Eighty per cent cocoa. Bitter chocolate.
‘He wanted me to give that letter to you, Rick.’
‘To me?’
She rose and went to the kitchen drawer where she kept important documents. ‘He asked that I personally place it in your hands.’
And then she held it out to him.
EVERY INSTINCT RICK had urged him to leap up and leave the room, to race out of this house and away from this rotten city and to never return.
He wanted away from Nell and her polished blonde perfection and her effortless nose-in-the-air superiority that was so at odds with the girl he remembered.
Fairy tales, that was what those memories were. He’d teased them out into full-blown fantasies in an effort to dispel some of the grim reality that had surrounded him. He’d known at the time that was what he’d been doing, but he’d wanted to hold up the promise of something better to come—a chance for a better future.
Of course, all of those dreams had shattered the moment he’d set foot inside a prison cell.
Still...
The letter in Nell’s outstretched hand started to shake. ‘Aren’t you going to take it?’
‘I’m not sure.’
She sat.
‘I have no idea what this John Cox could have to say to me.’ Did she know what was in the letter? He deliberately loosened his shoulders, slouched back in his chair and pasted on a smirk. ‘Do you think he’s going to accuse me of stealing the family silver?’
She flinched and just for a moment he remembered wild eyes as she ordered, ‘Run!’
He wanted her to tell him to run now.
‘After all, I didn’t disappoint either his or your father’s expectations.’
Those incredible eyes of hers flashed green fire and he wondered what she’d do next. Would she frogmarch him off the premises with his ear between her thumb and forefinger. And if she tried it would he let her? Or would he kiss her?
He shifted on the chair, ran a hand down his T-shirt. He wasn’t kissing the Princess.
‘If memory serves me correctly—’ she bit each word out ‘—you went to jail on drug charges, not robbery. And if the rumours buzzing about town are anything to go by, those charges are in the process of being dropped and your name cleared.’
Did she think that made up for fifteen months behind bars?
A sudden heaviness threatened to fell him. One stupid party had led to...
He dragged a hand down his face. Cheryl, at seventeen, hadn’t known what she’d been doing, hadn’t known the trouble that the marijuana she’d bought could get her into—could get them all into. She’d been searching for escape—escape from a sexually abusive father. He understood that, sympathised. The fear that had flashed into her eyes, though, when the police had burst in, her desperation—the desperation of someone who’d been betrayed again and again by people who were supposed to love her—it still plagued his nightmares.
His chest cramped. Little Cheryl who he’d known since she’d started kindergarten. Little Cheryl who he’d done his best to protect...and, when that hadn’t been enough, who he’d tried to comfort. He hadn’t known it then, but there wasn’t enough comfort in the world to help heal her. It hadn’t been her fault.
So he’d taken the blame for her. He’d been a much more likely candidate for the drugs anyway. At the age of eighteen he’d gone to jail for fifteen months. He pulled in a breath. In the end, though, none of it had made any difference. That was what really galled him.
Nell thrust out her chin. ‘So drop the attitude and stop playing the criminal with me.’
It snapped him out of his memories and he couldn’t have said why, but he suddenly wanted to smile.
‘The only way to find out what John has to say is to open the letter.’
He folded his arms. ‘What’s it to you, anyway?’
‘I made a promise to a dying man.’
‘And now you’ve kept it.’
She leaned across, picked up his hand and slapped the letter into it. She smelled sweet, like cupcakes. ‘Now I’ve kept it.’
A pulse pounded inside him. Nell moved back. She moved right across to the other side of the kitchen and refilled their mugs from the pot kept warm by the percolator hotplate. But her sugar-sweet scent remained to swirl around him. He swallowed. He blinked until his vision cleared and he could read his name in black-inked capitals on the envelope. For some reason, those capitals struck him as ominous.
For heaven’s sake, just open the damn thing and be done with it. It’d just be one more righteous citizen telling him the exact moment he’d gone off the rails, listing a litany of perceived injuries received—both imagined and in some cases real—and then a biting critique of what the rest of his life would hold if he didn’t mend his ways.
The entire thing would take him less than a minute to read and then he could draw a line under this whole stupid episode. With a half-smothered curse he made deliberately unintelligible in honour of the Princess’s upper class ears, he tore open the envelope.
Heaving out a breath, he unfolded the enclosed sheet of paper. The letter wasn’t long. At least he wouldn’t have to endure a detailed rant. He registered when Nell placed another mug of coffee in front of him that she even added milk and sugar to it.
He opened his mouth to thank her, but...
The words on the page were in the same odd style of all capitals as the envelope. All in the same black ink. He read the words but couldn’t make sense of them to begin with.
They began to dance on the page and then each word rose up and hit him with the force of a sledgehammer. He flinched. He clenched the letter so hard it tore. He swore—loud and rude and blue—as black dots danced before his eyes.
Nell jumped. He expected her to run away. He told himself he hoped she would.
‘Rick!’ Her voice and its shrillness dive-bombed him like a magpie hostile with nesting instinct. ‘Stick your head between your knees. Now!’
And then she was there, pushing his head between his knees and ordering him to breathe, telling him how to do it. He followed her instructions—pulling air into his lungs, holding it there and releasing it—but as soon as the dizziness left him he surged upright again.
He spun to her and waved the balled-up letter beneath her nose. ‘Do you know what this says? Do you know what the—’
He pulled back the ugly language that clawed at his throat. ‘Do you know what this says?’ he repeated.
She shook
