The Truth About Love (22 page)

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

L
andon still couldn’t figure out why Gina insisted on meeting him at his condo when he was getting back from Orlando at eleven o’clock at night. He’d have much rather swung by her place, crawled into bed with her, and made the world disappear as he lost himself in her soft, silky body.

“Hey,” she said as they both got out of their cars at the same time. He hated the tentativeness in her voice. It was so anti-Gina. So opposite of the confidence that made her so attractive. “Do you mind if I come in?”

Actually, he’d mind if she
didn’t
come in. He’d been thinking about her for the last twenty-four hours. Hell, he’d been thinking about her for the last week. He was still mad as hell that she hadn’t told him Morgan’s Ladder was dropping the case, but the more he thought about it, the more he believed that she’d planned to try to talk her boss out of it. He motioned for her to follow him.

As he led the way up the sidewalk, his stomach flip-flopped. He never got nervous around girls, but she was different. She made him feel things no one else made him feel.

He unlocked the door and stepped inside to turn off the alarm, then stood aside to let her in. He followed her down the front hall toward the living room. A quick glance at the living room told him he hadn’t put his laundry away a couple of nights ago. He hadn’t really felt like doing much the last few days. But she wasn’t here to judge him on his housekeeping skills.

He tossed his keys in the wooden bowl on the counter that separated the kitchen from the living room. “I would have been happy to come to your place.”

She ignored his comment. “We talked to Grady Buchanan’s daughter.”

His stomach clenched. His breath grew shallow. “And?”

“She confirmed your father and her father were out of town when your mom was murdered.”

He frowned. How was this news?

“But the thing is”—she hesitated, as if she didn’t know how to say whatever came next—“she had a boyfriend there with her that weekend. A boyfriend who fit Cyrus Alexander’s description.”

She paused. Landon sucked in a big, gulping breath. He searched her face for clues. For more information than she’d already shared. Was this the news he’d expected to hear these past few weeks? That he’d sent an innocent man to prison? But they’d been certain of the killer once. How could they be certain again? And know for sure? “You and Suzanne think he did it?”

She nodded slowly. “Do you remember a bracelet your mom used to have? One with a little charm on it?”

Hot tears sprang up, right behind his eyes. He hadn’t thought about that bracelet in years. One hand went to his other wrist, as if touching the inexpensive piece of jewelry. “The outline of a little boy’s head. With my name on it. Her girlfriends had all chipped in to buy it for her when I was born.” He panicked. How could he not have remembered it?

“Maggie Buchanan’s husband had it hidden in his tackle box.”

Landon lowered himself onto one of the stools at the breakfast bar. Like always, Gina was sending his life into a tailspin. Nothing in his head seemed to make sense. “Where did he get it?”

“He took it from your mother.” Her words came out slowly, as if she didn’t want to hurt him with their sharpness. “When he killed her.”

Landon searched her eyes. He didn’t understand what she was saying. How could the police not have questioned the boyfriend before? If he and Cyrus Alexander looked alike, how could the police have not seen the resemblance? “But why did he do it? Did he have an alibi?”

Gina shook her head. “Maggie Buchanan didn’t tell the police he was there. She was afraid the sheriff would tell her father he’d been at the house with her. No one even knew he was in town.”

“But why? Why would he do it?”

“We’ll never know for sure, but he had a history of beating up women, especially when he was drunk. And apparently he drank a lot.”

Landon couldn’t take a breath deep enough to fill his lungs. If the authorities didn’t know the boyfriend was in town, they never questioned him. They never would have known there was another tall, blond man who looked like Cyrus Alexander. “This means Cyrus Alexander has been in prison this entire time . . . ?” He couldn’t finish his sentence. He couldn’t think about what he’d done to that man. To his son, Tim. To their family.

She nodded. “And he’s innocent.” But unlike the other times they’d discussed the case, she didn’t act like she had something to prove. She, of all people, knew what he was going through. She knew what it was like to send an innocent person to prison.

He turned his chair toward the counter and rested his head on his arms. He needed to think. To absorb the news. His chest heaved, gasping for breath. Though his eyes were open, all he saw was spinning rings of light where his arms and kitchen counter should be. His foot slipped off the rung of the chair and hung loose, without foundation, much like Landon felt right now.

She laid her hand on his back and rubbed silently for several minutes. She seemed to understand that he couldn’t talk. That he didn’t know how to feel or what to say.

Finally, he raised his head. Her eyes were rimmed in tears.

“I did all this,” he said. “I made this happen.”

She held his face between her palms. “You were nine years old.”

“How soon can they get Cyrus out?”

“A few days maybe.”

He reached for her, overwhelmed by the feelings of guilt and shame and remorse crashing inside him. He pulled her to him and they clung to each other.

Then he realized that she might go. That she’d shared her news and might leave him now.

He raised his head to look at her. “I know I left your house in the middle of the night. And we have a lot of things to talk about.”

She bit her lip and nodded. He could see in her eyes how much he’d hurt her.

“But would you stay here tonight? If I asked you to?”

A ball of anger and empathy tossed around inside Gina’s chest like a tumbleweed. She understood why Landon didn’t want to be alone tonight. She’d been through the guilt of finding out that the person she’d helped convict hadn’t really committed the crime. But—damn it—Landon hadn’t let her explain the other night. He’d made love to her—twice—then walked out without giving her a chance to clarify the note he’d seen in her breakfast nook. She’d thought a lot about him since their meeting at the gym. A man who let his anger and emotion get the best of him, a man who wouldn’t talk things out with her, was not a man she wanted to sleep with again.

Or maybe he’d just used finding the file notes as an excuse to leave. He’d gotten what he wanted and used the notes as a convenient reason to escape. Men did a lot of things to get laid. They lied. They cheated. She’d learned that lesson loud and clear from Christopher, who hadn’t been able to resist sleeping with someone else, even when he and Gina had had a healthy sex life.

But either way, Landon’s emotions tonight were real. And she’d been through it. She owed it to him—as one of the few people who understood what he was going through—to stay with him. She wanted to help him get through this.

“I’ll stay for a little while.” She set her purse on a nearby chair. “But I’m not committing to anything longer than a couple of hours.”

He heaved a sigh of relief. “Thank you.”

“And I’m not sleeping in your bed with you.”

“I didn’t mean that—”

Gina held up her hand to stop him. She was here to help him work through his emotions, but her heart wasn’t ready to talk about what had gone on between them the other night.

“I just”—he ran his fingers through his hair—“want you to stay.”

She took his hand and led him to the couch, where they sat side by side. He leaned down to take off his tennis shoes and socks. She kicked off her flip-flops and placed her newly pedicured feet on the edge of the coffee table.

“Did you guys win your game tonight?” There would be plenty of time to talk about Cyrus Alexander.

Landon ran his hands up and down both thighs like he was having trouble sitting still. He nodded. “Beat that team from the Department of Insurance.”

“The one with the twins?”

“Yeah. Except one of them broke his ankle falling out of a golf cart the other day.”

She chuckled and placed a hand on his to still it.

He stopped for a second, then turned his palm over until his fingers intertwined with hers.

She took a deep breath, hoping she knew what he needed to hear. “This is going to be tough to get over. You know that, right?”

“How will I ever repay him?” His voice shook.

They both knew he was talking about Cyrus Alexander. Tears welled in her eyes as she thought of Nick Varnadore and the harm she’d done to him. “The sad thing is—I don’t know that you can ever repay someone for something like that.”

“Can he file a civil suit against me? For having him locked up all those years?”

“First of all, it wasn’t you who locked him up.” She ran her fingers across the back of his hand. “And I asked Suzanne about that the other day. She said most civil cases are against prosecutors who hid evidence to win their case.”

“I want to apologize to his son.”

Gina turned to look at him. “Really?”

“There’s not a worse thing that you can do to a kid than take his dad away.” He swallowed. Gina could tell how much it hurt him to talk about a kid without a dad. “You don’t think I should?”

She thought about it for several long seconds. “I think it’s about the toughest thing anyone could ever do. And I think you’d be a brave man to walk into a conversation like that.”

“I wouldn’t be any braver than a kid growing up with a dad in prison.”

“What would you say to him?”

“I believe in owning up to my mistakes. And helping to convict his dad was a helluva mistake.”

She couldn’t argue with him there, so she settled herself against the back of the couch. One of her shoulders touched his. Their thighs ran side by side, ending with suntanned feet on the coffee table.

They sat in silence for several minutes. A siren blared somewhere in the distance. The short chime of a text came through on Landon’s phone. He pulled it from his pocket and turned it off without looking at the message. He tossed the phone onto the coffee table and leaned against the back of the couch, returning to his spot next to her. Again, silence filled the space between them.

“I barely remember Grady Buchanan’s daughter,” Landon finally said. “And I had no idea she was even there that weekend.”

Gina considered sharing that Seth Rowling had beat Maggie, but she decided against it. It would only make Landon angrier that the bastard hadn’t been in jail long before the murder.

No, this was Landon’s internal struggle to work through. Just as no one was able to help her work through her maze of emotions, no one would be able to help him, either. All she could do was be there with him.

They continued through the night with little bits of conversation interspersed with long periods of quiet contemplation. When she woke the next morning, she found herself on the couch, covered with a plush blanket. A pillow—presumably from Landon’s bed—had been tucked under her head.

She gathered her purse, peeked in to see Landon asleep in his bed, and quietly let herself out the front door.

She pulled her cell phone out of her purse to check the time as she walked toward her car. Five missed calls from her parents’ house. Three from her mom’s cell phone and six from her dad’s. Darn it. She hated to make her parents worry. She hit the call back icon to dial their number. Her dad had been waking up at dawn for as long as she could remember.

“Daddy?” she said as soon as he answered the phone.

“Gina? Thank God.” The relief in his voice turned to anger. “Where are you?”

Her eyebrows rose, even though her father couldn’t see her through the phone. “In Tallahassee . . . ?” Where else would she be? And what was he so freaked out about?

“We called you all night last night.”

She checked the little switch on the side of her phone. It was on vibrate. She flipped the ringer on and put the phone back to her ear. “Why all the calls?” Anxiety rose in her chest. “Is Mom okay?”

“Yes, yes. Everything’s fine. It’s just when you didn’t call us back, we started to worry.”

“I’m sorry. I forgot to switch my phone off of vibrate after a meeting.”

“I even tried to reach your landlord to see if she could check your apartment.”

“I wasn’t there.”

“Honey, I know you’re an adult now, but when you were in college you had roommates and sorority sisters and whatnot—people who knew where you were supposed to be. Down there, with you all alone, I worry about—”

“I was with Landon.”

“At his house?” The anger in her father’s voice gave way to a protective, more fatherly tone.

“It’s not what you think, Dad.”

“You’re an adult, Gina. It doesn’t matter what I think.” She knew it had taken a lot for him to say that.

She wasn’t ready to talk about the case and how the latest developments had affected Landon. She was too worn out by it all to verbalize the facts around another innocent person having spent time in prison. “I slept on the couch.” She knew that answer would make her dad happy.