‘John Cox. I remember seeing him around the place. He drank at the Crown and Anchor, if memory serves me. Why? What about him?’
‘Did you know him well?’
‘I’m not sure I ever spoke to the man.’
‘Right.’ She frowned. Then this just didn’t make any sense.
‘Why?’ The word barked out of him. ‘What has he been saying?’
‘Nothing.’ She swallowed. ‘He died eight months ago. Lung cancer.’
Rick didn’t say anything and, while he hadn’t moved, she sensed that his every muscle was tense and poised.
‘John and I were...well, friends of a kind, I guess. I liked to garden and he taught me how to grow things and how to keep them healthy.’
‘Cooking and gardening? Are your talents endless, Princess?’
She should’ve become immune to mockery by now, but she hadn’t. She and Rick might’ve shared a moment of kinship fifteen years ago, but they didn’t have anything in common now. That much was obvious. And she’d long given up begging for friends.
She gave a shrug that was designed to rub him up the wrong way, in the same way his ‘Princess’ was designed to needle her. A superior shrug that said I’m better than you. Her mother had been proficient at those.
Rick’s lip curled.
She tossed her hair back over her shoulder. ‘John kept to himself. He didn’t have many friends so I was one of the few people who visited him during his final weeks.’
Rick opened his mouth. She readied herself for something cutting, but he closed it again instead. She let out a breath. Despite what Rick might think of her, she’d cried when John had died. He’d been kind to her and had taken the time to show her how to do things. He’d answered her endless questions. And he’d praised her efforts. The fingers she’d been tapping on her now cold coffee cup stopped.
‘Nell?’
She dragged herself back from those last days in John’s hospice room. ‘If the two of you never spoke, then what I’m about to tell you is rather odd, but...’
‘But?’
She met his gaze. ‘John charged me with a final favour.’
‘What kind of favour?’
‘He wanted me to deliver a letter.’
Dark brown eyes stared back at her, the same colour as dark chocolate. Eighty per cent cocoa. Bitter chocolate.
‘He wanted me to give that letter to you, Rick.’
‘To me?’
She rose and went to the kitchen drawer where she kept important documents. ‘He asked that I personally place it in your hands.’
And then she held it out to him.
EVERY INSTINCT RICK had urged him to leap up and leave the room, to race out of this house and away from this rotten city and to never return.
He wanted away from Nell and her polished blonde perfection and her effortless nose-in-the-air superiority that was so at odds with the girl he remembered.
Fairy tales, that was what those memories were. He’d teased them out into full-blown fantasies in an effort to dispel some of the grim reality that had surrounded him. He’d known at the time that was what he’d been doing, but he’d wanted to hold up the promise of something better to come—a chance for a better future.
Of course, all of those dreams had shattered the moment he’d set foot inside a prison cell.
Still...
The letter in Nell’s outstretched hand started to shake. ‘Aren’t you going to take it?’
‘I’m not sure.’
She sat.
‘I have no idea what this John Cox could have to say to me.’ Did she know what was in the letter? He deliberately loosened his shoulders, slouched back in his chair and pasted on a smirk. ‘Do you think he’s going to accuse me of stealing the family silver?’
She flinched and just for a moment he remembered wild eyes as she ordered, ‘Run!’
He wanted her to tell him to run now.
‘After all, I didn’t disappoint either his or your father’s expectations.’
Those incredible eyes of hers flashed green fire and he wondered what she’d do next. Would she frogmarch him off the premises with his ear between her thumb and forefinger. And if she tried it would he let her? Or would he kiss her?
He shifted on the chair, ran a hand down his T-shirt. He wasn’t kissing the Princess.
‘If memory serves me correctly—’ she bit each word out ‘—you went to jail on drug charges, not robbery. And if the rumours buzzing about town are anything to go by, those charges are in the process of being dropped and your name cleared.’
Did she think that made up for fifteen months behind bars?
A sudden heaviness threatened to fell him. One stupid party had led to...
He dragged a hand down his face. Cheryl, at seventeen, hadn’t known what she’d been doing, hadn’t known the trouble that the marijuana she’d bought could get her into—could get them all into. She’d been searching for escape—escape from a sexually abusive father. He understood that, sympathised. The fear that had flashed into her eyes, though, when the police had burst in, her desperation—the desperation of someone who’d been betrayed again and again by people who were supposed to love her—it still plagued his nightmares.
His chest cramped. Little Cheryl who he’d known since she’d started kindergarten. Little Cheryl who he’d done his best to protect...and, when that hadn’t been enough, who he’d tried to comfort. He hadn’t known it then, but there wasn’t enough comfort in the world to help heal her. It hadn’t been her fault.
So he’d taken the blame for her. He’d been a much more likely candidate for the drugs anyway. At the age of eighteen he’d gone to jail for fifteen months. He pulled in a breath. In the end, though, none of it had made any difference. That was what really galled him.
Nell thrust out her chin. ‘So drop the attitude and stop playing the criminal with me.’
It snapped him out of his memories and he couldn’t have said why, but he suddenly wanted to smile.
‘The only way to find out what John has to say is to open the letter.’
He folded his arms. ‘What’s it to you, anyway?’
‘I made a promise to a dying man.’
‘And now you’ve kept it.’
She leaned across, picked up his hand and slapped the letter into it. She smelled sweet, like cupcakes. ‘Now I’ve kept it.’
A pulse pounded inside him. Nell moved back. She moved right across to the other side of the kitchen and refilled their mugs from the pot kept warm by the percolator hotplate. But her sugar-sweet scent remained to swirl around him. He swallowed. He blinked until his vision cleared and he could read his name in black-inked capitals on the envelope. For some reason, those capitals struck him as ominous.
For heaven’s sake, just open the damn thing and be done with it. It’d just be one more righteous citizen telling him the exact moment he’d gone off the rails, listing a litany of perceived injuries received—both imagined