You were always smart enough to get the drop on me and Clint, weren’t you? I’m thinking of a specific incident involving water balloons off a balcony. Remember?”
That got him a shadow of a smile. “That was Chloe’s idea—but I did have pretty good aim.”
That shadow of a smile made him feel good. The world was bleak—but he could still make her feel better.
He drove his Porsche Spyder faster, whipping in and out of traffic. The best—and only—thing he could do for her was get her safely out to Red Oak Hill. There, she could have some peace and quiet and, most important, privacy. Once he had her settled, he could get back to town and try to deal with his schedule and his family.
“I don’t know if this part is in the news yet or not,” she went on, sounding resigned. “I’m sure people have been doing the math ever since I began to show—and I began to show very early, to the disgust of my mother. But do you know?” She paused for a second and Oliver tried to get his head around the fact that her mother was disgusted by her pregnancy. She looked stunning, showing or not.
But that was the sort of thing that he couldn’t just blurt out. This was a rescue, sort of. He wasn’t whisking her away for a weekend of seduction or anything. Definitely not a seduction. So instead, he just said, “What?”
“He woke me up early that morning and we...” She cleared her throat. “And afterward, he told me he loved me. I normally said it to him—he rarely said the words. Usually he just said, ‘Me, too,’ as if he also loved himself. But he was different that morning and he surprised me, and I didn’t say it back.”
This was far more than Oliver wanted to know. He kept his mouth shut like his life depended on it.
“And then he went to work, screwed his secretary, gave her the rest of the day off and blew his brains out, coward that he was. By my count, there were at least three—possibly five—women at the funeral who could have been current or former mistresses.”
“That seems like a lot.” One would’ve been too many, but to think that man had had that many women on the side in a year and a half of marriage?
Chet Willoughby was clearly a bastard of the highest order. Or he had been anyway.
“And the thing was I didn’t even know I was pregnant for another two and a half months. When I missed my period, I thought it was due to the stress. Isn’t that hilarious?”
She turned to him and he glanced over to see a huge, fake smile on her face. “Not really.”
Her smile froze. “Some people think it is. Some people think it’s the funniest thing they’ve ever heard. That I’m getting exactly what I deserve. There’s also a lot of speculation that I was cheating on him and drove him to his death.” Her voice cracked.
His heart damn near broke for her. “Those people are heartless cowards.” It was a good thing that Chet Willoughby and his suave face were already dead because otherwise, Oliver would’ve strangled the man himself. What kind of asshole did this to his wife?
“He knew the pyramid was going to fall and he was going to go with it. My mother tried to paint this as a noble thing. He wouldn’t turn on my father. Wasn’t that thoughtful of him? Not like Clint’s going to, maybe. And the baby?” She shook her head. “She said the baby would be a living reminder of Chet. As if I want to remember him or his betrayal,” she finished bitterly.
She was crying, he realized. Softly, quietly—but tears were trickling down her cheeks.
He didn’t want to know how everyone she’d ever trusted had betrayed her. Even Clint, who Oliver had thought was a good guy. It was physically painful to know that she was hurting and, worse, to not be able to do much of anything about it.
“I don’t think your child would be a reminder of betrayal,” he said, feeling his way as he went. “I’d think that the baby would be a testament to your strength, your courage. Others may have cut and run, but you stood strong, Renee. That’s what’s going to make you an amazing mother.”
She gasped and he could tell she was staring at him with huge eyes. He kept his gaze firmly locked on the road in front of him. “Do you really think so?”
He nodded like he was certain, instead of shooting compliments like arrows and praying to hit the mark. “You’re welcome to stay at Red Oak Hill as long as you want,” he went on. Because, aside from a lucky compliment or two, shelter was the only thing he could offer her. “I’m usually only there on the weekends. I do have a housekeeper, but I can give her some time off if you’d rather be alone.”
She nodded, surreptitiously swiping at the tears on her cheeks. “Will anyone else in your family be there?”
Oliver laughed. “Absolutely not. Red Oak Hill is mine. No one will know you’re there.”
“Thank you,” she whispered and there was so much pain in her voice that, without thinking, he reached over and wrapped his hand around hers. She clung to him fiercely. “You won’t even know I’m there, I promise.”
Somehow, as his fingers tangled with hers, Oliver doubted that.
It would be impossible to be around Renee and not be aware of her every movement.
As soon as he got her settled, he was driving right back to Dallas. He didn’t have time to comfort Renee Preston-Willoughby.
No matter how much he might want to.
Renee had not expected this. Red Oak Hill wasn’t a long, low-slung ranch house in the middle of dusty cow pastures. In fact, she didn’t see any cows anywhere as Oliver pulled up in front of what was undeniably a grand mansion at the top of a small hill. Towering trees she assumed were red oaks cast long shadows against the sweltering Texas sun.
The house looked like something out of a magazine. And she knew quite a bit about that. Something white caught her attention on the small lake on the other side of the driveway. “Are those...swans?”
“Fred and Wilma? Yes. They came with the house.”
Renee had had a terrible day. Well, given the last five months of her life, that wasn’t saying much. But somehow, the idea that Oliver had inherited a pair of swans made her giggle. “Did you name them after the Flintstones or did they come with those names?”
He quirked an eyebrow at her. “Don’t know if you can really name swans, per se. They don’t come when called. But...” He shrugged again, a mischievous glimmer in his eyes. “They seemed like Fred and Wilma to me. They have cygnets this year. Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm.”
She didn’t remember Oliver having a sense of humor. Had he always been this funny? She remembered him being uptight and grumpy. A stick-in-the-mud, she and Chloe had decided once. That was Oliver Lawrence.
But was he, really? She thought back now to the water balloon fight he’d mentioned. She and Chloe had got the drop on them from the balcony—that’d been Chloe’s idea. But Oliver and Clint had retaliated with a garden hose. And Oliver had been aiming the hose.
“Renee?
