Betina looked at him. “She doesn’t have to stay here. That was just something she told you. Hunter’s donation has nothing to do with her. It was always about his friends.”
She’d lied about having to stay? Why? So he wouldn’t force her to leave? To make him think he had time?
“Where is she?” he asked again.
“I’m not going to tell you. If she wants you to know, she’ll get in touch with you herself.”
He didn’t understand any of this. Why had Meri been here in the first place? What had she wanted? Why leave now?
“Is it Andrew?” he asked. “Is she upset because I told her what he was?”
Betina’s expression was almost pitying. “It’s a guy thing, right? This failure to comprehend the most basic of human emotions? It has to be. I can’t believe you’re honestly that stupid.” She smiled, then shook her head. “It always comes down to smart and stupid. How strange.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Nothing,” she told him. “Meri came here because she thought she wanted closure. She got it, in a way. She’s been in love with you all these years. But the man wasn’t really you. He was someone better. The person she thought you would be. Meri embraces life. She loves and is loved. She cares about people. She thought you were all those things, too. But she was wrong. And now she’s gone.”
Meri loved him? She couldn’t. Not after what he’d done. Not after he’d let her down time after time.
“She can’t,” he whispered.
“That’s what I keep telling her, but does she listen?” Betina closed the box. “I’m done here. Colin and I will be gone within the hour. Then you can have the house to yourself. You’ve got a few weeks left, right? I hope you enjoy your time here.”
She started to leave. He grabbed her arm. “You can’t leave it like that. There has to be more.”
“Why? You don’t want there to be more. It’s not like you really care about her. She’s just Hunter’s little sister, right? An annoying responsibility. Your problem is you didn’t know what you had until you lost it, and now she’s gone forever. Goodbye, Jack.”
He released her and let her go because there was nothing left to say.
Fine. He could be fine his last few weeks here. It was just three weeks, and then he’d go back to Texas and bury himself in his work. He would stay busy and he would forget. He was good at forgetting.
Three days later, Jack knew he was damn close to slipping into madness. The house was empty. Too empty. The silence mocked him. Worse, he found himself missing Meri’s nerd friends. He missed the arguments about string theory and the scraps of paper with equations that had dotted every surface. He missed walking into a room and not understanding a word of what was being said despite the fact that everyone was speaking English.
He missed the closeness, the way Meri bullied everyone to get outside, to live life. He missed her insisting on a better telescope because the stars were so beautiful. He missed the sound of her voice, her laughter, the way her body moved. He missed her quirky sense of humor, her brilliance and how her smile could light up a room. He missed her.
She wasn’t the teenager he’d known all those years ago. The young woman who had intrigued him and at the same time scared the hell out of him. Not just because she was Hunter’s sister but because there was a quality about her that warned him she would expect only the best of herself and those in her world.
For a while he’d thought maybe he could live up to those expectations, but then Hunter had gotten sick and he’d known he would only hold her back.
He’d let her go for a thousand reasons that made sense at the time. She didn’t need him. She had to grow up on her own. She was better off without him. He was afraid. They’d both been so young and his feelings for Meri had been confused. So he’d walked away and stayed away. He’d kept tabs on her from a distance. He’d taken the coward’s way out.
He hadn’t expected to ever see her again. Then she’d been here and he’d been thrown. She’d wanted to seduce him and he knew he couldn’t let that happen. Because of what he owed both her and Hunter.
He walked into the empty living room and stared at the perfectly arranged furniture. It was all so comfortable. He wanted to throw things, break things, mess it all up. Because life wasn’t tidy or comfortable. It was a pain in the ass.
He turned to leave, then spotted a DVD case on the floor, by the sofa. Someone had dropped it. Or left it on purpose. Meri? Betina? Hunter?
He picked it up and stared at the plain black cover. Someone had stuck on a piece of paper covered with a single word.
Hunter.
Against his better judgment, Jack walked to the DVD player and put in the disk. Then he turned on the television and braced himself for the pain.
Someone had taken the time to transfer Hunter’s home movies, he thought as he watched snippets of the first confusing days at Harvard. There were shots of Hunter’s friends. All of them. And Meri. She was always hanging on the fringes.
She’d been the one to show them around, list the best places to get pizza at three in the morning. She’d been there since she was a kid.
There were shots of snowball fights and a late-night party by a bonfire.
He leaned back against the sofa and lost himself in the images. A vacation here, a camping trip there. Seven guys who had become friends. No. Brothers. Brothers he hadn’t seen or talked to in years.
The scene shifted to a yacht vacation they’d all taken one spring break. The camera panned to show the guys stretched out in the sun after a very late night. Meri walked on deck and paused, looking awkward and unhappy. She turned her gaze to him. He had his eyes closed and didn’t see the look on her face. The one that clearly showed she loved him.
He felt it then, the cold slice of pain that was almost familiar. It took him a second to place it and then he remembered the knife attack in a Central American jungle. At first there had been nothing-just a breath of expectation, followed by the warm sensation of liquid as his blood flowed out. Then there had been the sharp sting that had quickly grown into agony.
It was the same today. As if razors had sliced his heart and his soul, as he realized he’d lost something precious. Something he could never replace.
He picked up his cell phone and pressed the buttons that connected him to his office.
“I don’t have anything,” Bobbi Sue snapped by way of greeting. “If you’d stop calling me, I might get a chance to find her.”
“She has to be somewhere.”
“You think I don’t know that? She turned in the rental car at the airport in Los Angeles, but she didn’t get on a plane. If she’s in a hotel somewhere, she’s using cash and a false name. I’m checking all her friends to see if they’ve used their names to register her. It’s taking time.”
He didn’t have time. He had to find her now. He’d spent every minute of the past three days thinking he had to go after her himself, but leaving meant blowing the donation, and Meri would hate him for that.
“Keep looking,” he said and hung up. To give his assistant the time she needed.
Jack stood and paced the length of the living room. He wanted to be doing the search himself, but he was trapped in this damn house. Trapped with memories and ghosts and a burning need he’d acknowledged three days too late.
He loved her. He had for a long time. In college, he’d assumed she would grow up and they’d get together. The plan had existed in the back of his mind, as if he’d known they were meant for each other. Then Hunter had died and everything had changed.
His cell rang. He reached for it.
“You found her?”
“I’m not looking for her.”
The voice was familiar. “Colin?”
“Uh-huh. So you’re looking for Meri?”
“I have my entire staff on it.”
“You won’t figure it out. Besides, what does it matter?”
“It matters more than anything.”
