“Good, Mrs. Prescott, thanks.”
“Would you like to sit down?” Sophie asked. With the initial shock over, she was finally remembering her manners.
“Actually, is there someplace we can go and talk in private? Outside maybe?”
Sophie didn’t want to be alone with him. But she understood Clay well enough to know he would not leave until he said or did what he’d come all this way to.
“Sure, we can go outside,” she agreed. “I was out there enjoying a beautiful day until someone plopped a helicopter in my backyard, blowing dust up my nose and into my eyes.”
“Sorry about that,” he said as he opened the front door, indicating she should proceed.
The small country lane bordered by shade trees at the end of the meandering driveway seemed as good a place as any to talk. Clay shortened his stride to match hers as they made their way along the cool, shadowy path.
“I screwed up, Sophie. I want you to come back.”
“No.”
“Look, I know I reacted wrong when you told me about the baby. I was still riding the high from being in your arms, from making love to you, when you told me. It took a few seconds for what you said to really soak in. Then, I don’t know, I didn’t know what to say. I can honestly say that was a totally new experience for me.”
“Okay. I get that.”
“And the Carla thing? Somebody hacked my email account. If you received a text or email asking you to come into my office, they hacked yours, too, because I didn’t send it. Carla got a message, supposedly from me, asking her to come by my office because I wanted to get back together with her. Which was funny because we never were an item to begin with. I did not send that email.”
“Okay.”
“Okay? What does that mean exactly?”
“It means that I believe you. It also means that I will absolutely not ruin your life by tying you down to a wife and family. I respect you too much to do that.”
Suddenly he seized her arm and spun her around. Before she could utter a protest, his lips covered hers in a deep kiss that singed all her senses. His tongue entered the cavern of her mouth, filling her, demanding a response. His lips, his taste, were so familiar. The scent of his aftershave... Then he was pulling back, but not far.
“I’m in love with you, Sophie Prescott. I want to marry you. Not because you’re pregnant. Not because I feel a responsibility, although both of those things are true. I want you in my life now and forever. I intended to come here the day you arrived and thought, no—give her a chance to calm down. I knew you were angry and I guess you had a good reason to be. Anyway, I made myself stay away until now. But it almost killed me. I need you in my bed, in my arms and in my life. And I always will.”
The tears welled in her eyes at the sincerity in Clay’s voice. Silently she shook her head. It would be a mistake to accept him, but she’d made plenty of mistakes. What was one more? But he had to know who she was. He had to know she was a criminal. She had to tell Clay about her past, about what she’d done. About how that elderly man had lost his life partly because of her actions. It didn’t matter if he was intoxicated and shouldn’t have been there, as some people had claimed. No one in her group should have been there, either. The bottom line was he had been there and no one had noticed him. And he had died.
Clay was a hard man, as tough as they came. He’d seen a lot in his life. But he’d never taken another person’s life. She turned away from him.
“Sophie, please don’t do this.”
“You don’t know what you’re saying, Clay. You don’t know the kind of person you’re talking to. I’m not the innocent you think I am. When Everest was facing all those false rumors, you ran a check on all the employees who’ve been with you the past two years. You should have gone back five years.”
“What?” He placed his hand on her shoulder and turned her to face him. “What are you talking about?”
“Me. I’m talking about me. If you had gone back five years, you would’ve found my record. Well, maybe not, because I was seventeen and juvenile records are generally sealed.” She looked up into the handsome face now frowning at what she was saying. “I killed a man, Clay. Me and four friends went into an empty barn to experiment with smoking a cigarette. We screwed up, dropped a match and caught the barn on fire. We thought the barn was abandoned. But there was an elderly man asleep on the hay in the back corner. He died.” She shook her head. “Some mother your kid is going to have, huh?”
Clay stood before her shaking his head and she steeled herself for his rejection.
“I caught you off guard again, didn’t I?”
“Sophie, that sounds like something any teen could have done. You were young. It was an accident. You and your friends didn’t know the man was there.”
“Not an excuse.”
“Did you receive any probation?”
“We had to get jobs after school and pay for the owner’s barn. And we get to spend a lifetime remembering what we did. You don’t want someone like me in your life. It fills me with horror at the thought the baby might someday find out.”
“Everyone is entitled to make mistakes, Sophie. Granted, burning down a barn might be a little extreme, but by far it’s not the worst mistake that’s ever been made. You didn’t know the man was passed out in the barn. How could you when he was covered with hay?”