“I saw him leave your building right before I came in.”
“Lots of people have offices in this building besides me,” Jake replied. “The nature of my business is confidential. I don’t talk about who comes and goes through that door.”
Hope smiled slightly. “I guess I can appreciate that. Especially since I don’t want anyone to know I’ve come here, either. But I have to know whether or not you’re working for Victor.”
“Why?”
“Because I’d like to hire you myself. To investigate Michael Eldridge.”
Jake lifted his brows in surprise. “But you made your feelings about me perfectly clear after Andrew died.”
She glanced away. “That was different.”
“How? You didn’t believe what I found out about your husband. Why would you believe what I tell you about this guy?”
She studied the purse in her lap for a moment, then her gaze lifted to his. “Because you don’t hold a grudge against Michael Eldridge.”
His voice hardened. “I told you then and I’ll tell you now. My investigation into Andrew’s connection with Simon Pratt wasn’t personal. I was doing what any good cop would have done.”
“But you weren’t just any cop,” she said. “And no matter how hard you might have tried, I don’t think you could have kept your personal feelings out of your investigation.”
“So what makes you think I can do that now?” He gave her a long, relentless stare. “There are other investigators in Memphis, Hope. Why did you come to me, knowing how I feel about the Kingsleys? Knowing how they feel about me?”
She hesitated, as if unsure how far she was willing to go. Then she shrugged. “Because I know you’re good. I know you can’t be bought. And because I need to know the truth about this man. As soon as possible.”
There was a desperation in her eyes that intrigued Jake. “Why not let the Kingsleys handle it? After all, this really doesn’t concern you any longer, does it?”
Anger flickered in her eyes before she quickly quelled it. No one else would even have noticed, but after all these years, Jake still knew Hope too well. Ten years had not changed the fact that she still tried to suppress her emotions—and he still didn’t want to let her get away with it.
They had been like fire and ice, he and Hope. His temper had always been hot, fierce, quick to explode, while her anger lay frozen beneath the surface, dormant for days, weeks, sometimes months at a time. Maybe even years, he thought, gazing at her now.
“Just because Andrew is dead doesn’t mean I don’t still care about his family,” Hope said. “Iris especially. She’s been very good to me, Jake. I don’t want to see her hurt. She’s very fragile right now.”
Somehow “fragile” wasn’t a term he could ascribe to Iris Kingsley.
“I know you don’t like her,” Hope continued. “I know you think she got you fired from the department—”
“I don’t think,” Jake interrupted bitterly. “I know. That review board had her fingerprints all over it, and you know it.”
He saw her knuckles whiten as her fingers tightened on the clasp of her purse. “I honestly don’t know what happened,” she said. “But I want you to know I had nothing to do with it.”
Jake glanced around his shabby office. “Well, that’s some comfort, isn’t it?”
The anger flashed in her eyes again, and this time she wasn’t so quick to suppress it. She stood. “It was a mistake for me to come here. I should have realized—”
“Yeah,” Jake said. “You probably should have. But as long as you’re here, you might as well finish what you started.”
She hesitated. A myriad of emotions flickered over her features, so quickly even Jake was hard-pressed to recognize them. “Maybe you’re right,” she said. “Maybe it’s time we got everything out into the open. Ten years is a long time to carry a grudge, Jake.”
“Is that what you think I’m doing?”
“You think I don’t see the loathing and disgust in your eyes every time you look at me?” she asked. “You think I don’t know how much you hate me?”
“I don’t hate you,” he said. Although sometimes he wished he did. Especially at night. Lying alone in his bed. Remembering the way things once were. The way things might have been. “I don’t hate you,” he repeated.
She didn’t respond. Walking over to the window, she stared down at the street. Jake wondered what she saw. The overflowing Dumpster in the alley below? A drunk stumbling out of the bar next door?
Great little place you’ve got here, McClain.
He wondered what Hope saw when she looked at him. A thirty-five-year-old washed-up ex-cop? A man who had been willing to give up everything for the sake of a career he no longer even had? A failure?
Not a very pretty picture, he thought. Not at all what he had wanted or expected of himself. At least Hope hadn’t pointed out how badly he needed a client, as Victor Northrup had. Jake guessed he should be grateful to her for that.
Still gazing down at the street, she said, “Ten years ago, I made a decision about my life. About us. I didn’t think I could be a cop’s wife after what happened to my father. I was devastated by his death, and the thought of losing you the same way…the thought of our friends from the department showing up at my door one night to tell me you were never coming home…to have their wives try to comfort me while secretly feeling grateful it hadn’t been their husbands who’d been killed…”
She trailed off and drew a long breath. “I knew I wouldn’t be able to bear it. So I broke off our engagement. I thought it would be easier that way, but it may have been the worst decision of my life.”
When she turned to face him, her eyes were like drowned violets, and Jake thought, almost in awe, that she looked close to tears. In all the time he’d known Hope, he’d only seen her cry once—the night she’d learned her father had been killed. She hadn’t cried at his funeral, and she hadn’t cried the day she broke off with Jake. Her resolve on both occasions had been frighteningly final.
But here she was now, ten years later, with tears in her eyes, telling him things he no longer wanted or needed to hear.
But as soon as the thought shot through his mind, he dismissed it. He must have imagined the tears and the remorse, because Hope’s eyes now were clear and more determined than ever, with not so much as a hint of regret shimmering beneath the surface.
“The point is…” she said, walking toward him. She stopped just short of his desk. Of him. “It may have been the worst decision of my life, and then again, maybe it wasn’t. Who’s to say what our lives would have been like if I hadn’t broken off our engagement. Who’s to say we would have stayed together anyway. I’ve always liked to believe things happen for a reason.”
He wanted to ask her what reason she’d had for marrying Andrew Kingsley, but he didn’t think he’d like her answer. So he said nothing. Instead he stood there feeling like a jerk, and he didn’t even know why.
“I guess what I’m trying to say is that if I made a mistake ten years ago, it was my mistake to make and I’ve had to live with the consequences.” Her chin lifted stubbornly, a gesture that was all too familiar to Jake. “I won’t be made to feel guilty about it any longer.”
“Is that what you think I’m doing?” Jake asked, his own anger stirring to life. “Trying to make you feel guilty?”
“This thing you have about the Kingsleys—”
“Was there a long time before I ever met you,”