Chapter Ten

“I can’t believe you actually want to watch this.”

“Excuse me,” Candace said though her attention remained fixed on the television screen. “But we don’t talk during Magical Knights.”

“It’s make-believe,” Neal protested. “Not even very good make-believe.”

“It’s fantasy,” she corrected with a purring sigh as the male lead conjured up a red rose for his lady love of this episode. “Really, really good fantasy.”

“And you go for this kind of thing?”

“Every woman goes for this kind of thing.” When the screen went to commercial, Candace faced Neal. “Did I bother you while you were watching that history documentary the other night?”

“As a matter of fact.” Neal grinned. “Yes, you did.”

“You didn’t seem to mind.” Candace slid further down onto the sofa, accepting the weight and warmth, not to mention the thrill, of his body pressing hers into the cushions. “At the time.”

“I didn’t.”

His clever hands and lips were already arousing her, sending her blood on a fast race. Her heart opened wide and offered love unconditionally.

“I was simply hoping to return the favor,” he said.

Her arms came around him, held him as he kissed her deeply, slowly. The days without him had been empty, days she hoped to never experience again. The ones since he’d tracked her down had been filled with heat and speed.

And a quiet, almost painful hope for a future together. Even now this wasn’t a kiss meant solely for satisfying a physical hunger but one that promised more than heat and speed.

It trembled along the razor sharp edge of unspoken love and commitment.

Just as Candace trembled from the need to hold back from telling Neal the words that bound her heart to his. He wasn’t ready to hear those words, just as he wasn’t ready to believe, if she spoke them, she would stand beside him forever.

“You’re missing your fantasy,” he said as he ended the kiss.

“No, trust me, I’m not.”

Television ignored, they faced one another in quiet embrace. Candace felt the steady beat of his heart against her palm as he slowly ran a hand over her hair, down her back.

She loved making love with him, was delighted by the urgency that always seemed to hover between them, but there was something to be said for moments like this. Moments where the outside world ceased to exist, moments where the intimacy of holding and being held, fully clothed, filled a needy spot within her.

“My mother liked to watch that kind of thing.” Candace felt his shoulder shift under her cheek. “I always thought it strange a woman so into material stuff would be interested in a time of history when there was so much poverty.”

“Maybe she liked the thought of a strong hero rescuing her.”

“I wanted to save her. I tried to. But it seemed no matter what I did, it wasn’t enough,” he confessed in a soft voice that snapped her heart in half.

Candace wanted to look at him, to tell him his mother hadn’t deserved his love and adoration. She wanted to argue that, if she’d lived longer, Melinda Barrows would probably have sucked him dry of all feeling, along with whatever financial stability he managed to earn. But Candace knew it would be like dueling with a ghost, one whose death erased so many of the bad and disturbing memories. Even as those memories retained the power to hurt.

“I fought with my mother the morning she died.”

Candace closed her eyes and held her breath. This one sentence was more than Neal had ever revealed about his relationship with his mother. That he would do so now, while holding her, meant more than a thousand phrases of devotion or love.

Well, all but one three-word phrase her heart desperately craved to hear.

“She was wearing a new dress. Red,” Neal explained. “She always loved bright colors. I had no money for lunch, but she had a new dress.” Candace said nothing as his hand gripped her hair.

“I don’t know why it set me off. I said things, repeated all the names I’d heard people call her. I accused her of being selfish. She just stood there, saying nothing, looking at me as if she were stunned I would believe such things about her, shocked I would feel anything less than complete and total adoration of her.”

“You loved her so much,” Candace murmured.

“I used to think it was my fault. That if not for what I said to her that morning, she would have continued her life the way she’d always lived it.”

“Neal,” Candace said, praying she was making the right choice here. “Do you honestly think she wouldn’t have pressed for more even if you hadn’t fought that morning?”

“No,” he finally admitted after a lengthy silence. “She didn’t deserve it. She didn’t deserve to be murdered in that way.”

“No, of course she didn’t. No one does.”

“I was glad. When I heard what had happened to her, my first thought was relief that she was out of my life.”

The confession shot out of him. Candace could only imagine the shame he felt for that one human, some would say acceptable, emotion. No wonder he’d held his feelings at a distance over the years. To love someone with that kind of devotion, to resent them with the same passion, left little to share with anyone.

“Her death changed your life,” she said. Shifting back she looked at him and saw the worry and a surprising uncertainty in his eyes. Did he really think what he just confessed would diminish her respect for him?

She ached for the young boy burdened by guilt and relief, just as she understood the man had to find his own forgiveness.

“Be proud of all you’ve accomplished, Neal.” She leaned forward, pressed her lips to his. “I know I am.”

****

“You’ve all done an outstanding job.” Candace praised her staff at the weekly meeting. “I’m positive management will be pleased…well, well, speak of the devil,” she said when the door to the conference room opened.

Ben never glanced around the room; he simply shifted in the doorway, freeing the space. “This meeting is adjourned.”

“Ben.” Candace stood, aware that everyone around the table waited for her instructions. “We still have some long-range planning to—”

“Out!” he commanded. This time there was no hesitation. Her entire staff exited. Before Ben could close the door, Tara slipped inside the room.

“Ben, really, did you—”

“Go home, Candy. Now. This minute.”

“Why?” she asked, only to have the dark look on her brother’s face register. “Oh, God. Grandmother.”

“No. Grandmother is fine.”

“Dawson?” she guessed, her legs trembling so hard it was impossible to stand. Ben crossed the room, wrapped his hands around her arms, and began to pull her toward the door.

“This isn’t about Dawson.”

“But—” Candace dug in her heels. “Ben, my shoes are under the table.”

“Damn it,” he swore, alarming her more. Ben only swore when he couldn’t get a grip on his emotions. “Hell, I thought you’d outgrown that habit.”

Now she gripped his arms, forcing him to face her. There was only one other possibility, one other reason for the fear clawing at her throat. One other person she cared enough about. That very fear kept her from voicing his name.

“What happened?”

“You’ve got to get out of here before Marcus tries to talk to you.”

“Marcus?” she asked, her puzzlement growing. Relief beckoned but the look on Ben’s face held it at bay. Candace glanced over at Tara but saw only concern. “Why would one of your reporters want to talk to me?”

“Tell her, Ben,” Tara encouraged. “It’s better if she hears it from you.”

“Marcus called me on his cell phone. He’s on his way back here to file the interview he had with Renee Watson.” Ben paused, swore again, and raked a hand through his hair.

“Corey’s mother?” Candace asked as her stomach knotted. “I don’t understand.” She glanced over at Tara, not liking what she saw on her sister-in-law’s features.

“Renee is accusing Neal of having forced her to have sex with him or he wouldn’t give Corey any playing time. Apparently she’s even implied the baby had been his.”

“No,” she whispered. “Ben, you know that’s not true. You know Neal—”

“Of course I know. But Marcus checked the hospital records and found out that Neal visited Renee when she was in the hospital.”

“That doesn’t prove anything.”

“Not by itself but Marcus also has a source who claims that Neal wrote Renee Watson a check for two thousand dollars.”

“Ben, you know Neal. He was probably just trying to help Corey and his mother out during a hard time.” She searched her memory, tried to recall if Neal had ever mentioned helping out Corey. Whether there’d been none or she simply couldn’t focus, not a single conversation about the boy came to mind.

And that reminded her of when Neal had failed to confide in her about the potential coaching appointment at the Academy.

“No one who knows Neal will honestly believe he’s capable of what Renee has accused,” Tara said as she sat down beside Candace. “But this is going to remind people of Neal’s mother and the way she always used others to get what she wanted.”

Ben frowned. “Candy, the school board will have no choice but to suspend Neal from coaching and teaching until an investigation is completed.”

“It’ll devastate him.”

Just when she thought she’d made headway into getting Neal to abandon the past and move into the future, a future with her, a dark reminder of his mother shot all of her hopes to hell.

“I need to go to him.” She stood but Ben stopped her. “Ben,” she pleaded and tried to shake loose of his hold on her. “Neal will need me.”

“Candy, Neal’s the one who asked me to see that you went to Grandmother’s. He doesn’t want you involved in this.”

“I already am. I’m in love with him.”

Tara rose and wrapped an arm around her shoulders. “Then love him enough, Candace, to let him deal with this on his own terms.”

****

Gone. Corey was gone.

The words repeated over and over, a continuous taunting of belief held and lost. The reality simply would not sink in.

Neal took the desertion personally.

“The police are canvassing the neighborhood, checking to see if anyone saw anything that might give us a clue,” Dana said, tapping her pencil point on her notebook. Her voice already carried the futility of uncovering anything of help.

“They’re wasting their time.”

“They’re following procedure, Neal.”

“Yeah, I know all about their procedure.”

As Ben predicted, the school board wasted no time in suspending Neal from both the classroom and the playing field. Knowing it was a matter of time before they discovered he had paid for Corey’s football physical, Neal agreed to blood tests and the disclosure of his medical records.

Then came the announcement that the money given to Renee Watson matched that of an undocumented withdrawal from the youth center renovation fund. From all appearances, it had been funneled from the fund account into Neal’s.

“Neal?” Dana sat opposite him, gently pried his fists away from his face. “Why don’t you go back and stay at the Hart Estate?”

“No.” Neal stood, then turned away when Dana rose as well.

He couldn’t explain why he’d even accepted Anita Hart’s surprising invitation on that first night. Still, one night in that home had been enough. One night in the home that represented everything he’d never had and, from the looks of things, could never hope to obtain.

One night where he’d had little choice but to turn away from the one woman he wanted to grab and hold onto more than he wanted to take the next breath.

He’d gotten through that night without going down the hall and slipping inside Candace’s bedroom. He’d gotten through the next morning of seeing her sleepless disappointment stare at him across the table.

Though he ached for her, he’d gotten through every hour since.

He wouldn’t let Candace be dragged into this. It was, perhaps, the only control he had left in his life.

If he gave in and went to her, he risked her being sucked into this swirling morass. She deserved better. Hell, he’d always believed she deserved better. That’s why he’d stayed away from her for so many years, why he’d convinced himself he had nothing to offer her.

“You can’t just sit here and do nothing,” Dana protested.

“What else can I do?” he exploded, whirling around to face her. “All I know how to do is be a teacher and a coach, Dana. What else can I do?”

“For starters, you can quit sitting here giving everyone the impression you have something to hide.” Her temper wasn’t something Dana usually set free; even as she did so now there was a measure or restraint within the flow. “You’re not the only one who’s been affected by this.”

“Oh, yeah,” he said, not even attempting to soften the sarcasm. “I’m sure the police are overwhelmed with all the help they’re getting in my investigation.”

“I’m talking about Ben and Tara struggling with the dilemma of having little choice but to publish news reports about their closest friend. I’m talking about Candace.”

“Candace?”

“She was called in for questioning.”

“What?” Neal advanced on Dana. “Why?”

“She’s chairperson for the youth center renovation committee. When Anthony Talmadge made the announcement that money was missing from the renovation account, she was asked to bring in the books.”

Neal hadn’t thought of that, hadn’t thought of anyone beyond his own feelings. It made sense, just as Dana explained. It also triggered something he’d all but forgotten.

“Dana? Anita Hart told me about some money missing from Candace’s private account a few weeks ago. Anita suspects Anthony Talmadge shifted the money into his account to pay off gambling debts.” Neal scrubbed a hand over his face. “Anita was collecting some more information before she confronted him. I think she planned to do so privately.”

“Did she?” Dana asked, a note of anger creeping in stronger. “Interfering old woman. Won’t she ever learn? Probably not,” she answered her own question, leaving Neal to wonder where this animosity had come from.

“Well,” Dana said. “It’s going to be my immense pleasure to tell Anita Hart this is one time she isn’t in charge of making decisions.”

****

The conclusion was almost anticlimactic. When brought in for questioning, Anthony Talmadge quite simply broke down and confessed stealing from the accounts, Candace’s personal one in addition to the youth center, to pay gambling debts. He admitted taking the desperate measure of promising Renee Watson a large sum of money, which Anthony planned to acquire by yet another bet, if Renee lied about her relationship with Neal. Anthony claimed to have no role in why Corey and his mother had disappeared.

Further investigation answered several other questions. Anthony confessed to trying to sidetrack Candace from his financial sabotage by trying to make it seem as if someone was stalking her when he was the one who put the doctored photo in Neal’s truck and left flowers on her doorstep. Anthony had even coerced one of his gambling cohorts into running Candace off the road.

For that incident alone, Neal hated that Anthony managed to broker a deal. Anthony had been promised a lesser sentence in return for testifying for the state case against the people who ran the gambling ring he’d become involved with.

Now Neal stood on the steps of the police building, flanked on either side by Ben and Tara and prepared to give a statement. If he’d had his way, he would have preferred to ignore the curious and simply go home.

“I’d like to begin with my gratitude to friends, colleagues, and students who had faith in me the last few days.” His legs shook, his lungs burned with an uneasy breath when he spotted Candace standing at the back edge of the crowd.

“Do you know where Corey Watson and his mother have gone?” one reporter shouted out.

Neal gave up on the statement, squared his shoulders, and faced the questions. “No.” And that was something that would haunt him until he had the answer.

More questions were fired at him as he glanced around the small circle of reporters and the curious, fought back the storm of emotion that even now they had the gall to be suspicious of his intentions. Because of his past he would never be able to ignore or escape these kinds of questions. For Corey and all the kids like him, and perhaps for nothing more than his own pride Neal shook off the bitterness and turned away. He stopped when one question reached him.

“What are you going to do now?”

He glanced at Ben, then Tara. Saw the friendship that had sustained him during more difficult times than he cared to count. Saw the love and commitment they’d found together. They had fought their way through a painful past, a job made easier by their shared interests and similar backgrounds. He and Candace had none of that.

Oh, they had friendship and a passion that still confounded him. But all of it had been shrouded in secret. He could stand in public, have his background as well as his future speculated about, gossiped about, but he couldn’t take her out to dinner without fear of her being subjected to the same kind of scrutiny.

“I don’t know,” he murmured, suddenly tired beyond belief.

He drove. After a week of self-imposed seclusion, Neal shrugged off Ben and Tara’s invitation to their house for dinner and simply climbed into his truck, driving with no particular place in mind. He kept to side roads, deliberately shutting his mind to thoughts of the future.

He had to let Candace go, he admitted. He had to make her understand that while he valued her friendship, and God knows he wanted her, they could never have more than an affair.

He would have to be just shy of cruel. The woman was too incredibly stubborn to accept his rejection of her simply or quietly.

He would thank her for the time they’d spent together. He could even acknowledge it was her belief in him that convinced him to admit he wanted the position at the Academy. Above and beyond all she’d given him in the freedom of her body she’d given him the priceless gift of her faith.

A faith he had to crush in order to give her everything she deserved.

Feeling more imprisoned than if he’d been convicted of the deceit he’d been accused of, Neal parked in his driveway. It wasn’t until he opened the front door that he noticed the light.

Candles. Both the flicker of light and a vanilla scent from an assortment of tapers and pillars chased away the darkness and the stagnant aroma of despair that had hung in his home the past few days. Music, soft seductive music, swelled with the promise of romance.

His heart went dead still inside his chest when he noticed the roses. Red roses. One, no, two dozen blooms waited on a table placed in front of the summer empty fireplace.

Red roses, he recalled her explaining, for love.

“I knew you wouldn’t come to me.”

His head snapped up, and he found Candace standing in the doorway to his kitchen. His blood leapt at the image of her standing in his home, completing the tantalizing scene she set.

She wore a simple cotton dress, the neckline curving above her breasts, the full hem shy of touching her knees. And buttons running the length in between. While her feet were bare, the brilliant stones at her ears probably cost more than he made in two months’ time.

As he stood, staring, her lips curved and her chin tilted at the angle she’d so often aimed at him.

“So I came to you.”