The Princess and the Pauper (23 page)

Nothing was simple anymore. April stared at her daughter, who was seated cross-legged on the end of her bed, and knew some explanation was necessary. Eden was too astute, too sensitive to her mother’s feelings to let Jesse’s visit go by unremarked.

“Why did he leave like that?” she demanded. “What was wrong with him? Mommy, you’re not going to cry, are you?”

The touching concern in her voice nearly undid April. She managed to smile through gritted teeth. “No. I’m not going to cry.”

“Tell me what’s wrong.” Eden was nothing if not persistent. “Don’t you like him? Did he make you upset?”

“Oh, Eden.” April drew in a breath and exhaled it slowly. She smiled wanly. “Mom’s just had a bad day.”

“What happened?”

Seeing there was no way to get around it altogether, April told Eden half the truth. “Someone stole from the store. He’s been caught, and now he’s being punished.” Her thoughts flew to Rob, and she was suddenly so miserable that the tears she’d denied gathered in her throat.

“That man?” Eden was grave and scared.

“No, not him. No, he’s… a policeman.” April got to her feet, smoothed her skirt. “I’m sorry,” she said in a voice too unsteady to trust. “I really just can’t talk now. Understand?”

Eden’s eyes widened in surprise. It wasn’t like April to tiptoe around an issue and Eden was clearly worried. She nodded, however, and April hugged her. Too tightly, because Eden started to squirm at her mother’s demand for love and compassion. “Do I have to go to school tomorrow?” she inquired. “I don’t want to see Kendra Oatfield ever again.”

“Yes, you have to go to school. Just ignore Kendra. She can’t hurt you if you ignore her.”

That was a lie, April thought as she returned to the lower floor. Ignoring Jesse had hurt her more than she’d believed possible. Now she was going to pay. He would never forgive her for hiding the existence of his daughter. He would never leave her unscathed. She felt it in her bones.

It was amazing how normal everything looked at Hollis’s while April’s world had shattered. The green and silver and gold had been replaced by spring shades of pale peach, lavender and eggshell white. The scents at the perfume counter smelled lighter, softer, sweeter. Fashion jewelry had changed from metallics to glittering pastels. April picked up a pair of lovely ivory-colored earrings carved to resemble a shell. The black foil tag read Bettina.

“Did you want those, Ms. Hollis?” the girl at the counter asked somewhat anxiously as April clenched her fingers around the delicate pieces.

“No.” She set the card back on the counter. “Does Bettina come into the store herself to show you her latest designs?”

“Most of the time. She lives right here in Portland. Why? Don’t you like her stuff?”

“Yes, I do. Very much.” April painted on a smile. “Next time she’s in, would you tell her I’d like to meet her?”

“Sure.”

April walked away before she revealed anything more. It was probably pointless to contact Bettina. What could she do to help April? Would she even want to?

“You look like you’re about to fall over,” Jane remarked as April waved to her on her way to her office.

“Thanks,” April remarked irritably as Jane disappeared. She was growing tired of everyone telling her how awful she looked. She felt awful. Didn’t she have a right to look awful, too?

“No, no, no.” Jane’s voice floated after her. The secretary marched into April office right on her heels. “You’re not getting away that fast. These are for you.”

She slapped down a pile of messages on top of the pile of paperwork already crowning April’s desk. Groaning, April flipped through them. One from her father, two from Nicole – she could guess what those were about, since her father had returned to Seattle – and one from Rob Harding.

Her hands felt like ice. Dropping the messages, she pressed shaking fingers to her temples. She didn’t want to talk to Rob any more than she wanted to talk to Jesse. No, she amended hastily, she did want to talk to Jesse. She was just afraid to.

“Here.” Jane smiled soothingly, placing a cup of tea in front of April. “You look like you could use it.”

“Thank you,” April said with such sincerity that Jane’s brows lifted.

“Don’t mention it.”

“How is everything at the store?” she asked quickly as Jane retreated.

“Depressing.” Jane never minced words. “Were all shocked to our socks about Roger. How are you holding up?”

“I’ll live.” She sipped the tea, choked and grimaced, staring at the cup. “As long as I’m not poisoned first.”

“Oh, sorry. I forgot. My new sugar substitute. No good, huh?”

April laughed for the first time in days. “I think I’d go back to what you were using before,” April advised.

Jane lifted a hand in acknowledgement and disappeared down the hallway. April glanced at the notes, her good humor evaporating. Should she call Rob?

“So what are you afraid of?” she asked herself angrily, sweeping up the receiver. She punched out the number. Three rings, and Rob was on the line.

“Hello,” he said hoarsely.

“Rob.” Her heart was in her throat. “It’s April.”

There was a terrible moment when she heard him draw a choking breath. She ached inside.

“Just wanted you to know that it had nothing to do with you,” he said. The words tumbled out as if they’d been pent up for eons. “It was stupid. I was angry. They were pushing me out after over twenty-five years with them. I just couldn’t go out with a whimper.”

“It’s okay. It’s okay,” she heard herself say. Meaningless words. It wasn’t okay, and they both knew it.

“I just wanted you to know. I’m sorry.”

“I’m sorry, too.”

There was a seemingly endless silence, then Rob sighed and hung up without saying goodbye. April gently slipped the receiver back into its cradle and thought that nothing could make her feel any worse than she did at the moment.

Bettina stared into her older brother’s furious amber eyes and wondered how he could be so maddeningly blind. She was shocked, true, but then she could understand why April would keep such a vital secret. Women did that sort of thing to protect themselves. God knew, she’d had enough experience with the vulnerability of her sex to be an expert. Hadn’t Stefan Tamblin nearly ruined her life?

“So you have a daughter,” she murmured, her heart wrenching a bit.

“I have a nine-year-old daughter,” Jesse corrected her swiftly. “I’ve lost nine years already!”

“Did she tell you Eden was yours?”

“Oh, yeah.” He laughed harshly. “You don’t have to be a math whiz to figure out she couldn’t be anyone’s but mine. Unless, of course, April had others that same summer.”

“Stop it, Jesse,” Bettina ordered flatly.

“She looks like me.” A spasm crossed his face. “I thought she looked familiar, but I didn’t figure it out at first.”

“Well, it’s plain to me that you need to talk to April. Get something straight. But don’t back her into a corner. She’s a Hollis. She’s got money.”

“Do you think I give a damn?”

“Jesse, be smart.” Bettina pointed a finger at his arrogantly jutting nose. “You won’t win against them. You know it.”

“I’m not going to let her get away with this. I won’t.” He was coldly adamant. “Not any longer.”

“Have you talked to her?”

“She’s left messages on my cell.”

“But you haven’t called her back?”

His answer was to stalk across her studio loft to the door. Bettina trailed after him, swearing as she stumbled over a stool in her haste to stop him from making an even bigger mistake. “Why are you so enraged?” she demanded, calling down the apartment stairway to him. His boots clopped down the steps. She could see him a floor below, turning the landing. “Did something else happen?”

Jesse refused to answer. Bettina, whose icy control had saved her through disaster after disaster, didn’t understand the betrayal that burned through his system like a brush fire. They’d made love. He and April had made love. She hadn’t told him even though they’d made love.

And the hell of it was that he wanted to make love to her again.

April chewed on her lower lip, drumming her fingers restlessly on her desk. How could she find Jesse? He wouldn’t answer his cell and she didn’t know where he lived. She’d already called Jordan at Touché and learned that he knew nothing more about his brother’s whereabouts. Jordan, in fact, had taken pains to let April know how unwise he felt her pursuit of Jesse was.

“Leave it, April,” he said in an unusually cool voice. “It’s over.”

She’d hung up feeling more than a little depressed. Her relationship with Jordan had taken a turn for the worse – what had she expected, anyway? – and she hadn’t realized how important a friend he’d been until it had ended. She was still furious with her father. What right did he have to pass judgment? He didn’t even know Jordan or Jesse.

Impatient, April shoved back her chair. She could search the store files or hunt down Bettina’s phone number and address on the Internet, she supposed, but there was an easier, quicker way to get in touch with Jesse: the police department.

Twenty minutes later she was walking through the front entrance of the Criminal Justice Building. Her steps echoed hollowly on the smooth floor; she was a bit awed by the place, she had to admit.

“I would like to see Detective Sergeant Jesse Cawthorne,” she said to the plain-looking woman at the massive reception desk.

“And you are?”

She hesitated. “April Hollis.”

The woman placed a call, spoke softly into the receiver, then said to April, “Take the elevator to the twelfth floor. Sergeant Cawthorne isn’t in right now, but Lieutenant Rothchild would like to speak to you.”

April’s heart sank. Lieutenant Rothchild. The man her father had spoken to about Jesse.

She stepped into the elevator and watched the floor numbers flicker on and off, one by one. Several weren’t even listed, she realized. You simply sped from the lower floors straight to the top. It took her a minute to realize that the jail was smack-dab in the center of the building. Strange, she thought with a little shudder.

She was dumped onto a floor of wild activity, where desks were crowded behind partitions, and men and women wore shoulder holsters as if it were the latest fashion trend. She stood blinking, mesmerized, for several moments, before a young man took pity on her and directed her toward Lieutenant Rothchild’s office.

“Miss Hollis,” the lieutenant greeted her with a practiced smile, shaking her hand. “I spoke to your father earlier this week. I must say I’m sorry for the misunderstanding with our department.” His palm was smooth, as polished as the rest of him. For reasons she didn’t analyze, April took an instant and complete dislike to him.

“Well, I guess everything turned out for the best,” she murmured.

“I assure you, Sergeant Cawthorne has been reprimanded for his, uh—” Rothchild rubbed his nose, searching for the right phrase “– over eagerness to finish what he began. The matter is being dealt with.”

April’s temper began to simmer. “I didn’t come here to make certain Sergeant Cawthorne was disciplined, she said evenly. “Actually, I think he should be commended. I found him honest, thorough and intuitive.”

Surprise flashed in Rothchild’s eyes. “Well, that’s certainly welcome news.”