“You said you like it. It’s too big for us now but...” He shrugged. “Little feet and all that.”
Kate felt blood rush to her face. She took a breath. “And Aunt Sara?”
“Cal’s house,” he said, then his eyes seemed to change color. In the next minute they were making love on top of the alligator pond.
After the group broke up, Randal took his time before going to his room that connected to Lea’s. It had been Derek’s and he wondered if it had been used by anyone since that week. Billy couldn’t very well have parties when there was a rotting corpse upstairs.
The crudeness of his thoughts showed how apprehensive he was about this night. He didn’t know how to play it. The women he trained, who worked to put their toned bodies in positions of invitation, were easy to deal with. Easy to say no to. But the instant he saw Lea, he’d known that his feelings for her were the same. His only other love had been Kate’s mother.
On the way to his room, he looked out a window and saw movement. When he realized it was Jack and Kate, her barefoot, and him holding her hand and leading her toward the cottage, he smiled deeply. At last! Sara was going to be pleased. If he’d ever met two people who belonged together, it was his daughter and Roy’s son.
When they were out of sight, he went into his bedroom. Standing still, he listened. It was something he’d had a lifetime of practice doing. There were times when his ability to be utterly still and listen with all his senses had saved his life. He could hear Lea moving about. Was she waiting for him? Should he go to her or stay where he was?
He gathered his courage and gave a knock on the door. She softly said, “Come in,” and he opened the door. It took him a moment before he could speak. She had on a long nightgown of peach-colored silk. It clung to her. He could see that she’d kept herself in excellent shape.
“Kate is wonderful,” she said. “She told me some of what has happened to her in the last years. And to you.”
He gave a smile that didn’t let on that they had heard the depth of Kate’s confession.
For a moment they said nothing. The air was full of the awkwardness of why they were there. Her husband’s murder.
“What you must think of me,” Lea whispered. “I was with you for most of that week. And with Kate. And...”
“You could have murdered him in front of me and I wouldn’t have cared.”
She smiled at that, but then her face turned serious. “You never contacted me.”
He took a step forward. “And say, ‘Wait for me?’ I couldn’t take away your hope of someday having love and family. For what? Forme? I don’t have that belief in my own worth.”
She took a step toward him. “But I did. I believed in you.”
They looked at each other in silence for a moment.
“It couldn’t have been easy for you,” he said. “You were left alone. When you went home...?” He didn’t finish.
“No, it wasn’t easy,” she answered. “But I didn’t have time to think. A month went by and Derek still hadn’t shown up, but his two cousins did. My hideous husband had bankrupted them. The poor dears were living by selling things they had before he emptied their bank accounts. And there I was with that big house and a few grand in the bank. I thought I’d get a job, so I let them move in with me. Little did I know how heavily mortgaged the house was. Another six months and we’d all be on the street.”
“What did you do?”
She smiled in memory. “It started out in a silly way. Months before, I’d broken a strap on my sandal and I put it back together with some cloth I had. Derek was embarrassed by it, but a woman said she liked it so I made some more. I sold three pair to a local shoe shop. Forty-eight hours later, they had all sold and I was asked to make some more so...” She shrugged.
“So you went into the sandal business?” He made it sound cute.
“We did. His cousins and I set up a little factory in the master bedroom. It was Derek’s and we wanted to cleanse it. We worked night and day. It was hard, but we enjoyed it. We called ourselves the Braidy Sisters.”
Randal lost his expression of cute. “Braidy? As in those shoes that even we heard about?”
“Yes. I started Braidys, but we sold it four years ago.”
Randal’s eyes were wide. “For millions?” he whispered.
She nodded.
He sat down on a chair, looking like he had just lost a battle. “This can’t happen. My sister will think I’m after your money.”
“Does it matter what she thinks?”
“She’d never believe it, but it always has. Very, very much.”
