The Perfect Letter Read online

From his place in the bed, Joseph called out in a sleepy voice, “Leigh, who’s there?”

  Leigh instinctively narrowed the door to a crack, but it was too late—Jake had heard.

  “Still the maid,” she answered. “Hold on.” She went out onto the stoop, shutting the door noiselessly behind her. So much for getting everything in the open.

  Jake’s eyes narrowed to stormy slits. “I take it that’s him,” he said. “Where do you find the energy?”

  “Don’t,” she said.

  A sound from inside the room—the rattle of glasses on a nightstand, the sound of someone picking up, and putting down, a cell phone.

  Jake started to say something else, but Leigh said, “Wait. Not here.”

  There was nowhere private at the top of the hill, and she couldn’t very well let Jake into her room at that moment, so she led him toward a small supply shed on the other side of the cottage. Inside there were brooms and toilet paper, a soda machine and an ice machine, which whirred and hummed in the background. She flipped on the light. It was cool inside, but too bright, too fluorescent for the morning hours. Already Leigh felt a headache coming on.

  “You do like your little secrets, don’t you?” Jake said. “I take it you never told him about me. But now he’s here, and I’m here. How cozy. Any second now it could turn into a sitcom.”

  “Listen, him coming here wasn’t my idea. He just showed up yesterday. What should I do, tell him to turn around and go home?”

  Jake crossed the distance between them. He stood so close she could barely see over his shoulder. If he was trying to intimidate her, it wouldn’t work.

  “Shouldn’t you?” he asked. “After yesterday, the day before?” His hands slid down her shoulders.

  Leigh was getting angry now, fear and frustration boiling over into fury. She pushed both hands into his chest, made him step back and drop his hands. “You disappear yesterday, and I don’t know where you are or even if you intend to come back. I have no way of getting hold of you. I don’t even know where you live, and I’m supposed to make a decision about the rest of my life based on one night?”

  “You don’t want him. I know you, Leigh. You don’t love him.”

  “You don’t know me, not anymore. We’re different people now, Jake. I’m not saying I can’t be with you, I just need some time to figure things out. Because of my job, and Joseph . . . it’s just not as simple as snapping my fingers.”

  Jake went quiet. “I thought—well, it doesn’t matter what I thought.”

  He was softening, starting to back off, and she lowered her voice again, her anger easing. She touched his arm. She needed a little space to clear her head, just a little. “I’m winging it here. I have no idea what the right thing is under these circumstances. Can you be patient, just a little patient with me? A few days is all I ask.”

  “Okay,” he said. “I can do that.” He was looking down at the floor, chastened, but something else must have caught his eye: the shine of the diamond on her left hand. She tried to turn her hand away, but it was too late.

  “I see,” Jake said, grabbing her wrist, his fingers tightening as he waved the ring around between them. “This is the part where I’m supposed to be patient?”

  “I didn’t—” she started.

  But Jake wasn’t listening anymore. His body was tensed with fury, and suddenly he filled the whole shed, he was everywhere. “You agreed to marry him on the same day you slept with me?”

  “Jake, I—”

  “I can’t believe you. Why would you agree to marry him? Because of a fancy ring, a nice apartment, a job? What are you really selling yourself for?”

  Leigh stiffened. “You don’t know anything about it. I owe him a lot.”

  Jake gave a single ha, a sound flat and hard as stone. “That’s a funny thing to say to a man who went to prison for you.”

  “He needs me,” she said, but it sounded feeble even to her own ears.

  She knew what Jake wanted from her, but after the last few days, she wasn’t sure she could give it. He was too erratic—pulling her toward him one minute, pushing her away the next.

  “If you dumped him today, you think his life would change at all? He’d find someone else, you know it.”

  “I don’t know that.”

  “He would. He’d be a little sad for a while, but he’d move on,” Jake said. “I’ve tried—God knows, I tried—but I can’t move on. Not without you. I need you, Leigh. I need you so badly I can’t breathe.”

  He crossed what little distance remained between them, coming close now, and then his hands were on her, his manner intense but not hurried. He pulled up the hem of her nightgown gently with his fingertips, touching her as if it were the most natural thing in the world, as if there had never been a time when they were apart. His hands were sliding up the back of her thighs, cupping her buttocks. He pulled her close, slowly, until they were just millimeters apart, his mouth nearly brushing hers. The heat of him crept over every inch of her skin. He was so close she could feel him everywhere, even deep in her lungs.

  “I need you,” he said, breathing the words into her mouth. “Don’t you know that by now? That there’s no place in the world that’s home for me, except you?”

  Her body yearned toward him, her skin crackling with the electricity between them. If he so much as kissed her now, she would forget Joseph, her career, everything. She would give up all of it to be with him.

  He was coming close to her, pressing her back against the wall next to the ice machine, parting her thighs with his knee. “I know you want me. I know it. I can feel it.” Something was vibrating, either the ice machine or the air between herself and Jake. “I felt it yesterday. I feel it now.”

  She didn’t answer. She could feel the heat coming off him, the smell of his skin making her dizzy, the space between them taut with sorrow and longing and a want that was so palpable it nearly had a shape and a voice. She couldn’t see anything but his dark blue eyes pushing their way into her, leaving her naked. If he touched her then, she would dissolve completely.

  With one hand he opened the lid of the ice machine and took a piece of ice. With the other he slid the strap of her nightgown off her shoulder, revealing her breast. He touched the ice to her nipple, and she shivered. She couldn’t move. She was pinned there by his body, his hands, her own pulsing desire.

  “I tried to forget about you in prison,” he said. “I tried to hate you, tried to get you to hate me. I thought you’d be safer that way.”

  “Safer from what?” she choked out.

  “From me.”

  The ice tightened something deep inside her. His lips were just an inch away. All she had to do was tilt up her mouth to kiss him, and the decision would be made. There would be nothing else to keep them apart, ever.

  Jake kept pushing, coming closer. He rubbed the ice up her neck, watching it dissolve on her skin. She shivered.

  “Tell me you love him. Tell me you want to marry him.” When the ice was gone his hands slid downward, his fingers still cold and wet and slick. “If you tell me to go, I’ll go. Tell me you want me to leave right now, so I can leave you behind once and for all.”

  His hands slipped beneath her panties, felt the wetness at the center of her. Leigh’s body arched toward him, and she felt her throat close up. She couldn’t speak, not even the word “wait.” She would never tell him to go away, never. Not when she wanted him as much as this.

  “You think he’d ever touch you like this? You think he could ever know your body the way I do? Your heart?”

  Through the window, they were in full view of the hillside path, where people could walk by at any moment, where Joseph could find them at any moment. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered but his hands and the searing look in his eyes, and the flutter of greed in her belly that said more.

  “Tell me to go. I’ll go.”

  She realized, dimly, that if she told him to stop he would leave immediately, and she would never see him again. The t
hought made her belly clench with fear.

  “Jake.”

  “What?”

  His hands. The electricity in them. Please. Please, don’t stop. She closed her eyes, her breath coming fast and hot, not caring that Joseph would come outside at any moment looking for her. He’d wonder what was taking her so long and come looking. Then he’d see. It would be awful, the repercussions, but she didn’t care, she didn’t care at all. In that moment the only thing that mattered was Jake, his hands, his mouth. Her body, alive with wanting.

  Just then the maid came in with her cart, flinging the door wide and making them jump apart. “Sorry,” she said, looking down at her feet, her face turning scarlet. “I didn’t know anyone was in here.”

  “No, no,” Leigh said, pulling her nightgown down again, her body still charged with Jake’s touches, clumsily coming back to herself. “We’re sorry.”

  “I’ll go,” the maid said, moving to close the door, but Leigh, trying to stop her, bumped into the cart and knocked over a dozen rolls of toilet paper.

  “Oh no, I’m so sorry,” Leigh said, bending down to help the maid pick up the supplies and put them back on the cart. “I’m so embarrassed! We shouldn’t have been in here.”

  She finished picking up the mess and pulled Jake away. It no longer mattered that anyone at the conference might see them, Saundra, Joseph. Everything would be out in the open, as it should be.

  Except that Jake was standing over her, his face closing up, his body stiffening with anger. He laughed, a stony, bitter laugh.

  “God,” he said. “I’m such an idiot.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You can’t do it, can you? You can’t choose because you don’t want to.”

  “What?”

  “You want to fuck me and marry him. That’s it, isn’t it?”

  She hugged her arms around herself. “That’s not it. I—”

  “You’re scared to be with me. Maybe you’re right to be scared. I’ve done things I’m not proud of.”

  “So have I,” she whispered.

  “You don’t owe that guy anything, not your career, not your hard work and intelligence. No one gave those things to you. It’s not loyalty to him that’s stopping you. Real loyalty is right here in front of you.”

  He looked at her with such contempt that she took a step back. “Jake, stop—”

  “So I have to assume it’s something else. Your money, your rich Manhattan lifestyle. I don’t have anything to offer you. I don’t have anything except myself, and that scares you, doesn’t it?”

  Leigh stood mute. The anger in Jake’s voice was painful for her to hear, but not as painful as the substance behind the words. He was right—he’d found out the truth about her, the real truth. She was afraid of what would happen if she chose Jake. She was afraid of who she’d be, how she’d live. How would they manage? What would they do? Without her life in New York, her precious and longed-for publishing career, who was Leigh Merrill, anyway?

  He took another step back, and another, retreating from her as he would from a poisonous snake. “I should have known it was too late for us, but I guess I’m a slow learner. I don’t see the truth until it agrees to marry someone else,” he said, and in his anger, he wheeled around and gave a tremendous punch to the door of the ice machine, leaving a deep dent behind. His knuckles were bleeding, but apparently he didn’t notice.

  She flinched. “Jake—”

  But he was already backing toward the parking lot, toward his red truck. “Go on back to New York and your friends and your job. Marry that guy. Pay off Russell. What’s a million dollars to Leigh Merrill anyway? Maybe he’ll even leave you alone afterward.”

  “Please . . .” she started, but then she wasn’t sure what was supposed to come next. You’re wrong? I’m sorry? Nothing she could think of would make things right between them. She’d been a coward—she’d tried to have it all without thinking of the consequences—and now it was too late.

  “You were right the last time you wrote me, Leigh,” he said. “All those years ago. You were right when you said maybe it would have been better for both of us if we’d never met at all.”

  “No,” she started. “Jake, I was wrong—”

  “Don’t worry,” he said. “I won’t bother you anymore. Good luck, Leigh. Have a nice life.” Then he went down the hill. She watched him get into his truck, spinning away in a hail of gravel.

  She slumped to the floor of the porch, feeling cold and blank and empty. She’d wanted something to happen that would push the decision to the breaking point, some sign from the universe that she was doing the right thing; she’d wanted something to come along that would take the decision out of her hands.

  Now that it had been, she knew it was the wrong decision.

  She watched him go, knowing she didn’t deserve Jake, but she wanted him, wanted him in ways that she hadn’t been able to admit, even to herself. She’d loved him her whole life, since that first day in Mammoth Cave when the bats had swooped around them, when he had first kissed her in the dark space of the cavern like the inside of a church. She had pledged herself to him then in spirit if nothing else, and there had never been anyone else but him in all the years since, not really. She had been selfish and she had been scared—she had made some terrible, awful decisions that even now she didn’t know how to atone for—but the only person she ever wanted was Jake, and everything else was just a stopgap, a placeholder in her heart. It was Jake, or no one.

  Only moments before she’d been ready to give him everything he wanted, but now she was back to where she’d started—with Jake gone, clinging to whatever was left. And what was left didn’t seem like enough anymore.

  It wasn’t until the maid came by again with her cart, giving her a strange look, that Leigh stood up and wiped her face. She had work to do today, after all. She had pitches to hear, authors to meet, decisions to make. The machinery of life still ground on, even when you felt like you couldn’t face it another minute.

  Her meetings. Her authors. Russell Benoit. She would see her blackmailer again today, she was sure of it. She just wasn’t sure what she was going to tell him. What was right and what was fair no longer made sense to her.

  She’d also never gotten a real answer from Jake about his dad, about why he’d gone to talk to him about Russell. What did Ben Rhodes and Russell Benoit have to do with each other? How had they even met? She still didn’t know. Maybe now she’d never know. There was no way to find Jake to ask, and he’d seemed resolute in his decision to leave her alone. No—she was going to have to deal with Russell on her own.

  When she opened the door to her cottage, she could see that Joseph had fallen back asleep probably as soon as she had gone out the door. He was lying on the pillow—head thrown back, mouth open in a light snore, his thin, handsome face still and untroubled. As far as he knew, everything was fine.

  She felt a sudden weariness overtake her and wished she could climb in bed beside him, wished he would wrap his arms around her and tell her it would be all right. She wanted to be angry with him for not comforting her, but that wasn’t fair—it wasn’t his fault he didn’t understand the enormity of the situation, because she had never told him the truth about herself. Not once. The only one who deserved her scorn was Leigh herself.

  Hearing her come in, Joseph sat up sleepily and looked around as if trying to reorient himself in the world. “Is that you, babe?” he asked. “Want to get some breakfast?”

  She went into the bathroom and stood in front of the sink, staring angrily at her own reflection. She looked ghastly—red and puffy, her skin and hair greasy, like she’d been up all night drinking—but she felt worse than she’d felt in years, sick to her stomach, sick at heart. She didn’t deserve Jake. She didn’t deserve Joseph. She didn’t deserve to be happy.

  All she could do was go on pretending. She had to. After all, what other choice was there?

  Joseph was still sitting up in bed, waiting for her.
Waiting for an answer.

  “I’d love some breakfast,” she said, doing her best to keep her voice neutral and even. “Just give me a minute, will you?”

  Twelve

  She headed for work that day in a fog, her mind clouded with regret. In the dining pavilion she grabbed some coffee, the ring on her finger sparkling every time she lifted her hand.

  Even Saundra noticed and congratulated her. “Good morning,” said the woman, leaning over to pour some raw sugar into her morning cup of tea. Today she was wearing long gray gaucho pants and a red crocheted vest that made her look like a hippie cowgirl. Her long gray hair was braided and lay straight down her back like a horse’s tail. “I saw you coming home last night after supper, you and the man in the suit. You looked so good together, I thought for sure you’d have the most beautiful babies. That was him?”

  Leigh nodded. She could hardly speak. She felt a sudden pang of longing for her mother, a stab of resentment that she’d had to figure out her life without her mother’s help. Surely if anyone would have understood what Leigh was going through, it would have been Abby Merrill, the woman who’d run off to New York and defied her own formidable father with all the calm of a Buddha.

  “Oh, honey,” said Saundra, “I didn’t mean to make you cry.”

  “It’s all right. I’m all right,” Leigh said, though she was anything but.

  “You want to talk about it? I realize it’s none of my business.”

  She shook her head no. “I’m sorry to be so unprofessional.”

  Saundra gave her a warm hug. Her hair smelled like cinnamon toast, and Leigh nearly broke down. Some small, deep-down part of her was wailing I want my mother!

  “My door is always open,” Saundra was saying in a sweet voice. “You know where to find me.”

  Leigh gave a weak smile. She wanted so much to confide in someone, anyone. Chloe wasn’t here, and there was literally no one else.

  “I’m not sure I love him,” she blurted out. “Not the way he deserves.”

  “Oh, honey,” Saundra said, “it’s not about what he deserves. It’s about making a partnership with someone who makes you happy. Deserve has nothing to do with it.”