Sea Glass Cottage (36 page)

He’d had three
days to calm down and still it bothered him. After stewing for that long Thane had a few choice words for the man he believed in his heart was the responsible party that had led Isabella down such a foolish path. Logan Donnelly.

So once Thane got Jonah off to school that morning, he went looking for the sculptor. He found him working in the studio next to the museum.

Thane strode through the door and for a couple of minutes watched the guy work on a hunk of marble, chiseling away then smoothing out the stone with a grinder.

“What caused you to move out of the top floor of the lighthouse?” Thane asked, looking for an opening. “Isn’t that why you renovated it in the first place?”

“Tried it, the space didn’t work for me. Besides, I got the lighthouse up and going again because it was something that interested me at the time.”

“You know why I’m here. I didn’t come for small talk.”

“You’re the one standing there babbling about my studio choices.”

Thane huffed out a breath, got down to it. “How could you let Isabella do something so stupid and dangerous? It came to me last night that it had to be you who fronted her the money for three years in this ridiculous, pursuit of getting at Navarro.”

“You’re certain of that, are you? One of these days when you decide to talk to her, you might bring the topic of money up to her.”

“Who else would have that kind of money, the kind it would take to finance this mess? You should know I came in here to flatten you like a pancake.”

Logan put down his grinder, stepped away from what he hoped one day might be considered a potential stroke of genius. “Take your best shot. You’ve wanted to do that for days.”

Thane sent him a contemptuous glower, the kind he’d used on Sunday afternoons to stare down an opposing lineman. “I outweigh you by forty pounds and have a much longer reach. You wouldn’t last two minutes.”

“Probably. And since I don’t wish to have broken bones or to have to call Kinsey to cart me over to Doc’s just now, I’ll simply tell you that I understand where you’re coming from. I don’t blame you a bit for feeling the way you do—pissed off at the world.”

“No, not the world, just you and Isabella.”

“That’s why I’ll give you first shot.”

“Now you’re being ridiculous. I’m not going to bash your face in. I’ve had time to consider the fact that you have kids. Not to mention my own. I don’t want to spend the night in Cody’s jail waiting for my attorney to show up just for taking you out—although it would feel damn good to do it because your actions could have potentially put my son in danger. You and Isabella did a very irresponsible thing without a thought to how it might impact the safety of those around her, namely Jonah.”

“For what it’s worth, that’s been pointed out to me now in a major way by my own lovely, gorgeous wife who was furious thinking that I’d also managed to endanger my own children in the process.”

Thane narrowed his eyes in a lethal squint. “The fact of the matter is both of you wanted this guy so badly you would’ve done anything to get him.”

“Am I arguing that point? No. Because I did want Henry to pay for what he did. We both wanted that. Neither one of us is arguing that one point. That’s the major reason I allowed myself to go off on this tangent to do it. The week Isabella Rialto died, the two of us were grieving to such an extent that maybe we weren’t exactly thinking straight. The nuts and bolts of the plan called for your Izzy to become Isabella, to do whatever was necessary to lure Henry anyway she could. She wanted, no, she needed to do this for herself.”

“See, that’s where I have a problem with this whole thing. You’re supposedly a smart guy. Everyone says so. How does someone like that just sit back and watch while she waits for this guy to come after her? You were nowhere around when she was a sitting duck back on Long Island.”

“Okay, point in your favor. But I’m not sure you really understand the loss of power women like Izzy and Isabella give up when they marry a narcissist and a control freak, a man who takes everything away from them, either all at once or chips away at it daily, little by little, until all the decision process has been taken away from them.”

“I understand that. I’ve watched my share of
Oprah
and
Dr. Phil
. I know about feeling the loss of empowerment.”

“Maybe you think you do. I’m not sure I understand it, not fully anyway, not to the degree that women like Izzy and Isabella did. I never gave up my freedom, my power, not like that for anyone or anything and my guess is neither have you. So both of us are already a step behind the curve when it comes to appreciating what one Isabella wanted to do for the other Isabella and why. Not just that, but she convinced me with one thing she said.”

When Thane started to speak, Logan held up a hand to stop him. “She said that by hiding out, pretending to be Isabella for a while, Garth wouldn’t be able to find her and that he would eventually move on.”

Thane frowned. “I…I hadn’t considered that.”

“Nor had I. But that’s exactly what Garth eventually did. She was wise enough to know his traits and take that path. She looked at all the angles and decided the best thing to do for herself, was to somehow convince Henry that his wife had survived the attack that night. She was convinced that by pretending to be his wife, Henry would try it again. I admit, it sounded reasonable enough to me at the time because Henry was so obsessed with Isabella he couldn’t see straight. That was irrefutable. I ought to know I watched it happened over the years and did nothing about it.”

“You must’ve known Isabella well. How well?”

Logan’s temper finally snapped in full force. “It wasn’t like that. Not ever like that. She was a kid to me. It was actually her father I was closest to—Javier Rialto helped me get established in the art world enough that I could grab a foothold and become what I am today. If not for Isabella’s father I doubt anyone would even know Logan Donnelly from any other struggling artist.”

“Somehow I doubt that.”

“No, it’s true. Believe it. Javier was an influential presence in my life, a respected collector, who knew his stuff. He also knew the right kinds of people to get me embedded into the scene. Do you have any idea all the talented artists out there who go undiscovered? Thousands. Millions. Javier made sure I wasn’t one of them. But the man had one weakness. Javier loved his daughter and wanted to protect her. The Rialtos had been friends with the Navarros for several decades. Javier knew Henry better than anyone did. But on occasion, usually after we’d had too much to drink, Javier would tell me stories about how awful the bastard had been to Isabella over the years. It went back to their childhood. Isabella’s mother, Jenna, even caught him slapping her to the ground a couple times. From what I discovered later, Henry was a disturbed individual who never quite outgrew his idiosyncrasies, translation, his meanness, his tendency to lean toward psychopathic bullying. I suspect Henry killed Javier. He either did it himself or had someone else do it for him. But I can’t prove it.”

“Yeah, that’s what Izzy said, and is one more reason that says your plan was so amazingly ill-conceived.”

“Okay, another point in your favor. But think about it. Henry Navarro made Javier’s death look like an accident. Her father had been actively encouraging Isabella to break it off with Henry. I wasn’t around a lot back then. I’d gone on to spend some time in Tuscany, to work, to create, to add to my inventory. When Javier died on Long Island it took some time for the news to reach me. Even before I had time to digest the loss, to react to my mentor’s death, the next thing I knew Henry had taken charge of everything, the money, the estate, and of course, Isabella. Before I could stop it, they were married in a quickie ceremony without any of her family around.”

“I hate to point this out to you, but you’re not exactly making a case for yourself. Instead, you’re making mine for me. If this Henry did all that and you suspected him of it, then why in hell would you allow Isabella to take such drastic measures to bring him out in the open? And for God’s sakes, why didn’t you at least stand by while Izzy completed the illusion?”

Thane paced back and forth in front of Logan, his anger building up again. “Why not try to get Isabella out of her horrible marriage to Henry while she was still alive, knowing what Javier had told you about this bastard?”

Logan shook his head, sent him a disbelieving look. “You can’t be that clueless. You can’t help someone out of a marriage, even an abusive one, if that person isn’t willing to take that major step to get away. Again, something people who haven’t gone through it couldn’t possibly understand. If they aren’t ready to take that step...if they aren’t ready to get away from their situation, it’s useless to pound away on them. You can encourage. You can be a sounding board, but the decision to leave is ultimately theirs.”

“You mean Isabella wasn’t ready? How could that be? Why on earth…?”

“No, she wasn’t ready. And the short answer is I have no idea why. Guilt plays a huge chunk of my part in all this.”

“Yeah, that’s what my Izzy said, that she feels she should’ve been there for your Isabella that night,” Thane tossed back.

“Now you’re beginning to get the drift. Guilt. Do you have any idea the lengths Izzy went to, to see this thing through? To make sure it was a believable ruse? How committed she was to its success? She took classes in self-defense. She learned how to fire a weapon. Izzy put her life on hold for three years. Three years of living life as Isabella, breathing in her persona and personal habits just in case Henry had sent his emissaries to spy on her. Those first two years she lived at the Rialto family home on Oyster Bay, she did such a compelling job even the neighbors had no reason to believe it
wasn’t
Isabella staying there. They didn’t even question her performance. But after time passed and there was no activity on Henry’s part, she came out here to try to stir things up.”

“And you went along with it every step of the way?”

Logan rubbed his eyes, scrubbed his hands over his face, weary of the discussion. “Yes, I went along with it. Not only that, I didn’t say a word about this to Kinsey. So you see I’ve had a rough couple days with my own problems dealing with my less-than-forthcoming behavior.

“Ah.”

“Until three days ago my own wife didn’t know the truth. And let me tell you Kinsey was
not
happy with me. So believe me when I say I understand where you’re coming from.”

“So Izzy’s past is just as real to you?”

“You bet it is. It’s very real. Garth Lattimer treated her just as shitty as Henry treated Isabella. So you see no one could have played this role more to perfection than Izzy and pull it off the way she did.”

Thane started to pace again, to storm back and forth. “And where is this Garth guy now? Maybe I should look him up.”

“He’s not that hard to find since he still lives in the Denver suburbs in the same house he shared with Izzy. For a year he scoured the country for her and when the private investigator he’d hired couldn’t find a trace of her, Garth got the message. He gave up the hunt and filed for divorce. The next year he remarried a woman he met over the Internet.”

“Someone should’ve stepped up and tipped her off, warned her about what she was getting into.”

“You think we didn’t try? Isabella and I signed up at the same site, found her email address, and sent her several messages as a caution. But some people refuse to see the writing on the wall no matter how large the script is. None of it made a difference. The woman married the son of a bitch anyway.”

“You just called her Isabella.”

Logan blew out a frustrated breath. “Maybe that’s because I don’t think of her as Marisa. I’ve leaned on her as a friend ever since that night in Alberta when Isabella Rialto slipped away from us. She’s stronger than the Isabella Rialto I knew. She’s happier, more at ease forgetting she was ever married to Garth Lattimer. I have no problems thinking of her as Isabella.”

“I’m in love with her. I don’t want to be but I’m in love with her.”

“I figured as much. You wouldn’t be standing here itching to put a fist in my face if it was just lust or a casual fling.”

“But what happens when you find out that you’ve been lied to though? Tell me that much.”

“You either find a way to forgive or you move on. It’s as simple as that.”

“That’s a helluva choice. It’s not that easy.”

“I never said either one was easy.”

“That’s what I was afraid of.”

“It’s never an easy thing to eat crow either.”

“Yeah, especially when I’m in the right. The thing is now I have to figure out how to get over the way I’ve acted like an ass.”

“That’s the easy part. Women are used to us acting like asses most of the time. The deal is to know you were right but still be able to pull off the big apology.”

For the first time in days, Thane grinned. “I guess I could work on that.”