Awakenings. All those vivid splashes of color. That energy and verve. He'd known she'd needed it there, a reminder of life. And so the room had become a haven.
"Are you upset about Kate?"
"Yes." She kept her hand in his as they climbed the stairs. "But this is about something else." She walked into the bedroom, moved to the fireplace, the window, then back. "I love you, Finn."
The tone put him on guard. "We've established that."
"Loving you doesn't mean I have the right to intrude in every area of your life."
Curious, he tilted his head. He could read her like a book. She was worried. "Which areas do you consider off limits?"
"You're annoyed." Baffled, she tossed up her hands. "I can never quite understand how easily I can set you off, especially when I'm trying to be reasonable."
"I hate it when you think you're being reasonable. Just spill it, Deanna."
"Fine. What did Angela have on you?" His expression altered subtly, from impatience to utter confusion. "Huh?"
"Don't do that." She ripped off her coat and tossed it aside. In her tasteful black suit and damp shoes, she paced the room. "If you don't want to tell me, just say so. I'll agree that anything you've done in the past isn't necessarily connected to our relationship."
"Slow down, and stop stalking around the room. What do you think I've done?"
"I don't know." Her voice sounded shrill to herself. "I don't know," she said more calmly. "And if you think I don't need to know, I'll try to accept it. But once the police question this Beeker character, your secret is bound to come out anyway."
"Hold on." He held up both hands as she unbuttoned her suit jacket. "If
I'm reading this correctly — and stop me anytime if I veer off — you think that Angela was blackmailing me. Have I got that part?"
Marching to the closet, she yanked out a padded hanger. "I said I wouldn't intrude if you didn't want me to. I was being reasonable."
"You certainly were." He came over, clamped his hands on her shoulders and steered her rigid body to a chair. "Now sit down. And tell me why you think I was being blackmailed."
"I went to meet Angela that night because she said she knew something about you. Something that could hurt you."
He sat himself then, on the edge of the bed, as a new kind of fury ate at him. "She lured you to the studio by threatening me?"
"Not directly. Not exactly." She dragged a hand through her hair. "There was nothing she could tell me that would change my feelings for you. I wanted to make sure she understood that. That she left us both alone."
"Deanna, why didn't you come to me?" She winced from the simple, rational question. "Because I wanted to handle her myself," she shot back. "Because I don't need you or anyone running interference for me."
"Isn't that precisely what you misguidedly tried to do for me?"
That shut her up, but again, only for a moment. It was, she knew, master interviewer against master interviewer. And it was a competition she didn't mean to lose. "You're evading the issue. What would she have told me, Finn?"
"I don't have a clue. I'm not gay; I don't use drugs; I've never stolen anything. Except a couple of comic books when I was twelve — and nobody could prove it."
"I don't think this is funny."
"She wasn't blackmailing me, Deanna.
I had an affair with her, but that was no secret. She wasn't the first woman I'd been involved with, but there haven't been any deviant sexual encounters I'd want to hide. I don't have any ties to organized crime, never embezzled. I'm not hiding any illegitimate children. I never killed anyone."
He broke off abruptly, and the impatient amusement drained out of his face. "Oh Jesus." He brought both hands to his face, pressing the heels to his eyes.
"Jesus Christ."
"I'm sorry." Competition forgotten, she sprang up to go to him. "Finn, I'm sorry, I should never have brought it up."
"Could she have done that?" he said to himself. "Could even she have done that? And for what?" He let his hands drop, and his eyes were haunted. "For what?"
"Done what?" Deanna asked quietly, her arms still around him.
Finn drew back, just a little, as if what was working inside him might damage her. "My best friend in college. Pete Whitney. We got hooked on the same girl. We got drunk one night, really plowed, and tried to beat the crap out of each other. Did a pretty good job. Made sure it was off campus. Then we decided, hell, she wasn't worth it, and we drank some more."
His voice was cool, detached. His newscaster's voice. "That's the last time I've been drunk. Pete used to joke that it was the Irish in me. That I could drink or fight or talk my way out of anything." He remembered the way he'd been then — angry, rebellious, belligerent. Determined to be absolutely nothing like his chilly and civilized parents. "I'm not much of a drinker anymore, and I've figured out that words are generally a better weapon than fists. He gave me this." Finn tugged the Celtic cross out from under his shirt, closed his hand around it. "He was my closest friend, the closest thing to family I ever had."
Was, Deanna thought, and ached for him. "We forgot about the girl. She wasn't as important to either of us as we were to each other. We killed off another bottle. My eye was swollen up like a rotten tomato, so I tossed him the keys, climbed into the passenger seat, passed out. We were twenty, and we were stupid. The idea of getting into a car filthy drunk didn't mean anything to us. When you're twenty, you're going to live forever. But Pete didn't.
"I woke up when I heard him scream. That's it. I heard him scream and the next thing I remember is waking up with all these lights and all these people and feeling as if I'd been run over by a truck. He'd taken a turn too fast, hit a utility pole. We'd both been thrown from the car. I had a concussion, a broken collarbone, broken arm, lots of cuts and bruises. Pete was dead."
"Oh, Finn." She wrapped her arms around him again, held on.
"It was my car, so they figured I'd been driving. They were going to charge me with vehicular manslaughter. My father came down, but by the time he got there they'd already found several witnesses who had seen Pete take the wheel. He wasn't any more or any less dead, of course. It didn't change that, or the fact that I'd been drunk and stupid, criminally careless."
He tightened his fingers around the silver cross. "I wasn't hiding it, Deanna. It's just not something I like to remember. Funny, I thought about Pete tonight, when we walked into Angela's funeral. I haven't been to one since Pete's. His mother always blamed me. I could see her point."
"You weren't driving, Finn."
"Does it really matter?" He looked at her then, though he already knew the answer. "I could have been. My father gave the Whitneys a settlement, and that was pretty much the end of it. I wasn't charged with anything. I wasn't held responsible."
He turned his face into Deanna's hair. "But I was. I was just as responsible as Pete. The only difference is I'm alive and he's not."
"The difference is, you were given a second chance and he wasn't." She closed her hand over his, so that they both held the cross. "I'm so sorry, Finn."
So was he. He'd spent his adult life making himself into the man he was, as much for Pete as for himself. He wore the cross every day as a talisman, yes, and as a reminder.
"Angela could have dug up the facts easily enough," Finn said. "She could even have made it appear that the Riley money and power influenced the outcome. But she would have blackmailed you, not me. She'd have known if she'd come to me, I'd have told her to take out an ad."
"I want to tell the police."
He eased her back on the bed so that they were curled together, wrapped close. "We'll tell them a lot of things. Tomorrow." Gently, he tipped her face toward his. "Would you have protected me, Deanna?" She started to deny it, but caught the gleam in his eye. She knew he'd recognize a lie. "Yes. So?"