Page 37 of Thick and Thin

I didn’t know what to say—except the obvious question…but it wouldn’t come out of my mouth.

But he continued. “Even then, though, I didn’t know for certain. You could have been acting for all I knew. It would be difficult to deny damages you caused here—but I didn’t see any sabotage, either. It might have been easy to feign accidentally breaking something, and you never did that.” His eyes shifted to his water glass, and he twisted it, staring at the liquid inside as if contemplating his next words. “I’d never known the extent of the rivalry between our fathers, except that I’d been told over and over to never trust a Miller in Winchester. Even though my father never told me a lot about what had happened, it was always clear that he was bitter about the whole affair. And that was all ingrained in me, Lise. I’d been told to be wary of you—and I suspect you’d been told something similar about my family.”

I couldn’t deny it—even if I thought my father had a good reason. “Yes.”

“But the way you cared for the things in the dungeon—basically things that had been discarded by the Whittier family over the years…hell, even the dungeon itself had been abandoned long ago, before my father’s time. I’ve been told it had once been a grand ballroom and that my great grandparents used to host dances for their friends. One of my brothers told me our grandparents considered changing it into a disco, but I think he was making that up. The bottom line is that the space you’ve been working in all this time has been one that’s been uncared for, full of unwanted objects, and you’ve shown them love and care—and even rescued a painting.”

Oh…I’d rescued more than that—and, at some point, I would have to tell him all I’d learned from his mother’s journals.

“So as I watched you report week after week, I wondered. And you have such a kind, gentle, unassuming way about you, Lise—I couldn’t resist you. The way you’d get excited about things made me ponder your possible innocence. Then you’d get angry or defiant and I’d question it all over again.” Finally picking up his water glass, he added, “Don’t get me wrong—I liked when you’d get angry.”

I couldn’t help but smile and shake my head. “What? Why?”

“Because it shows how full of passion and life you are. It showed me you weren’t the cowed girl I’d witnessed under interrogation at the college. Even that made me question if we’d gotten the wrong person.”

“So what finally convinced you?”

“I was ninety-nine percent sure you hadn’t done it when you went back to tend to your father—but, by then, I didn’t really care. I wouldn’t have gotten to know you had none of this happened. And I’ll be honest with you. My whole plan to have you here working off your debt had been nothing more than a ploy to win my father’s approval. I was going to have you work for him in some capacity—but I learned early on that he didn’t care. He didn’t see the genius in my plan. I had to follow through anyway, lest you think I wasn’t a man of my word.

“But what finally convinced me that you weren’t the culprit was when I came to Winchester last Saturday. It was what you said to Alan Sherwood as I was approaching your house. It’s clear he was the one behind it.”

I nodded fervently. “He was.”

“But I need to know one thing.”

I couldn’t stop the way my brow furrowed. “What?”

“Did you know about his plan beforehand?”

It was this—his underlying distrust, ingrained and indelible—that was just another reason why we would never work. “No. Of course, I didn’t. I was—”

“I believe you. I didn’t think so…but I needed to hear it from your mouth.”

Ah. So maybe he did trust me. My shoulders softened a bit. “That was what I was trying to tell Mr. Sherwood—that, when my father fought against yours, he never hid behind a mask or let someone else take the blame.”

“But he wasn’t actively destroying anything, either.”

“That’s true…but my father is an honorable man. I can’t imagine him ever doing anything like that, even when he would get angry.”

Sinclair placed his linen napkin on the table, signaling to me that he was done eating. “Just so you know, I have alerted the authorities in Winchester about Sherwood. I told them what I’d overheard and they said they needed proof, not accusations.”

“After what they did to me?”

Sinclair nodded. “I asked them to keep an eye on him…and regard him as a person of interest. And perhaps you could tell them what you know.”

“I already did. Multiple times. And they didn’t listen.”

“I suspect Leona and I had a lot to do with that. Now that they know they…have my approval, they’ll open their eyes and re-examine the evidence. And they may want to question you again about what Sherwood told you.”

I was highly doubtful, knowing what I knew of the Winchester Police, but I wasn’t about to argue with Sinclair. It was simply enough that he believed me.

And that led me back to the big question—but he answered it before I had to ask.

“And, because I know you didn’t do it, there’s really no restitution to be made, is there? Although we have a contract, I don’t see how it could hold up in court when the foundation on which it was made has crumbled. You have nothing to repay.”

My throat suddenly dried up…because if he didn’t expect repayment, then he absolutely one-hundred percent believed me. He knew. But I didn’t know what to say. Technically, that meant that I shouldn’t be sitting next to him, eating dinner with him…feeling the evidence of our union, even if slight, between my panties.

It meant I should have been home with my father.

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