“I’m going to stay right here until we find Sutton. Should we start organizing some sort of search?”
“I’ll get back to you on that. I’ve gotten a lot of information in the past hour. I need to go sort through it all and get my boss moving on a few things.” She pocketed her notebook. “We’ll find her, Ms. Brookes. I promise.”
The tears stopped. Brookes swiped a hand across her face. “I hope you do. Before it’s too late.”
“One last thing. Did you happen to make a call to my cell phone yesterday?”
She shook her head. “No, I didn’t. Though now that I see this email from Sutton, I wish I had.”
I’M COMING HOME, I’M COMING HOME
Then
“Ethan, come here!”
He hurried to the other side of the house, drawn by the urgency in her voice. She was in her office. No makeup, hair in a ponytail, spilling down her back. Feet bare, toenails polished red. She looked so young, so carefree. He couldn’t help the spike of love he felt when he saw her. Sometimes he forgot how things were now. For a moment, their reality fled away and he saw her with early eyes, the ones he had before their world went to hell.
“What is it, love?”
“That asshole Wilde is after me again.”
He bit back the sigh. This little drama was getting very old.
Sutton’s office was so empty now. Without the baby’s basket, it seemed practically frigid. They were in the first flush of winter, and the skies were gray and dreary. Looking closer, he could see Sutton was pale, black circles under her eyes. Neither of them slept well anymore. When had they slept together recently? He tried to think back to the luxurious warmth between her legs. It had been weeks.
He needed to rectify this. He needed to fix his marriage. They’d gone through hell and back, and if they had any hope of surviving, they needed to find one another again.
But all Sutton could focus on was some stupid online blogger who kept poking her crazy.
“You need to ignore him.”
“I have been. You know that. But now he’s attacking you.”
A rush of fury. And a little voice in the back of his mind... Hypocrite. Hypocrite. Hypocrite. “What? Let me see.”
The article was only two hundred words, very succinct. It was titled Who’s Really Writing Ethan Montclair’s Books?
“That bloody arsehole!”
“I know. We have to do something. This is defamation.”
Ethan skimmed the article again, enough to take away that Wilde was intimating it was Sutton who was writing Ethan’s books, from start to finish. That he had severe writer’s block, or maybe he’d plagiarized the first book, stole it completely from another author who wasn’t published, someone he’d come across in a writing class.
Rage filled him. His vision blackened, and it took a good five minutes before he could really hear Sutton. She was crying. That shook him from his state.
“What? What’s wrong?”
“Let go of me!”
He looked down, realized he was gripping Sutton’s forearm so tightly her hand was turning white. He released her as if burned.
“Oh my God, Sutton. I am so sorry.”
She cradled her arm in her lap. There was going to be a bruise. It would be bad, too. Sutton was so easily damaged these days.
“You scared me. I thought you were going to hurt me. You grabbed my arm, and you wouldn’t let go. It’s turning black already. My God, Ethan.”
He threw his arms around her. “Baby, baby, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you. I’d never hurt you on purpose.”
But her eyes were wide, the pupils dilated. She was cringing in her chair, pulling away.
He tried to stay calm. He stepped back, put some space between them. “Where would he get this idea? That you’re writing my books? That I plagiarized someone?”
“I have no idea. It’s preposterous. I mean, all I ever do is edit you, and that lightly. Accusing me of writing them is silly. Everyone knows you write your own books. You were a writer well before you met me. I’m going to put ice on my arm.”
“Let me get it for you.” He rushed to the kitchen, came back to see Sutton taking a photo of the burgeoning bruise.
“What in the world are you doing?”
“I can’t see it properly. It looks like two fingerprints.”
“Here.” He handed her the ice, took the phone from her hand. “Move your arm to the right.” She did, and he snapped the picture. He handed her the phone. “See. It’s not as bad as you think.”
She stared at it.
“You should probably delete that. You don’t want the weird sisters to see it and get the wrong idea.”
“No one can tell what it is, it just looks like a smudge.”
“I’m so sorry, sweetheart. Come here.” This time she let him hug her. He arranged her on the small sofa, tucked the ice pack in around her arm. “Do you want some Advil?”
“No, the ice is fine.”
“I’m sorry Wilde is at it again. I think we should look at hiring someone to get him to back off.”
“A lawyer?”
“Yes.”
“I see it takes him attacking you for you to take this seriously.”
He didn’t rise to the bait. “I should have been paying more attention. I’ve been having a lousy few weeks. The book’s not working. Hell, maybe you should start writing it for me. Kidding,” he said at her dark look. “Why don’t I give Joel a call, see if he can give us some advice.”
“I already talked to Joel, the last time Wilde acted up. He said we could sue but it’s going to take a lot of time and money, and without any proof that I didn’t post those notes, we’re going to have a—quote unquote—uphill battle to get a conviction.”
“But this is different, don’t you think?”
“Call him, then. Let’s hear what he has to say.” She took the ice off her arm, started poking at the bruise.
“Stop that. You’ll make it worse.”
“I was just seeing how much it hurts.”
“I’m sure it will hurt much less if you stop poking it.”
“Call Joel.”
“I am. Sutton...”
She looked at him with those blue-gray eyes, the smudges beneath hard as rain. There was no look of love or joy or acceptance in them. Of course not, he’d just hurt her, all she could be around him now was wary. They hurt each other all the time now, their words striking harder than slaps, the bruises deeper than broken blood vessels. They both knew how to use words, knew they were the greatest weapon of all.
Before he knew what he was doing, he was kneeling by her side, his head in her lap, crying. She cried with him. They ached together in their loss. The loss of Dashiell, the loss of their marriage. The loss of each other.
That they’d make love was inevitable. He was not expecting it to be quite so aggressive, quite so wild. They both went a little crazy. And when they were finished, slick and hot and sated, Sutton said, in a small, quiet voice, “I’ve missed you.”
And Ethan’s heart broke all over again.
THAT MAN IS LYING THROUGH HIS TEETH