Читать книгу A Defender's Heart - Tara Taylor Quinn - Страница 16

CHAPTER FIVE

PULLING OFF THE sweaty bandanna tied around his head, Cedar walked over to his pickup truck in the employee parking lot of The Lemonade Stand. He was one of a dozen men on the construction crew, building new bungalows on previously unused acreage on the other side of the swimming pool. But right now, he was alone as he unbuckled his tool belt in the deserted lot. Dropping it on the floor behind the driver’s seat, he climbed inside, pushing the ignition button before closing his door. In the July heat, the Chevy was like a sauna without the steam.

A blast of warm air hit and he reached into the cooler on the floor below the passenger seat for his last bottle of water. Downed it. And glanced at the gray suit on the seat next to him. He’d donned it before lunch and quickly changed back into work clothes after delivering Heather’s salad to her office.

Heather.

She’d be coming to The Lemonade Stand, but there was no reason she’d ever need to know that he was working there. It wasn’t that she couldn’t know, but he didn’t want her to. He didn’t want to be responsible for swaying her in his favor again. Didn’t want anyone to convince her he was at the Stand as a way of proving that he’d changed. Or as an attempt to get her back.

His atonement was between him and...him.

The bungalows to which he’d been assigned were acres away from the main building, where Heather’d be meeting with Carin Landry, Dominic’s girlfriend.

The parking lot she’d use was a small space intended for general visitors, on the opposite side of the now seven-acre complex. It was the only parking available without a pass card—giving access to a small, nondescript outer reception area, through which she’d be admitted to the main building after showing her identification.

He’d finalized the details that afternoon, during his break, and then worked an hour of overtime to make up for the extra minutes he’d been away from the job. And maybe to work off some extra tension, too.

Seeing Heather...

Damn, he missed her.

He needed a beer.

Throwing the truck in Reverse, he heard his phone ring. Whoever it was could leave a message.

Unless...what if it was Heather? Lila McDaniels Mantle, the Stand’s managing director who had absolutely no idea—from him, anyway—that he and Heather knew each other other than professionally, had said she’d call Heather to arrange the appointment with Carin.

After putting the truck in Park, he grabbed his phone out of the heavy-duty case clipped to his jeans. And almost dropped it. The number on the screen was on his speed dial, but...

“Randy Cedar-Jones?” he said before the phone was even fully to his ear. His father was calling him!

Elation went to immediate alarm as he realized that something must be terribly wrong. Randy Cedar-Jones had never called him. Not once. Ever. They’d never met. He had the private number as part of a legal agreement designed by his mother. For all he knew, the line was only for him—set up when he was a kid. He called. Left messages. They were never returned. Never.

Most people didn’t even know that the famous pop singer had a son. Cedar’s mom, who’d been a groupie having a one-night stand, had chosen to keep it that way. She’d told the singer about him, and had signed a legal document that she’d helped him draw up, valid until Cedar’s eighteenth birthday, agreeing never to approach Cedar-Jones or speak of Cedar’s parentage—including no paternity testing—in exchange for child support. She didn’t want her son raised in an unrealistic world, nor did she want him to be part of a two-family, two-home lifestyle. One with her and an entirely different one with Cedar-Jones. Her one demand had been that Cedar, the man’s only child, always had his private phone number.

His mother, a kindergarten teacher, had never married or had other children. And she’d never made any secret of the fact that she was such a Cedar-Jones fan that she’d named her only son after the singer. Randy Cedar-Jones had sent flowers to her funeral when she’d been killed in a car accident shortly after Cedar graduated from college—but he still hadn’t picked up the phone when his son had called to thank him.

Nor returned that or any subsequent calls.

“Cedar! Is this a good time?” To talk, he figured his father meant.

And with a mind that felt encased by sludge, he tried to sound as nonchalant as the old man did.

“Sure, what’s up?” Something obviously was. But Cedar still couldn’t contain the excitement churning inside. His father had called him.

Thirty-four years into his life, and it had finally happened.

His mother would be glad. He had to tell Heather...

Slowing his thoughts to adult level, Cedar listened as Randy said he had a favor to ask. And he felt another rush—of an emotion he’d waited for all his life.

Wow. A younger Cedar had lived for this day.

“I’ve got a...friend...who’s gotten himself into a bit of trouble...”

Cedar listened, his mind racing ahead to possible fixes, thinking along the lines of cleanups and protection, even before he heard the gist of the problem.

“It’s not unlike that case you had three or so years ago, the one where the guy skipped the country and you were able to get him to give you evidence to clear his partner, since they couldn’t prosecute him if they couldn’t find him...”

The time he and Heather had gone to Egypt. And come home to meet Charles at her parents’ barbeque.

“And the case from last year where the guy was found with 1000 kilos, but you were able to show enough doubt as to the ownership and how it came to be where it was, that he walked...”

Dominic. Cedar had shown sufficient doubt, and then, just before he’d rested his case, the prosecutor had turned up with reports of 911 calls from neighbors, reporting suspicious activity at Dominic’s home. There’d never been any charges for anything as a result of those calls. Until then, he’d never known about them. And though one would expect there to have been a police report, none could be found. Other than the incoming calls to 911 that had been too vague to draw from. Concerned neighbors calling in suspicious activity. Dominic had been certain they had the case won, that the calls wouldn’t change that, so he wouldn’t come clean about them. Dominic had been willing to risk his freedom on the certainty that those calls wouldn’t matter, that no one would find a single report that would explain the calls, but Cedar hadn’t been willing to risk his win.

He’d risked his relationship with Heather, instead.

Cedar-Jones listed a couple of other cases, and Cedar began to see the link. They’d all been seemingly definite convictions—mostly white-collar crime—and even with digital trails, he’d managed to pull a rabbit out of the hat every time, and his clients had walked free.

He saw something else, as well. All those years, when he’d called Cedar-Jones after every case...his father had been listening to his voice mails.

He sat there, half listening, knowing without a doubt that he’d give his father the affirmative he was after. And that whatever the old man had to say about the case wouldn’t matter nearly as much as Cedar doing his own digging.

What mattered right now was that, when his famous father had finally acknowledged him, he could give him exactly what he needed.

For the first time in his life, he felt...good enough.

Complete.

Holy hell!

* * *

CHARLES HAD INVITED another couple to dinner. A friend of his, Rebecca, from college, who’d been in LA for a church conference and had an unexpected free evening. And her husband, Anthony, who loved to play golf as much as Charles did. They were a thoroughly enjoyable couple. Becky was a dentist, too, and Anthony a chiropractor. They had two teenage children and a lovely home in Chicago and invited Heather and Charles to visit them the following summer—promising to take them out on their boat, which was docked at their property on Lake Michigan. And they insisted on getting an invitation to the wedding, too.

The bottle of wine, and the next one, disappeared quickly, but they ate inside, in Charles’s formal dining room, not out on the deck. No view of the ocean. And Heather helped with the cooking, preparing the salad and side dishes, while Charles entertained his friends and grilled the steaks on the grill out on the deck. She was at home in his kitchen, enjoyed her time there, which was why she offered to take care of the dishes while Charles and Becky and Tony continued to chat. They were talking about a couple of bands they all used to like, music she’d heard of, but to which she’d never really related. Turned out that Tony and Charles, who hadn’t known each other before that evening, had both been to more than a few of the same bands’ concerts during their college years. Heather had barely been born.

She tried to follow the conversation as she rinsed dishes and loaded the dishwasher, cleaned the pans she knew Charles always did by hand and wiped down all the counters. It was a struggle, though. Her mind kept wandering, just as it had all night long, even when the conversation going on around her had been engaging.

Before she went home that night—and she definitely planned to go home, which would be another issue, since Charles was expecting her to stay—she had to tell the man she loved that she couldn’t be engaged to him. Yet. He was going to think she was some kind of kook. Or worse, that she still had a thing for Cedar.

Which she didn’t. She scrubbed hard at a spot on the frying pan—until she noticed that she was leaving slight scars on the bottom of the pan. The only true feelings Cedar raised in her were negative ones. Left over from the trauma he’d put her through.

The trauma she’d allowed herself to fall into.

But even if Charles didn’t worry about Cedar, even if he took her conversation for what it was, it was going to be difficult for him. Including on the most surface level—they’d just announced their engagement in a big, celebratory way to everyone he considered a friend.

He wouldn’t be wrong to feel upset with her for not realizing, a couple of days sooner, that she wasn’t ready to marry anyone.

Yet.

That yet kept surfacing. Maybe if she led with that part, her news wouldn’t be so horrible.

“Are you sure I can’t help you with anything?” Becky was back from the restroom, where Heather had directed her minutes before. It was the third time Becky had offered assistance.

“Nope, all done here,” Heather smiled, hung the cloth she’d just used to wipe out the sink and turned back toward the dining room.

The last thing she needed was girl talk. Unless it was with one of her girls, and she wasn’t even up for that at the moment.

* * *

DEAN DISALVO, his father’s friend, had a lot of money. He offered a sizable chunk to Cedar, who wasn’t taking it. He’d promised himself he was done working as a lawyer, at least for a while. Maybe forever. He was done selling his soul. Done taking money for a job that had controlled him to the point that he’d sacrificed his conscience to succeed. He was helping his father. Period.

About five minutes into their conversation Monday night, DiSalvo finally got that Cedar meant what he said—that he wasn’t in it for the money.

His father never came up. Whether Cedar-Jones had mentioned anything to DiSalvo, other than the name of a lawyer, Cedar didn’t know. If DiSalvo wondered about the name likeness he didn’t say. DiSalvo could think what he liked about why a seemingly high-powered attorney would work for free. Cedar really wasn’t interested in what the man thought.

The case interested him, though. Cedar-Jones was right. An intricate trail of money-making deals had veered off course, and DiSalvo was being framed. Or he said he was. They always said they were. Usually they weren’t as innocent as they claimed, but there were ways to make them look as though they were. Cedar knew that firsthand. And knew, too, about the people whose palms could be greased, by a lawyer or the accused, to make things disappear. And people who’d roll over to keep themselves out of hotter water. It was exactly the kind of case that used to make Cedar salivate. After a quick shower and a ham-and-mustard sandwich, he sat out on his deck, with the ocean in the distance, a glass of milk in hand, his laptop on the table in front of him and his body alive in a way it hadn’t been in too many months.

DiSalvo had sent a shitload of files. Cedar wasn’t going to bed until he’d perused every single one of them.

And maybe not even then.

His father had called on him.

He had work to do.

And a job site to be at in the morning.

Good thing he was used to getting by on minimal sleep.

* * *

HEATHER STOOD AT Charles’s side, a slight step behind him, as they waved goodbye to his friends. Could anyone tell her palms were wet?

Cedar would have known from the arm across her midsection that she was holding back. Holding in. That something was bothering her.

She dropped her arm. Kept waving. Concentrated on the smile on her face. And was caught unawares as Charles turned around and kissed her deeply, his tongue in her mouth.

“Thank you,” he said, as soon as he lifted his head. “I know this wasn’t the evening we planned, but it was perfect in a different kind of way.”

Perfect wasn’t even close to a word she’d have used, but then she’d known what was coming and was sure that had clouded what might otherwise have been a wonderful time.

All except for the conversation about bands, maybe.

“They’re nice people,” she said, stepping away from Charles—wanting another glass of wine, which would require opening a third bottle. Which they had.

Was it too late for him to go along with their original plan of wine on the deck?

“Becky’s a sweetheart,” Charles was saying, following her into the kitchen. “You really liked her?”

Hovering near the wine cooler, Heather smiled at him. “I did. Truly.”

“So you’d be up for going to Chicago to see them?”

She imagined Charles and her together, but not engaged, and smiled again. “Of course.”

It was awkward, just standing there in the kitchen. He might be ready to go to bed. She wasn’t joining him.

She needed some time to figure out the total impact of the feelings assailing her because of her contact with Cedar. She should’ve realized there’d be an initial backlash. She hadn’t seen it coming. And she had to deal with that first.

“Shall we have another glass of wine?” she asked, feeling like a kid asking for permission to stay out past curfew. Which was ridiculous. Charles was the late-night one. “We could sit out on the deck.”

“Sure!” He shrugged, looked happy as he pulled out a bottle of her favorite unoaked chardonnay, while she slid a couple of fresh glasses off the rack mounted above the cooler.

She loved him in this mood, so easy, so supportive. Would it hurt to put off the conversation until later?

Following Charles through the house toward the deck, she considered her options. Her appointment with Carin Landry wasn’t until Wednesday, and she wouldn’t be seeing or speaking with Cedar again until she’d had more than one appointment with the woman. She needed preliminary conversation with her before she could form a list of questions. She could have Charles over to her house for dinner on Tuesday night. After his golf game. Unless he had dinner with the others in his foursome, all doctors.

She’d been thinking about stopping by Lianna’s after work the next day. Her friend hadn’t said no to the weekend in wine country, but she hadn’t said yes, either. She’d sounded decidedly unlike herself. Maybe it was time for Heather to be a friend, rather than just have one...

Charles pulled open the sliding glass door that led to the upper deck at the back of the house. She followed him out. She took a deep breath of air, convinced she could taste a hint of the ocean’s salt in the breeze. Growing up in Santa Raquel had given her what seemed like a biological need for that very special air.

She handed a glass to Charles, exchanged the other empty for the one he’d filled, and stood by the rail waiting for their traditional toast.

“To us,” he said, clinking his now-full glass to hers.

She nodded, mouthed the words and hoped he didn’t notice that they didn’t actually pass her lips. Hoped they’d still be an “us.”