Page 15 of Two Hearts
The combination of not wanting to suffer the fiery temptation of being near her, of hating to have to look into her blue eyes and lie to her, and of wanting this damn case finished so he would no longer have to, resulted in a lot of late nights.Worked weekends.Missed dinners.And while Grace said she understood…Jack rather doubted it.
But she was all right.She had her family.She had the house—oh, hell, the house.A wedding gift from Harry and Mitsy.Jack had to give Harry credit, though.The old man had taken Jack’s taste into account.It wasn’t a sprawling mansion enclosed in a fence.Instead, it was a redwood-and-glass modified A-frame, sitting on its own fifty acres on the shore of Looking Glass Lake.Thirty minutes from the city, and perfect.Jack had loved it on sight, but he couldn’t even think about the price tag without feeling like the world’s biggest moocher.When he mentioned that to Harry in a rare private moment, his father-in-law’s reply had been predictable, if not entirely accurate.
“You saved my life, son.All I gave you was a house.We’re not even close to being square.”
He was wrong, though.Dead wrong.Harry had given Jack his daughter, and that was one gem Jack knew he couldn’t earn in a dozen lifetimes.Not if he saved a thousand lives.
Things should have been unbelievably good.
So why weren’t they?
Jack began to suspect that maybe his precious Grace was beginning to see through him.To catch glimpses of the low-class fraud inside.He didn’t know how.He’d been so careful.He’d been studying things like etiquette and wines.All his old clothes were at the apartment, which was still his for a year no matter what, according to the lease, but he hadn’t told Gracie that.He didn’t want her seeing the way he used to live.
Sometimes after work, Jack and JW would head over there for a couple of beers and a hand or two of poker.Watch some sports on TV.Then Jack would change into one of his new suits, and dust off his phony-baloney briefcase, and head home in the fancy new car that had cost a third of his retirement account.All his other savings had gone for the rings on his wife’s finger, because nothing but the best was good enough for Grace.
After a very short while, though, it seemed to Jack that Grace would look at him real close when he came home late.As if she suspected the truth.
It was eating at him.Damn, if he could just nail that dealer and get it over with.Then he could move on with his new life, in a job he wouldn’t have to lie to his wife about.
Maybe he should just tell her.
He loved her.And he knew she loved him, and the rational part of his mind really didn’t believe she would stop loving him if he told her the truth.The irrational part did, but that was a whole other ball game.The reasons he gave himself for continuing this grand deception were that she was too good and too fragile.It would scare her to death, for one thing, and if she got too close, it would disgust her.Seeing her husband grilling an addict while he threw up on his shoes.Watching her husband don his homeless bum costume and sit between trash cans on surveillance.Seeing the kind of scum he had to deal with day in and day out.The stress.The worry.The constant fear.
Maybe part of it was selfishness, too.To Jack, Grace was like a haven.For so long he’d been immersed in filth.She had pulled him out of that.When he showered and put that suit on at the end of the day, it was just like washing away the slime.He never used to feel that way.He used to go home feeling as if it were clinging to him.Like a dark cloud or an oily film that he couldn’t scrub off.
Not now.Now he washed it away, and went home to a clean, nice place, with an angel waiting for him.And from the minute he set foot there, he never thought about work again until he headed out the next morning.Never once.So in a way, he guessed he was enjoying the game he was playing with his wife.
He should have known better.He really should.
After all, he was practically living two lives at once.And the wounded, worried look in Grace’s eyes seemed to be getting more and more pronounced all the time.
It had to end.Soon.
Late one night the phone rang, and for the first time Jack’s real world, the dirty, smelly, low-down one in which he lived every day, invaded his make-believe world—the one in which he took refuge every night.
Jack rolled over in the king-size bed, glancing at the huge window that overlooked the lake and seeing the stars dotting the sky beyond it.Frowning, he picked up the phone and when he heard JW’s voice, he looked at Grace fast.She seemed to be sound asleep.He whispered, “God, why are you calling me here?”
“It’s too big to wait, pal.”
Jack sighed, glancing again at his sleeping wife.“I’ll call you right back,” he said, and hung up.Then he tiptoed out of the bedroom, closed the door quietly behind him and went down the open stairway to return his partner’s call from the living room below.
CHAPTER 6
“Iknew it!”Gracie paced the length of her living room again and again, crossing in front of the huge fireplace she loved and barely looking at it.“I mean—I didn’t know it.I knew there was…something.I just thought it would be something else.”Her throat went tight, and her eyes burned.“Oh, God, anything else.”
“Grace, honey, you aren’t making any sense.”Hope stepped into her path with a cup of tea in her hands, thrusting it under Grace’s nose.“Settle down, sip this and tell me again.”
“She told you twice already, Hope.”Charlie was on the sofa, sock feet propped on the coffee table, watching the proceedings with an I-told-you-so look on her face.“He got a midnight phone call from his lover and off he went to meet her.”
Grace stopped pacing and glared at Charlie.“We can’t be sure who was on the other end of that phone call!”
“Hey, I’m just repeating what you said!”Then she looked around.“You got any chips or anything?”
“Now do you see how foolish you sounded?”Hope asked.
Grace looked down at the cup of tea her sister still clasped.“It was just so odd.The way he sneaked away and called back.The way he whispered into the phone so I could barely hear what he was saying, even though I came halfway down the stairs to try to hear him.”
“Yeah,” Charlie said.“Trusting soul that you are.Why didn’t you just pick up the phone upstairs?”
