At the grocery store, Brenna found herself participating in his nonsensical method of determining which watermelons were the ripest, the sweetest. She even found herself agreeing that the best kind of watermelons were those stolen from some poor farmer's patch. Through it all, she wondered if, like Alice, she had fallen down a rabbit-hole to some strange, wonderful place. This man who played silly games with his grandmother could not be the same harsh lawyer she remembered from her first meeting with him.
"What's left on the list?" Cole asked Grandmom, pushing the cart down the aisle, putting things not on the list into the basket. Peanuts. Pretzels. Oreo cookies.
"Important things," she responded, eyeing his additions. "Flour. Milk."
"Milk," Cole said, drawing Brenna close. "You know I used to get up at four in the morning to milk the cow before I went to school. Now they bay it from the store. Can you believe it?"
"And you trudged through the snow to catch the bus, I bet."
He shook his head solemnly. "This was before buses. I walked miles."
Brenna laughed. "You're quite well preserved for such an old-"
"Watch it," he warned. "If you say mean things, I may not invite you to my campfire."
"What campfire is this?" she asked.
"One down next to the lake. We can't roast marshmallows without a fire." He winked, and Brenna
imagined that marshmallows weren't the only thing he planned to roast. Brenna noticed he added staples to the basket that weren't on the list. And besides getting things he liked for himself, he casually added the kind of tobacco his dad used in his pipe, a bag of chocolate candies like the ones in a dish on his mother's desk, a bottle of peach-flavored seltzer Grandmom had mentioned she liked. At the checkout counter, he kept Grandmom so preoccupied that he had the groceries paid for before she was able to take the cash out of her wallet. This was a side of him Brenna hadn't imagined, a side she liked. Since sunrise this morning, she had experienced the most fulfillment she had ever known, and she had seen the return of her oldest companion-fear of discovery. All with people she'd like to know and love for the rest of her life, if that were her choice to make. In her heart of hearts, she wished it was.
"There's something I have to tell you," Brenna said to Cole two days later, when they were about a hundred miles from Denver. They each had been increasingly silent during the long drive. Each exit off the interstate represented a crossroads to her. At each one, her conscience mocked her deceit. She had to tell him and get it over with. "My turn first," Cole said, clearing his throat. His glance left the highway for a moment as he met her gaze. "I haven't been honest or fair with you."
His statement echoed exactly what she had intended to say to him. His gaze left the highway again, and he took her hand. "You and me... We have something good going, don't you think?"
Brenna nodded and ran her tongue over lips that felt dry, chapped. She didn't dare speculate about where this was going.
Cole's attention returned to the long, straight expanse of highway that stretched in front of them. "I let you believe that I quit from Jones, Markham and Simmons." He cleared his throat. "It didn't happen quite like that. I was given a choice between resigning or being fired."
She didn't know what she had been expecting him to say. This wasn't it. Clearly, she remembered he had told her he left the firm shortly after her case was finished. "Because of me?"
"The situation with you and Harvey Bates was the final straw on a very large pile." Cole gave her hand a reassuring squeeze. "One of the first things you learn after getting out of law school is how to build cases on what you want to present, how to control your own agenda, how to get a judge and jury to see what you want them to see. When you're part of a big firm, you learn how to use the system to acquire cases that are good for the firm. Financially. Prestige-wise."
"Harvey Bates was prestigious?" Brenna asked, confused.
"Hell, no. If a case has prestige, the partners handle it. But clients like Bates are the bread and butter of a firm. He spends several thousand dollars with the firm every year. That's what associates are for. To take the dregs the partners don't want to handle, or don't have time to handle."
"Harvey Bates."
Cole nodded. "Among others." He glanced back at her. "I've been thinking about this a lot. I told Zach MacKenzie the other day that I'd tolerate nothing less than the whole truth. And then I didn't have the guts to give you what I demanded of others." A wry smile lifted the corner of his mouth. "Not exactly a high point for me. That's the first thing."
"There's more?"The whole truth . The words echoed in her mind, and her heart sank.
"Have you ever been seriously involved with someone? To the point of thinking about marriage?"
Again, he completely surprised her. She hadn't anticipated the question, and she answered honestly, "Once. I was-"
Cole pressed a finger against her mouth. "I'm not asking you to tell me about it, fair lady." A brief smile slashed across his face. "Unless this guy is still around. In which case I'll be forced to challenge him to a duel at sunrise."
Brenna shook her head, smiling at the image he so easily painted in her head.
"Good. What's in the past for you is none of my business." His hand lifted again, and he caressed her cheek with the back of his fingers. "I was, too. Once. Serious, as in engaged."
Oh, God. She didn't want to know about his past. She didn't want to know they had gotten this serious. The skeletons rattling in his closet were benign in comparison to the monsters in hers. Through dry lips, she said, "The Susan person."
Cole chuckled. "I should have guessed Grandmom would have told you."
"How did you know?"
"That's how Grandmom always refers to her. They didn't get along."
"You don't have to tell me about her."
"I want to."
"I don't-"
"I want you to know, Brenna. This has been eating at me for days, and I want to get it behind me." He gave her a quick glance. "I met her just after I passed the bar. She was working for a Big Eight firm."
"Big Eight?"
"One of the largest CPA firms in the country. She's a CPA, very bright, very ambitious. We had lots of interests in common. Or so I thought at the time. We planned to have it all. Vacations in Aspen and Hawaii, Christmases in Acapulco. She accepted a position in Chicago, and I planned to go with her. We even rented a great apartment-a penthouse in an elegant old building that had been renovated."
Brenna schooled her expression into one of polite interest as his words ate away at her. His voice held the reminiscence of fond memories. Though the lifestyle Cole described wasn't one she had ever wanted, she hated the dreams he had built with someone else, hated knowing those dreams made her jealous.
"I had quit my job, put my house up for sale, and she had already moved."
"What happened?"
"I got an offer on my house-for the price I was asking. And I couldn't sign the papers. Susan told me I'd never stopped being a farm boy."
"I'm sorry," Brenna said.
"I'm not." Cole's big hands flexed over the top of the steering wheel before he let his fingers loosely curl around it again. "I was then, but I'm not anymore." He glanced at Brenna. "I resented the hell out of her accusations. I'm an attorney, and I like being one. But the ranch is just as much a part of who I am. You know?"
"I know," Brenna agreed softly. "But that's part of you, too, isn't it? Vacations in exotic locales and-"
"At the time, I wanted it."
"And now?" She was torturing herself for asking, but she had to know.
"I like working in a city. I discovered what made me happiest, though, was to live in the country. Penthouse apartments, hell, they're fine." He gave Brenna a quick look, a genuine wide smile filling his face. "I just couldn't figure out where to keep a Shop-Vacand a radial-arm saw in one."
"No place for your toys, huh?" she teased, the ache in her heart easing at his confession.
"Tools, fair lady, not toys." He clasped her hand within his again. "Now. Your turn. Michael told me your dad is coming for a visit. Is that what's bothering you?"
"Some."Tell him . This was a time for confessions. He had given her an opening. A big one. Her throat squeezed clued against the words that would drive him from her life.
Cole squeezed her hand. "You can come stay with me if you want."
"That's a tempting offer. Only, I promised myself I wouldn't run away-" Sudden realization choked her voice. She had promised herself she wouldn't run away from her father anymore. Yet she was running away from the inevitable with Cole.
"Hell of a thing, dads are sometimes," Cole said. "And there isn't anything wrong with running, sometimes. Listening to you and Zach MacKenzie made me realize how lucky I am. Zach's father told him he deserved what's happened to him."
"And Zach believes him?"
"Damned if I know. Probably. Zach checked himself into a treatment hospital last week."
Brenna heard a tinge of anger creep into Cole's voice. "That makes you mad?"
"The timing is lousy. The hell of it is that I admire what he's done. It takes guts to admit you've got a problem, then deal with it. In some ways he reminds me of you."
"Another person in an impossible mess, huh?" She let go of Cole's hand and wrapped both of hers around herself, chilled to the bone, knowing she had to give up the deceptions, unable to say the words aloud.
Cole shook his head. "A person who faces things head-on when the going gets tough. I'm not sure I'd have the courage to choose the path he's taken."
"He's a nice guy," Brenna said. "I hope things work out for him."Tell him, you coward. Just tell him.
"He's done his part," Cole said. "All I have to do is mine. Which reminds me. Did the guy who owns Score talk to you about filing for unemployment?"
The balance of the drive into Denver focused increasingly on the matters at hand for the upcoming week. Brenna's search for a new job and filing for unemployment. Cole's schedule, which included a couple of court appearances. Moments before they arrived back at Michael and Jane's apartment, Cole offered again to have Brenna come stay with him while her father visited.
She wanted to accept. Doing so would be the coward's way out. And sooner or later, she was determined to stop being a coward.
Chapter 19.
"Dad arrived night before last," Michael told Brenna at breakfast the following morning. His announcement was a reality check that instantly faded the rosy images left from her trip with Cole. She set down her cup on the counter with such force that hot coffee sloshed over the rim. She glanced around the kitchen as if she expected her father to materialize. "I didn't think he was coming until next week."
"He sure surprised the hell out of us," Michael said with a rueful smile. "Told me it was your idea that he
spend the Fourth with us."
"How nice," she said, sure of no such thing. Grabbing a clean dishcloth from the drawer, she wiped up the coffee off the counter.
"Of course, he managed to get business in, too," Michael added. "He was here in Denver until last night.
We took him down to the Springs, and he'll be back late tomorrow or maybe the day after." Michael shook his head, a look of disgust marring his features.
"What aren't you telling me?"
"He says he wants to spend time with us. Then, over the weekend when we have time off, he's busy with other things." A trace of irritation filled Michael's voice. "He says he wants to spend time with Teddy, then invites Jane and me to the Denver Country Club for dinner and says he'll pay for a sitter."
To Brenna, that sounded exactly like the Colonel. Appearances were everything. Children were to be seen and not heard, and she knew from personal experience that it was better to not even be seen. She decided if she was lucky-very lucky-she might be able to avoid seeing her father altogether. She had unpleasant memories of every visit she had with him over the last ten years. She felt a pang of guilt, knowing that she had been so concerned with her own troubles, she had ignored the fact that things had probably been no better for her brother.
"I'm sorry, Michael."
"Me, too," he returned, his frown easing. "I just keep hoping he'll change. After he retired, I thought things might be different."
"What's that old saying about a leopard and its spots?" "A rose by any other name," he said. "Still stinks," Brenna finished. Michael laughed. "That's a very disrespectful tone, miss." "Sirto you, young man." Brenna sat down at the table next to him. "Seriously, I am sorry you had a rough weekend. I'm not sorry I missed it, but-" "You're willing to make it up?" Michael asked, a glint in his eye. "Uh ... no. Not even for a very large bribe, which I could use."
"I'm too poor to bribe you. You're the rich one."
"Uh-huh," Brenna agreed. "That's why my wages-excuse me, myex -wages-are being garnished, andthe very reason I gave up a nice condo to live in the lap of luxury with you." "Brenna." Michael waited until she looked at him before he continued. "You have money." "Not me. I used the last of my savings to pay for John Miller's inept services." "Remember a couple of weeks ago when all those old photographs and things came from Dad? There was a passbook with that stuff." At her even more puzzled frown, Michael added, "You know. The one that had a picture of Mom with it."
"It wouldn't have any money in it. Not after all this time."
"I bet it does."
Five minutes later, she found the passbook in the back of her closet where she had stuffed it in a box with old pictures and other papers. Sitting down on the bed, she simply held the book, remembering back to the night she had left home.
Brenna stared, unseeing, afraid to open the book and afraid not to, and so full of regret she hadn't told her mother that she loved her before she died.
"Well, open it," Michael urged.