Breach Of Promise

“I mean it. I love you more than ever. I need you back in my life. This time for good, Lindy.”

For a long time she looked out across the water, remembering the last time they had been together on this lake, in a boat. The spring wind fluttered through his hair as he stood waiting for her to say something, so very different than he had been that night, a different person, as she was.

He wanted to marry her at last. Here it was, big as Lake Tahoe and just as full of mystery, the happy ending, nothing like she had ever imagined. Underneath the ridiculous, persistent, flickering hope that this time would be for good and forever, doubt and fear had taken the place of faith. She had never known how fragile it all was. She had never known how your hopes could collapse on you, and destroy you. How hard it was to go on, knowing that.

“I’ll promise to marry you…” she began.

“Ah, Lindy.” His face creased into a deep smile.

“If you promise not to wiggle out of it this time,” she finished.

“No more wiggling.”

“I’ll believe that when I see the preacher here on Sunday,” she said.

They kissed, and then sat down on the built-in benches that lined the stern, touching shoulders. “I’m taking you on a real honeymoon,” Mike said. “I know just the place.”

“You want to leave right now? With the business in so much trouble?”

“The question is, what do we want to do? I have a suggestion. I’m thinking we might want to sell out, go somewhere brand-new. I hear there’s a big opal mine in Australia for sale…”

“A new start,” she said. She ran a finger along his chin, refreshing her memory of its shape.

“Just sell out and go.”

“I’m already packed,” Lindy said, and as she said it, words from Corinthians her father used to quote came into her mind. “Love is patient. Love is kind. It is not easily angered. It keeps no record of wrongs.”

She realized she would never know why it all happened, why he fell in love with Rachel, or why she forgave him. Why they had ended up in court. She did not have a clue. You just never knew about people. There were so many things going on inside them all the time, waves of memories and events, influences you could never fathom. She thought again, sadly, of Clifford Wright.

“Speaking of business,” she said, “I’m going to have Nina draw up some papers for us to sign, Mike. Things are going to be different between us, marriage or no.”

“Sure,” he said. “Let’s make it plain and simple, in writing. That ought to satisfy even ol’ Jeff Riesner.”

A speedboat went by, and its wake made the cruiser pitch and sway. “By the way,” he said, holding her tightly, “how much is the damage so far in the legal department?”

“A lot, but Nina worked very hard for me. I wish I had something personal to give her, something really special, besides money,” she said, thinking of Genevieve. “I’d like to show her how much I appreciate… Oh! I know. How about this for a bonus? I’ll pass along my dad’s claim. It’s not worth anything, but it’s a place to go besides her office. Maybe she would like that. I don’t think I’ll ever go back there now. Too many memories.”

“Great idea.”

“Her costs and hourly fees ran to about a hundred thousand total. Isn’t it awful? What an expensive lesson. She won’t get the percentage, of course.”

He turned her so that the sun warmed her back and began massaging with the art of an ex-boxer who really knew what felt good. “Your legal fees are a hundred grand?” he said, moving his fingers soothingly over the knobs in the center of her back, working slowly, kneading the sore spots he knew so well.

With the tenderest possible touch of his callused hands, he was trying in the best way he knew how to erase some of the injury of the past year.

“You got a bargain,” he said, and laughed. “My lawyer charged twice that.”

“Moan and whine for the rest of today if you have to,” Sandy was telling Nina across town, “but that’s all the time you get. You have an appointment tomorrow at ten.”

“Oh?” Nina had started to pick at her salad. The afternoon sun, reflecting off the lake outside, blazed into the office, warming her face. She tried to yawn, wishing she could nap for just a few minutes and forget the mountain of financial trouble she was in, but exhausted and tired were two different things. She felt exhausted but wired.

“New business,” Sandy said.

“Sandy, no…”

“Something big.” She was sitting very still, wearing her most deadpan expression.

She was up to something.

“ Sandy, tomorrow’s a long way away to me right now. I have a lot of decisions to make. Even if I could afford it, I can’t consider getting all wrapped up in another horrible case…”

“You’re going to love it,” she said.

And as she spoke, something stirred inside Nina, a familiar feeling, that little thrill.

What the hell, she thought.

She took her feet off the desk, straightened up, and picked up a yellow pad.

“Lay it on me, Sandy.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

PERRI O’SHAUGHNESSY is the pen name for two sisters, Pamela and Mary O’Shaughnessy, who live in California. Pamela, a trial lawyer for sixteen years, graduated from Harvard Law School. Mary is a former writer and editor of multmedia projects. They are the New York Times bestselling authors of four other Nina Reilly thrillers, Acts of Malice, Obstruction of Justice, Invasion of Privacy, and Motion to Suppress. Readers can contact Pamela at [email protected] /* */ and Mary at [email protected] /* */