Secrets of You (14 page)

Lorna patted her hand. “You don’t worry about that girl. Like I said, she’s always been her own worst enemy.” Her voice slipped. “God might punish me for saying this, but the second after your father drew his last breath, I told Vanessa I wanted to see you.”

“I’m sure she wasn’t happy about that.” The thought that her mother had wanted to see her lifted Arianna’s soul.
She hadn’t been forgotten
. She’d even been loved. Maybe by her father, too, despite his actions.

Lorna smiled. “Indeed, she wasn’t. Pouted and fussed for a week until I told her if she refused, I’d hire someone to drive me there and then see if I’d offer to sit for the girls while she went off gallivanting after one thing or another.”

Arianna kissed her mother’s rough hand. “Thank you for never giving up on me.”

“We’ve got a lot of time to make up.” And then, “I’m sorry your father never came around.”

Arianna nodded, pushed the next words out. “Do you have any recent pictures of him?” Had his dark hair grayed or maybe turned white like his own father? And what about the mustache he’d trimmed for as many years as she could remember?

Her mother’s face brightened and she half-sprang from the chair. “I have the perfect one.” She rushed to the sink and snatched a framed picture from the window ledge. “It was taken last July and he’s even smiling.”

Obviously, smiling had become a rarity for him.

Lorna handed her the picture and let out a long, sorrowful breath. “He looks almost happy, doesn’t he?”

Arianna studied the tallish man in the white T-shirt and blue work pants. He still had the tanned skin she remembered, the broad shoulders, thin nose. His hair was salt-and-pepper gray, his eyes the same blue as hers. Sad eyes, filled with loss and an empty heart. Had she made him this way, caused such grief and disappointment he could not find a way past it? If this was “almost happy,” what did “not happy” look like?

Her mother touched the edges of the frame, a gentle brushing of fingers, like a caress. “I love this picture.” The truth lay in those words, seeping onto the print of Edgar Sorensen in one giant bleed of revelation. Lorna may have loved Arianna but she could not bring herself to go against her husband—her one true love. And
that
was what grieved her so, smothered her with guilt and remorse that she had not fought for her daughter.

“I’m surprised he agreed to let you take it.” He’d never been much for flash or fashion.
Simple. Hard-working. Straight up.

“Oh, I didn’t take it.” The smile spread, the fingers eased over his face. “It was that nice young man who talked him into it. He was good for your father. Didn’t matter they only saw each other a few times, they hit it off real well, spent evenings in the garage, sipping beer and talking cars.
Or motorcycles.” She glanced at Arianna and added, “He had a motorcycle.”

“Oh.” How many people
came riding into Endicotte on a motorcycle?
No. Please no
. Arianna sipped air and pushed out the next words. “What was his name?”

“Ash.
Ash Lancaster.”

Ash Lancaster
. He’d even used his real name. How dare he show up in her town as though by coincidence and not strategic calculation? He’d walked out on her and then gone digging into her past. And how much of that past did he know? She clutched the edge of the tablecloth as the oxygen spun from the room, trapping her in her own lies. “He must have been something if he could get Daddy to talk.”

A giddy laugh slipped from her mother’s lips. “Oh, he was a looker. Tall, lean, with eyes the color of whiskey. Your sister had a bead on him but he couldn’t see her. One look told you he’d been hurt and hurt bad, by a woman, no doubt, but he tried to hide it behind the smile and the good manners.” She paused, studied the picture. “I think that’s why your daddy took to him so fast. They both had a pain they couldn’t talk about, buried so deep it would never come out.”

Arianna stared at her father’s picture. She was the woman behind Ash’s hurt. And her father’s. “Daddy hated motorcycles, said they were owned by nomads, hippies, and derelicts.”

“Now that’s true, he did say that, believed it, too. Right up until this young man
came riding into town with his good manners and quiet style. Even in jeans and one of those motorcycle T-shirts, he had class. Everybody noticed him the first time he rode into town—the men because of that fancy bike, and the woman because of the man on the bike.” She sighed and set the picture on the table. “Haven’t seen him in months, but one of these days he’ll ride back into town and then I’ll have to tell him the sad news about your daddy.”

Oh, he’d know soon enough.
In vivid detail
. “He left no way for you to get in touch with him?”

She shook her head, a wistful expression crossing her tired face. “No, he didn’t. Your daddy talked about him for weeks after he left and then out of the blue, Ash would show up again.” She laughed. “Kind of like a Christmas present in June.”

“Hmm. Except Daddy was never big on presents or Christmas.” Edgar Sorensen thought holidays were too commercialized, especially Christmas, and to that end he’d permitted no more than two presents per family member and those must be purchased with a twenty-dollar bill.

Her mother’s eyes lit
up, sparkled. “There was just something about Ash that made your father warm up. Now, I’m not saying he pulled out his jar of wheat pennies and showed those, that didn’t come until the third visit. But your daddy wasn’t as guarded as he is around most folks, especially strangers.”

Just how many times had Ash been to
Endicotte? “Did he spend a lot of time here?”

“He came three times. The last one was in July when he took this picture of your dad. That’s when he brought his fancy camera with him, said he wanted to make memories.”

***

Ash studied the photos he’d laid out on the boardroom table. He’d been at it all afternoon and could barely make out a scrap of cherry wood on the table.
Overkill? Probably. But he wanted just the right feel for the pictures that would hang in the lobby of the new office building. Pete had entrusted him with this job and he was not going to screw up. He wished Arianna were here to give him a thumbs up or down, but that was another story. She hadn’t answered her cell for the last two days and for all he knew, she could have changed her number.

He’d really believed they had a chance and for a second, he could have sworn she believed it, too.
And now, to disappear? Why? To show him what it felt like? Something had happened the other day to upset her and it had to do with her sister’s visit—he’d bet his bike on it. And that “something” was what she didn’t want him to know.

He eased a print of
a an old farmhouse from the table and studied it. What he really wanted to do was toss the pictures of Endicotte on the table and pick from those. There were blood-red sunsets and tractors, fields of corn and wheat. Miles of split-rail fence. But he couldn’t add them to the selection until he fessed up his relationship with the folks in Endicotte—and he’d hoped he wouldn’t have to do that until she spilled the truth—the whole truth about her past.

Except it didn’t look like that was going to happen.
As a matter of fact, the past two days were pretty indicative of where they were headed in the relationship—nowhere. He could fight it a while longer, pretend she’d show up and proclaim not only her love for him but her ever-loving commitment to him, but that was a crock of nothing. Sometimes you lost, no matter how hard you tried. He was contemplating the truth behind this when Arianna stormed into the boardroom and slammed the door closed behind her.

“How dare you.”

She stood before him, flushed, angry, and so damn beautiful it stole his breath. Obviously, he was the object of her anger. “What have I done now?”

“You know what you’ve done.” She advanced on him, eyes sparking, mouth pinched, a dragon queen breathing fire. “You know exactly what you’d done.” She pointed a finger at him. “And you’ve known all along, so don’t even try to pretend.”

Ash set the photo on the table, not certain if he should opt for humor or seriousness. Until he knew what the hell she was talking about, he’d take the humorous approach. “I’m very good at a lot of things, but mind reading is not one of them.” The dragon queen’s eyes narrowed on him. Okay, humor had been a mistake. She wanted serious? He had plenty of that. “I have no idea what you’re talking about, and we can either stand here and continue this lunacy, or you can tell me. Straight out.”

“Fine.
I’ll tell you—” her upper lip curled “—straight out. You visited my hometown. You met my parents, sat at their kitchen table. You drank beer with my father.”

Ah. So that was it. He had planned to tell her the second she confessed the truth about her past.
Except that hadn’t happened. “I did. Great people. I really hit it off with your dad.”

“My father died two weeks ago.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.” He was, too. There’d been something about Edgar Sorensen that Ash respected and liked, and it had nothing to do with Arianna. The man hadn’t been full of words or fancy phrases; he’d never been on a plane or eaten caviar, but there had been a genuineness about the man that spoke of integrity and honor. Sadly, it appeared the high standards the man lived by had not allowed him to forgive his daughter of her youthful indiscretions, which made for a pained and lonely existence. Ash recognized that pain, knew it well because it had lived in his soul for too long and it began and ended with Arianna.

“You had no right.” Her voice quivered, strengthened. “How dare you invade my past and pretend you wanted to be friends with those people, and all the while you were laughing at them.”

Now she was annoying him. “Laughing at them? I cared about those people. They
were
my friends and I might have laughed with them, but certainly never at them.” He should shut up and let her sprout her accusations, but dammit, he couldn’t. “Maybe you’re the one who made fun of them and that’s guilt spewing those words at me, trying to twist things around.”

“Hardly.”

He was sick of her subterfuge. Ash crossed his arms over his chest, challenging her. “I’m not the one who pretended my parents were dead and I was living off of a damn trust fund.”

“I had my reasons.”

“Are those reasons why your father never talked about his ‘other’ daughter?”

Her lower lip trembled, straightened out, trembled again. Oh, she was trying to be valiant as if those words hadn’t struck her soul. Well, maybe that was just what she needed—the pain of that truth invading her, smothering her self-righteous need to pretend she was someone she wasn’t. “I’m sure my sister was more than happy to fill in the gaps of my life for you.”

Ash rubbed his jaw and studied her. What she really wanted to know was how much they’d told him but, of course, she would never come out and say that. He could let her wonder a bit but he was too damn tired of the whole mess, so he spat out the truth. “Actually, no one talked about you. I tried to get them on the subject because, after all, can you blame me for wondering why you told me you were an orphan with a trust fund and not a small-town girl with hard-working parents?”

Those eyes narrowed on him. “The past is called that for a reason.”

“So we pretend?” He moved toward her, stopping when he was a reach away. “I mean, why not? That’s all we’ve been doing from the beginning, isn’t it? I pretend I’m somebody I’m not, and so do you. The difference is, when I had a second chance, I owned up and told you the truth. You didn’t.”

She stood there, statue-cold, and said nothing. It was over between them. Ash tried to ignore the emptiness in his soul, but it was too devastating to ignore. Why couldn’t she have tried harder, trusted him more? Given them a real second chance?

“I have something for you.” He scooped up a plain white envelope from the long table. Inside were pictures of Edgar Sorensen the last time Ash saw him. He handed them to her and stepped back, away from her, away from them. “Good-bye, Arianna. I hope you find what you’re looking for. Don’t worry, I won’t come after you this time.”

He didn’t hear her leave, or hear Megan enter the room, didn’t even know she was beside him until she touched his shoulder.
“Ash? Are you okay?”

It was Megan’s voice, but if he tried hard enough, she sounded a little like Arianna.
Almost. Who the hell was he kidding? She didn’t sound at all like Arianna, nobody did, and he was tired of pretending people were different from the pathetic, disappointing individuals they really were. Ash continued to stare out of the window at the building next door. “Sure, Megan. I’m fine.”

She squeezed his shoulder, leaned in, and planted a kiss on his temple. “You don’t sound fine and that didn’t seem like an okay meeting.”

“It’s over.”

“You and Arianna?
Oh, Ash.” Another squeeze on his shoulder, an arm around him. “I’m so sorry.” And then in the softest of voices, “What happened?”

He didn’t want to talk about it and yet, the words poured from him, burning as they left his mouth, charring what he and Arianna had once shared.
“Too many lies. Too much pretending. Not enough truth.”

“Is this about her past?”