She gave a strange bark of laughter that sounded a little like a wounded dog. “I don’t need you to tell me what happened,” she said. “I know what happened. You used me. You suspected me of being part of some horrid insurance scam and you cozied up to me just so you could find out what Myron was doing,” she said, her tone bitter. Even worse, a tear slipped from one eye.
That, he couldn’t abide, and Flynn moved without thinking, but Rachel instantly threw up an arm. “I don’t want you near me,” she breathed. “And I don’t want you to pretend that what you did doesn’t matter, that you were on the side of good, or something asinine like that,” she said, her voice shaking. “I’ve thought about this a lot, Flynn. I hate what Myron did to me. He betrayed me in the worst way, lying and stealing and using me. But that doesn’t hurt nearly as much as your lies. And I know you will argue you had to do it, that it was your job, but you lied to me, you used me, you played me for a fool and it hurts because I loved you. Your lies cut so deep that I keep thinking I’m going to bleed to death.” A rash of tears erupted from her eyes, and Rachel gulped down a sob, pulled her shawl more tightly about her. “I really loved you, Flynn. And that makes your cut the deepest.”
Christ in heaven. He walked up the steps, reached out and touched her face, but Rachel recoiled, turning her head. “Rachel,” he said desperately. “I love you, too, Rachel. That’s just it, that’s why I came here—”
“I don’t believe you! I can’t believe anything between us was real. That night I told you I was falling in love with you, you might as well have crawled under a table. And there was always something you were going to tell me—what was it? That there was another woman? Did you lie about that, too?”
The question, flung out of the blue, startled him so badly that Flynn hesitated, if only for a fraction of a second, but in that fraction of a second, Rachel turned her back to him, walked to the door, and yanked it open. “I don’t ever want to speak to you again. I don’t ever want to see you again—I just want the whole nightmare to go away,” she said, and walked through the door, slamming it shut behind her.
Flynn stood on the lawn, his jaw aching with the clench of it.
All right. She was frightfully angry. He had no choice but to give her time to cool off. He’d be in the States a few more weeks, tracking down the last items. And as he hadn’t the least bloody idea what to do at that moment, he turned away, lost in thought, walked to his car in the drive.
But he sat behind the wheel of that car, emotionally and mentally exhausted. Rachel was hurt, and he felt himself sitting on the edge of a dreadful turmoil, bubbling up beneath the silence that had filled his heart and his mind since Hilton Head, a turmoil that was ready to break the surface and completely demoralize him.
He happened to glance up, and saw Rachel at the upstairs window, staring down at him, her expression carved from stone.
Flynn made himself drive.
At the Corporate Suites, he grabbed his coat from the car and walked from the parking lot into the lobby and waved at the desk clerk. “Ah, Mr. Flynn!” the young man called as Flynn punched the button. “I got a message for you.”
“That’s quite all right—I’ll pick it up later,” he said, and stepped into the lift, smiled thinly as the clerk tried to speak while the lift doors were shutting, and fell against the wall, waiting for the interminable ride up to the fifth floor.
On the fifth floor, he exited the lift, walked slowly down the hallway to his flat . . . and thought, strangely enough, that he could hear a telly blaring in his flat. As he haltingly neared the door, he was certain he did, and wondered if he’d left it on all day. With a shrug, he unlocked the door, pushed it open, and walked in.
“Flynn, darling!” his mother cried happily, startling him out of his wits. “We thought you’d never return!” she said as she hurried to embrace him. “Surprise!” she said, and threw her arms around him, went up on her tiptoes to kiss his cheek, then stood back, smiling. “Oh dear, you look absolutely knackered.”
“Mum, what are you doing here?”
“You missed the Farmington Fall gala, you know,” she said. “Your cousins were quite distraught.”
“Where’s Dad? I can’t believe he’d let you bring him all this way without some sort of protest.”
“Oh no, your father didn’t come,” she said with a laugh.
“I came darling, who else?”
The voice sliced through him; Flynn groaned, turned toward the tiny living room and a smiling, bone-thin, Iris Willow-Throckmorton.
“What is it?” she laughingly cried as she pranced toward him, her arms outstretched. “You don’t seem very happy to see me!” She rose up, air-kissed his cheek. “We’ve come all this way to see you, and you aren’t the least bit happy. You haven’t gone and found yourself a new fiancée, have you?” she asked sweetly.
For the first time in his life, Flynn felt the urge to deck a woman. “Hallo, Iris,” he said, and loosening his tie, stepped around her, walked into his bedroom, and shut the door.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Subject: RE: RE: RE: Re: [FWD: I’m Okay, Really]
From: <[email protected]>
To: <[email protected]>