Her Fill-In Fiancé (14 page)

As befitted her position as one of the wealthiest women in town, Marlene Leary looked perfectly put together in an ice-blue pantsuit with matching shoes while everyone else wore jeans and boots, her blond hair expensively and expertly styled thanks to frequent trips to one of the top salons in San Francisco. But Sophia was shocked by how Marlene had aged in the past five years, as if all the life had been slowly drained from her and replaced with a corrosive bitterness.

Certainly Marlene's words ate like acid in Sophia's stomach, but the slow burn turned into cold shock when she saw the sheriff's car parked in front of Hope's shop.

S
eeing the sheriff's car, Sophia broke into a run. Her thoughts raced as fast as her steps against the sidewalk. What could have happened? She'd barely been gone fifteen minutes, and she'd locked the door before she left—hadn't she?

She remembered putting the sign in the window, the hands on the plastic clock turned to twelve-twenty, and then she'd locked the door. She was sure of it! She'd even double checked by testing the handle before walking down to Bonnie's…where she'd given the keys to Jake.

She'd just reached the front of the shop when the door opened and Jake and Sheriff Cummings stepped out, talking like old friends. Settling his hat onto his salt-and pepper hair, he advised Jake, “You need a furniture dolly to move that stuff or you're gonna be needing a wheelchair.” The sheriff tipped his hat in greeting as he caught sight of her. “Sophia.”

Despite his smile, Sophia could only think about the last
time she'd seen him—down at the station where he'd questioned her about the break-in and damage done at Hope's shop.

“You aren't doing yourself any kind of favor by protecting your friends,”
he'd told her.

“They aren't my friends!”
she shot back.
“None of them are my friends!”

“I hear you were over at Bonnie's. I don't suppose you noticed if she has any Boston creams this morning, did you?” He rolled his eyes toward Jake. “I know what you're thinking, but there is nothing cliché about these doughnuts.” Sophia barely managed a response before the sheriff started over to the bakery, passing by the still-gathered crowd as he went.

“Are you okay?” she asked Jake, even though she could see for herself he looked relaxed despite his run-in with the suddenly amiable sheriff.

“I was about to ask you the same thing.” Sliding his hand to the small of her back, he led her into the store and onto a leopard-print settee away from the front window.

“What happened? Why was the sheriff here?”

“I met the delivery truck out front and had the driver pull around back. One of the other shopkeepers saw a strange guy and a moving van outside a store that had been closed and assumed I was up to no good.”

Jake leaned back against the settee, as calm now as he'd been while talking to the sheriff, and Sophia could only stare at him. “Someone called the cops on you! Why aren't you more upset about this?”

“It's not the first time.”

“What?”

“Think about my job. Part of being an investigator is to follow a suspect around. If I'm parked too long on a street
filled with watchful neighbors, sometimes the cops get called. Same thing happened here.”

“Watchful neighbors,” she echoed. “I wish I could believe that's all it was.”

“But you don't.”

“I think they called the sheriff because of me. Because of what happened before I left.”

“Are you ready to tell me what really happened? Because I know you'd no more rob and ransack this place than you'd burn down the church where your parents got married.”

“You sound so sure, but you didn't know me then.”

“I know you now. I know you love this place,” he said simply. “I saw it this morning when you opened up the shop. It was obvious every time you so much as touch one of the pieces.”

“I do love this shop,” Sophia admitted. “I have ever since I was a little kid. Coming here felt like exploring a treasure trove of riches. I didn't care about buying things. I had so much fun simply looking.”

“No wonder Hope offered you a job.”

Sophia cringed. “By that time, I wasn't the best bet to win employee of the month. My brothers all were born knowing what they wanted to do. My mother has pictures of them as little kids—Nick with his dog, Scout, Drew building skyscrapers out of Legos, and Sam always surrounded by cars and trucks. While I—I tried everything.”

And failed at everything…

“For a while, I tagged along after my brothers, but nothing they did interested me. I even tried all the things I thought I was supposed to like—singing lessons, dance classes, band practice. Nothing stuck. My parents were frustrated, and I can't blame them. They kept accusing me of quitting too easily, and finally I just…stopped trying at all. I dropped out
of all extracurricular activities, my grades started to slide, and I had nothing but time on my hands.

“And once Amy Leary and I started hanging out more and more, it didn't take long for us to discover one thing we were really good at was getting into trouble—and getting away with it.”

The worst part had been how little they cared when someone else took the blame—the stock boy who'd been fired for supplying beer from the Learys' store for one of their parties; the too-eager-to-please freshman who'd gotten caught trying to steal a test because they'd asked him to; the football players who'd been suspended for painting the opposing school's end zone with the name of their own team—an idea they had come up with.

“The Learys are one of the wealthiest families in town, and both Amy's parents have a great deal of influence. No matter what she did, Amy was untouchable, and since Amy and I were always together, that get-out-of-jail-free card extended to me, too.”

Until the tables turned, and Sophia was the one to take the fall.

“I still don't know why Hope offered me the job. Maybe as a favor to my parents or maybe because that's the way she is—always trying to give a helping hand when it's needed.”

And Sophia had certainly needed it as the pranks and partying started spiraling out of control. The job had pulled her away from a dangerous edge. But even as Sophia took that step back, Amy had inched even closer to crossing that line.

They'd drifted apart as Sophia started spending more and more hours at the store. And when she tried making time for her friend, she sensed a change in Amy, a bitterness and anger, that worried Sophia.

Amy had always been reckless and wild, traits that had
appealed to Sophia as she struggled to find her own place in her family. But this darker side of Amy, and her refusal to talk about what was going on, drove a wedge through their friendship.

One Sophia had taken a foolish chance to try to repair.

“One day, Hope received a shipment of vintage dresses. Gorgeous, nineteen-twenty-era flapper styles. I fell in love with them all and bought one for senior prom. I thought maybe Amy would like to see them. At first, she said she wouldn't be caught dead in moldy old hand-me-downs and we got in a big fight. I thought our friendship was over after that, but the night before the dance, Amy called to apologize. She said she wanted to see the dresses after all. I told her we'd go try them on first thing in the morning.”

But Amy had said that would be too late. She and her mother had planned to drive into Sacramento early the next morning to find a dress. Amy needed to see the vintage gowns that night.

“I really don't think this is a good idea,” Sophia whispered as she unlocked the back door to The Hope Chest.

“Why not? You open up the store all the time,” Amy pointed out, her face ghostly in the glow from the overhead security light.

“When I'm scheduled to start the morning shift, not after hours when no one's supposed to be here.”

“One quick look.”

Sophia thought of the dress sure to fit Amy—a white sheath with silver fringe and a row of clear blue crystals beneath the bodice. From the moment she saw the dress, Sophia knew it would be perfect with Amy's blond hair, fair skin and blue eyes.

“What will it hurt?” Amy pressed, and in that moment, in the poor light, her eyes looked just like those crystals—pale, cold and hard.

“We kept the lights off, hoping no one would notice we were inside, and when I heard the first crash, I actually thought Amy and I had interrupted an intruder. I had no idea Amy purposely tricked me into opening the store so she could let them in.”

Images flickered through her mind like the waving flashlights slicing through the darkness—a hooded shadow at the register, another at a display case, and Amy, spraying the gorgeous array of dresses with angry splashes of red.

“What no one knew—” at least, Sophia had always
hoped
Amy hadn't known “—was that Hope was having work done on her house and had spent the night in the small apartment above the store. When she heard the noise, she came down to investigate.”

“That does seem like something she would do.”

“One of the guys pushed her out of the way as he ran for the door. When she fell and didn't get up…” Until that moment, Sophia had felt like she was sleepwalking through a nightmare. Reality shocked her awake with a cold hard slap when she realized Hope was hurt. “I called the sheriff and waited with Hope.”

“Waited to get caught.”

“I couldn't leave her. I wouldn't, so yeah, even after Amy and her friends took off, I stayed. Besides, it was my fault. I deserved to get caught.”

“You didn't know what Amy planned.”

“I
knew
opening the store was wrong, so everything that happened after that pretty much falls on me no matter what I did or didn't know.”

“Is that what the sheriff told you?” Jake asked, seeming to have heard the echo of the other man's voice in her words.

“He had a point.”

“But he didn't have the whole story.”

Sophia shoved away from the settee, needing to walk off
the anger and hurt she still felt after all this time. “Oh, I told him the whole story.”

“He didn't believe you?”

“I think he wanted to, but he also thought I knew who the guys were, that I was trying to protect them. But I wasn't.”

“And what about Amy?”

“Amy didn't need
my
protection. She had her parents.”

“What do you mean?”

“According to the Learys, at the time of the break-in, they were all watching a movie together. Family night, you know.”

And the more Sophia protested her innocence, the more the town's opinion turned against her. It was her word versus the Learys', and Sophia had come across as a liar who tried to blame Amy for her own mistakes.

“So they all got away with it.”

“That's the one good thing. They didn't get away with much. The one guy never did get the register open, and the other dropped the bag of jewelry he'd taken from the display cases. Amy's the only one who caused any real damage.”

Irreparable damage…and not limited to the vintage dresses.

“Did you ever ask her why she did it?”

Sophia sank back down beside Jake, her hands twisted together as she spun her silver ring between her thumb and middle finger. “We never talked after that night. I don't know if her parents tried keeping her away from me. Or maybe I'd served my purpose, and that was it. After graduation, she went to college in Washington. She has a job at a radio station in Seattle. Like she'd always wanted.

“The truth is, I still don't know why she would use me like that. Why go after Hope's shop? Just for kicks?” Sophia gave a sharp laugh that felt like it cut holes in her chest. “My father quit his job after that! And my mom… She used to be on
dozens of these local committees, along with Marlene Leary, but that all changed. I think even my brothers' businesses suffered for a while, although they never said anything.”

Reaching over, Jake took Sophia's hand, brushing his thumb against the ring on her middle finger. “Your dad, your mom, your brothers,” he recounted thoughtfully. “You know, I have to say, it seems like they're doing okay now.”

“I think so. But—”

“And they all seem happy,” Jake added. “Well, except for Nick,” he conceded. “But the others?”

“Yes, I think the rest of my family is very happy.”

“So when is it your turn?”

“What?”

“When is it okay for you to forget about the past? When is it your turn to be happy?”

“I've been happy,” Sophia protested only to realize the happiest she'd been in years were the weeks they'd spent together in St. Louis.

“When you moved to Chicago, why didn't you get another job in retail?”

Sophia mentally recoiled at the idea. After what happened at The Hope Chest…was Jake right? Had she refused to go after what she really wanted because she couldn't let go of the past?

“When I moved to Chicago to live with Theresa, she introduced me to a friend who got me an interview with a domestic service. It was close to the holidays, and they had a dozen or so corporate parties where bartenders and servers were needed, and half their staff was either on vacation or had come down with the flu.”

Sophia swallowed. “During the interview, when they asked about past work experience, I told them I didn't have any. It wasn't a lie, exactly, since I never had done that kind of work before, and I was afraid no one would want to hire
me after what happened here. But they were desperate enough that I don't know if it would have made a difference. I had one if not two jobs a night that first month, and before long, the only work history that mattered was what I'd done in Chicago.”

Just the way she'd wanted it.

“By the time the position opened at the Dunworthys, I had plenty of references, from the agency where I'd worked for two years and from their clients, too. Maybe it wasn't the job of my dreams, but it let me forget.”

“To forget that you had dreams?” he asked softly.

“Jake—”

“Close your eyes, Sophia. Go on, close them.” When she'd reluctantly complied, he said, “When you picture yourself happy, what do you see?”

Staying in Clearville…working with Hope at the shop… Jake at her side…the two of them raising her child together.…