without blinking an eye, she said calmly, “Your business could be affected once the word gets out. Apparently, the detective has been poking around in my background. If he knows, chances are others are going to find out.” Then she sighed and glanced back to the play area. She had to accept reality. Micah had already told Joey. Joey knew. Ali knew. Others would find out.

“Micah loves his dad. Sometimes I wonder why, because the man wasn’t exactly
father
material, but he loves him and I don’t lie to my son. Micah knows where he is and it just doesn’t occur to him that people would think … unkindly of us when they hear the truth. So even if Sims keeps this quiet, word will get out because Micah will talk about it. Is that what you want? People talking about the possible criminal you have working for you?”

“You’re telling me that
you
are a criminal?” Noah snorted. “Sorry, Trinity. I’m not buying it.”

The absolute faith in that simple statement hit her hard, square in the chest. There had been only
one
person who had believed in her, right from the start. That had been her father. Well … and Micah. A child’s love in an amazing thing. So accepting, so all consuming. Even knowing what his father had done hadn’t altered Micah’s love for the man. But Micah hadn’t ever once thought
she
had done anything wrong. In
his
eyes, she could do no wrong. It wasn’t exactly as comforting as one might think.

Blowing out a slow, careful breath, she reached for the glass of wine and took a small sip. She felt like she was being pulled apart … from the inside.

“No. I wasn’t involved in anything Anton—Micah’s father—had done. But that didn’t matter to just about anybody who knew me,” she said, shifting her gaze to the wine in her glass, staring down into the dark, ruby-red liquid. If only she could find the answers to life, some simple recipe for peace inside. “Not once everything he’d been doing started to come out. People I’d known for years, people I thought were my friends … they all thought I was involved. Or they thought I knew and had kept quiet.”

“Then I’d say those people didn’t really
know
you.”

Through her lashes she studied him. “You don’t even know what happened, Noah. How can you be so sure?”

“I’m usually a pretty decent judge of character … but even if I hadn’t already had a good feeling about you, I would have figured it out when you told me you don’t lie to your son.” He glanced at Micah. “I see how you are with him, how much you love him. I suspect telling him the truth about his father was probably one of the most painful things you’ve ever done in your life. But you told him the truth because that’s just what you do. That’s just how you are. If you can’t hide something even though it hurts you, then you’re not the kind of person who would have been involved in whatever he was doing.”

The calm, absolute assurance in Noah’s voice was enough to twist her heart around in her chest.

She looked away until the burn of tears faded, until the ache in her throat eased.

“Since you seemed determined to talk about this, I’m just going to ask. What happened? What did he do to you?”

Startled, she looked back at Noah. Determined to talk about it?
I’m not
 … she started to say. She almost
shouted
it. But even as the denial rose inside her, she realized if she said it, she’d be lying.

She’d never
talked
about it. Never
told
anybody. Not her side.

She’d been cross-examined. She’d been interrogated.

But never once had anybody just asked her,
What happened?

Her side of the story. Somebody really just wanted to hear her side of the story.

Licking her lips, she tried to figure out just where to start. Nervously she glanced around. The place wasn’t very busy, but it was the middle of the week. Carryout orders were flying out of the place and there was a line of customers at the counter, but here in the back near the kids’ area it was just them.

Where do I start?.…

At the beginning.

“Anton was hired because I liked him,” she said slowly. “My father owns …
owned
a big advertising firm in New York. One of the biggest. He sold it after all of this.” Staring down into her wineglass, she shook her head. “He was so proud of that company. He built it from the ground up. When he took me on as a junior partner, I was … thrilled. Sooner or later, I thought
I
would take the place over, although I never cared for the business aspects. Paperwork. Management.”

Noah lifted a brow. “You seem to handle paperwork and everything pretty well at my place.”

“Handling it doesn’t mean I like it.” She let herself have another sip of wine, savoring its sweet warmth as it hit her belly, and then she forced herself to continue. “I was more into the creative end—I liked that part, designing stuff, working with people. The company was growing, getting bigger and bigger all the time. Anton was brought in to help with marketing, working with new customers,
finding
us new customers. It made it easy for him.”

*   *   *

The look in her eyes had Noah ready to punch something.

She might think she had it hidden, all that pain, all that shame, all that misery, but he could see it, more of an echo than anything else. But that echo was enough to have Noah ready to spit nails. At the same time, he wanted to go around the table and pull her into his arms, hold her tight, tell her that it was all going to be okay.

He couldn’t make that promise, though, because he knew, just as well as she did, there were always going to be people who’d judge her based on what somebody else had done. That was just life. It sucked, but knowing that it sucked didn’t change it.

Instead of saying anything or offering her false platitudes, he made himself be silent and listen.

“He started overcharging. Had new pricing sheets made up, and since he was the one handling the new accounts they never thought to question it. He started small, too … a few hundred on the little bookstore in Brooklyn. A thousand on a new bar. Eventually, he started getting accounts from bigger places … boutique hotels near Times Square, a couple of national accounts, and that’s where he started taking the bigger risks—he’d be skimming tens of thousands off
those
accounts.”

“Wouldn’t somebody in … shoot, I don’t know how big companies work, but aren’t there invoices and things to be accounted for?”

She gave him a grim smile. “Oh, yes.” She twirled her wineglass around, and for a moment Noah found himself mesmerized by the way the liquid splashed around in the glass.

One drink.

Just one.

Then he jerked his attention back to her, watched as she lifted the glass to her lips and sipped.

“As far as I can figure out, Micah had just been born when he started taking the bigger risks. We started dating almost as soon as he settled in with the company—he chased after me and I let him catch me. Didn’t even put up a fight. I was pregnant within a year. While I was on maternity leave, adjusting to being a new mom, he was getting it on with the girl in Accounts Payable. Others in the company knew. I think some people kept quiet because they felt bad. Me having the new baby. Others didn’t want to get me pissed off—owner’s daughter and all. Looking back, I can remember the whispers. The looks. I was almost always with somebody else when I was out of my office, heading to a meeting, off to a business lunch. There was one time, I’d seen one of the women in the accounts department—standing there, staring toward this group I was heading out with—and she was whispering to somebody else.”

She paused, blew out a breath. “I assumed she was looking at one of my friends … even thought,
Man, I wonder who it is.
It was me. All that time.” Then she shrugged and shifted her attention to the kids in the back. “Micah was almost two when things really came to a head. Anton and I, well, our relationship was getting rocky. I was fed up with him acting like he wasn’t a father—I didn’t need the money, but I wanted him to be a father. Micah loved him. Adored him, asked about him all the time. Stupid me, I’d tell him,
You’ll see Daddy soon.
The nanny I hired for him would bring him into the office twice a week and I would practically trap Anton into having lunch with us, just so my son could see his father. Other than that, Anton came by to visit him a couple of times a month. Up until Micah turned two.”

“What happened when Micah turned two?”

“Everything.” Sadness darkened her eyes. “Within one week,
everything
happened. It was like my entire world exploded. One Sunday, at a barbecue, one of my father’s oldest clients asked me why he’d been overcharged by more than five thousand dollars. Monday, before I could talk to Accounts Payable and figure out what was going on,
another
client—a newer guy—told me that he knew what Anton and I were up to, but maybe he wouldn’t take it personally, he and I could work something out. Between us.”

Blood rushed up to stain her cheeks red as the words hung between her and Noah.

Noah’s eyes glittered like glass. “Did you hit him?”

“No.” She smiled a little. “I wanted to, thought about it. But I was still operating under the delusion that there was a mistake. That something was just wrong with the books or somebody had made an error and we could fix it. That guy had always been an ass, so I just brushed it off. Went to find Anton, determined to figure out what was going on—I’d talk to him, then Accounts Payable—and I ended up walking in on a nooner between Anton and the woman he’d been sleeping with since about halfway through my pregnancy.”

She went quiet, staring down at the table.

The air around her and Noah all but vibrated with the remembered pain, the shame. He reached out and touched her hand, unsure of what to say, what to do.

She looked up at him.

“This sounds awful, but again, the only thing I have to say is,
Did you hit him?
”

It startled a laugh out of her, one that ended on something that sounded like a sob. She covered her face with her hands, and a moment later she whispered, “No. But man, I wish I would have.”

Reaching out, Noah caught her wrists and tugged them down, staring into her pale-grey eyes. “I know from experience it would have made you feel better, for about five minutes.”