Reprieve (Love's Second Chance Book 1) Page 2

  “Do you always end up hiding yourself away, Sophie?” he’d asked her curiously.

  She’d stiffened in response. “I’m not hiding myself.”

  He entered the room more fully, stopping only when he was a foot away from her. He was so tall, so muscularly built she felt totally dwarfed.

  His cat’s eyes searched hers. “Do they know how miserable you are?”

  The question jarred her and for a moment, she didn’t quite know how to respond. Why did she have the feeling those eyes of his could see into the depths of her soul, finding secrets she wanted to keep concealed from the rest of the world?

  “I don’t think they do,” she said at last, surprising herself with her candor.

  How odd it was that a complete stranger was now her confidante when no one else seemed to understand her. Not for lack of trying, of course, but she had discovered it was incredibly difficult for people to admit their loved ones were unhappy. Maybe because it frightened them. Sophie didn’t know.

  “I’ve been wondering why,” he murmured, “you would do something so drastic. Your family loves you. That much is plain to see. You don’t lack for friends, either.”

  She turned away from him, walking to the window to stare unseeingly into the brightness of the day. Explaining to him how she felt, what she had gone through, seemed impossible.

  Grief could be incommunicable. Everyone told her it would lessen with time, become easier to control. But for Sophie it had only grown worse. She took a deep, steadying breath.

  “I watched you in there.” His voice was close behind her. “And I’ve never seen someone who looked more alone. Why is that, Sophie? Why don’t you let anyone in?”

  “No one understands,” she told him. “No one.” She turned to him, taken aback at his proximity. “They’re all so happy it’s impossible for them to see how I could be anything but.”

  Embarrassment surged through her. What was she thinking, emptying her private hurts to this man? This was only the second time she had met him, the first having been in the hospital. Still, there was something about him, something familiar and comforting, like he was an old friend she hadn’t seen in ten years.

  He reached out and caught a teardrop before it fell down her cheek. “I’m sorry, Sophie. I didn’t mean to upset you.” He pulled his hand away, driving it through his thick, black hair. “Hell, I came in here to wish you well and tell you goodbye.”

  Abruptly, he reached into his pocket and withdrew a card case. “I’ll be in town for another week.” He removed a white card from the black leather sheath. “This is my business card. My cell number is on it. If you change your mind about showing me your art, then give me a call.”

  He thrust it into her hands and strode out the back door.

  Sophie came back to the present with a start. She still stared vacantly at the business card and her tea had probably gone cold. Something about him rattled her. Even though she knew she should throw his business card away and forget about him, somehow she couldn’t.

  Her doorbell rang. Sophie laid the card on the antique, marble-topped table flanking her sofa and rose to her feet. En route to the door, she wondered for a moment if she’d conjured up Trevor James and would find him waiting on her doorstep. The ridiculous notion died a quick death when she found Claire instead, sans Garrett.

  “Claire.” Sophie stepped back, surprised. “Come in.”

  Her sister entered the house, shrugging out of her chic, lime-green coat. “How are you feeling?”

  She blinked. “You drove over here to ask me how I’m feeling? Couldn’t you have just called instead?”

  She knew she was being rude to her sister and she didn’t really know why. For all that she didn’t want to be alone, she couldn’t bring herself to at least try to avoid scaring everyone else off. It seemed second nature to her.

  Claire frowned at her. “Soph, why are you being this way?”

  Sophie didn’t care to investigate the answer to that question, so she turned on her heel and made her way back into the den instead. Unfortunately, her sister wasn’t inclined to allow her such a comfortable retreat.

  Claire followed her, ever the persistent and perceptive sister. She plopped down on the sofa next to Sophie. “Aren’t you going to say anything?”

  Sophie looked down at her lap, plucking at a loose thread on her jeans. She should have known this was coming, she mused. Claire had begun asking her questions in the last few days, digging questions that disturbed her. She didn’t want to talk about the endless pain burning inside her, about the sleepless nights, about the longing for escape. How could she put into words so much emotion, so many things she was ashamed to say aloud?

  “Well?” Claire prompted.

  “Why am I being this way?” Frustration threatened to overwhelm her. “Well, let’s see. Two years ago, I lost my husband and my daughter.” Tears choked her voice. She couldn’t keep herself from crying whenever she thought of Peter and Elizabeth.

  A vision swept through her mind of Peter looking down at Elizabeth and saying the last words she would ever hear him say.

  Give Mommy a kiss.

  The words would echo in her mind forever.

  She could almost feel her daughter’s chubby three-year-old arms encircling her neck. She could hear her sweet voice happily chirping, “I love you Mommy” in her ear. She could recall the fresh, clean scent of Elizabeth’s halo of blonde curls and the wet smooching sound of her daughter’s lips against her cheek. But Sophie had not returned Elizabeth’s kiss on that awful night. Her last chance to kiss her daughter’s soft, warm cheek and Sophie had squandered it. She hadn’t wanted to give Elizabeth the flu.

  Sobs were racking her body and she had somehow wound up in her sister’s embrace. A huge, damp stain spread across Claire’s shoulder from Sophie’s tears.

  “I miss them so much.” Her breath was difficult to catch. “Oh God. Why didn’t I kiss her that night? I should have. I should have held her in my arms and never let her go.”

  “Stop it.” Claire pulled back, putting firm hands on Sophie’s shoulders, forcing her to meet her gaze. “No more should-haves. They don’t mean anything and you know it. You didn’t know what was going to happen. No one did.”

  “In my rational mind I know that.” Sophie gave her sister a sad, watery smile. “But I don’t get through a day without thinking, ‘If only I had told them to stay at home,’ or ‘If only I had gone with them’.”

  “If you had gone with them, you’d be—”

  “Dead,” Sophie finished for her. “And things would be so much easier that way.”

  A spark of comprehension lit Claire’s eyes. Her grip tightened on Sophie’s shoulders. “You didn’t cause your accident on purpose, did you?”

  Sophie toyed with the idea of telling her sister the truth. But it was evident Claire wasn’t prepared to hear it. More than that, Claire would hardly be able to understand why Sophie had intentionally veered into the sound barrier wall. The action had been so weak, she acknowledged to herself. Spur of the moment. It had been wrong.

  “Of course not,” Sophie denied. “Why would I do that?”

  The prospect clearly agitated Claire. Her normally peachy skin had turned milk white. Guilt washed over her. She loved her sister and they had always been best friends. But grief of the magnitude Sophie had experienced could create a rift between the closest of friends.

  “You’d tell me if you were ever considering something like that.” A worried hitch caught in Claire’s voice. “Wouldn’t you?”

  Sophie nodded, another wave of guilt crashing over her. But what was one more when she was already drowning in an ocean of lies?

  “Sometimes I look at you and I feel like you’re a stranger.” Claire tucked a stray strand of hair behind her ear. “I wonder where the Sophie is who stole my makeup and tagged along to everything. Remember the time I caught you trying to hide in the backseat when I was going on a date with Dermot Linley?”

  “I was a
pain in the butt, wasn’t I?” She was glad for the freeing sense laughter provided her. Laughing again at the end of a long cry always felt good.

  Claire laughed too. “The biggest pain.” She smiled wistfully. “I miss those days, Soph. We were young and happy and waking up every morning was so exciting. What happened to us?”

  Sophie sensed an undercurrent in Claire’s words as she searched her sister’s gaze. “You mean you’re not happy now?”

  Claire looked away. “Of course I am. I have every reason to be.”

  But her voice was unconvincing, the words flat and hollow. It occurred to Sophie her sister had been acting differently recently. She hadn’t really noticed it until now, since her own grief had been all-consuming. At the party, Claire and Garrett had kept their distances from one another. And they’d never visited her in the hospital as a couple. Sophie had assumed it was because of their work schedules but now she wondered.

  “Claire, are you and Garrett okay?”

  “We’re fine,” Claire murmured, obviously hesitant to share whatever weighed on her mind. She picked up Trevor James’ business card from the table, reading it aloud to change the subject. “Mom said he wanted to look at some of your artwork. Are you going to call him?”

  “No.” Absolutely not, she reminded herself. “I was actually going to throw it away.”

  “It’s a good thing I got to it first.” Claire slipped the card into her purse.

  Oddly enough, Sophie immediately felt as if she wanted the card back, despite her earlier words.

  “What do you want with it?” Her words sounded sharper than she had intended.

  Claire shrugged delicately. “Maybe I’d like to drop in the next time I’m in New York. I like art galleries.”

  Sophie wanted to protest, but held her tongue. “Fine.”

  Claire raised a golden brow. “It doesn’t sound like it’s fine with you.”

  Sophie reached across her sister’s lap to retrieve her tea from the tabletop. It was cold, but she drained the dregs anyway, taking the time to consider her words.

  “Of course it’s fine with me,” she said finally. “What you do is your own business.”

  Smiling, Claire dropped her purse back onto the floor. “If you say so.” Her tone was calculated to annoy.

  Sophie refused to rise to the bait. Instead, she turned the tables on her sister. “Are you going to tell me why you’re really here or do I have to drag it out of you?”

  Claire looked surprised. “I told you. I was worried about you.”

  “I know, but there’s more to it than that. I can tell.”

  “Well, there is something else.” Claire sighed.

  For a moment, Sophie wasn’t certain whether or not her sister would discuss it.

  “Things between Garrett and me have been a little tense lately.” She looked up from her lap. “It would be a good idea if we each had some space. So I thought I’d spend the night here with you, just like in the good-old days. I took tomorrow off anyway. What do you say?”

  “Tense?” Sophie repeated, completely taken aback by the revelation. “What do you mean?”

  Claire’s relationship with Garrett had always seemed perfect to Sophie. She was ashamed to admit she had even been jealous of her sister on numerous occasions, even before losing Peter and Elizabeth. Not that Sophie and Peter hadn’t shared a good relationship as well, but they had been together for nearly fifteen years. Neither one of them had ever dated anyone else all through high school and college and sometimes Sophie had caught herself wondering what her life would have been like had she dated different men instead of only Peter. Of course, she felt like the lowest worm now for ever having entertained such thoughts, because she would give everything she had to bring Peter and Elizabeth back to her again. Everything.

  Claire toyed with the ends of her lush, blonde hair, apparently choosing to ignore Sophie’s question. Sophie thought again of just how incredibly isolated she had been in her own grief. Her sister, her best friend, was having problems with her marriage and Sophie had been too caught up in self-pity to notice.

  Feeling doubly awful, she reached out and took Claire’s free hand in hers, giving it the same reassuring squeeze Claire had been so quick to offer earlier in the day. “What is it, Claire?”

  Claire managed a tremulous smile that had a manufactured brightness. “He’s been busy lately. Having meetings, late nights, that sort of thing. Steven tells me it’s the project they’re working on, the industrial complex for C & G Industry.”

  Steven Connor was Garrett’s business partner and a good friend to both Claire and Garrett. Together, the two men had built a now-thriving general contracting company from the ground up. Southeastern Contracting was well known throughout Philadelphia and the surrounding suburbs and highly respected in the construction industry.

  “I’m sure that’s all it is.” Sophie wanted to reassure Claire, not just for Claire’s sake, but because Sophie couldn’t fathom Garrett turning to another woman. After all, Garrett Morton was her sister’s devoted slave, had been ever since they first met six years ago.

  “I don’t know.” Claire’s tone was hushed. “I barely see him and then when I do finally get time with him, we either argue nonstop or he ignores me completely. I’m not sure which is worse.”

  “The first three years are always the hardest.” They had been for Sophie. “It gets better. You’ll see.” Her marriage had gotten better. She and Peter had settled into a life of comfortable routine.

  Claire shook her head. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be dumping all this on you. You’ve got enough on your plate without my excess baggage.”

  Sophie smiled. “Hey, that’s what sisters are for, right? I’m just sorry I haven’t been a very good one lately.”

  So much still remained unspoken between them. How could she ever admit to her sister what her despair had driven her to do? She didn’t think she could. The only person who would ever know was the man who had seen her crash and pulled her from the wreckage. And she would never see him again, thank God.

  Sophie turned her attention back to Claire. “What do you say we have some fun for a change?”

  They spent the night reminiscing, laughing and drinking margaritas. Sophie couldn’t remember when she’d last felt so alive. Neither one of them got to bed before five a.m. But as they crashed on the comfy sofas in Sophie’s den, it didn’t seem to matter.

  She wasn’t going to call.

  Two weeks had passed since Trevor had slipped his business card into Sophie’s hand. She wasn’t going to take him up on his offer. Would she sink deeper into despair and grief, try to take her life again? Damn, but it bothered him to think she might.

  Just what was it about her that drew him so? It went beyond the bond formed between rescuer and rescued. It went beyond the limitations of a man finding a woman attractive. When he looked at Sophie, he saw a woman who needed rescuing in more ways than one. And God help him, he didn’t know where the impulse sprang from, but he wanted to be the one to rescue her. That, he supposed, was why he had been so certain she would call him, so certain she only needed a nudge.

  But mulling it over was both ridiculous and useless.

  He groaned aloud, raking a hand through his hair. Why was he even contemplating the matter any further? She was lost to him. He doubted like hell he would ever see her again. He had already established she wasn’t his problem. Besides, she was emotional, a woman with scars and a past, the kind of woman who made him run in the opposite direction like there was a vicious pit bull on his heels.

  Think of something else, damn it. Like the weather or the weekend. Thank God it was Friday. Tonight he could go somewhere, anywhere to get his mind off things, off her. Maybe he would try that new bar, what was it called? The Hot Spot? He’d call Dominique, tell her to buy a new dress.

  “What the hell’s the matter with you? I can hear you pacing down the hallway.”

  Trevor turned to the door of his office to see Marcus Wesl
ey, his best friend and business partner, striding lazily across the floor.

  Marcus grinned when he caught the look on Trevor’s face. “Ah. Woman troubles. Is it the luscious Dominique?”

  Dominique was the aspiring actress Trevor had been hooking up with for the past three months.

  Trevor shook his head. “No, and keep your hands to yourself, Wesley.”

  Marcus only grinned wider still. “How long have the two of you been an item? Two months? Three? Does the poor thing know she’s about to expire?”

  Trevor was hardly in the mood for company. His thoughts were so jumbled he could barely manage a coherent sentence. From the look of things, Marcus was in rare form.

  “Has anyone ever told you you’re a pain in the ass?” Trevor demanded.

  Marcus crossed the room and sank into Trevor’s chair, plopping his feet atop Trevor’s desk in the process. “At their peril.” He crossed his arms behind his head and leaned back into the chair. “So, does she?”

  Trevor stopped pacing and glared at his best friend. “Does who what?”

  “Does who what,” Marcus repeated with a bark of laughter. “Does Dominique know she’s about to get dumped?”

  “No she doesn’t,” Trevor pointed out. “Because she’s not.”

  Marcus raised a brow at him. “Oh really?”

  “Really.” Trevor suddenly felt compelled to defend himself. “I like Dominique. She’s beautiful and she doesn’t talk much. What more could you ask for in a woman?”

  Unbidden, Sophie’s image popped into his mind. Shit, couldn’t he keep her out of his head? How had she gotten under his skin, into his bloodstream like a disease?

  “You forget I know you too well,” Marcus said, tapping a pen on the surface of Trevor’s desk in an annoying rhythm. “You never stay with a woman more than three months. The minute you start ducking her calls, it’s only a matter of time.”

  So he had dodged one or two of Dominique’s calls this week. That didn’t mean anything.