Chapter Seventeen
Nate had taken a week’s leave after the funeral, and it was nearly up. He had to clear out his father’s house before he put it on the market—maybe he’d use the money to buy himself a plane.
He wanted a new start, away from all the memories. That’s what he was doing—packing away a lifetime of memories. His father’s life. And his mother’s. He hadn’t realized his dad had kept all this stuff. Most would have to go, but he kept a box of photographs, his mother’s jewelry, including the engagement ring his father had given her all those years ago. A small emerald—she’d had green eyes.
What sort of ring would suit Regan? Not that he’d ever get to put one on her finger. Tightness gripped his chest at the thought. He’d been doing his best not to think of Regan. Because it hurt. And he didn’t want anything piercing the nice protective case he’d been enclosed in since his father’s death.
She’d been adamant that it could never work between them. Was she regretting that decision? Or was she happily going along with her life? He’d gotten word that her application, with his endorsement, had been accepted. She could open her business now.
Maybe he should contact her, just to ask how it was going. Ask how Trixie was doing. He missed the little dog. Hell, he missed Regan…but it was best not to go there.
So what sort of ring would she like?
There was only one gemstone he would ever associate with her.
He glanced over at the sideboard. The small velvet bag still lay there, as it had since he’d gotten back from the hotel five nights ago. He pushed himself to his feet and crossed the room. Picking up the bag, he poured the diamonds out onto the sideboard and stirred them with his finger. Over a million pounds’ worth of cut stones. Out in the open. Luckily, he hadn’t been burgled.
He’d take them in on Monday, when he went back to work. He’d say they’d been given to him anonymously, put through his letter box. And he’d find some way of doing it without implicating Regan.
A knock sounded on the door, and he pushed the diamonds back into their bag, then shoved it in his pocket and headed into the hallway. He’d had many visitors over the last week. Mostly neighbors, coming to say how sorry they were, bringing him food, which was good, since he doubted he would have bothered eating.
But when he opened the door, two women stood there, Regan’s friends Darcy and Summer. The one he’d helped out of a sticky situation. He’d seen her that night when her brother had caught them at Regan’s apartment, but they’d never been introduced.
What the fuck…?
He forced down the panic. “Is Regan okay?”
Darcy scowled. “No, of course she’s not okay.”
What the hell did that mean? He glanced behind them, as though Regan might appear. But of course she wouldn’t be here.
“Can we come in?” the other asked softly. She was a blonde with an air of sweetness about her. She’d been in Holloway with Regan, but he would have sworn she was not the type. Even two years in prison hadn’t hardened her. He hadn’t looked into what crime she’d been convicted of—it was none of his business. Now he couldn’t help but wonder. She wore a gray business suit and a pink shirt and looked like she belonged in some smart office, not a prison cell.
“I’m Summer,” she said. “We just want to talk to you.”
“What’s wrong with Regan?”
Darcy sighed loudly. “Nothing permanent. Let us come in and we might tell you.”
He shook himself, trying to get his brain working. “Of course.” He led them into the kitchen, which was the only room not full of boxes. “You want a drink? A coffee?”
Not waiting for an answer, he busied himself with the coffeemaker while they took seats at the table. Despite her belligerence, Darcy looked a little ill at ease, her gaze straying around the kitchen. Something occurred to him.
“Does Regan know you’re here?” he asked, pushing the mugs of coffee across to them, then adding milk and sugar to the table.
“Hell, no. She’d kill us.”
He still had no idea what they wanted. “What’s wrong with her?” he asked again.
“She’s got a goddamn broken heart, you numbskull.”
He sank down into the chair. What did she mean, a broken heart? How could they know? But inside, a little spark of hope burned into life. And then flickered and died. It didn’t change things. All the same… “Let me get this straight. You’re saying she’s got a broken heart because of me?”
Darcy rolled her eyes. “Hey, give the detective a cigar.”
“She loves you,” Summer said.
He pinched the bridge of his nose. He knew that. She’d told him. “She was the one who walked away.”
Darcy was about to take a sip of her coffee, but now she put it down without taking a drink, a scowl on her face. “Well, you see, that’s because you’ve got her thinking she’s not good enough. That she’ll never be good enough. And you know what—she’s the best person ever.”
That was something else he already knew. He just didn’t know how to convince her. Maybe deep down, he also knew that his job would always come between them. That her family would never accept him. That she would indeed end up torn apart between them. He couldn’t do that to her. But he hated it.
Summer reached out and rested a hand on his arm. “She never did anything other than that one job. She decided when she was eighteen that she wasn’t going to follow in her family’s footsteps. She is good, really she is.”
“I know that.”
“Then show her.”
He pushed himself to his feet and paced the room. Scratching his head, he tried to make sense of what they were telling him. Why were they telling him this at all? Why were they here? Did they want him and Regan back together? And if so—again—why? They had to be as wary of the police as Regan was—especially Darcy, considering her scumbag brother-in-law. This thing about not being good enough went both ways. He’d always felt her friends, and her family, had judged him and found him wanting, as well.
He sat down again. “I don’t know how to show her. She won’t believe me. I told her we could make it work, and she still walked away.”
They were silent for a few minutes. “Do you know why she did the job?” Summer asked. “The one you put her away for?”
He shook his head.
“Did you ever even ask her?” Darcy’s tone was pissed off.
They hadn’t exactly talked about the subject. It was one of the “no go” areas, one of the lines he wasn’t supposed to cross. “I presumed she wanted the money.”
“Her scumbag ex-boyfriend told her his sister was dying, that she had a goddamn brain tumor and needed the money for treatment in America.”
“And even then,” Summer added, “she insisted that she choose the job. She’d only steal from a big organization.”
They were a South African company, and he remembered thinking at the time that it couldn’t have happened to a better business. They probably hadn’t even missed the diamonds. He’d never considered before that some crimes were worse than others. If you broke the law and got caught, you paid the consequences. Now, for the first time, he questioned that.
“She’s a goddamn modern-day Robin Hood,” Darcy said. “And while I may forgive you for locking her up, I’ll never forgive you for making her doubt herself.”
“You’ve got to make it right,” Summer said.
“How do you know all this? Has she told you?”
“Of course she hasn’t told us. She’s gone all quiet and just mopes around all day, hugging that little rat of a dog she got from you.”
He wanted to defend Trixie but couldn’t get a word in.
“And she cries herself to sleep every night,” Summer added. “Her eyes are all red and puffy in the morning.”
“And she’s not eating.”
“And she won’t go out. She didn’t even go to her family dinner last week, and then wouldn’t talk to her brothers when they came around to ask her why.”
“And it’s a good thing they don’t know you broke her heart, otherwise they’d be visiting instead of us.”
He reckoned there was a threat in there somewhere. If he didn’t do what they wanted, they’d tell her family. But he still had no notion what they expected him to do. Nothing had changed. He was still a cop. Her family was still a bunch of criminals. She still didn’t want him enough to take the risk.
And at the heart of all this, Regan was hurting, and he hated the thought of that. More than his own pain. Hated that it was his fault, and he had no clue how to fix it. He blew out his breath. At least they had run out of things to say and were now both watching him.
“What do I do?” he asked.
Summer got to her feet and gave him a weak smile. “You need to fix this.”
Darcy followed her up and stared him in the eye. “I don’t know how you do that. But then you’re the goddamn detective, not me. You detect and come up with an answer. There is one. You just have to find it. Fight for her.”
They didn’t wait for him to show them out, just left him sitting at the table. He didn’t move as he heard the front door slam. But the sound cracked the protective shield he’d wrapped around himself since his father’s death, or maybe even before that. When his father had been diagnosed, Nate had somehow had to learn to cope, to live with the knowledge.
Fight for her?
Was he too scared? Or had the whole experience with his father convinced him of the inevitability of losing the people he loved? That losing Regan was unavoidable, and sooner rather than later would be less painful?
Did he believe that?
Only as the kitchen went dark around him did he move. He headed upstairs and stripped off his clothes. His wallet lay on the table beside the bed and he flipped it open, stared at his new badge, forcing his brain along the paths it was reluctant to go.
All I ever wanted.
But that didn’t mean he couldn’t change, that there wasn’t another way. That he couldn’t have a different life and be happy. Hell, this one hadn’t brought him much happiness so far. Regan was the one good thing to come out of it. With that thought, the last of the numbness dispersed from his mind, and he saw clearly for the first time in as long as he could remember.
He loved her. He wanted her more than anything else in his life. She made him feel like he could fly.
By morning he had come up with a solution. It was so simple, he wondered why he hadn’t thought of it long ago. Yet at the same time, it was so hard that he knew the answer had needed to take him this long, and this much pain, to finally come to.
He jumped out of bed and pulled on his clothes. It was Friday, and he had things to do. First, though, he called Darcy at the gym.
“Make sure she goes to her parents’ tonight. I’m going to fix this.”