Josh suddenly rapped on the open door. He rarely interrupted when she had someone in the office-partly because he rarely needed to. He was more than capable of handling most problems himself, but this time he clomped in with a frown, dropped something in her hand and closed her fingers around it. “You gotta quit putting that in the bathroom. I’m scared it’s going down the drain,” he said and then clomped right back out of the room again.
Emma knew what it was without looking…but she did look. There, in her palm, was the breathtaking sapphire Reed had given her.
She just couldn’t seem to keep the engagement ring on her finger lately. Couldn’t even try to pretend.
Felicity didn’t seem to notice the exchange, just kept on chatting. Eventually she stood up to leave-although not until the bottle was nearly leveled. She carried the two crystal glasses and the corkscrew as far as the doorway, but then stalled there, clearly in no hurry to leave…not once they started on everyone else’s gossip.
“Did you hear the police talked to Abby again? Apparently she got them to take fingerprints of her mother’s safe-and they found a thumb and forefinger-and the prints weren’t of any family members! So they’re questioning Edith Carter again. You know, Bunny’s housekeeper-”
“I just don’t get it,” Emma said, closing her hands around the ring again, feeling the stone pinch. “When it comes down to it, Abby’s mom only told a bunch of gossip. Sure, people wouldn’t want it in print if they were discovered sleeping in the wrong bed. But to kill her?”
“I know, I know. But then if someone had the cojones to blackmail Jack Cartright, you have to believe some people get pretty shook up over their secrets being told.”
“Yeah,” Emma said thoughtfully, again feeling the weight and shape of the sapphire in her palm.
“And another secret thing…I ran into Mary Duvall again. I know you used to be good friends with her.”
“Yeah, we were really close back in high school.”
“I think she’s great. But she just looks so different than when we were in school. Suddenly turned into a Pendleton-and-pearls type. No more wild cookie. I think there’s another mystery there.”
“Maybe she just grew up,” Emma said drily.
“And maybe she has a deep, dark secret that made her want to come hide out at home again…Hey, I heard maybe they were going to let Caroline out of the hospital in another day or two. Maybe, anyway. You haven’t heard what her secret is, have you?”
“No.”
“Well, it has to be something big. A girl doesn’t swallow a bucket of pills if she’s got nothing going on behind locked doors. God, this town. Big money makes for big secrets, eh?”
When Felicity finally left, Emma set the engagement ring on her desk and let out a sigh softer than a southern wind. Her family had secrets, too. But right now her own private heartache of a secret weighed so heavily on her conscience that she could barely think.
There was going to be hell to pay if she ducked out of a marriage this far along in the planning stages. But the more she worried about what she owed Reed-and what she owed her parents-the more she slowly realized that in her entire life she’d never asked the buffalo side of that nickel question.
Wasn’t there some point in a woman’s life when she got to ask, what did she owe herself?
Six
Garrett hurried through the hospital doors, past desks, past people, past carts, past anything and everything. Because the elevator was too slow, he took the stairs. He stumbled on the top step. Hell, a man could hardly run in the slick-soled dress shoes he was stuck wearing with a tux.
His tie still wasn’t tied-he never could do tux ties. But he’d been dressed and grabbing the car keys to drive to the Eastwick Country Club dance when he got the call from the hospital.
At the head nurse’s desk he barked, “Where is she?”
His sister’s room had been changed. She wasn’t back in Critical Care, thank God, but they’d moved her to the small psychiatric unit, where they could keep her monitored full-time. Caroline’s recovery had seemed on a clear upswing until an event that afternoon, when the doctor feared she was a suicide risk again.
Just outside her room he slowed his step so he didn’t barrel in there like a noisy elephant. But his stomach tightened when he saw his sister. She was lying on the bed, all curled up like a wounded baby, facing the wall. Straps on her wrists prevented her from removing the IVs or getting up on her own.
The same thought kept echoing in his mind-that he wished Emma were with him. She’d know what to say, what to do. He knew how to work, how to make money but not how to deal with people. He never had.
His sister must have sensed his presence, because she suddenly turned her head. “Hey, big brother,” she murmured.
“Hey back.”
She noticed his tux. “Whew. You’re looking so hot that I want to whistle, but my throat seems to be mighty dry. They gave me something awfully strong.” She wasn’t completely lucid. Her eyes kept sluggishly opening and closing. “You all dressed up to take me out for a night on the town?”
“I’d take you out in two seconds if you’d go.” He yanked a chair closer, parked on it. “Who phoned you, Caro?”
“What do you mean?”
“You know exactly what I mean. You were doing fine. We all thought you were coming home in another day or so. Then the nurse said you got a call this afternoon-”
“That day nurse is such a tattletale.”
Garrett ignored that. “And the next thing, she found you in the bathroom with a piece of broken glass in your hand.”
“It was an accident. I broke the water glass-”
“Quit it, Caro. It wasn’t an accident. Who called you?” he repeated, and when she didn’t answer he said, “I know it was a local call, so it had to be someone from Eastwick. What in God’s name is going on that’s got you so terrorized? Tell me.”
She smiled. “Aw, Garrett, you were always my white knight. You always got between me and Dad when I was in trouble. Or between me and a wrong date.” She closed her eyes. “Do you remember when I had a sleepover that one time? Think we were all twelve. Raided the liquor cabinet after Mom and Dad went to bed, all got drunk as skunks, then decided to go swimming. Then you showed up, remember?”
“I remember. All six girls hurled all over me, as I recall. Not counting the messes all over the house.”
“But you saved us all, Garrett.” She smiled at him again. “You’ve got everybody fooled that you’re a coldhearted workaholic. Through thick and thin, I could always count on you. You’re the only one in the whole family with integrity. Real integrity.”
“Obviously they’re giving you some kind of hallucinatory drug. And all this being nice isn’t getting you off the hook. It’s time you told me what’s going on.”
“What’s going on,” she said thickly, slowly, “is that I made a mistake I can’t live with.”
Again he wished desperately that Emma was here. Emma wasn’t judgmental and she had a way of calming people down, making them believe things would be all right. Instead his sister was stuck with just him. “There’s no mistake you can’t live with, Caroline. Nothing I couldn’t forgive you for. Nothing I wouldn’t help you get through. But I can’t prove that to you if you won’t talk to me.”
“You want to help? Then get the hospital to release me so I can go home,” she said.
Yeah, sure. And have her get another call at home from the person who’d been terrorizing her? Hell, he didn’t know what to do. But when his sister fell asleep, he stumbled out of the hospital and aimed straight for the country club.
He wasn’t remotely in a party mood, but this summer shindig was one of the year’s biggest galas. Someone there knew what was going on with Caroline. They had to. And Emma might have some ideas about who to question that he hadn’t thought of.
From a half mile away he started seeing the lights. The place was lit up like a miniature galaxy. The multiple French doors of the formal ballroom gaped open onto the patio. People were dancing both inside and out. Fountains
