Ties That Bind (5 page)

“No, she warms up to you more than you realize. Besides she’s none to happy with me a good deal of the time.”

Kate leaned back against the couch. “Sometimes I can’t believe it’s come to this. My little girl…”

“If we told her more about why we divorced, maybe she’d be better.”

“Oh, God, no. She’d be worse. And we both have too much to lose. Not only would it worsen your relationship with her, but then we’d have to get into stuff about me that’s best left unsaid.”

“Well,” he said curtly, “that’s certainly true. Then we’ll just have to do what the therapist advised—keep battering her defenses.”

“I’m trying.”

“Drive up with me.”

Kate frowned, still not convinced.

“We can go over the files in the car. Four hours of work time is a lot.”

“Isn’t Gidget going with you?”

“Gidget?”

“Oh, my God, did I say that out loud?”

He shook his head. “You’re a piece of work.”

“I’m sorry. She’s a nice woman.”

“Yeah, she is. And no, she’s not coming.”

“Why?”

“Sofie asked me not to bring her.”

Hmm, that was good news. If her daughter got close to Dray Merrill, Kate didn’t know what she’d do.

“Reese, Jillian saw Dray today.”

“So?”

“She was with Tyler.”

“Sloan?”

“Yeah. At Starbucks.”

He arched a brow. “Good God, there’s nothing going on between them, is there?”

“No. I’d be shocked if there was. Tyler wouldn’t cheat. He knows how I feel about that kind of thing.”

Reese looked like he was going to comment on that, but instead said, “Why the hell would they be together?”

“Tyler told Jillian they’d bumped into each other.”

He ran a hand through his hair. “They probably did. Proximity to her gym and his hospital.”

“What would they have to talk about?”

He arched a brow. “Us, I would guess.”

She frowned. “I’m not sure I like it.”

“Talk to the good doctor.” His words were sharp. Gone was the sensitive man of a few minutes before. “I’m sure he’ll cave on anything you want.”

“No need to get nasty.”

“Isn’t it boring having somebody so smitten?”

His sarcasm ignited her temper. “You should know the answer to that question.”

Shaking his head disgustedly, he said, “Don’t mock Dray.”

“You threw the gauntlet, Reese, like you always do.” She stood. “I’m going.” She looked down at her clothes. “I’ll change.”

“Don’t bother. Give them back to me some other time.”

“Whatever you say.” She gathered up her suit and shoes and got to the door before he stopped her with his words. “Kate.”

She turned back.

“I…didn’t mean to get into old stuff.”

She sighed. “Me, either. We just can’t be together without reacting like this.”

“We have to be together. We need to make a pact to stop sniping at each other.”

Ah, the infamous pact…

Let’s make a pact. No matter what happens, we’ll always love each other, treat each other well. Even if we get divorced.

Don’t talk about divorce on our wedding day.

I mean it. You’re my best friend, too. I couldn’t bear to lose you…

She smiled sadly. “Agreed. We’ll make a pact to be better with each other.”

“And come with me tomorrow. We’ll get a lot of work done and you’ll get to see Sofie.”

“Oh, Reese…”

“There’s something else. We need to tell her about this thing with Bingham.”

“I suppose we do.”

“Best we present a united front.”

“She’ll believe I did something wrong.”

“I’m the one accused of adultery in the note.”

Kate sighed. She was so weary she weakened. “I’d really like to see her.” A hesitation. “Okay, I’ll go.”

“Should I pick you up?”

“Oh, sure. Fine.”

“Where?”

“My house.”

“You and Sloan don’t spend your nights together?”

“That’s not a question you get to ask, Reese.”

“You’re right. How stupid of me.”

She ignored the sarcasm. “What time were you leaving?”

“Nine-ish.”

“Fine, I’ll see you then.”

“Good night, Kate.”

“Good night, Reese.”

Kate held her head high as she left the office and the building and the man who had once been hers. But the weight of all that loss was heavy on her shoulders.

WHEN REESE ARRIVED at Kate’s condo the next morning at nine o’clock, he found her waiting at her door, dressed in jeans, low-heeled shoes, and a pretty red cotton long sleeve shirt that made her eyes liquid and…enticing. Hell. He’d spent an uncomfortable night, with Dray asleep next to him and his ex-wife drifting in and out of his consciousness. One day in Kate’s presence and he felt that stinging attraction to her again. But he’d learned his lesson. Though the physical thing between them had always been good, he needed to remember the emotional damage they did to each other that ended their marriage. And summon the anger, if necessary.

“Hi,” Kate said coming down the walk, backlit by the early morning sun. She was holding a newspaper. “Did you see this?”

“Yeah, not too bad.”

The Herald had run much the same story as yesterday, except for an update from the police to say they were checking into the alleged suicide and talking with pertinent people. It briefly mentioned Reese and Kate, who had each responded to the reporter’s call with no comment.

He nodded to the paper. “It’ll get worse, though, if we don’t come up with something.”

“I know.” She took in his outfit and pointed to his navy Yale Law sweatshirt, that he wore with jeans and a Yankees baseball cap. “Where’d you get that? It looks brand-new.”

“A reunion. I went to our twentieth.”

“I see,” she said tightly. “Was it fun?”

“Except for having to answer questions about us from our old buddies, it was.”

That was an understatement. The comments had ranged from, Man you two were made for each other, to Never thought I’d see the day. You were sides of the same coin. Of course, Reese had always thought that, too. So had Kate.

Circling around his sporty yellow Mustang convertible, she slid into the passenger side as he took a seat behind the wheel. “They were surprised we were divorced?” she asked, once they were in seatbelts.

“Shocked. Especially since we were the envy of all of them at our tenth.”

A small smile broached her lips. They were unpainted and she wore little makeup. She’d never needed it. “That reunion was fun.” They’d thought, at the time, the world was theirs for the taking. Everything had clicked into place by the time they were thirty-five. “Sofie was only six, remember?”

“Yeah,” he said as he started the car and headed down her street. “She stayed with my sister for the weekend. The boys weren’t even born yet.”

“How is Emily? I haven’t talked to her in a couple of weeks.”

“Still trying to find her sea legs.”

Emily was Reese’s sister, whom he’d helped raise because his mother had been diagnosed with Hodgkin’s disease when Emily was ten and Reese was fifteen. Even after his mother died, and his father had more time for his kids, Reese had watched out for her. It nearly killed him when she’d married a loser, and divorced him six years ago when Jason and Jimmy were three and four.

“Not to be callous,” Kate put in, “but she’s definitely better off without Charlie Gates. He drank like a fish.”

“Yes, she is.” He shot her a glance. “I think it’s nice you still have contact with her. I never told you that.”

“She’s like another sister to me.”

Reese knew that. Kate had three sisters of her own, all older, who lived in different parts of the country. Though she talked to them each once a week, on different days, she missed them; his sister had filled part of that void.

He smiled. “Remember how we used to have the boys stay with us every summer?”

“Yeah. You built that tree house in the old oak behind the farmhouse, and even when Sofie got older, the three of them spent hours together in it.”

A farmhouse that had broken Kate’s heart to part with.

“Emily said the boys still come to stay with you on occasion.”

“I couldn’t give them up, Reese. Besides, Sofie loves it.” She glanced over at him. “You see them a lot, don’t you?”

“As much as I can. “

“You’re still sending her money.”

Emily had set up an online T-shirt company, but it was in the early stages and she was having trouble making ends meet.

“Some.”

“You were always so generous, Reese. It was such a good trait in you.”

“So were you.” He kept his eyes on the road, but his thumb rubbed the wheel. This conversation was starting to stir things up inside him again. “Interesting coming from two kids who had nothing.”

Because they’d grown up in lower-income families, Kate and Reese both had to work for everything they got. Along with scholarships and loans, they paid for their own college, law school and every material thing they possessed by taking jobs, sometimes two at once. It took them ten years to pay off their debts, but it had been worth every penny.

“Yeah, I guess you go either way. If you grow up with nothing, you get stingy or you figure, hell, I never had any, might as well spread it around.”

“Want to stop for coffee?” he asked as they approached Interstate 90.

“Not now. I had some already. I’ll need a snack in an hour or so. “

“You always needed to eat every two hours.”

“Still do.” She patted her tummy. “It’s hell on the abs, especially since they’ve never been the same since I had Sofie.”

She’d complained bitterly about her stretch marks and rounded stomach after the baby, and he’d always called them battle scars, well worth the sacrifice. “I told you last night, you look great, Kate.”

She shifted uncomfortably in her seat. “Should we start with the articles?” The subtext read, And get off the personal stuff. Damn, either they were yelling at each other, or the good things about their relationship surfaced. He didn’t know which was worse. He did know it wasn’t healthy to be reminded of what had gone right in their marriage.

“Maybe we’d better.”

She opened her briefcase and pulled out a sheaf of papers. He’d had his secretary duplicate all the information she found on Anna Bingham and had given Kate her own copies.

“How do you want to do this?”

“You read, I’ll listen while I drive, and then we’ll highlight the salient points.”

She dug a pink highlighter out of her bag. He chuckled.

So girly, he used to tease when they were in law school.

You love my girly-ness.

He had, right down to the nail polish she wore on her toes and the thongs she scrimped to buy just to torture him. Briefly he checked out her jeans and wondered if she wore the naughty underwear for Sloan now. For some reason, that notion brought his anger to the forefront, and he had to work at containing it.

Kate focused on the material in front of her. “All right. This is an article on her from a society page. Christ, it was when she came out at a debutant ball.” Kate rolled her eyes. “Do they still do that?”

“I guess.”

“Did Dray?”

Dray’s parents had money and she and her sister—and later an adopted sister—had been spoiled little princesses. Which would be evidenced in the fancy and, in Reese’s opinion, ostentatious wedding of the younger sister planned for the end of April. Dray was maid of honor, and she and Reese were spending a long weekend in the Hampton.

“I don’t know, I never asked.”

She began to read again. “Blond hair and blue eyes.”

His preference until he’d met Kate.

“Only child. Father stockbroker, mother dealt in antiques.” She studied the article. “There’s a picture of her. Now I remember her.”

Kate continued reading the bio information. He smirked a couple of times over the private schools, the horseback riding competitions and other activities reserved for the very rich.

So did she. “Remember how we used to mock the rich kids at Yale?”

“Who made up the majority. Yeah, I remember.” Again, he threw her a knowing look. “Of course, you didn’t mock Max.”

Kate chuckled. Maxwell Thurman Jacobs the Third. “God I hadn’t thought of him in years.”

“He was at the reunion.”

“Really, what happened to him?”

“Working for his father, managing the Jacobs Foundation. You could have had all that, Kate.”

“I didn’t want it. I only dated him because I knew you hated him and you broke up with me…”

“I didn’t break up with you.”

“Oh, no, wait. I forget. You wanted to ‘see other people. To be sure.’”

“Well, hell, it worked. After a week of watching him squire you around, I came to my senses.” A small smile. “You made me sweat, though.”

“Why not? I never wanted the separation.”

“You didn’t tell me that. I thought you agreed.”

“I do have some pride.”

Reese was shocked by the revelation, but when he thought about it, a young Kate Renado would do just that. It made him wonder what else she’d kept—or was keeping—from him.

“So, did he ask about me?”

“Uh-huh. He wanted your phone number.”

“He never called.”

“I didn’t give it to him.”

“Why?”

“Damned if I know. I guess I never liked seeing his hands all over you.” Reese gripped the steering wheel, remembering all too well how he’d had to fight to get her away from Jacobs.

She sighed. “How did we get on this?”

“I don’t know. Read the next article. I think there’s one in there on white-collar crime. It uses her as an example, and gives some of her adult bio.”

Kate rustled the papers, her hands shaky. She wished she and Reese hadn’t gotten off on that personal tangent. It unnerved her. And he seemed more uptight now than he was when they began the trip.

“Here’s one from when she was released from Danbury. And there’s a picture with her prison advocate.”

“Yeah? He turned out to be a nice guy.”

Prison advocates were hired as consultants by criminals facing federal incarceration to ease the way and show them the ropes in their down time.

“I still think those people prey on others in a bad time.”