Читать книгу Sweet Deception - Rochelle Alers - Страница 11

Ten years later…

“I can’t believe you’re marrying your sister’s brother-in-law.”

“Believe it, because in another week I’ll become Mrs. Griffin Rice.”

A hint of a smile lifted the corners of Belinda Eaton’s mouth as she stared at Zabrina Cooper. As she’d promised when she’d run into Zabrina at a fundraiser, she’d called to set up a dinner date with the woman who at one time had been engaged to her brother.

Her twin nieces, Layla and Sabrina, whom she and Griffin legally adopted after their parents died in a horrific head-on automobile accident, were spending the weekend with their paternal grandparents, giving Belinda the time she needed to meet with her childhood friend and finish packing her personal belongings before she moved into Griffin’s house. They had gone from being godparents to parents, after Belinda’s sister, who was married to Griffin’s brother, died tragically in an auto accident, leaving the twins orphans.

The skin around Zabrina’s large light brown eyes crinkled when she smiled, something she hadn’t done often, or in a very long time. The only person who could get her to smile or laugh spontaneously was her son. Adam was not only the love of her life, he was her life. Her mother had died when she was young, and she’d buried her father four months before she’d become a widow. Aside from an aunt and a few distant cousins there was only Adam.

She sobered, staring at the woman who, if she’d married Myles Eaton, would have become her sister-in-law. To say the high-school history teacher was stunning was an understatement. The soft glow from the candle on the table flattered Belinda’s flawless sable complexion. A little makeup accentuated the exotic slant of her dark eyes, high cheekbones, short straight nose and generously curved full mouth. A profusion of dark curly hair framed her attractive face.

Zabrina’s gaze moved from Belinda’s face to her hand, which flaunted a magnificent emerald-cut diamond ring surrounded with baguettes. She remembered the engagement ring Myles had slipped on her finger, a ring she had returned to him via a bonded messenger hours after she’d called him to let him know she couldn’t marry him because she was in love with another man.

“I knew there was something going on between you and Griffin when you two were maid of honor and best man at Donna and Grant’s wedding.” Belinda’s older sister had married Griffin’s older brother.

Belinda took a sip from her water goblet. “That’s where you’re wrong, Brina. Griffin and I barely tolerated each other. What I hadn’t realized at the time was that I was in love with him. But instead of letting him know that, I acted like a junior-high schoolgirl who punches out the boy so everyone believes that she despises rather than likes him.”

Zabrina stared at her bare hands resting on the tablecloth. “It was the same with me and Myles. He used to tease me mercilessly until I kissed him. I don’t know who was more shocked—me or him.”

“You kissed my brother first?”

Zabrina’s face became flushed as she cast her eyes downward. “He was leaving for college, and I didn’t want him to forget me.”

“And apparently he didn’t,” Belinda said softly.

Zabrina looked up and her eyes met Belinda’s. “I was thirteen when I kissed Myles for the first time, and I had to wait another five years before he kissed me back. Myles claimed he didn’t want to take advantage of a minor, so he felt at eighteen I was old enough either to let him kiss me or punch his lights out.” Her eyes brimmed with tears. “The happiest day in my life was when your brother asked me to marry him and one of the darkest was when I called to tell him I was in love with another man.”

Reaching across the table, Belinda placed her hand over Zabrina’s ice-cold fingers. “What happened, Brina? I know you loved my brother, so why did you lie to him?”

The seconds ticked off as the two women stared at each other. They’d met in the first grade and become fast friends. Then tragedy had separated them for a year when Zabrina’s mother was diagnosed with brain cancer.

Isaac Mixon moved his wife and daughter to Mexico for an experimental treatment not approved by oncologists in the United States. Zabrina had just celebrated her seventh birthday when Jacinta passed away. Her body was cremated and her ashes scattered in the ocean.

Zabrina returned to the States with her father, not to live in the stately white Colonial with black trim but in a three-bedroom condominium in an exclusive Philadelphia neighborhood. She and Belinda no longer attended the same school, yet they’d managed to get together every weekend. Belinda would either stay over at Zabrina’s, or she would sleep over at Belinda’s. Though Belinda had two other sisters, Zabrina Mixon had become her best friend and unofficial sister. But a lifetime of friendship had ended with a single telephone call to Myles Eaton.

Belinda stared at the beautiful woman with the gold-brown skin, gleaming black chin-length hair and brilliant hazel eyes. She remembered photographs of Jacinta Mixon, and Zabrina was her mother’s twin.

“I had to, Belinda,” Zabrina said in a soft voice. “I wasn’t given a choice.”

“Who didn’t give you a choice, Brina?”

Zabrina averted her gaze, staring out the restaurant window at the patrons dining alfresco in the warm June temperatures. “It had to do with my father.” Her gaze swung back to Belinda and she closed her eyes for several seconds. “I’ve already said too much.”

“Are you saying you were forced to marry Thomas Cooper?”

“The only other thing I’m going to say is I didn’t want to marry Thomas. Please, Belinda, don’t ask me any more questions, because I can’t answer them.”

She’d promised her father she would never tell anyone what he’d done although she was tempted to do just that after burying Isaac Mixon. However, she’d changed her mind when she thought of how it would’ve affected Adam. Her son idolized his grandfather.

“You can’t or you won’t?”

“I can’t.”

Their waiter approached the table, bringing the difficult conversation to an end. The two women ordered, then settled back to discuss Belinda’s upcoming wedding.

Belinda touched a napkin to the corners of her mouth. “I know you sent back your response card saying you’re coming, but I want to warn you that Myles will also be there. He came in from Pittsburgh last night and plans to spend the summer here in Philly.”

Zabrina nodded. She’d had more than ten years to prepare to meet Myles Eaton again. Marrying Thomas Cooper would’ve been akin to a death sentence if not for her son. Raising Adam had kept her sane, rational and out of prison.

“It’s been a long time, but I’ve known eventually we would have to come face-to-face with each other one of these days.” She couldn’t predict what Myles’s reaction would be to seeing her again, but she was certain he would find her a very different woman from the one who’d pledged to love him forever.

The two women talked about old friends, jokes they’d played on former classmates and the boys they’d had crushes on but who hadn’t given them a single glance. They talked about everything except the loss of their loved ones—Belinda’s sister and brother-in-law and Zabrina’s parents.

Both declined dessert and coffee. “Who’s your maid of honor?” Zabrina asked.

Belinda wanted to tell Zabrina she would’ve been her matron of honor if she had married Myles. “Chandra. She’s scheduled to fly in Monday, because she has to be fitted for her dress.” Belinda’s sister had joined the Peace Corps and was currently teaching in Belize. “My cousin Denise will be my other attendant. Myles will stand in as Griffin’s best man and Keith Ennis will be a groomsman.”

With wide eyes, Zabrina whispered, “Baseball player Keith Ennis?”

Belinda smiled. “Yes. He’s one of Griffin’s clients.” Her fiancé was the lawyer for half a dozen superstar athletes.

“It looks as if you’re going to have quite the celebrity wedding.”

“All I want is for it to be over, so that my life can return to normal.”

“Are you going on a honeymoon?” Zabrina asked.

“Yes. We’re going to spend two weeks at a private villa on St. Kitts. I plan to sleep late, take in the sun and eat and drink until I can’t move.”

Zabrina smiled again, then her smile vanished when she spied the man she hadn’t expected to see until Belinda’s wedding. Myles Adam Eaton had walked into the restaurant with a beautiful, petite dark-skinned woman with her hand draped possessively over the sleeve of his suit jacket. Myles immediately glanced in her direction. Their eyes met, recognition dawned and then the moment passed when he dipped his head to listen to something the woman was saying. To say time had been kind to Myles was an understatement. Quickly averting her gaze so Belinda wouldn’t see what had gotten her attention, she signaled for the waiter.

“I’ll take the check please.”

Zabrina silently applauded herself for becoming quite the accomplished actress. It’d taken a decade of smiling when she hadn’t wanted to smile, uttering the appropriate phrases and responses when attending political events, even though she’d wanted to spew expletives. She didn’t know if the woman on Myles’s arm was his wife, fiancée or date for the evening, but it didn’t matter. Zabrina didn’t ever expect to become Mrs. Myles Eaton. Having his son was her consolation for having to give him up.

“I told you I was treating tonight,” Belinda said between clenched teeth.

Zabrina took the leather binder from the waiter. “You can treat the next time.”

She didn’t tell Belinda that with all of Thomas Cooper’s so-called political and legal savvy he’d neglected to draw up a will, and she’d inherited a multimillion-dollar home, which she’d promptly sold, and investments of which she’d had no previous knowledge. She’d sold the shares before Wall Street bottomed out and deposited the proceeds into an account for her son’s education. Becoming a wealthy woman was a huge price to pay for having to give up the man she loved while denying her son his birthright.

Zabrina settled the bill, pushed back her chair and walked out of the restaurant, Belinda following, without glancing over to where Myles sat with his dinner date. She waited with Belinda for the parking attendants to retrieve their cars from valet parking. Her car arrived first.

She hugged her childhood friend. “I’ll see you next week.”

“Next week,” Belinda repeated.

Zabrina got into her late-model Lincoln sedan and maneuvered out of the restaurant parking lot. She hadn’t realized her hands were shaking until she stopped for a red light. She closed her eyes, inhaling a lungful of cool air flowing from the automobile’s air conditioner. When she opened her eyes the light had changed and she was back in control.

Myles Eaton pretended to be interested in the menu on the table in front of him to avoid staring at the table where Zabrina Mixon and his sister had been. A wry smile touched his mouth. He’d forgotten. She was no longer a Mixon. She was now Zabrina Cooper.

As an attorney and professor of constitutional law, he’d memorized countless Supreme Court decisions, yet he had not, could not, did not want to remember the dozen words that had turned his world upside down.

His fiancée, the woman to whom he’d pledged his life and his future had waited until two weeks before they were to be married to call and tell him she couldn’t marry him because she was in love with another man. And when he’d discovered the “other man” was none other than Thomas Cooper, his rage had escalated until he realized he had to leave Philadelphia or spend the rest of his life obsessing about the woman who’d broken his heart.

Thomas Cooper used every opportunity to parade and flaunt his much younger wife. Myles could still recall the photographs of a very pregnant Zabrina with the councilman’s hand splayed over her swollen belly at a fundraiser. Then there was the official family photograph with the haunted look in Zabrina’s eyes when she’d stared directly into the camera lens. There were rumors that she’d been afflicted with chronic postpartum depression, while others hinted that marital problems had beset the Coopers and they were seeing a marriage counselor.

All of the rumors ended for Myles when he requested and was granted a transfer to work out of the law firm’s New York office. Adjusting to the faster pace of New York had been the balm he needed to start over. The cramped studio apartment was a far cry from his spacious condo. But that hadn’t been important, because most nights when he came home after putting in a fourteen-hour day he’d shower and fall into bed, then get up and do it all over again.

He’d given New York City eight years of his life before he decided he didn’t want to practice law, but teach it. He contacted a former professor who told him of an opening at his law-school alma mater. He applied for the position, went through the interview process and when he received the letter of appointment to teach constitutional law at Duquesne’s law school in Pittsburgh, he finally found peace.

“What are you having, Myles?”

His head jerked up and he smiled at the woman who’d become his law-school mentor. Judge Stacey Greer-Monroe had graduated from high school at fifteen, college at eighteen and law school two months after her twenty-first birthday. Myles thought Stacey was one of the most brilliant legal minds he’d ever encountered, including his professors.

“I think I’m going to order the crab cakes.”

“What’s the matter, Professor Eaton? You can’t get good crab cakes in Steel City?” Stacey joked.

His smile grew wider. “I get the best Maryland-style crab cakes west of the Alleghenies at a little restaurant owned by a woman who moved from Baltimore. Sadie G’s has become my favorite eating place.”

Stacey lowered her gaze rather than stare openly at the man she’d tried unsuccessfully to get to think of her as more than a friend. But their every encounter ended with a hug and a kiss on the cheek. After he was jilted by his fiancée Myles continued to regard Stacey as friend and peer. Their relationship remained the same after he’d moved to New York and then Pittsburgh when they communicated with each other online.

Stacey’s hopes of becoming Mrs. Myles Eaton ended when her biological clock began winding down and she married a neurosurgeon she’d dated off and on for years. She was now the mother of a two-year-old daughter.

“So, you’re really serious about putting down roots in Pittsburgh?”

Myles’s dark eyebrows framed his eyes in a lean mahogany-brown angular face that once seen wasn’t easily forgotten. “I’ve been house-hunting,” he admitted. The one-year lease on his rental would expire at the end of August. “And I’ve seen a few places I happen to like.”

Stacey angled her head. “I thought you’d prefer a condo or co-op.”

“I’d thought so, too. But after living in apartments the past nine years I’m looking to spread out. I don’t like entertaining only a few feet from where I have to sleep.”

“You could buy a duplex.”

Myles studied Stacey’s face, one of the youngest jurists elected to Philadelphia’s Supreme Court. Stacey Greer-Monroe had always reminded him of a fragile doll. But under the soft, delicate exterior was a tough but fair judge. Her grandfather was a judge, as was her father. And Stacey had continued the tradition when she was elected to the bench.

“I miss waking up to the smell of freshly cut grass and firing up the grill during the warm weather.”

Stacey smiled. “It sounds as if you’re ready to settle down and become a family man.”

Myles wanted to tell her he’d been ready to settle down ten years before. Then he’d looked forward to marrying Zabrina and raising a family, but that changed when she’d married Thomas Cooper and gave him the son that should’ve been theirs.

“Excuse me, Judge Monroe, but are you ready to order a cocktail?”

Frowning slightly, Stacey shifted her attention from Myles to their waiter. Talk about bad timing. She was just about to ask him whether he was seeing a woman, and, if he was, was it serious? “Yes.” She smiled at Myles. “Do you mind if I order a bottle of champagne to celebrate your return to Philly?”

“Not at all, Judge.”

He’d come back to Philadelphia to spend the summer and reconnect with his family. He’d checked into a hotel downtown for the week. After the wedding he would move into Belinda’s house for the summer. His sister hadn’t decided whether she wanted to sell or rent her house. It was to be the first time in a decade that he’d spend more than a few days with his parents, siblings and nieces.

Waiting until the man walked away, Stacey said to Myles, “I told you never to call me that!”

“Aren’t you a judge, Stacey?”

“Yes, but only in the courtroom.”

“I’ve never known you to be self-deprecating. When we met for the first time all you talked about was becoming a judge.”

“I was all of twenty-six and I wanted to impress my very bright protégé. You had to know that I liked you.”

“And I told you I was in love with someone else,” Myles countered.

A beat passed. “Are you still in love with her, Myles?”

His eyebrows flickered before settling back into place. “Yes,” he admitted truthfully. “A part of me will always love her.”

Stacey curbed the urge to reach across the table to grasp Myles’s hand. “I’m glad I married when I did, because I’d still be waiting for you to notice me.”

He angled his head and stared directly at his dining partner. “I noticed you, Stacey, only because you were trying too hard. The flirtatious looks, the indiscriminate touching and the occasional kiss on the lips instead of the cheek were obvious.”

Stacey’s lashes fluttered as she tried to bring her emotions under control. She’d always thought she’d been subtle in her attempts to seduce Myles Eaton, but evidently she had been anything but. “You knew?”

He nodded. “I knew, and I promise I won’t tell your husband.”

“You must have thought me a real idiot.”

Reaching across the table, Myles covered her hand with his. “No, Stacey. We weren’t that different. We both wanted someone we couldn’t have.”

He’d wanted Zabrina at eighteen, and at thirty-eight he still wanted her.