The Truth About Love (14 page)

He set the phone on the seat beside him, not sure what he should do. He picked it up again, thought about it, then stuffed it back into his pocket.

He turned onto Apalachee Parkway, toward Boomer’s house. He could go there and watch a little ESPN. They could shoot some shit and he could pretend none of this was going on.

There, he could forget what an ass he’d been to Gina. He could forget about her and the DNA and the media and the senator and all the other crap having to do with the case.

But was that really what he wanted? He pulled into the parking lot of a fast-food restaurant, not sure if going to Boomer’s was what he needed right now.

Sure, he’d like to forget about the case. Would like—for one night—to forget that he might have put an innocent guy in prison and that his own father might be a murderer. But he didn’t want to forget about Gina. He didn’t want to forget her soft skin or her determined eyes or the way she made him think that maybe—just maybe—she understood what he was going through.

He watched as a couple of college students got out of a beat-up Chevy and walked, arm in arm, toward the restaurant. The girl laughed at something the guy said. He pecked her cheek as they stepped onto the curb, then held the door open for her.

An unexpected jealousy welled inside Landon’s chest at the sight of them. He wondered if he and Gina could ever be that close. That carefree.

And then it hit him. These were the thoughts that scared him. This is why he had pulled away from her. Because he wanted to have a real relationship with the woman who was causing such chaos in his life.

And that terrified the hell out of him.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

L
andon told himself he was here on Gina’s doorstep to apologize for pulling away from her last night. That, and to return the terrible sweatpants he’d worn home after breakfast at her house a few mornings ago. He’d done laundry last night when he’d gotten home and figured tonight was as good as any to return them.

The door to her upstairs apartment swung open. An older man with salt-and-pepper hair and a middle-aged paunch stood where Landon had expected Gina. The man stepped closer and cocked his head in Landon’s direction, scrutinizing him.

A smile spread across the man’s face. “Hey, hey. Landon Vista. Come on in.” The man grasped his elbow and tugged him inside. “Look, Terri, it’s Landon Vista.”

A delicious smell filled the apartment—something with tomato sauce and garlic. Something that made it smell like a home.

A tall woman with the same strawberry-blonde hair as Gina’s rushed from the kitchen. Laugh lines in the shape of parentheses framed her mouth, the only visible wrinkles on her otherwise flawless skin.

“The football player you told me about?” She grasped his hand in both of hers. “And such a handsome man.”

“Nice to meet you, ma’am.” He dipped his head toward her, then scanned the apartment.
Where the hell was Gina?

The man stuck out his hand. “Ted Blanchard. Gina’s father.”

“She should be home any minute.” Her mom leaned closer, as if she didn’t want anyone to hear. “They had to go to the prison today,” she whispered.

Landon froze. Was Gina visiting Cyrus Alexander? Last Landon knew, Cyrus was at the state prison in Starke, a couple of hours away. Were they there swabbing his mouth, testing for DNA that might exonerate him?

Landon had gone through the same humiliating test the day before. Yet another time his dad’s actions had made Landon feel low-class. Like in fifth grade when Martin had shown up drunk at Landon’s school. Or in ninth grade when Matthew Cunningham had shown everyone Martin’s drunken mug shot in the local newspaper.

Yes, all the unpleasant memories had come flooding back, all because of a swab in his mouth and what it might prove about his father.

“Have a seat.” Ted stood aside and motioned toward the couch. “I can’t believe I’m in the same room as the guy I used to curse at on TV.”

“He doesn’t really need to know that, Ted,” Gina’s mom said.

The older man gestured toward the couch. “Terri promised Gina she’d make her favorite meal while we were in town. Homemade lasagna. You can stay, can’t you?”

“It makes enough to feed half of Tallahassee,” her mom said. “I’ll get you two a glass of sweet tea. You can sit down and relax while I make the salad.”

Ted raised his eyebrows as if seeking Landon’s response to their invitation.

“I guess I can stay a minute,” Landon said. Stick around long enough to see if Gina learned anything new about the case.

Terri headed for the kitchen with that same self-assured gait her daughter had.

“Gina told me you two had met,” Ted said.

Landon nodded. “There’s a volleyball league for people who work near the capitol. She’s on one of the opposing teams.” Her dad didn’t need to know that she’d blocked all his shots that first night they’d met.

“No rec football?”

“I play that in the fall.”

Ted’s eyebrow crooked up. “Tackle?”

“Flag. Fewer injuries that way.” He hoped Gina’s father didn’t ask him about the NFL. Most people did when they talked sports with him—wanted his take on why he hadn’t gone on to the next level, even though the local media had analyzed the hell out of it a couple of years ago. “He doesn’t play an offense that works well in the NFL” or “Too slow off the line” were the usual culprits.

He looked around the room, grasping for another topic. “I didn’t realize Gina had company.”
Where was it she’d said she’d been raised before heading off to college? Georgia somewhere? Maybe Savannah?

Ted grinned as his wife returned with two glasses. “We’re on our way to St. Pete Beach. The Don CeSar.”

“That’s where we went on our honeymoon.” She smiled as she handed Landon one of the drinks.

Landon tried to smile, but it felt fake. He wasn’t good at sharing in other people’s happiness, especially when it came to happy couples. But he was pretty sure the Don CeSar was that pink beachfront hotel where the senator had held a fundraiser the year before. At least he knew that much.

Gina’s mom returned to the kitchen. Her dad sat on the edge of the chair opposite him, leaning toward him. Landon felt like a teenager about to be quizzed by the father of a girl he was taking to prom.

“Gina told me you still live in Tallahassee.” Ted said. “Work at the capitol? You write speeches or something?”

“I work for a state senator.” So, Gina’d been talking to her dad about him
.
He wasn’t sure if that was good or bad. “Research mainly. Statistical analysis. Put data together for hearings. That sort of thing.”

“Like how taxes are going to be spent? How much money’s going toward education?”

Landon shot him a sideways glance, trying to figure out if the man knew where the conversation was headed. “Crime related, mostly. Tougher sentencing guidelines. Harsher sentences for repeat offenders.”

Ted nodded. “I understand you and Gina”—the slow pace of her dad’s words told Landon he was choosing his words carefully—“may be on opposite sides of the crime issues.”

He swallowed. “Yes, sir.” Good. A short answer with no implications. No voice inflection.

Ted’s eyes bored into his. “I admire a man who stands for something.”

“Yes, sir.”
So what was the guy trying to tell him?

“A man who’s had a tough life”—he tapped Landon’s knee where it jutted into the space between them—“is a man with a lot of character.”

So he did know Landon’s story, either from Gina or from having heard it on TV during his playing days.

“My Gina’s a stubborn one.” A look of pride warmed the man’s face. “I wouldn’t want her on the opposite side of anything. Gets that from her mama.”

Landon’s stomach muscles tensed as footsteps sounded on the stairs that hugged the side of the detached garage leading to Gina’s apartment. His mind raced. What would he say to Gina when she found him all chummy with her dad, chatting over glasses of sweet tea like they were old friends?

The door opened.

“Landon?” A confused look crossed her face. “What are you doing here?”

Gina had noticed a truck like Landon’s in front of the house next door, but this was the South.
Lots of guys drive trucks like that
, she’d reassured herself. All she wanted to do was to go inside and rid herself of all the remnants of the prison she’d visited today. The lonely sound of the prison doors closing still hung in her clothes. She wanted to change into a pair of sweats and sit down at the table, to enjoy her mom’s homemade lasagna. To forget about the wasted years and wasted lives she’d seen today.

What she didn’t want—and hadn’t prepared for—was to see Landon. What she didn’t expect was him sitting in her living room, drinking iced tea with her dad. Not today. Probably not any day.

“Is that any kind of way to treat your dinner guest?” her dad said, rising to greet her.

Landon hustled off the couch. “I’m not staying.” His gaze met hers, as if trying to convince her he didn’t want to be here with her family any more than she wanted him to be here.

“Oh, come on,” her dad said. “You’ve got to try Terri’s lasagna. Best pasta I’ve had since I went to Little Italy in New York.”

“Is that Gina?” Her mom came around the corner from the kitchen. “How was your day, honey?”

“We”—her gaze slid to Landon—“should probably talk about that later, Mom.”

His eyes searched hers, as if asking if she’d found out anything new about the case today. She hadn’t learned anything, but this wasn’t the time to talk about that. Her parents already hated what she was doing this summer. They wanted her to go into real estate law or tax law. Something without prisons and rapists and murders.

“We’ll talk football.” Her dad slapped Landon on the back. “Remember that game against Auburn? Must have been your sophomore, maybe junior, year?”

“I’m going to change clothes,” Gina said as she set her briefcase down and headed for her bedroom. Her dad could talk to anyone. Make anyone feel like a long-lost buddy, no matter how short a time he’d known them. She knew Landon would soon be seated at their dinner table, eating her mother’s lasagna like he belonged there. Like it was the most natural thing in the world for him to share a meal with them.

Her dad would want to talk football, but her mom might ask about her job or her day at the prison or—God forbid—how long Gina and Landon had been dating.

Gina stripped her suit off and pulled on the first pair of shorts and T-shirt that she ran across. She’d done enough damage to Landon on her own. She didn’t need her mother causing more.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

L
andon had offered twice to help with the dishes, but her mom had refused.

“You two go sit in the living room,” Terri said as she shooed Landon and Ted out of the kitchen. “We’ll have pie and ice cream as soon as we get this mess cleaned up.”

Landon tried to figure out if now was an appropriate time for him to make his exit. He glanced toward Gina as he left the kitchen, but she seemed more interested in checking for his reaction than in revealing her own.

“You see what we brought for Gina?” Her dad pulled a picture frame off the bookshelf as the two men entered the living room. “Has one of those little memory cards in back. Keeps rotating the pictures.”

In the frame, one digital family photo dissolved while another one took its place. Landon chuckled at the strawberry-blonde little girl who stood in a leotard, her arms proudly stretched over her head, marking the end of her gymnastics routine.

Ted shook his head. “She practiced and practiced those flips until she could do them. Had more chutzpah than anyone I’ve ever seen.”

“Still does,” Landon said, thinking about how she’d stood up to the senator the other day in his office. How she’d gotten under his own skin, even when he’d been so certain a girl like her would never have anything to do with a guy like him. “Wasn’t she kind of tall for a gymnast?”

Ted chuckled. “She found her niche with volleyball, that’s for sure.”

The picture faded and another one took its place. In it, a dark-haired boy held a tiny kitten in his arms.

“She told me about her brother.”

Ted’s gaze stayed on the picture, his face grim. “That’s why she does it, you know. Because of what happened after Tommy’s death.”

“Why she’s out to save the world?”

The life returned to Ted’s eyes. “You noticed, too, huh? She’s become more . . . focused, more determined since all that happened. But I guess I don’t have to tell you how a single event can change a life so much, huh?”

“No.” Landon looked again at the little boy in the picture. “You don’t.”

Ted motioned toward the kitchen with his head. “Must have been a surprise when she and her boss brought your mom’s case up again.”

“I had no idea it would ever happen.”

“So is Gina the ally?” Ted cocked an eyebrow. “Or the enemy?”

Landon took a deep breath. “I just want to find out the truth.” He wanted to know who’d murdered his mother. He wanted to know if his dad really had an alibi. He wanted to know what might happen between him and Gina once all this was over.

“Just remember—she’s been through tough times, too. She knows how hard this is for you. It took a lot to get her through what she’s been through.”

Landon’s chest ached. The family gathering, the soft clinking of dishes in the kitchen, the gentle laughter of Gina’s mother, the home-cooked meal, the man-to-man chat—it all reminded him of what he’d missed. Of what he’d longed for all his life. Of what he could have had with his own father if Martin had been a different man or if Landon had a different set of life circumstances.

Gina might have been through something tough. Through something horrific. But at least she’d had her family. She’d had someone to care for her. To guide her through it.

She’d had them. And he’d had no one.

Thirty minutes later, Landon followed Gina down the steps outside her apartment, hating himself for enjoying the way her butt looked in the little khaki shorts she’d put on when she changed out of her suit. He wondered how many other guys had joined her family for dinner over the years. How many had been important enough in her life to meet her parents.

How many she’d slept with.
Why was he thinking about that?
He didn’t want to think about her gorgeous thighs wrapped around some other guy’s hips. Some guy who didn’t deserve her, or he’d still be around.

“I don’t know anything about the DNA yet,” she said as they reached the bottom of the staircase. “I assume that’s why you came over?”

“I thought I owed you an apology.” God, this was harder to say than he thought it would be. “You tried to be there for me and I . . . was kind of an ass.”

One of her eyebrows quirked upward. “You think?”

“But I had dinner with your parents, so now we’re even.”

“You were a good sport in there, letting them rope you into staying.”

He’d actually had a good time listening the details of her father’s work, her mom’s real estate company, the goings-on of their small-town neighbors. They’d even asked about his life since football. They were people who laughed and hugged and teased. People who cared about each other.

People who made him feel like he belonged, even though he didn’t.

“It wasn’t so bad,” he said.

“You’re lucky you escaped before Daddy got too wound up talking football.”

“Football’s easy.” Other topics, he wasn’t so sure about. Had never been sure he knew how to act, how to joke, when to hug. “It’s the get-togethers with Mom and Dad that are scary.”

She laughed. “My parents aren’t scary.”

“They are when you don’t have a lot of experience with normal family life.”

“I’m not sure there is such a thing. And mine wouldn’t qualify even if there was.” A look of sadness crossed her face. “You lived with your aunt’s family,” she said. “Weren’t they normal?”

He leaned against the wall of the house and thought about how to answer. How to explain that he’d always felt like an outsider, brought there out of a sense of obligation when Mama was killed, but never quite fitting in. “Their entire lives revolved around their little girl, my cousin. Dance classes, cheerleader tryouts. They even took her to Orlando for some modeling work. They thought she was perfect . . . until the preacher’s son got her pregnant at sixteen.”

Gina’s eyebrows rose. “Puts a crimp in the modeling at least.”

“They shipped her off to some home for unwed mothers so nobody else would know.”

“I didn’t know they even had those anymore.”

“Wouldn’t even tell me why she was going away until I asked them point-blank the day she was leaving, like they were afraid I would tell someone their precious little angel had gotten knocked up.”

“Your cousin didn’t tell you?”

Landon shook his head. “I guess she was too ashamed. They’d raised her to be their little princess and”—he thought about it for a second—“she fell off the throne.”

“Surely they were proud of you.” She stood in front of him, close enough for him to reach out and touch.

But he didn’t.

He couldn’t.

As badly as he wanted to.

“You played football for a Division I school,” she said.

His laugh sounded bitter, even to him. “They were happy college was paid for.”

“Well, my parents loved you. You can borrow them any time you want.”

Okay, so “loved him” was a figure of speech. They’d only known him a couple of hours, but already he felt more comfortable here than he’d felt in most places throughout his life. The bittersweet feeling socked him in the gut—made him long for the family he hadn’t had since Mama had died.

Would he have grown up a different person, given a family like Gina’s? Would he have her confidence? Her insistence that she could change the world? Her parents seemed relatively well-off, but they had a richness that had nothing to do with money—a quiet grace that showed they knew their value in the world. A concept that had always escaped him.

“Must be nice to know”—Landon couldn’t believe he was saying this out loud, especially to her; not something this close to his heart—“that they’d drop what they were doing and come take care of you if you were in trouble somehow.” He’d never had that security. And he wasn’t even sure he could understand it completely.

She cocked her head to one side. “Wouldn’t Calvin do that for you?”

Landon shrugged. He’d mentioned Calvin to her a couple of times the other day.

She ran her hand down his arm. He liked that she did that sometimes. That she felt like she could. “A family doesn’t have to mean a dad and a mom and the kids. Sometimes it’s a neighbor or a teacher.” She cocked her head to look him straight in the eye. “Or a coach.”

Of course she was right. He was lucky to have Calvin. And somehow he felt lucky to know her, though he still hadn’t figured out why. The only certainty was that she would be the woman who breezed in and out of Tallahassee one summer, changing him forever. He wanted to change the subject. Wanted to stop thinking about the fact that he’d never had a real family.

“You visited the prison today,” he said.

She nodded slowly, as if switching gears from the friendly chatter to the reason for the chasm between them. “We did.”

“No news at all on the DNA?”

She shook her head. “I know it’s hard.” The grief in her eyes told him she really did understand.

“Seems like a waste of time to visit him when you’ll know in a day or two whether he really did it or not.” The waiting must be even worse for Cyrus Alexander.

“We’ve still got work to do.”

“Yeah? Like what?”

She gave him a you-know-better-than-to-ask-that look. “I can’t tell you about meetings with our clients.”

“That’s right. Attorney-client privilege.” Landon would be a happy man if he never heard that phrase again in his lifetime.

“I can tell you that Cyrus has a son.”

His head whipped up. “What?”

“A sophomore in high school.”

He didn’t want to believe it. “The math doesn’t work. He’s been in prison for fifteen years and—”

Her steady gaze caught his. “Tim was born just before the sentencing. Days before. Cyrus has missed the kid’s entire life.”

Landon felt like he’d been punched in the gut. He might have done that to the kid. And if Cyrus was innocent . . . God, this made a wrongful conviction so much worse. “How long have you known this?” He pushed away from the wall and glared at her. “Why didn’t you tell me before?” This changed everything. “Why are you telling me now?”

“I thought you might have a little sympathy for the kid. You both—”

He felt the defensiveness inside him click on. The same defensiveness that had been lurking there since elementary school, just under the surface. “We both what? Came from loser families?” He motioned up toward her apartment. “Because we didn’t have a dad bringing home a paycheck and a mom cooking us lasagna every night?”

Her face paled. “Because you both grew up without your dads. You’re anything but a loser.”

A humorless laugh escaped from his throat. “That’s not what it felt like when every kid in fourth grade looked at you like you were damaged goods. The only freak in the whole school whose mom had been murdered. I can still see the kids staring at me when I walked into my new classroom, knowing they’d been told about my mom.”

“Just think how he must feel, being the only kid in class whose dad is in prison for murder.”

But the DNA test could show that his own father was the murderer, which would make him even more of an outcast. “I’ve got to go.” He yanked the keys from his pocket and stalked toward his truck as a maze of emotions swirled inside him.

How stupid could he have been? He’d actually thought that coming here to see her was the right thing to do. He’d thought it might make him feel less alone.

Then, lulled by the ambience of a quiet family dinner, he’d actually felt good for a while. Comfortable. Like maybe he could have this one day. How stupid could he have been?

He cranked the ignition and jerked the truck into reverse. In front of him, Gina waved. He cocked his chin; the subtle motion was the only good-bye he was willing to give.

What had he been thinking, anyway? He’d actually thought they might be together one day, after the whole Cyrus Alexander business was over. But now, reality hit him smack in the chest, like a barbell dropped on a weight bench.

He could never be with her. Not when her entire life was built on the safety of family. The comfort of home. It was all so foreign to him, like a language he didn’t understand.

Yes, he was drawn to her, but he’d have to get over that. He’d been alone for years. And he was going to have to stay that way.