Til Death Do Us Part (45 page)

Cleo laid her hand on Roarke's back. He flinched. She eased her hand upward and gripped his shoulder. Sobs lodged in her throat. Dear God, what it must have been like for him to have lost his child. And how tragic that it had all been so senseless. So preventable. If Hope hadn't been drinking. If. If. If.

“My drunken, mentally unbalanced ex-wife put my
three-year-old baby girl in her car and I didn't do a thing to stop her. And you know why?” Roarke's voice rose to a shout. He spun around, knocking Cleo's hand off his shoulder. He glared at her with dry, pain-filled eyes. “Because I was halfway around the world playing soldier. I was in the middle of a jungle with a Special Forces group doing a dirty little job for Uncle Sam.”

“Oh, Simon.” Tears distorted her vision so completely that she could barely make out her husband's face. “You blame yourself. You think Laurie's death was your fault.”

“It was my fault.” His tone lowered to a soft, calm lifelessness. “I was more concerned about my military career than I was about my child. I left Laurie alone with a woman who couldn't even take care of herself, let alone a three-year-old.”

“You didn't know. You said you had no idea how much Hope was drinking, and you didn't realize that mental instability ran in her family.”

“I didn't take the time to find out. I had more important things to do. My daughter was not my first priority. She should have been.”

“How long ago did Laurie die?” Sniffling, Cleo swallowed her tears.

“Nearly fifteen years ago.”

“Where is Hope now?” Running her fingertips under her eyes, Cleo wiped away the moisture.

“She's in a private sanitarium in Florida. She's been there over fourteen years, and the doctors say that after all this time, there's not much chance for a recovery.”

“And you take care of her,” Cleo said, understanding her husband more completely now than many women understood their husbands after years of marriage. “You pay all her bills, don't you?”

“I let Hope down. She needed help back then and I just didn't see it. Maybe if I had—”

“Don't do this to yourself.” With quivering hands, Cleo reached out and cupped Roarke's face. “You've been living with this guilt all these years and it's nearly destroyed you.”

“I don't want to hurt you, Cleo.” He covered her hands with his, then pulled them away from his face and held them between their bodies. “I should have known I was playing with fire when I agreed to take this job, especially when one of the stipulations of our agreement was that I father your child.”

“You must have had a very good reason for agreeing.”

“Yeah, I thought they were good reasons. Now I'm not so sure.”

“Security for Hope?” Cleo asked, certain of his answer.

“Partly.” He held Cleo's hands, encompassing them with his. “I'm nearly forty. I want out of the cloak-and-dagger business. I told you that last year I got shot up on an assignment and nearly died. If something happened to me, there would be no one to pay Hope's expenses.”

“So you agreed to marry me, be my bodyguard and father my child so you'd have the money to take care of Hope after you retired from the Dundee agency?”

“I'm going to buy a small farm somewhere.” He released Cleo's hands. “The rest of the money is going into a perpetual trust for Hope.”

“Thank you for telling me about Hope and about Laurie. I know it must have been painful for you. I'm sorry.”

“You had a right to know.”

“Yes…well…I—I appreciate your…”

He didn't touch Cleo. He didn't trust what he might do if he touched her now. She looked so small standing there, so forlorn and lost. He'd done this to her. He'd taken the light out of her eyes. She had thought something magical was happening between them, and selfishly, he hadn't been honest with her. He'd let her believe.

“I won't leave until you are no longer in danger. I promise you that.” He looked directly into her moss-green eyes and saw the rage inside her. Outwardly she was calm, totally unemotional. Roarke knew she'd already put up a defensive barrier between them. He had hurt her. She wasn't going to allow him close enough to ever hurt her again.

“Thank you.” She walked away from him, then paused as she stepped into the bedroom. “I think I'm going to lie down and take a nap. I'm very tired, and I want to make sure I get plenty of rest. I intend to take very good care of
my
baby.” She emphasized the word
my.

Her sedate composure worried him far more than if she'd thrown a temper tantrum. He wished she'd throw something at him. Beat her fists against his chest. Call him names. But that wasn't Cleo's style. She had a temper, but it had a low boiling point and her expression of anger was more subtle than hysterical outbursts.

He followed her out of the sitting room.

“Lock the door behind me. I'm going to Kane's room to discuss a scheme we've been working on to capture our problem maker at McNamara Industries.”

“Fine. Go ahead. You can tell me all about it later.”

Roarke walked outside. Cleo closed the door and locked it. He leaned back against the door, resting his head for a second. He'd give anything if he could take away Cleo's pain, the pain he'd caused. But he couldn't ease her suffering. Hell, he couldn't even ease his own.

Suddenly, he felt something moist on his face. He touched his cheek, removed his hand and looked down at his fingers. They were damp. Wet with his tears.

But that wasn't possible. He hadn't cried in fifteen years.

C
LEO INSISTED THAT
she was well enough to go to work. Nothing Roarke, Beatrice or Pearl said changed her mind. She reminded Roarke that just as he had a job to do, so did she. He thought if he heard her say one more time that people were counting on her, he'd shake her until her teeth rattled.

They'd slept in the same bed last night. The bed they'd shared since the first night of their marriage. The bed in which they'd made love so many times. But he hadn't touched her. He knew that if he had, she would have refused him. He'd been right all along about Cleo. She was the kind of woman who'd get sex and love all mixed up.

“What if your and Kane's little scheme doesn't work?” Cleo placed her empty cup down on the tray. “You don't know for certain that Trey or Hugh is the person we're after, and even if one of them is, he might not step into your trap.”

“Ellen Denby has been playing the blond airhead around Trey and Hugh, letting bits of so-called secret information accidentally slip out.” Roarke tossed his napkin down on the tray beside his breakfast plate. “She's led them to believe that she's totally incompetent and can be easily manipulated. She's even hinted that for the right amount of money, she'd be willing to look the other way while someone tampered with the computer again or created another accident.”

“Do you honestly think Trey or Hugh is gullible enough to believe her?” Cleo asked. “Don't you think they're smart enough to figure out that she's lying? After all, they know Kane is a professional. He'd hardly hire a bimbo to be on his security force.”

“You don't know what a talented actress our Ellen is. She's pulled the wool over brighter minds than Trey's or Hugh's. Believe me, she knows what she's doing. She's implied that her intimate relationship with Kane is what got her the job.”

“Something my cousin and future cousin-in-law are just the types to believe.” Cleo got up and walked into the bedroom. She picked up her black jacket off the bed, put it on and fastened the gold buttons. “If you're right, then tonight we should know who was behind all our problems at the plant.”

“Maybe. If we're lucky,” Roarke said as he followed her into the bedroom. “Ellen's going to let it slip that she'll be alone on duty tonight inside the plant and there'll be no one else around except for the guard at the front gate.” He lifted his holster from the nightstand, removed his Beretta, checked it and replaced it, then strapped on the holster. “We're giving our saboteur a perfect opportunity to wreak havoc at the plant without getting caught. Or so we hope he thinks.”

“Hugh and Trey both have security clearance at the back entrance, so they could enter the plant without the guard seeing them.”

“Exactly.”

“So it's possible that by morning, all my problems will be over and neither I nor McNamara Industries will be in any more danger.”

“If we catch our man,” Roarke said. “And if he and the
person who's been trying to kill you are one in the same.” He lifted his jacket off the back of the chair.

“If he is, then your job will be finished and you can leave. You can get a divorce, collect your payoff and be long gone before I even have a bout of morning sickness.”

“Yeah. Sure. That's what we both want, isn't it?” Roarke put on his jacket, walked across the room and opened the door. “Are you ready to leave for the plant, Boss Lady?”

 

T
HE DAY HAD
seemed endless. Cleo discovered that ignoring Simon Roarke was easier said than done. She found it impossible to pretend he wasn't around when he was at her side constantly. After all, he
was
her bodyguard. And he could hardly guard her if she was one place and he another.

She supposed that if Simon hadn't told her the truth about his past—about Hope and Laurie—she might have gone on thinking that there was a chance he'd change his mind and stay with her. That he might actually want to spend the rest of his life with her. That someday, he would grow to love her.

But there was no hope now. No false dreams to hang on to. No illusions about a marriage of convenience that she now realized could never be anything more.

There was no love in Simon to give. The anger and guilt and remorse he felt over Laurie's death had slowly killed all the love inside him. And no matter how much she loved him, Cleo knew she couldn't bring his deepest emotions back to life. Only Simon could do that. And he never would. Loving someone meant taking a risk on being hurt. He'd been hurt too deeply, had endured an agony that would be a part of him forever. A man who
walked around with third-degree burns scarring his emotions would never again take a chance on getting burned.

She glanced over at Roarke. He sat behind the Jacobean desk, while she curled up on the leather sofa. They had agreed to wait downstairs together in the study. Wait for Morgan Kane to call and tell them that they'd caught their man. That either Trey or Hugh had walked into their trap.

Roarke flipped through the pages of a book on farming techniques, which he'd found in Uncle George's library. Cleo held a biography of Amelia Earhart on her lap. The minutes dragged by, making the waiting unbearable.

They'd eaten dinner with the family and tried their best to keep up appearances, but Cleo suspected that they'd failed at presenting the happy newlyweds act they'd finally perfected. But it didn't matter. What difference did it make anymore whether the family believed theirs was a real marriage? They'd all know the truth soon enough, once Simon left. Once they got a divorce.

Both Daphne and Trey had excused themselves from a family night at home, Daphne saying she had a date with Hugh and Trey telling them that he was going to the country club to play cards with a group of his friends. Both explanations were reasonable. Daphne saw Hugh almost every night and Trey did play cards at the country club fairly often.

Cleo glanced down at her watch. “It's ten o'clock. You'd think if something was going to happen, it would have happened by now.”

Roarke closed the book and laid it on the desk. “Not necessarily.”

“If it has to be Trey or Hugh, I hope it's Hugh,” she said.

“You're thinking of your family, aren't you? That it would be easier all the way around if Trey isn't guilty.”

“Do you have any idea what it will do to Aunt Oralie
if it is Trey? She dotes on her children. She thinks they can do no wrong.”

The telephone rang. Cleo jumped. Roarke picked up the receiver.

“Roarke here. Yes. I see. No, go ahead and call Phil Bacon. Cleo and I will meet you at the sheriff's department.” Roarke hung up the telephone.

“That was Kane, wasn't it?”

“Yes. Our simple little trap worked.”

“Who?” Cleo asked.

“Trey,” Roarke said. “They caught him red-handed. He's trying to talk his way out of it, but there's no question that he got into the computer again and deleted several files. Of course he had no way of knowing that he was destroying useless files, dummy orders that we'd entered today, or that he was being videotaped.”

Cleo could tell by the look on Roarke's face that there was more to what had happened than he was telling her. “What else? You're not telling me everything.”

“Trey had rigged some explosives that he planned to set off in the main production room of the plant.”

“What! How would Trey know the first thing about explosives?”

“Every man and his brother can find that information on the internet or order it through the mail,” Roarke told her. “It doesn't take a genius to assemble a simple little bomb.”

“Trey.” Cleo gritted her teeth. “I didn't want it to be Trey. I can't believe he'd try to kill me. Aunt Oralie raised him to be selfish and greedy, but I never thought he was capable of murder.”

“He may not be.” Roarke shoved back the chair and stood. “He may be guilty of only sabotage. Kane's calling Phil Bacon, so I imagine by the time we get down to
the sheriff's department, they'll have brought in Trey for booking.”

“He'll be arrested and put in jail, won't he?”

“Yeah, and if I have anything to do with it, he won't be getting out on bond anytime soon.”

 

R
OARKE WISHED HE
could have spared Cleo from this ordeal. If the saboteur had been anyone other than a member of her family it would have been easier for her. But then, she'd known all along that it had to be someone with something to gain. Someone who would benefit if she agreed to sell McNamara Industries.

Trey Sutton had called Hugh Winfield, who had shown up at the county jail shortly after Roarke and Cleo had arrived. Cleo had reminded Hugh that as one of McNamara Industries' lawyers, he could hardly represent someone who'd tried to sabotage the plant. Hugh in turn had called Drennan Norcross, an old warhorse of an attorney, who, with his white hair and thick mustache looked the part of a forties-style Southern lawyer. Drennan actually wore white suits in the summertime and carried a gold-tipped black cane, which he said helped him get around better since his rheumatism had gotten so bad.

While Drennan spoke to his client, Cleo and Roarke waited, along with Morgan Kane and Ellen Denby. But Hugh Winfield suddenly disappeared.

“He's gone to the house to tell the family,” Cleo said. “They'll all be down here in a little while.”

“We'll handle that when it happens,” Roarke told her. “I don't want you to worry. You're recovering from a concussion. You just got out of the hospital yesterday. Getting upset isn't good for you. Or for the baby.”

She noticed that he hadn't said
your
baby or
our
baby, just
the
baby. Of course he was right. Getting upset and
worrying about how she was going to handle Trey's capture and the family's reaction weren't good for her or her baby. And her child had to be her number-one priority. Regardless of the fact that she had conceived this baby to fulfill a stipulation in her uncle's will, she already loved her child and wanted it desperately.

In the future, she might have other children, but they would not be Simon's children. This tiny life growing inside her would soon be all she had of Simon. Their child and her few precious memories of the days and nights they'd shared during their brief marriage.

Drennan's cane tapped along on the hardwood floor as he shuffled down the corridor leading from the jail cells that were located in a separate west wing of the sheriff's department.

“Well, Phil, Trey's ready to sign a statement.” Drennan clasped Sheriff Bacon's shoulder. “But he wants to talk to Cleo first.”

“What sort of statement is Trey willing to sign?” Phil Bacon asked.

“The boy knows he's been caught red-handed, so to speak.” Drennan chuckled, the sound a smirky good-old-boy laugh. “He's willing to own up to playing around with the computer and to rigging up some little old homemade bomb that probably wouldn't have done more than cause a loud sound and create some smoke.”

Cleo rolled her eyes heavenward. Drennan Norcross was making Trey sound like a misguided Boy Scout who'd been caught putting a garden snake in the scoutmaster's cot.

“Is he willing to confess to trying to murder his cousin?” Roarke asked.

“Hell, no. Trey Sutton is no murderer, sir. The boy
doesn't have it in him to try to harm Miss Cleo.” Drennan smiled at Cleo, his white teeth glistening.

“I want to talk to Trey,” Cleo said. “I want him to look me in the eye and tell me that he didn't try to shoot me or poison me or—”

“Cleo will agree to speak to Trey, but not alone,” Roarke said.

“Of course,” Drennan agreed. “He said you'd want to come along with her.”

“Are you sure you want to do this, Cleo?” Phil Bacon asked. “We don't need a signed confession, not with eyewitnesses—” Phil glanced at Kane and Ellen Denby, who waited discreetly just outside his open office door “—who caught Trey in the act.” Phil lifted a videotape off his desk. “And even recorded what he did.”

“I understand,” Cleo said. “I'm glad that we've caught our saboteur, but unless Trey was behind the attempts on my life, then I'm still in danger. And so is my baby.”

“Baby?” Phil looked from Cleo to Roarke. “Well, congratulations, folks. Hell, Cleo, this is hardly the place for a pregnant lady. Down here at the jail having to deal with a mess like this.”

“I promise that as soon as I talk to Trey and hear what he has to say, I'll go home.”

“Come on, then,” Phil said. “I'll walk you and Mr. Roarke on back. If you'd like, I'll dismiss my deputy and stay in the room with y'all.”

“Could we speak to him privately?” Cleo asked.

“I'm afraid not.” Phil shook his head. “Sorry.”

“All right. Let's go get this over with.” Cleo turned to her husband. “He'd be a fool to confess that he's tried to kill me.”

Roarke nodded, then slipped his arm around her. She didn't resist the comforting, protective gesture. They fol
lowed the sheriff down the hall and into the small, private inquisition room that also served as a private meeting area for lawyers and their clients.

Phil dismissed his deputy, who exited the room before Cleo and Roarke entered. Trey stood up the minute Cleo entered the room.

“I'm sorry, Cleo,” Trey said. “I did what I had to do, what I thought was best for the whole family. We'd all be better off if we sold the company while it's still worth something. The way things are these days, there's no way for a small plant like ours to survive.”

Roarke watched Cleo's face, the tensing of her jaw, the slight flaring of her nostrils, the narrowing of her pensive green eyes. She was trying to control her anger, trying to stay calm.

“Don't apologize to me,” Cleo said. “There is no excuse for what you did, for the thousands of dollars you lost for McNamara's, the lives you put in danger.”