“Huh?” Grant replied.
“I feel closer to you than anyone in my life,” she said, a slight tremor in her melodious voice. “Yet I realized there’s a significant piece of my past that I never shared with you. I want to tell you what happened to me, Grant. I need to tell you why I went to prison.” She couldn’t help but turn her eyes downward as her face reddened with shame.
Reading the pain in her body language, Grant gently brushed his fingers across her cheekbone. “You don’t have to tell me, Sophie.”
“Yes, I do,” she responded with increasing confidence, raising her eyes to peer into his once again. “I need to be completely honest with you if I want to make this relationship work. At least that’s what my shrink told me. I just hope, um, I hope you’ll still want to be with me when you know the truth.”
Grant flinched upon hearing her words, shocked that she’d been experiencing the same doubts as he had—fears that if the truth was revealed, one of them would leave. He felt deeply saddened that she thought he would cast her aside so easily. He would never allow that to happen.
He grasped her hands in his, stroking the soft skin of her palms lovingly. “Sophie, no matter what you tell me, I would never leave you. Don’t you understand?” He waited until she met his eyes. “I love you.”
She drew in a sharp breath and felt the sting of tears as her heart thumped furiously. Oh God! Her eyes glistened. “I love you too,” she declared. She was sure of it.
He squeezed her hands in his. “Don’t you see? We love each other, and we won’t let anything come between us, okay?”
She nodded. “Okay.”
He gently leaned forward and kissed the tip of her nose, tasting the salt of her tears. They studied each other for a moment before she plunged ahead, determined to tell her story before she lost her courage.
“I was seeing a client in my practice,” she began. “He was court-ordered for treatment related to a, uh, an addiction.”
Grant nodded and drew her hand to his mouth to kiss it encouragingly.
“My client was a well-known criminal,” she continued, feeling her cheeks flush. “Well-known to everyone except for me, that is. I don’t know how I could have been so stupid.”
Grant frowned and smoothed his fingers down her long blond tresses. He carefully tucked a strand of strawberry hair behind her ear, then resumed caressing her cheek.
Sophie sniffed. “I’d been meeting with him for more than six months, and he wasn’t getting any better. I wasn’t helping him. Then this one session, he was telling me an awful story about his childhood—I was trying to comfort him—and he—he … kissed me. He did other things to me too. And …” She gazed down in shame. “And I let him. I liked it.”
“It’s okay, Sophie.”
“No, it’s not, Grant. It’s not okay! I was his psychologist! I shouldn’t have let it happen. I exploited the situation. I broke every ethical guideline in the book.”
“That’s why you went to prison?” he asked incredulously.
“No, what I did could have put my license in jeopardy, but it couldn’t have put me in prison.” She sighed. “There’s more. He stashed stolen money in my office. When I found the cash—there was a lot of it—I freaked out, and I called him and yelled at him. He was going to come pick up the money but before he got there, the police arrived. They had a search warrant. I tried to tell them the money was my client’s, but when they searched the office, they found … they found …” Her voice trailed off, and she seemed miles away.
Grant snuggled closer and planted a soft kiss on her collarbone, nudging her to continue. “It’s all right.”
“They found a stash of guns,” she choked out.
He lifted himself up on his elbow and stared at her, alarmed. “Guns?”
She nodded and felt her tears resume. “Guns. One of them had been used in a … murder.” Her last word was a whisper.
“But they weren’t your guns!” Grant objected. “Why should you have to go to prison?”
“Because my client skipped town—nobody knew where to find him. And somebody had to take the fall. At least that’s what my attorney said.”
Grant suddenly realized his hand had ceased caressing her face and instead was balled in a fist, pressing down on the pillow next to her head. He was infuriated.
Watching his eyes cloud over, Sophie ventured, “What are you thinking? Do you hate me for what I did?”
“Hate you? Of course not. I hate the man who did this to you, though. He’s never been brought to justice?”
“No. I don’t think the police have found him.”
“What’s his name?”
Sophie hesitated. “It doesn’t matter.”
Grant’s voice was low and tight. “Yes, it does. I want to hurt him like he hurt you.”
She now recognized that the intensity in his eyes represented furious vengeance, and it scared her. “Listen to you, Grant. What exactly are you planning? What are you going to do if you find him? Beat him up?” Her voice sounded harshly derisive, and she added in a softer tone, “Anyway, how would you find him? Have you forgotten that you’re on parole, not allowed to travel anywhere without Jerry’s permission? If you got yourself in so much as one fight you’d be back at Gurnee immediately. Have you thought of that?”
For Sophie’s sake, Grant tried to take a deep breath, studying her with a quiet intensity.
“I had to tell the police my client’s name, but other than that I should keep his identity confidential,” she said. “I may appear totally unethical but I can at least keep that one promise of privacy.”
It dawned on Grant that she felt as guilty and insecure about her situation as he felt about his. Unlike him, however, she had the decency to take responsibility for her lapse in judgment. In his weaker moments, Grant still blamed his brother for forcing him into prison. He couldn’t even step up and be accountable for his crimes.
Shaking this off for now, Grant tried to lighten the mood. “So, now I know about the guns and money leading to your arrest, Bonnie. Now it all makes sense, my little lawbreaker.”
Gently he gathered her in his arms and held her tight, protectively wrapping himself around her, skin on skin, feeling the wetness of her tears on his shoulder. “And I still love you.”
He felt her body shudder into his, leading him to squeeze her tighter, swathing her in his compassionate love. Sophie unleashed a torrent of sobs. Grant gently rubbed her back, and her body gradually stopped trembling, her breathing eventually evened out.
A loud knock on the door broke the mood. Grant looked into Sophie’s questioning eyes and gave a dismissive shake of his head. “I’m not answering it. Nobody knows where I live.”
She nodded and they continued holding each other, but the knocking resumed, louder this time.
“Maybe you should see who’s there?” she said, pulling back from his embrace.