The Perfect Letter (24 page)

“No, no,” Leigh said, pulling her nightgown down again, her body still charged with Jake's touches, clumsily coming back to herself. “We're sorry.”

“I'll go,” the maid said, moving to close the door, but Leigh, trying to stop her, bumped into the cart and knocked over a dozen rolls of toilet paper.

“Oh no, I'm so sorry,” Leigh said, bending down to help the maid
pick up the supplies and put them back on the cart. “I'm so embarrassed! We shouldn't have been in here.”

She finished picking up the mess and pulled Jake away. It no longer mattered that anyone at the conference might see them, Saundra, Joseph. Everything would be out in the open, as it should be.

Except that Jake was standing over her, his face closing up, his body stiffening with anger. He laughed, a stony, bitter laugh.

“God,” he said. “I'm such an idiot.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You can't do it, can you? You can't choose because you don't want to.”

“What?”

“You want to fuck me and marry him. That's it, isn't it?”

She hugged her arms around herself. “That's not it. I—”

“You're scared to be with me. Maybe you're right to be scared. I've done things I'm not proud of.”

“So have I,” she whispered.

“You don't owe that guy anything, not your career, not your hard work and intelligence. No one gave those things to you. It's not loyalty to him that's stopping you. Real loyalty is right here in front of you.”

He looked at her with such contempt that she took a step back. “Jake, stop—”

“So I have to assume it's something else. Your money, your rich Manhattan lifestyle. I don't have anything to offer you. I don't have anything except myself, and that scares you, doesn't it?”

Leigh stood mute. The anger in Jake's voice was painful for her to hear, but not as painful as the substance behind the words. He was right—he'd found out the truth about her, the real truth. She was afraid of what would happen if she chose Jake. She was afraid of who she'd be, how she'd live. How would they manage? What would they do? Without her life in New York, her precious and longed-for publishing career, who was Leigh Merrill, anyway?

He took another step back, and another, retreating from her as he would from a poisonous snake. “I should have known it was too late for us, but I guess I'm a slow learner. I don't see the truth until it agrees to marry someone else,” he said, and in his anger, he wheeled around and gave a tremendous punch to the door of the ice machine, leaving a deep dent behind. His knuckles were bleeding, but apparently he didn't notice.

She flinched. “Jake—”

But he was already backing toward the parking lot, toward his red truck. “Go on back to New York and your friends and your job. Marry that guy. Pay off Russell. What's a million dollars to Leigh Merrill anyway? Maybe he'll even leave you alone afterward.”

“Please . . .” she started, but then she wasn't sure what was supposed to come next.
You're wrong? I'm sorry?
Nothing she could think of would make things right between them. She'd been a coward—she'd tried to have it all without thinking of the consequences—and now it was too late.

“You were right the last time you wrote me, Leigh,” he said. “All those years ago. You were right when you said maybe it would have been better for both of us if we'd never met at all.”

“No,” she started. “Jake, I was wrong—”

“Don't worry,” he said. “I won't bother you anymore. Good luck, Leigh. Have a nice life.” Then he went down the hill. She watched him get into his truck, spinning away in a hail of gravel.

She slumped to the floor of the porch, feeling cold and blank and empty. She'd wanted something to happen that would push the decision to the breaking point, some sign from the universe that she was doing the right thing; she'd wanted something to come along that would take the decision out of her hands.

Now that it had been, she knew it was the wrong decision.

She watched him go, knowing she didn't deserve Jake, but she
wanted him, wanted him in ways that she hadn't been able to admit, even to herself. She'd loved him her whole life, since that first day in Mammoth Cave when the bats had swooped around them, when he had first kissed her in the dark space of the cavern like the inside of a church. She had pledged herself to him then in spirit if nothing else, and there had never been anyone else but him in all the years since, not really. She had been selfish and she had been scared—she had made some terrible, awful decisions that even now she didn't know how to atone for—but the only person she ever wanted was Jake, and everything else was just a stopgap, a placeholder in her heart. It was Jake, or no one.

Only moments before she'd been ready to give him everything he wanted, but now she was back to where she'd started—with Jake gone, clinging to whatever was left. And what was left didn't seem like enough anymore.

It wasn't until the maid came by again with her cart, giving her a strange look, that Leigh stood up and wiped her face. She had work to do today, after all. She had pitches to hear, authors to meet, decisions to make. The machinery of life still ground on, even when you felt like you couldn't face it another minute.

Her meetings. Her authors. Russell Benoit. She would see her blackmailer again today, she was sure of it. She just wasn't sure what she was going to tell him. What was right and what was fair no longer made sense to her.

She'd also never gotten a real answer from Jake about his dad, about why he'd gone to talk to him about Russell. What did Ben Rhodes and Russell Benoit have to do with each other? How had they even met? She still didn't know. Maybe now she'd never know. There was no way to find Jake to ask, and he'd seemed resolute in his decision to leave her alone. No—she was going to have to deal with Russell on her own.

When she opened the door to her cottage, she could see that Joseph
had fallen back asleep probably as soon as she had gone out the door. He was lying on the pillow—head thrown back, mouth open in a light snore, his thin, handsome face still and untroubled. As far as he knew, everything was fine.

She felt a sudden weariness overtake her and wished she could climb in bed beside him, wished he would wrap his arms around her and tell her it would be all right. She wanted to be angry with him for not comforting her, but that wasn't fair—it wasn't his fault he didn't understand the enormity of the situation, because she had never told him the truth about herself. Not once. The only one who deserved her scorn was Leigh herself.

Hearing her come in, Joseph sat up sleepily and looked around as if trying to reorient himself in the world. “Is that you, babe?” he asked. “Want to get some breakfast?”

She went into the bathroom and stood in front of the sink, staring angrily at her own reflection. She looked ghastly—red and puffy, her skin and hair greasy, like she'd been up all night drinking—but she felt worse than she'd felt in years, sick to her stomach, sick at heart. She didn't deserve Jake. She didn't deserve Joseph. She didn't deserve to be happy.

All she could do was go on pretending. She had to. After all, what other choice was there?

Joseph was still sitting up in bed, waiting for her. Waiting for an answer.

“I'd love some breakfast,” she said, doing her best to keep her voice neutral and even. “Just give me a minute, will you?”

S
he headed for work that day in a fog, her mind clouded with regret. In the dining pavilion she grabbed some coffee, the ring on her finger sparkling every time she lifted her hand.

Even Saundra noticed and congratulated her. “Good morning,” said the woman, leaning over to pour some raw sugar into her morning cup of tea. Today she was wearing long gray gaucho pants and a red crocheted vest that made her look like a hippie cowgirl. Her long gray hair was braided and lay straight down her back like a horse's tail. “I saw you coming home last night after supper, you and the man in the suit. You looked so good together, I thought for sure you'd have the most beautiful babies. That was him?”

Leigh nodded. She could hardly speak. She felt a sudden pang of longing for her mother, a stab of resentment that she'd had to figure out her life without her mother's help. Surely if anyone would have
understood what Leigh was going through, it would have been Abby Merrill, the woman who'd run off to New York and defied her own formidable father with all the calm of a Buddha.

“Oh, honey,” said Saundra, “I didn't mean to make you cry.”

“It's all right. I'm all right,” Leigh said, though she was anything but.

“You want to talk about it? I realize it's none of my business.”

She shook her head no. “I'm sorry to be so unprofessional.”

Saundra gave her a warm hug. Her hair smelled like cinnamon toast, and Leigh nearly broke down. Some small, deep-down part of her was wailing
I want my mother!

“My door is always open,” Saundra was saying in a sweet voice. “You know where to find me.”

Leigh gave a weak smile. She wanted so much to confide in someone, anyone. Chloe wasn't here, and there was literally no one else.

“I'm not sure I love him,” she blurted out. “Not the way he deserves.”

“Oh, honey,” Saundra said, “it's not about what he deserves. It's about making a partnership with someone who makes you happy.
Deserve
has nothing to do with it.”

“He surprised me by showing up last night. He asked me to marry him before I left New York, and he was so crushed when I said I needed some time to think. When he asked me again last night I just couldn't refuse him again. It was too painful. But I don't think I can marry him, and I don't think I can break up with him.”

“Why ever not?”

“He's the publisher at my firm. He's my boss, basically. I'd lose my job. He wouldn't fire me, but it would be impossible to work with him. I'd have to quit.”

“That shouldn't matter,” said Saundra, patting her hand. “You'd find another job.”

“I could, but I've worked so hard to get where I am at the company. It would be like starting over.”

“No—”

“It would. I can't do it, I can't.”

“I'm an old lady,” said Saundra, stirring the sugar in her tea, “but we're not that different, you and me. I used to be young once, too, you know.”

Leigh smiled. She could picture a younger version of Saundra Craig, with long hair down her back, wearing crocheted vests and bell-bottoms.

Saundra went on: “My mother was a very controlling woman. She had very strict rules about how late I could stay out, who with, everything. Eventually I married a man I barely knew because I wanted so desperately to get out from under my mother's thumb.” She smiled. “It was the sixties, and there weren't a lot of options for women in those days. It was fine at first. I got to have my own house and a little independence, and I loved having those things, but only for a little while. Because we didn't love each other, not really. When he started sleeping around I was grateful, because it gave me a reason to get out.”

“I'm so sorry,” Leigh said.

“Don't be. It was best for all of us. Because then I was free to meet someone I really did care about, and now I've been married to him for thirty-five years.”

“Really?” Leigh asked. “Why do you think the second marriage worked?”

Saundra looked around and lowered her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “To be honest, the sex was—
is
—fabulous,” she said, and Leigh had to stifle a sudden laugh. The thought of Saundra and her husband . . . well, it was not what she was expecting. “Don't underestimate the power of chemistry. It will get you through a lot of tough times, believe me.”

But Leigh couldn't see how that helped her at all. “Don't you think there should be more to it than that, though? I mean, sex is just a little part of your day. What do you do the rest of the time?”

“Chemistry isn't just about sex. It's everything—a shared sense of humor, common interests, common history. My second husband was a boy I knew from high school. We'd grown up together, came from the same hometown. After my divorce I ran into him again, and it was like nothing had changed in all those years. He knew me when I was a kid. He knew who I was and where I came from, because he came from the same place, the same kind of people. That matters. It matters a lot, believe me.”

All of a sudden Leigh felt a sense of rising panic. Maybe she should have tried harder to get Jake to stay. Maybe she was putting her heart at risk for the sake of her career and her wounded pride. But he'd been so intent on going, so sure they would be better off apart. Who knows—maybe he was right. Because she couldn't see how the two of them could ever get past the hurt they'd inflicted on each other, intentionally or otherwise.

“Your career and the rest of it don't matter,” said Saundra. “The best way to be fair to him is to be honest about your own feelings. Your fiancé's a big boy. He'll manage his own disappointment if you don't marry him. What you shouldn't do is pretend your feelings are something they're not. That isn't fair to you, or to him.” Then, giving Leigh one last pat, she walked off toward the barn, her gaucho pants kicking up dust.

Leigh wiped her face with both hands, feeling the weight of the ring on her finger. She looked at it—it
was
beautiful, but maybe Saundra was right: she should stop pretending the ring meant more than it did. She slipped it off her finger and into the pocket of her blue cotton skirt. At least she wouldn't have to answer any more questions about it, at least not right at that moment. And she had to talk to Joseph. She just didn't know right then what she was going to say.

The rest of the morning Leigh worked on autopilot, politely listening to authors and their pitches, asking dutiful questions and nodding along with their responses. It wasn't until lunchtime, when she grabbed a quick salad in the dining hall, that she even remembered she'd promised to meet Jim Stephens for coffee at the end of the day to discuss his book.

Leigh felt a pang of regret. Jim's wonderful book—it was one thing she
did
have a good feeling about, the same way she'd felt about Millikin. She still wanted to publish it. It was raw and it was rough, but she thought she knew how she could help him polish it up. She had no idea how he'd feel about editorial comments from anyone, most especially from a woman thirty-five years his junior who'd never spent a day in a war zone. But that didn't mean she couldn't try. No one had thought she'd talk Richard Millikin into publishing again, but she had.

The first title from Leigh Merrill Books. She still liked the sound of that—she was still grateful to Joseph for believing in her, for making the dream a possibility—but there was still too much that was unsettled, uncertain. Leigh and Joseph. Leigh and Jake. New York, Texas. Her career, her future.

She was only sure of one thing: she couldn't agree to buy Jim's book. Not under these circumstances.

For once in her life she was determined to do the right thing, to put other people's feelings before her own. And if that meant she couldn't publish Jim's book, then so be it. But it was a hard thing to do, to tell a man whose work she admired so much that she couldn't take it, not because it wasn't wonderful, but because she was afraid she was going to be out of a job soon. She couldn't very well keep working for Jenks, Hall & Middlebury if she and Middlebury weren't going to be on speaking terms anymore.

So when four o'clock rolled around, and her last meeting for the day wrapped up, it was with dread that she walked to the dining pavilion,
where she'd promised Jim she'd meet him. His manuscript was tucked into her bag, the white pages poking out like a flag of surrender. She'd make it up to him somehow. She just wasn't sure right now how she was going to do that.

The hot, bright May sun was in her eyes, so that it took a few seconds for her to see him clearly, but then she glimpsed Jim at the picnic table nursing a glass of iced tea, waving her over. He wore a dark blue baseball cap with the insignia of the Marines on it, his pale gray eyes twinkling under the brim. “Welcome!” he said, standing up when she came close, a gesture that made Leigh grin—it had been a long while since a man had stood up when she arrived at a table. It was pleasantly old-fashioned and entirely lovely of him. “Thank you,” she said, and sat down.

“What can I get you?”

“Oh, no, I'll get it,” she said, standing up again, but Jim waved her down. “I can fetch you a coffee. It's the least I can do. What kind?”

“Vanilla latte,” she said. “Thank you.”

While he was at the coffee station she took the manuscript out of her bag and put it on the table. She'd always liked the look and feel of manuscripts, the white expanse of unbound pages, the thrill of opening one up and finding new people, new voices, the undiscovered countries that, until they were written down, existed only in the minds of their authors. New books were new hopes, with the promise of buried treasure.

She flipped to the first page and read the opening line once more.
My first day in-country,
Jim had written,
a stranger saved my life.
It was a great book that deserved an editor who would love it, and see it through to success. Leigh just wished it could have been her.

Jim came back and set the coffee in front of her and another iced tea for himself. He was watching her face, reading it for signs of encouragement. “That good, huh?” he said. “Oh well. Guess it's back to
the drawing board for me, eh?” He was smiling, trying to maintain his good humor, but Leigh could see how disappointed he was.

She took a gulp of her coffee as much to be polite as to swallow the lump in her throat. “Oh, it's not that,” she said. “The book is wonderful, Jim, absolutely terrific. I couldn't stop reading it. I wanted to publish it right away.”

“Wow.” He sat back, smiling broadly. “That's incredible. It's better even than I was hoping for. I thought, maybe . . . Thank you. Thank you so much, Miss Merrill.”

“Please, call me Leigh. I think we know each other better than that by now.”

“Leigh, of course.”

“It's a bit rough in spots, but I think with the right editor you could really have something spectacular on your hands.”

A note of caution crept into his voice, and he looked puzzled. “Wait. Wouldn't you be the editor?”

“I loved the book. Absolutely loved it without reservations, that's the truth . . .”

“I feel a ‘but' coming on here.”

“But.”

“Uh-oh.”

“I think my circumstances might be changing. I'm not sure I could take it on right now. My situation at Jenks and Hall . . . well, let's just say I'm no longer certain of my place at the company.”

“That sounds bad,” Jim said, leaning toward her across the table. “Can you talk about it?”

She was afraid if she kept talking she'd burst into tears. How unprofessional would that be? Here was a talented writer who'd offered her his book. He didn't want to hear about her problems with the company, with her love life. Just as she'd done with Saundra, she was losing it, she was falling apart.

“I'm sorry,” she said. “I didn't want you to see me like this.”