Over the Line (13 page)

“Are you going to marry James?” she asked after a pause.

Oh crap. She didn’t want to lie to her. Lousy, lousy… “Would that be okay with you?” she hedged.

“I guess.” A long silence, then, “Do you want to try them on?”

“Hell, yes!” Beth said, grabbing the left one and easing her foot into it. It fit perfectly. She really did want a pair of these boots. They felt so badass; no wonder Maisie loved them.

When she’d laced the other one up, she rolled up the legs of her pants and walked up and down in front of Maisie. “Do they look good?” she asked.

“They look awesome.”

“Go on, now you put them on and show me,” she said as she took them off. And now she knew she was stalling to go back downstairs. Maisie’s stomach rumbled. “Or would you prefer to go get some breakfast with me? I’m starving, too.” When she nodded, Beth asked, “So what’s breakfast like here?”

“Gracie’s ham and cheese omelet is awesome. Crispy around the edges, and soft and squishy in the middle.”

“Sounds perfect. Want to go back downstairs?”

* * *

When Beth and Maisie got back to the breakfast room, they were greeted with an icy silence. But they both smiled brightly at James, who was relieved they were back. “Hungry?” he said, standing up to pull out both Beth’s and Maisie’s chairs for them.

“Starved,” they said in unison, then laughed. Beth continued, “I have it on good authority that Gracie’s omelets are incredible.”

He sat down, suddenly feeling calmer and happier.

With Beth and Maisie back in the room, there were no more awkward conversations, just harmless chatter about the wedding and who his mother had invited from her group of old school friends. He wondered just exactly how many of the guests Sadie and Simon would actually know, and figured that it must be a pain for poor Sadie to have to meet a bunch of new people on her actual wedding day.

When they’d consumed the last of the omelets and coffee, they all got up to leave the room so it could be cleared by the staff. Maisie insisted on taking them out to see the portable bathrooms. He wasn’t so keen to see them, since he spent a lot of time downrange in portable bathrooms and couldn’t quite imagine how the wedding guests would feel about them.

As they were leaving his father stepped up and took Beth by her arm. “May I have a word with your fiancée?” he asked James.

“Dad, she doesn’t belong to me. If you want to speak to her, ask her, not me.” He realized immediately he should have just said no, but he’d been so incensed that his father had treated Beth like she was a piece of property, he missed the opportunity to answer for her. He frowned at the thought of Beth being alone with his father and hoped she’d say no.

“Of course you can,” Beth replied. “I’ll see you guys outside in a minute.”

James left the house with Maisie, but paused on the steps and looked toward the window of his father’s study. No. He wasn’t going to interfere. He trusted Beth to say or do the right thing. “Okay, Minxie, show me these amazing bathrooms.”

She took his hand and dragged him beyond the grand wedding tent until they found red carpet. Only his mother would have red carpet going to the johns.

Instead of Portajohns, which were what he had been expecting, there were actual rooms, tiny room-sized trailers—ten of them in a semi-circle like an old-fashioned motel. “Wow. Are these really the bathrooms?” he asked his sister.

“Come look!”

He opened one of the doors to find a marble bathroom with brass fittings. His own bathroom in his temporary lodging paled in comparison. “Shit, this is nicer than my whole home. You think I can drag one back behind the Audi?”

Maisie giggled and turned on the faucets and flushed the toilet like she’d never seen running water before. There was even a velvet love seat in one corner. Well, at least now there was somewhere for him to escape to if the wedding became too much. Him and Beth. On the love seat. He shook his head. More importantly, what the hell was his father talking to her about, and was she able to hold up the charade in front of him?

“Come on, Minx. Let’s get back. We don’t want to desert Beth.”

“We do not,” she said as she reluctantly turned off the taps and then shut off the light. “Let’s go find her.”

When they got back to the front of the house, James looked in the study windows again. This time his father was standing at his desk, holding something out to Beth. He squinted. What was it? Beth took the piece of paper and looked at it.

Blood rushed from his head, and he shivered. No way. Not again. The bastard was buying her off. He’d done the same thing to Sadie’s ex, the one before Jeffrey. His breath hitched as he watched. She was smiling at his father. Was she really going to take the money? He was suddenly really confused. And angry. She could take the money, because they weren’t really engaged, but what did that say about her? Nothing good, right?

Fuck. Fuck.

* * *

Beth literally couldn’t believe her eyes. She blinked again and again at the check. Five hundred thousand dollars to leave James.
What the hell?

“Before I write your name on that check, I want to be sure that you are not pregnant. If you are carrying my grandchild, things will get a lot more complicated for you. Now James assures us that you’re not, but I would like to hear it from you.”

James assured them…? What the…? A rush of emotion flooded through her like boiling hot water. Anger at James, sadness for him, sadness for his family, who thought they knew who the right woman for him was. God, she felt sorry for James’s real fiancée whenever he found one. Anger flared in her belly but she kept her expression blank. Fought to keep it there as she considered her options. She was pretty sure it would break James’s heart if she told him about this. Absolutely sure it would create a nightmare wedding for Sadie, who was obviously stressed enough already. She’d tell James when they were on their way home.

Maybe.

She kept her mouth shut for as long as she could, but she was so pissed she could visualize smoke coming out of her ears. Gone was her determination to stay unmemorable to Mr. Walker, to fade into the background.

“I can’t accept this,” she said evenly, holding it back toward him.

“You need more?” he asked. “Let me tell you, if you marry James, he won’t be a part of this family’s inheritance. You won’t get more money just because you married a cash cow.”

“James is not a cash cow. What’s the matter with you? You don’t see what a great person he is? He’s a hero. He’s funny, and kind… Surely you can see that?”

Director Walker rolled his eyes. “A hero? Really? He flies a desk at Fort Bragg. I can’t even persuade him to move up to the Pentagon where the real decisions are made. He’s frankly an embarrassment, but at least he’s not delivering pizza.”

Delivering pizza?
She wanted to explode on his ass. He thought serving the country was the same as delivering pizza? He really didn’t know anything about James. He didn’t even know the difference between Fort Bragg and Pope Army Air Field. Sweet hell. Now she was stuck between a rock and a hard… Her mind flicked for the briefest of all seconds to him on top of her in the bed. She fought to regain control of this terrible situation.

“This is your only chance. If you say no now, if you run out of here and tattletale to James, I will ruin you. Not in a conventional way, but five, maybe ten years from now, you may find it difficult to renew your driver’s license, maybe find it hard to get on a plane. I want you to understand that I will do anything it takes to protect my family from freeloaders and bad influences.”

Beth fantasized for a second about leaping over the desk and kicking him in the nuts. But she had a fake identity to uphold. This wasn’t her fight. Wasn’t her family. Ideally she could get out of this weekend with minimal impact on this family. Her only job was to make it through the wedding. And then regale Tammer with stories from the Walker Telenovela.

“I will make you a promise. I won’t say anything to James, I’ll take the check, and if I really am as bad for him as you seem to think, you should have no worries that I will cash it and leave him, all right?” She had no idea if this was going to work or not; it just seemed like an ideal way to keep the peace for two more days.

He frowned at her as if he was trying to figure her angle. But he fingered his pen as if he was buying it.

“But you, in turn, have to promise to leave me alone. Do we have a deal, Mr. Walker?” She suddenly wondered if he was likely to run her fingerprints, but hoped that because this was a family affair, maybe he would do the right thing. She had to believe it, actually. She was going to work for him one day, and if he used his incredible power on a personal matter, it would speak volumes about his abuse of that power. An abuse of power in an organization she would then want nothing to do with. She hoped this was all an empty threat designed to scare a woman with no idea what she had gotten into.

“Who should I make the check out to?” He said, twisting the top off his fountain pen.

A beat passed.

“Beth Cojones,” she said, pronouncing it as if it was spelled “co-jones.” “That’s C-O-J-O-N-E-S.”

Director Walker scribbled her name on the check, staring at her over the top of his glasses. “I have to admit, I thought you would be a harder sell,” he said. “What do you do?”

“I just want an easy life,” she said, taking the offered check.

“You’re a beautiful woman, Ms. Co-Jones. I can see why you turned James’s head. But you had to know a marriage into this family would never have worked.”

Kick. Kick. In the cojones
. “Pleasure, sir.” She folded the check into a tiny square, and tucked it in her pants pocket, then stuck out her hand. As he shook it, she didn’t let go. “I just wish you knew your son better. Appreciated him the way others do. He’s here for this whole weekend. Talk to him. Talk to him about what he wants in life, where he wants to work, who he wants to be. You might be surprised.”

“I don’t like being surprised, Ms. Co-Jones. A fact you would do well to remember yourself.”

Shit
. She nodded, released his hand, and left the room. She closed the door behind her and released a breath of relief. What a piece of work. Maybe her career in the CIA was a pipe dream anyway.

“What did he want?” She looked up to see James leaning against the doorjamb of the reception room.

A friendly face. “Nothing. He just wanted to welcome me to the family. Sweet, really. And you were all worried! Where did Maisie take you?”

He was silent for a second, and then pushed himself off the wall and held out his hand for hers. “The temporary bathrooms in the gardens. They’re in better shape than my current housing, which is a little embarrassing. Maisie is so taken with them I suspect she will commandeer one tomorrow and just stay in it all day.”

She laughed. “I can’t wait to see them. I expect they’ll put mine to shame, too.”

“Come on. We’re free until the early cocktail thing.” He nodded toward the door and studied her as she walked by. He seemed tense, but maybe that was just from being here. Now she kind of understood why he needed her as backup.

“Swimming pool? Can we just laze around all morning?” she asked, suddenly needing to be alone with him again.

“Sounds like a plan,” he said and started off across the lawn back to the pool house.

She slipped off her sandals and strode to keep up with him. “Is everything okay?” She laid a hand on his arm.

He patted it almost absently and said, “Sure, why wouldn’t it be?”

She let it go. Smooth and detached. Clean entry and clean getaway. That’s what she’d taken from her conversation with his father. James hadn’t lied about the Hammer House of Horrors, but he wasn’t responsible for the behavior of his parents. Maybe she should tell him about the check. Maybe he would laugh. But knowing him as little as she did, she was sure he would storm back over to the house and rip his father a new one. And then leave.

Damn it. None of this was good for her. None of it was good for James’s family life either. She’d never imagined she was better off without a big family… but the Walkers made her count her blessings that it was just her and Tammer.

She knew plenty of people who got stressed when they went home to their families. Sometimes she felt like some of the people she met in the military had actively decided to join up just to get a little space between the claustrophobic feel of home and the freedom of service. She would have joined up sooner if she’d been able to.

James interrupted her thought process. “I’m sorry. I didn’t really expect to feel so hemmed in by my family. Sometimes it seems that just being in touch with them, just here for the weekend, leaves me feeling tied up in barbed wire and unable to get myself free without drawing blood. Either from me, or them, or…”

“Me? I promise I can handle whatever they throw at me. Remember, we’re just here for the weekend, and then we’ll be driving home and all this will be behind us.” As she said the words, they didn’t feel right either. “Well,
they
will be behind us,” she added.

“I wish we hadn’t come. I’m sure it would have been more fun climbing.” He took his sunglasses from his pocket and put them on, almost as if he was hiding behind them.

Beth looked away and fell silent. In a second she had processed what he’d said and didn’t want him to see the gut wrenching his words had given her. He wished all of this away? The… intimacy? She’d made herself so vulnerable to him and that was what he thought? He’d essentially rejected her. How stupid was she? This was exactly why she never allowed anyone to get close.

“I think this might have been less stressful without me here,” she replied. “Honestly, if you want me to leave now, I really don’t mind. I’m happy to just disappear and you can hang with Harry, keep your folks happy, and then come on back to North Carolina after the wedding. A day and fifty beers later and this will all be a distant memory.”

“Really? Ten minutes with my father and you’re ready to bolt? Why ever could that be?” He slowed to a stop. “Tell me what he said.”

A shot of inexplicable fear rushed through her. He was acting like he knew what his father had done, but he couldn’t. “You just said you wished I wasn’t here, so I was giving you a painless out. That’s all.” A coil of terrible emotions tangled in her stomach. Pity at the family life James must have suffered through until he’d left. Desperate concern that she’d fucked over her dream career because of this stupid weekend.