Chapter Twenty-Nine
Mitigating Circumstances
Brooke looked around the courtroom, her eyes Searching. Where had Dane gone?
She’d just broken the news to him about being stuck talking to Ames for twenty minutes, an apology and a full explanation on the tip of her tongue, when up walked J.B. Rivershire.
“Miss Chadwick.” The electricity magnate whose bolo tie, huge turquoise belt buckle, and gold front tooth that everyone in the whole world recognized extended his hand. “I’m J.B. Rivershire, and I wonder if you’ve got an investment partner. I hear you and your aunt— Ruth, is it? How appropriate— are opening a baseball museum. Lots of Yankees stuff. I’m their biggest fan, and …”
Everybody and their dog thought they were the Yankees’ biggest fan, but at this moment, Brooke had no inkling to argue. Good gracious! This was J.B. Rivershire, offering to be her financial backer.
Yeehaw!
Ten minutes of intense, fan-frenzy conversation later, she emerged from swift negotiations and looked again for Dane. She’d meant to grab him, to tell him with all her heart how much she appreciated his help, and to give him the kiss that had trembled on the edge of her lips ever since all this nonsense about no kissing began.
Because once she had kissed him, going back to not kissing had turned her into a quivering mass of nerves, struggling against passion for him every single second she’d been in his presence.
Oh, Dane. He was so her hero this day. And she was finally going to admit to him, after all this time, how crazy she was about him. He’d done more than prove he wasn’t just playing with her heart as she’d mistakenly believed; he’d shown her what true devotion, sacrifice and love were.
And this moment— she’d had to wait for it, but it couldn’t have come soon enough. Dane was free of ethics charges, and she was free of all this legal stress— thanks to him. Entirely thanks to him.
Now, where was he? Her eyes shot all around the room.
“Have you seen Dane?” she asked, interrupting Aunt Ruth and Mr. Koen’s conversation. Aunt Ruth only shook her head briefly and said, “Did you know Mr. Koen has watched every Yankees home game since he was three years old?”
“Nice.” Brooke tried to give the courtesy small talk, but her eyes were scanning the room for Dane. Butterflies went to war in her stomach. She was really going to tell him. For reals. And while she was pretty sure he’d reciprocate, there were no guarantees.
Win or lose, she was going to go crazy if she went another day without spilling all her feelings to him. The trial, his ethics situation, all of it had built a dam against the emotional surge in her, but now all that was gone.
And she could give him her whole heart.
Where was he? She went out into the hall. Had he gone to get a drink from the water fountain?
“Dane?” she hollered down the big, echoing hallway. No Dane in the hall, the foyer, near the double doors.
Brooke rushed to the front doors and out onto steps. There! Her heart flipped— Dane’s old Dodge was rolling.
Wait. He was pulling out of the parking lot.
“Rock!” she hollered in vain. But he was gone. She pulled out her phone to dial his number, try to catch him as he left. But it went to voice mail. And she was about to text him, when—
“You ready?” Ames appeared beside her.
“One sec.” She shot a text to Dane.
Amazing. You’re amazing. I can’t wait to show you how amazing I think you are.
But seconds ticked by as she watched for the status to read delivered. It didn’t. He’d shut off his phone— for court, obviously.
Her heart sailed toward him, and yet it was too slow. He’d left. Why? She hadn’t even made good on her promise to kiss him.
The interruptions. Out of the corner of her eye, she’d seen him get increasingly frustrated as each successive person had stolen her attention from him. Rivershire had interrupted right after Ames had interrupted, which was after Twyla Thomas had interrupted, which was right after Aunt Ruth had interrupted, which was right after Koen had interrupted. Exhausting! Everyone had insisted on her attention at once, and she couldn’t break away without being rude to everyone who’d contributed in some way to the victory.
And now Dane was gone. Slipped through her fingers.
But— it couldn’t mean he was done with her. She wasn’t just a mere box ticked in the win column. However, a truth wrested in her mire of insta-self-doubt: as of this afternoon Dane had freedom from his ethics charges, and nothing else, really, to tie him to Maddox.
And an even bigger truth, undeniable, loomed— Dane had gone.
Ames pressed a hand to the center of her back. “We can ride together,” he said. Numb, she nodded and went with him, her eyes on the empty parking spot where Dane’s truck had been.
____________
“The furniture store?” she asked when she realized where they were. Really, Ames?
Colonial Furniture’s endless aisles of sofas and entertainment centers stretched before her. The place smelled of leather and Scotchguard. Fake plants dotted the pretend living room groupings, and those balls of wound-up rattan were stacked jauntily in glass dishes on nearly every surface.
“I need help picking out furnishings for the urgent care center,” he said. “I’d forgotten this place is the Costco of furniture stores.” Ames glanced left and right at the football fields of recliners, flanked by end tables decorated by wooden bowls filled with decorative hunks of bark.
“Where do you want to start?”
He didn’t answer for a minute, and then he said, “I guess with how I met Charli in the first place.” His voice was low. “We were kids.”
“I meant, where in the store? Desks, chairs, end tables?” She’d dreaded this moment, but now she had to honor her word. She kept her promises. Whether or not he did.
“Oh, right.” He led her to a horrible white couch, the kind that only bachelors that had no kids or pets, or friends with kids or pets, would buy. He sat down. Brooke sat beside him.
“You were kids,” she repeated. She might as well get this over with. They both looked at a stand of potted fake plants on the other side of the white painted coffee table.
“Our dads knew each other in college. They were friends— or so my dad thought. Faro LaBarge convinced him to invest in a new business he was starting, and my dad wanted to help him out.”
“So your families were friends. They decided then and there the two of you would wed. It was all very Swan Lake.” It still was no excuse for what Ames had done to her.
Ames sighed, sounding soul-tired. “It wasn’t like that at all. My dad didn’t know it, but Sarge LaBarge was forging my dad’s signature on business documents and making shady deals.”
Contact with Faro LaBarge had toxic consequences even in his early days, apparently.
“Nice family you married into.” Hadn’t he seen what a cesspool he was diving into head first? “Let me guess what happened next: blackmail.”
Her few weeks’ experience with LaBarge had taught Brooke quite a few things. Ames had a whole year of that experience. Maybe more.
“Bingo.” Ames looked her way. “How did you know?” It was like he was seeing her for the first time.
She lifted a shoulder in response. “LaBarge is amassing quite a record.”
“It’s all going to come out eventually,” Ames lowered his voice. “But we have to be careful how we proceed, at least until he’s in custody for the bomb threat against you.”
Brooke got the careful part. “Where does Charli come into all this?”
“LaBarge,” he whispered, “was blackmailing my father. He threatened to expose my dad’s involvement in the unethical business deals LaBarge had done over twenty years ago— even though all the signatures were forged.”
“Still not clear why you married his daughter, then. It seems to me that would make you not want to touch her with a ten-foot pole.”
“Right? I totally agree.”
“And yet …”
“And yet.” He drew in another heavy breath and placed a hand on Brooke’s shoulder. She ached to shrug it off, but her emotional energy had started to drain. “I had to. For my dad’s sake.”
“Your dad insisted you marry Charli LaBarge,” she guessed.
“No, I did.” When she opened her mouth to protest, he jumped in. “I had no choice.”
Okay, this statement actually irritated her. “You had no choice?” Ugh. That phrase had to be her biggest pet peeve in life. Humans had free will. They were inherently born with choice. “Let’s be clear, Ames. When the preacher, or justice of the peace, or spiritual guide or whoever, in St. Thomas asked Do you take this woman as your wife, you had no choice? Because in my book, that is the very definition of choice: being presented with two alternatives and picking one. Please.”
He pressed her shoulder, but she pulled away. He’d better not touch her right then. Her fury could’ve given him third degree burns.
She got up and went to another part of the store. Here, a hundred grandfather clocks tick-tocked in syncopation, matching Brooke’s heart rate.
Ames had followed her.
“Okay, explain,” she said.
And he did.
Charli had seen him play baseball when they were younger. She’d developed some kind of long-distance crush on him. Unbeknownst to Ames, her dad had arranged for a social situation where Charli could meet him “serendipitously.” Ames and Charli had talked a little. She wasn’t his type, but she gave him her number. He didn’t call it, but she called him a few times. He took her to a school cotillion, but she’d started dating a major league player when she graduated from high school, and Ames figured it was over.
Then, after he quit baseball and was finishing medical school, she’d cropped up again. Her taste had matured from ball players to doctors, apparently, and she’d told her daddy her dream was to marry a doctor like Ames Crosby.
LaBarge had taken her literally.
“And he took up matchmaking as a side job,” in addition to corrupt politics and bomb-threat organization— and corrupt business deals, apparently.
“The next thing anyone knew,” Ames said, “LaBarge was contacting my dad with threats from the past. Blackmail. If my dad didn’t surrender me as sacrifice on the marriage altar for his daughter, Sarge LaBarge would expose everything he’d fabricated that my dad had done, and everyone would believe LaBarge because of his political position. No one would believe my dad because he was just a building contractor who had moved around a lot due to the economy.”
“But your dad hadn’t done anything wrong.” Brooke’s heart had resumed its regular rhythm. The story made some sense. “He should have just fought it.”
Ames scoffed. “You don’t know how powerful LaBarge is.”
“As a matter of fact, I’ve got firsthand knowledge of that.” Brooke wasn’t Matthew Chadwick’s daughter for nothing, though. “But my dad would have told yours to fight anyway. Corruption shouldn’t be allowed to fester. It needs to be warred against. Otherwise, it’s just going to run unfettered.”
Ames steepled his fingers. “Not everyone’s dad is the same.”
No, they weren’t. Some were Chadwicks, some were Rockwells, and some were Crosbys. And some were LaBarges. Poor Charli.
Matthew Chadwick would have been proud of Dane Rockwell’s handling of Brooke’s case, refusing to let dishonesty win the day.
Where was Dane? He’d left so upset, and she’d had no choice but to let him go.
Wait. She’d had a choice. And she had let him go. Her heart flipped over in her chest. She needed to wind this up with Ames as fast as possible. She needed to go to Dane, wherever he was.
“And so?”
“And so the deal was, LaBarge would destroy the paper trail against my dad if I married Charli.” He frowned. “And stayed married to her for a year.”
“Ohhhh.” Brooke’s voice trailed off. “So there was an escape clause for you.” And for Charli? Brooke wondered. “You’re saying you spent the year marking time, just waiting for the get out of jail card.”
Ames didn’t answer.
If what he said was true, then he’d chosen to preserve his father’s reputation over his own love for Brooke.
“You didn’t tell me. You could have at least responded to a text, anything.”
“The Hey, I’m married to someone else, sorry text? I respected you too much for that.”
It hadn’t felt like respect. “An apology, then. Anything would have been better than a freeze out.” If he’d really loved her, more than just the idealized idea of her, he would have trusted her with his troubles.
He nodded, like he could see that now.
Other than the time he’d hidden the fact his hearing was at the same time as her trial and he thought he was letting her down by not being there for her, Dane never kept his situation from her, even when it was ugly.
They walked to the roll-top desk section. This desk looked like one that had been in her father’s law office and now sat in Quirt and Olivia’s study.
“I only have one last thing I want to tell you, Brooke. And then I’ll let you go— if you want to.” He took her by the shoulders and looked into her face. She used to feel something when he did that. “All of it was real. Every ounce of it. There was no pretense. And believe me. I am glaringly aware of everything I lost— noonday sun surrounded by mirrors glaringly aware— by my choice, as you say.” Now his voice had a hint of bitterness, and for the first time, Brooke realized there was a slim possibility Ames might have been hurt in the situation as well.
Pah. Ames had been the injurer, not the injured. Maybe the one holding the whip got a little blister on his finger from the leather handle, but it wasn’t the same as the whipping victim whose skin lashes bled and festered and left lifelong scars.
“We all have choices to make.” Brooke looked at him. He looked exhausted and earnest. He’d hurt her— immensely. But she had healed.
Dane’s strength had been a big part of that.
And time. And God’s mercy.
“Time will heal you, Ames.” She reached out to him this time. And as she touched his elbow, heat flooded her. Not desire. Not hate. This time it was love— pure, forgiving love. “You’ll find someone else. Just like I did.”
Now, she had to go find Dane.