“That’s right.”
“Why not?”
“Because it was a mistake to drag you into my problems.”
I shake my head. “You don’t hear me complaining, do you? After all, it brought us here.”
A growl rumbles in the back of his throat as I lift his afflicted hand up to my lips and kiss his clenched fingers. He doesn’t pull away, but I can see him retreating emotionally. He wants to say more, but something holds him back. His gaze is shadowing over like a door being slowly closed.
As much as I want to coax all his secrets out of him, I know him enough to understand that if I push too hard, he’ll only close that door even tighter.
“Maybe you were right,” he says gruffly. “You should go home now.”
“Don’t do that. Don’t shut me out.” I let go of his hand and reach for his handsome face instead, framing his whiskered jaw in my hands. My gaze implores him to see me, to let me in. “Please don’t act like you want me gone. Don’t act like you want to be alone when it seems to me you’ve been alone for most of your life.”
“Alone?” He chuckles humorlessly as he lowers my hands. “Look around you, darlin’. I’m surrounded by people.”
“How many of them know about your tremors? Does your lawyer know? Seems like you and Nathan Whitmore are good friends, but I’ll bet he’s got no idea. What about Gibson?”
Jared nods now, a wry twist to his mouth. “He’s the only one. I used to send the old man out for my prescriptions, back when I was still taking them. But I think he knew even before then. He notices too much, rather like someone else I know.”
“He cares about you,” I tell him gently. “Like someone else you know.”
His gaze searches mine for a long moment. He wets his lips, then leans forward and gives me a heartbreakingly tender kiss. “Finish drying off and get dressed. I’m going to take you home.”
He turns away from me and grabs another towel from the rack. I watch as he runs it roughly over his damp hair. His movements are tight and aggressive, not only due to the tremors that still have a hold on him. He’s retreating from something more than just me. I can practically see the talons of his past sinking into him.
“You said your father came down with early onset Parkinson’s, too. Was that how he—”
“Died?” Jared finishes for me when I break off. There’s something cold in his eyes when he swivels a glance at me. “No, it wasn’t the Parkinson’s that killed him. It was the shotgun he put under his chin the day the bank sent their foreclosure letter on our horse farm.”
“Oh, my God. Jared . . . I’m so sorry.”
“Shit happens, right?” On a heavy exhalation, he tosses down the towel he used to dry his hair. “I only wish I’d been able to keep my mother from running in behind me after we heard the blast from inside the house.”
I close my eyes, trying not to imagine the horror of that moment. “Why would he do something like that to both of you? He had to know the pain it would cause.”
“He had his own pain. First the disease that was slowly devouring him, then the shame of losing everything he and my mother had worked for.”
“But that wasn’t his fault,” I point out, recalling that Jared relayed some of the story to me at his studio. “He was cheated in a Ponzi scheme.”
“Yes, he was. Although I imagine that was cold comfort to him during the months when the creditors were clawing at the door and all my parents’ rich society friends turned their backs to avoid being tainted by the scandal.” Jared shakes his head. “My dad ran the farm his whole adult life. His investments were supposed to carry us once he became too weak to work. The really fucked up thing about a Ponzi scheme is that it takes years to perfect. Years of deliberate, calculated deception. It starts with a lie to build trust, and then the one running the game keeps those lies coming, building on one another. The bastard who got to Dad knew he was sick, so he preyed on my father’s fears of leaving his family behind to fend without him.”
My heart aches to consider it. It aches for Jared, too, because he’s lived with this pain and loss for so long.
“I was twelve,” he says, “old enough to recall the day my father brought Denton Sweeney to our house. He wore a nice suit and polished shoes, and his brand-new Bentley had New York license plates. Mom didn’t appear to like him much, but my dad seemed to hang on every slick word that came out of his mouth. After Sweeney left, he called the house at least once a month. Seemed like Dad was always going to the bank for one thing or another. In the beginning, he was cashing in proceeds from Sweeney’s investments every other week. They were big checks, so Dad kept investing more and more. Apparently, he trusted Sweeney so much, he finally staked the farm, too. The scheme went on for more than two years before some other men in nice suits and cars with New York license plates showed up at the farm to talk to my father. These men also had FBI badges.”
“Sweeney was found out?”
Jared scoffs under his breath. “Not until after he was dead. He had a stroke on the toilet in his 5th Avenue apartment. It took a couple of weeks before the overdrafts started piling up and his clients started to wonder what was going on. By the time the authorities started sniffing around, Sweeney’s wife had fled the country with their young son and all the money Denton had stolen from more than two dozen investors. The pair were never located, not for lack of trying.”
I close my eyes, appalled by the brazenness—the sheer cruelty—of the crime. “And all the people Denton Sweeney cheated, people like your father, who just wanted to take care of their families—they had no way to get their money back?”
Jared shakes his head. “It was all gone. Unfortunately, for us, that also included the farm and all our horses.”
“Jared, I’m so sorry.” I go to him. Whether or not he wants my comfort, I need to be near him. I need to touch him and let him know that I’m here, that I care about him—so profoundly, it’s an ache filling my chest. He doesn’t flinch away from the hand I lay tenderly on his shoulder. “How did you and your mom get through all of that?”
“Not easily,” he admits, his deep voice low and raspy. “Mom sank into an immediate tailspin. The awful way he died, the financial worries, our eviction from the farm . . . it all weighed on her, more than she could bear.”
