“He hoped I might have seen something while I was painting Gavin’s portrait. Something between you and Justine. An argument, maybe.”
“But you couldn’t have. I was never at the house when you were there.”
“I know.” She chewed on her lower lip, wishing she could stop herself from asking the next question but knowing she probably couldn’t. She’d never had very good impulse control. “I always thought I might run into you, but I never did. Was that deliberate? Were you avoiding me on purpose?”
“Yes.”
She frowned. “Well, that’s a hell of a note,” she said. “Just ‘yes’?”
“Well, what do you want me to say? Yes, it was deliberate. Yes, I was avoiding you on purpose.”
“Why?”
He shrugged, and it, too, held the echo of the old days. He always did have a large, infuriating repertoire of smug-jock mannerisms. “I thought you’d prefer it that way.”
“You thought I…” She frowned for a few seconds, feeling herself heating up, though she wasn’t sure why. Mike Frome had always been able to confuse her in world-record time, which inevitably ticked her off. “Why?”
“I thought seeing me might make you…” He seemed to search for a word. “Uncomfortable.”
Uncomfortable? Her temperature rose even higher. What the heck was that a euphemism for? Did he think she was still a geeky, untouched virgin who would blush at the memory of the night he’d copped a feel?
“Know what, Frome? That’s BS, and you know it. I haven’t got anything to be uncomfortable about where you’re concerned. Sixteen seconds of touchy-feely ten years ago doesn’t exactly require me to wear the scarlet letter for the rest of my life.”
He shook his head. “I didn’t mean that. I meant that seeing me might make you unhappy. You know, you might—”
Unhappy? Oh, this was even worse. Did he think she’d actually spent the past ten years carrying a torch for Mr. Most-Likely-To-Succeed? Oh, brother.
“Might what? Might turn to stone just from looking at your irresistible bod? Sorry, but that’s baloney, too. You may have been the king of the sandbox in Firefly Glen, but it’s a pretty small sandbox. Out in the real world, where I’ve been living for the past ten years—”
To her surprise, Mike began to laugh. He reached out and grabbed her hand. “Easy, Fang. You’re getting it all wrong.”
She forced herself to take a deep breath. Man, was she regressing. She didn’t do this anymore, didn’t fly off the handle, didn’t read insults into perfectly innocent comments. Her tendency toward irrational ferocity had disappeared the minute she left Firefly Glen, which in her opinion proved that Mike Frome must have been the problem all along.
However, there was such a thing as protesting too much. She inhaled one more time, just for good measure.
“Or maybe,” he said, “I’m putting it all wrong.”
“Probably both,” she said tightly. “We never did really communicate all that well. But, look, we’re getting off topic. This is serious. I’m trying to tell you that your ex-father-in-law wants to see you spend the rest of your life in jail.”
“Okay.” He gazed at her, the poker face returning. “So what did you tell him?”
“I told him I hadn’t laid eyes on you in ten years. That frustrated him, but it didn’t really slow him down much. He made it clear that if I’d just say I saw you shove Justine around or something he’d make it worth my while.”
The smile remained on Mike’s lips, but it was as if he’d simply forgotten to put it away. He still had hold of her hand, so she knew how tight his fingers were.
“And what did you say to his offer?”
She pulled her hand away. “What do you think I said?”
“I don’t know.” He shook his head slowly. “I think you said no. I hope you said no.”
“But you’re not sure?”
He stared at her a moment, and then, his body stiff, he rose from his wicker chair. He leaned against the railing, his back to the sunshine, which threw his face into shadow.
“How can I be sure? The Suzie I used to know—she would have told Alton to take his money and stuff it up his hairy ass. But I haven’t seen you in ten years. I don’t know you anymore. Not really.”
“You think ten years is enough to turn me into a liar?”
He hesitated again. “Ten years can do a lot of rotten things to people, Suzie. If you don’t know that yet, I’m happy for you.”
She stood up. “Let me get this straight. You think it could turn me into a woman who would send a man to the gas chamber for something he didn’t do?”
“Perhaps not.” He lifted one hand. The effort to look suave, indifferent, world-weary failed miserably. He was just plain tired. “But am I sure? No. To tell you the truth, I’m not sure of anything anymore.”
Her annoyance faded slightly in the face of his exhaustion.
“Well, you can be sure of this. Millner is going to try to frame you for this, Mike. He’s going to do any dirty thing he can to see that you pay for what happened to Justine.”
“I know.” He glanced toward the French doors, obviously wondering if Gavin was within earshot. “But frankly, Suzie, Alton Millner isn’t the only vulture out to get me. He isn’t even the most dangerous one. The D.A. has a bead on me, too. I guess it’s pretty standard for the cops, even if it feels outrageous to me. They always look at the husband first.”
She felt an upwelling of incredulous indignation. Was everyone around here insane? Mike Frome couldn’t kill anyone. Heck, Suzie herself was a more likely candidate. She’d hated Justine, and she was, after all, the one they called “Fang.”
But neither of them had done it. They just weren’t that kind of people.
“That’s the dumbest thing I ever heard,” she said. “Jeez. Shouldn’t you be a better judge of people than that if you’re going to be the D.A.?”
Mike almost smiled. “You’re so sure he’s wrong, then?”
Suzie rolled her eyes. “I’ve known you since you were about six, Frome. You can be a horse’s ass, and you do have an irritating tendency to think you’re God’s gift. But kill somebody? No way. Kill your own child’s mother? Not in a bazillion, trillion years.”
“Damn.” His half smile turned into a grin. “Why couldn’t you have been the D.A.?”
She shrugged, but she felt herself smiling, too. “Couldn’t have handled law school. Problems with authority, you know.”
“Yeah,” he said. “I know.”
Man, this was getting weird. A minute ago she’d wanted to punch him out, and now she had this stupid impulse to go over and hug him. She felt a disgustingly maternal urge—perhaps the first in her whole life—to help him hang on to that smile.
But she forced herself to stay where she was. “Well,” she began. “That’s all I had to say, so I guess I should—”
“Suzie.”
She frowned, just on principle. “What?”
“Thanks for coming by to warn me. It was very—very sweet.”
“Wow.” She found herself smiling again, and she made a few adjustments to make sure it was a sarcastic smile. Behind her, she heard footsteps approaching. Gavin must be coming back. “You’ve used a lot of words