The door closed. She wasn’t going to stand outside and argue with him over the roar of the water.
That wasn’t actually the temptation that gnawed at her, of course. She longed to slip back in and laugh again as the soap slid against her skin, as…
Something seized at her heart. It was wrong, all wrong. She couldn’t be what he wanted or needed, couldn’t say the words now that would be lies in the future.
She struggled into her wet clothing, then hesitated. She could still hear the water running. If she wrote him a note, it would be a cop-out. If she waited and spoke to him…
She hurried to the notepad by the phone and flipped past the pages that held her drawings. She started writing.
Dear Jake…
Nothing came to mind. The water wouldn’t run forever.
This won’t work.
Again the words she needed eluded her. There was so much she could say. I can’t keep my nose out of things that involve me? No.
I understand how you feel. Perhaps not completely, but I know enough about the past. I’m so sorry for what happened to Nancy, but I’m sure that whatever she was doing, she felt it was important and something she had to do. But I can’t be a hothouse flower. You can’t spend your life trying to protect me because you care about me.
Was that too presumptuous?
Maybe she was attributing way too much meaning to what was just a hot and heavy sexual relationship to him. No. He cared about her. She knew that. And she cared too much. Dare she write the truth? I’m falling in love with you, enough to sell my soul, my future, my belief in myself….
No. She wasn’t about to write that. She settled for I can’t see you anymore.
There was more. So much more she could put down on paper. Too much. But right now she had even greater concerns. Karen. She had to find out what was happening with her friend. She was afraid, but she had to do things herself, make the right moves.
She had said what needed to be said to Jake.
The water stopped running. Ashley didn’t sign the page; she simply dropped it and ran, fleeing the houseboat before he could stop her.
CHAPTER 20
It all started with a food fight, something that didn’t even draw Peter Bordon’s attention immediately, since it started far down at the end of the breakfast table.
Violence seldom occurred in the area of the prison where he was incarcerated. The men here were mostly white-collar criminals. They wanted to get out. They had families. Some dreamed of going straight.
They were rarely unruly, much less violent.
It started with flying eggs, but in seconds, there was a melee going. He had no intention of getting involved. He didn’t care if he wore egg or not.
Then someone had him by the shirt collar and he was being dragged across the table. The next thing he knew, he was on the floor, and there were a dozen men on top of him. He could hear whistles and shouts as the guards came rushing in to break it up, but he was more concerned with the elbow slammed into his face, thudding his head against the floor. Punches were raining down all over his body. He was smothering. He yelled, furious, trying to get the men off him. He returned their punches as best he could with the weight on him.
At first he wasn’t even aware of the blade sliding into him….
Then, beneath the pile-up, he knew.
The food fight was a performance, acted out for his benefit alone. Someone knew about the phone call. Any of them might have betrayed him. There was big money involved. Hell, it didn’t even matter who had turned on him. There was always someone who could be bought, no questions asked.
The blade inside him twisted. He screamed, but his voice and his lungs were failing. He had blacked out by the time the guards at last pulled the other prisoners from him.
It had all taken just a few moments of time.
“The coffee is made—and aren’t you running late?” Nick asked as Ashley made her way through the main house.
“I don’t have to report in until eight now,” she told him.
“Ah, well, that’s good. You look like hell—well, for being young and beautiful, you look like hell, anyway.”
“Thanks—kind of.”
“Look, Ashley, I’m not going to presume to tell you what to do, but you might want to take things a little slower with Dilessio.”
“Um, I might.” Was a dead standstill going to be slow enough? She already regretted her note. For some reason, she had thought he might pound on her door and say something. Hardly likely, and it hadn’t happened. He was on his way up to the center of the state, maybe finally solving the mystery that had plagued him for so long. For his sake, she hoped he found the answers. But she didn’t think that was going to change him.
His concern for the woman he’d loved in the past was greater than any feelings he had for her.
“How was your night out?” she asked her uncle.
“Great. Sharon’s appointment got cancelled, so we went to South Beach for stone crabs, took in a movie on Lincoln Road and walked on the beach.”