The Dirty Secret (18 page)

Killian’s mouth tasted bitter. “Are there more? More secrets that I shouldn’t know, because I’m such an untrustworthy bastard?”

Vessa said nothing, but the tears finally fell, two tracks down her face. “Only one. And it’s not because I shouldn’t tell you, it’s because I don’t want to.”

Humiliation crawled up the back of Killian’s neck. “Donna Edith told me to be patient, but I can’t do this anymore, Vessa. You’re right, I shouldn’t have told you those things about Bengt and Bergman and Starla. But I only did because I do trust
you
. And I don’t want to be with somebody who won’t trust me back.”

“I understand.” Vessa picked up her shoes and then stood. “Thank you for giving me the opportunity to decorate your house.” She walked away, barefoot, toward her car.

Killian turned back to the fountain, unable to watch her leave.

Chapter Seventeen

A Loft

The voice recording played on the speaker of Vessa’s brand new phone, lauding the phone company’s customer service and cheerfully stating that her wait would be another forty-three minutes. Vessa unloaded the dishwasher, and stacked her plates into the packing crates marked Kitchen—Fragile! The lease agreement was stuck to the fridge with magnets, turned back to the last page with the penalties for vacating before the terms were complete.

She didn’t let herself think about the tall man with the deep voice and the long muscled arms that wrapped around her shoulders when he hugged her, or the way she could hear his heart beat beneath his ribs when she laid her cheek on his chest.

This morning she’d driven to the house and left the key and the architecture firm’s purchasing information and Killian’s credit card in an envelope on the mantel. She took the cup with the
V
with her when she left, twisting the lock on the doorknob—and her heart—behind her.

The associate at the cell phone store had asked her if she was okay. She’d pressed her fingertips to her eyes and told him she had allergies. When he explained that her dead phone had been reported stolen and couldn’t be reactivated, she cried again, ugly tears that had no comfortable excuse. He’d called his manager for help. Now she waited, as she returned her existence back into its boxes, to see what of her phone would be salvaged through email backups, and if the past two weeks of hours to Donna Edith’s payroll app were backed up online somewhere. Vessa didn’t even have the agency’s phone number. Or Killian’s.

Vessa packed away the mixer she’d only used once—to make his cookies—and the blender she’d never made drinks with. She found her coffeepot in the box marked Emergency Supplies—Keep Available! She left it there.

She was wrapping her juice glasses in her dinner napkins when a heavy
clang
rang through the loft, like a mallet hitting organ pipes. It took Vessa several seconds to realize the unknown sound was the doorbell. She ran to the window and peered down onto the street. The vehicle below wasn’t a green pickup—it was a pale Nissan sedan. She buzzed the lock and pushed her apartment door ajar.

The feet on the stairs got slower and slower at the top. “Come in,” she called.

“Dad told me where to find you.” Starla stopped in the doorway of the loft, arms folded across her chest. Her hair was in a messy ponytail, and her eyes were swollen and red. “I want answers.”

“Have a seat,” Vessa said, gesturing to the futon couch that faced the window. She glanced at the clock and the morning sun. “Wine?”

“That would probably be a good idea.”

Vessa filled two coffee mugs from the box of white Zinfandel in her fridge. “Sorry about the cups. My wineglasses are packed already.”

“Are you moving?” Starla asked, taking the wine.

“I’ll have to, I’m sure.” Vessa was surprised how calm her voice was. She gulped at the wine, swallowing her sadness of having to leave her adorable loft.

“I’m so angry I could spit nails,” Starla said. “They’re fighting. Mom and Dad. I’m not speaking to either of them right now. I don’t know what to believe.”

She would paint her father’s other daughter a room in spring colors, a pastel palette, budding green and cherry blossoms, with a swath of hot tulip red.

“Are you okay?” She sat down on the opposite end of the couch.

“Yep, I’m fine. Just dandy, for someone who just found out she’s had a sister hidden from her for her entire life. You’re younger than me, aren’t you? If you were older, Mom wouldn’t care so much, I think. But younger means your mom was after mine. Oh my god. This is so gross to think about.”

“You’re a month older than me.” Vessa watched Starla do the math.

“Your mother was the one he got caught with, wasn’t she? The one who refused to testify?”

“Yes. She was an intern, like your mother. They were actually roommates.”

“So Dad cheated on my mom with yours, and he cut it off with your mother when Mom found out she was pregnant with me. They got married, and then discovered your mom was pregnant, too?” She shook her head. “Didn’t any of them ever hear of birth control? Idiots.” Starla huffed. “I need more wine for this.”

Vessa took her mug and refilled it, then topped off her own.

“So why all the secrets?” Starla asked. “Why did they hide you from me?”

“Your mother. My mother.” She sipped at her wine. “My mom wanted to disappear. The whole scandal thing, and all the media. It wasn’t easy for her, and she got out of the political machine. But Dad wouldn’t give me up. And he wanted me to have a relationship with Nana and Grampa.” That sat in her chest, warming, like the wine.

“But not me?”

“It was the terms of your mom staying with Dad, I think. That she didn’t have to deal with me. If your guy cheated on you, and you decided to take him back and start a family, would you want the evidence of the affair displayed for all the public to see?”

“I don’t know. It’s not like it’s your fault. Did you know about me?”

“No. Not until I saw that video of you meeting the president. In the pink coat. Did Nana give that to you?”

Starla nodded, eyes wide over the rim of her mug.

“She gave me the same one, only light blue,” Vessa said.

“I was sixteen.”

“Me, too.”

“Why didn’t you find me?”

The wine had numbed the tip of Vessa’s nose, but she still felt the tears on her cheeks. “Your mother paid me not to,” she said, the last ugly secret she couldn’t bear to tell Killian. “A bribe. No contact with you.” A tear fell with a splat onto her arm. “I took it.” Her mother had brokered the deal.

Her half-sister’s face worked through a rainbow of expressions, pale shock to red anger. “Money?”

“College.”

“Dad wouldn’t help you out?”

“Political figures don’t have a lot of privacy, especially when it comes to money. And paying my college tuition would have raised enough eyebrows that someone would have ferreted out that he’d hidden an illegitimate daughter, right when he got tapped to run in the state election.” She drained her mug. “She worked out an arrangement with my mother. I was the beneficiary of a charity scholarship.” The word
charity
still sat like acid on her tongue, even with the sweet wine.

“But you’re done with school, aren’t you?”

“A scenic artist fresh out of college with only a bachelor’s degree could never afford a place this nice.” Neither could a budding interior decorator, no matter how well her first opening went. She looked out the windows to the view she loved so much. “Celeste rented an apartment in L.A. for me. Leased a car. Paid for my phone. The only condition was that I keep my mouth shut.”

Starla stared into her mug, tipping it to catch the light, like she was searching for a last glimpse of the precious liquid. She pursed her lips in a smirk. “Mom’s gone on all morning about a car that’s been in the state police impound lot for the past two weeks. Apparently, it was found abandoned with marijuana in it, so she has to go to court because the lease is in her name. She wanted to report it stolen but Dad wouldn’t let her.”

“Oops.” Vessa’s head felt like it was filled with helium, staring at the girl who sat the same way she did, one knee up, propping an elbow on top. “I guess he didn’t have a say about the phone.”

At least the open house brochure listed her email address, not her number. She walked to the kitchen, listing slightly sideways, and found her new cell phone. She hung up on the automated hold music and dialed one of the few numbers she knew by heart.

“Piazza,” the voice answered.

“A large Hawaiian for delivery, please.”

“Name,” her old boss demanded.

“Vessa Ratham.”

“Tess! Are you done with your boy problems yet? Because I’ll put you on the schedule for next week.”

Her heart beat sideways with a tipsy whine. “Yes. We’re done.” She closed her eyes, refusing to think about the tall man with the long fingers and the stormy eyes that said as much as his dirty, dirty mouth.

“Tell me you’ll come in on Monday and this pie is on me.”

“I’ll be there. Thank you.” She described the door to her apartment then hung up. The hours at the Piazza would help, and at least she would eat, but it wasn’t enough. She would still have to move, unless Donna Edith could get her a new client, and fast. The wine turned to vinegar in her veins, sour and sad.

Starla took the coffee cup from her hand, and refilled both mugs from the wine faucet. “You want to know something funny? I thought he was having an affair. I heard him on the phone once, saying, ‘I love you, sweetheart,’ and Mom was doing laps in the pool, definitely not on the other end. And they’d fight, him slipping off to make a private call, and Mom making the all-pissed-off face. I used to hate him for it, but at the same time, I couldn’t blame him.”

“That’s horrible.”

“It’s all horrible, and unreal. I keep waiting for it to sink in, and it just won’t,” Starla said.

Vessa rummaged in her cabinets, then handed her a napkin and a square of maple cream fudge.

Starla broke off a corner and placed it on her tongue. She whimpered, touching her mouth with her fingers. “That’s Nana’s recipe, isn’t it? It’s like discovering that someone has been wearing the clothes from your closet without you knowing.”

“They wouldn’t talk to me about you. I think they wanted to.”

“Did you see them a lot?”

“Every July. I stayed with them when Dad had to be back in town. I wasn’t allowed at your house.”

“How did no one find out?”

“Dad’s face isn’t so famous outside Vermont,” Vessa said. “And anyone seeing us would have just assumed I was you.”

Starla raised a dubious eyebrow at Vessa’s hair.

“This isn’t my natural shade,” she said.

Her half-sister choked back her laughter. “Mom and I would always go somewhere in July. To see her mother. Or to Europe. Sometimes we went on cruises.” Starla blinked down at her cup, then looked around the apartment. She frowned at the walls, and then at the boxes and trunks stacked against them. “It looks like a gypsy caravan in here. Do you have a mirror anywhere?”

“In the bathroom.”

Star stood, leaning at an odd angle. “I want to see something.”

Vessa pointed, back toward the little entryway by the door. “It’s on the left.”

“No, you come, too.”

She followed her into the bathroom, and the girls looked into the mirror together. Vessa pulled her hair back, away from her face.

“Oh my god. That is so weird. We could almost be twins. What color
is
your hair, like, naturally? Is your mom a brunette?”

“Auburn. But we both look like Dad. His nose.”

“Did you have to have braces?”

“When I was thirteen.” She stared at the girl who seemed a stranger, then to the mirror, where her own features were doubled.

Star turned away. “I can’t deal with this.” She staggered to the couch, and tucked her feet underneath her legs. “Okay. So tell me this. You had an apartment in California, a car, everything paid for. Why did you come back here?”

“To be closer to Nana and Grampa, after the stroke.” Vessa looked out the window. “Mom moves a lot, with her work. So this is really my only home, even though I was never here more than a few weeks every year.” She set her mug on the steam trunk that served as a coffee table. “I wasn’t expecting you to be here. I thought you’d be in college somewhere, or in Montpelier, with Dad and your mother.”

“Mom still lives here. Dad commutes. He’s got an apartment that he stays at when the state is in session. But yep, I wanted to be near them, too. That’s why I went to UVM. And because it’s good for Dad, for me to go to a state school.”

“That’s part of why my mom went along with all of it. She didn’t want me to have to make choices based on what was good for someone else.” Vessa looked away. “They paid her, too.”

“Well, she would need child support, wouldn’t she?”

Something warm and light, like sunshine—or perhaps alcohol fumes—slid around in Vessa’s brain, in her heart. She hadn’t expected to
like
her half-sister.

“What does Killian think of all this?” Starla asked.

“I haven’t spoken to him since the open house,” she said, running her finger around the rim of the cup as if it were a wineglass.

“You should call him. He looked completely wrecked when I left.”

The doorbell rang. Vessa ran downstairs barefoot, cash in hand, to fetch the pizza. When she came back, Starla was curled up in a ball on the couch, passed out cold.

Vessa watched her, wondering if she looked the same when she slept, young and naive, her lips parted slightly.

Out the window, the sunlight bounced off the lake, beyond the tiny city. She would miss the view, but she had roots now, family and friends, and a brilliant start to a career doing what she loved. The mask was off.

And she was lonelier than she’d ever been in her life.

Her new phone beeped and chirped and buzzed on the kitchen counter, finally synching the data from her old number to the new one. She’d missed five calls from Killian. She couldn’t feel her thumb when she pressed the voice mail button.

“Vessa, it’s me. I just wanted to make sure you got home okay.” Sounds of the open house—chatter, the clink of wineglasses and a casual toast—filled the recording, “Yeah. Okay. Bye.”

The second message had less background noise. The party was distant. “Hey. I just met your dad. He’s really cool. And really proud of you. So I just wanted to tell you that I get it. The first impression thing. He shook my hand and all I could think was ‘oh shit, does he know I’m knocking boots with his daughter?’ So, yeah. Can we talk? Could you call me back?”

“Vessa?” This time his voice was clear, no echoes or background voices. “I didn’t mean I didn’t want you.” His Southern accent was more pronounced than usual. “I just want to know you, and I want to be someone you can trust. Please?”

The next message had a long period of garbled rock n’ roll before he spoke. “This is why y’all had to get a restraining order on Titus Androcles, isn’t it? No, Androcles was the lion. You pulled the thorn out from some poor bastard’s paw and he couldn’t let you go. I think you put one in mine.
Hey
!”