False Pretenses - Kathy Herman [77]
She sighed. What difference did it make now? She would never have a daughter. She and Pierce weren’t going to start a family. Or even start over. They were done.
Zoe heard the wood floor creaking and then footsteps moving toward her. She held her gaze on the cane fields.
Pierce came into the dining room and remained standing. “I called Jude again—at home and at the sheriff’s department. The answering machine didn’t go on at the house. But I got through to his office. He’s due in this morning, but they aren’t sure when. I’ll have to try back later.”
“Shapiro said he’d contact me again before the deadline and tell me where to wire the hundred thousand. He’s probably getting suspicious because I’m not answering my home or cell phone.”
“Probably so, Zoe! And he’ll only get more suspicious as the day wears on. That’s why I didn’t leave my name and number at the sheriff’s department. I don’t want there to be any written record of my call. For now, Shapiro probably thinks we’re out scrambling to get the money. But once the banks are closed, and he hasn’t been able to contact you, he’s going to make good on his promise to kill us. It’s just a matter of when.”
“Maybe Jude will find him,” she said.
“How? Since you don’t know his real name or what he really looks like. You just double-crossed a drug dealer—who believes it’s the second time you did it. He’s not going to let this go.”
“I’m scared,” she said, barely above a whisper.
“Well, you’re not the only one.”
An unexpected tenderness in his tone led her to think that he might be more concerned for her than for himself.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I know being sorry doesn’t change anything.”
“You’re right. You should’ve trusted me, Zoe.”
“Really?” She turned and looked into his sad, dark eyes. “If I had told you how I got the money to start Zoe B’s, wouldn’t you have stopped seeing me? Maybe even felt compelled to go to the police—or to Mrs. Woodmore?”
Pierce didn’t say anything.
“I shouldn’t have lied to you. It was wrong. But from my perspective at the time, it was less wrong than destroying the good thing we had going. I was falling in love with you—something I didn’t even think was possible, given my childhood abuse. I knew telling you the truth wouldn’t undo the past. What it would do was wreck any chance we had for a future. It was self-serving not to tell you. I don’t deny that. But I never, ever intended to hurt you.”
“Did you really think that letting me fall in love with a fraud would not hurt me?”
“Yes, because I tried to be the person I led you to believe I was—the person I wanted to be.” Tears ran down Zoe’s cheeks. “I thought I could make you happy. You have to believe me.”
“Believe you?” Pierce rolled his eyes. “You’ve got to be kidding. And if you think you can manipulate me with your tears, forget it. I don’t feel sorry for you. What you did was beyond the pale. I don’t even have a word for that kind of deceit.”
Desperate, she thought. Desperate people do desperate things.
Zoe felt as if her mouth were stuffed with cotton. What could she say in her own defense? The very shame she worked so hard to hide had been laid bare, all her secrets exposed. Pierce knew she was a thief. And a liar. He knew she’d been sexually abused. And that she wasn’t Cajun. And her family was dysfunctional. Somehow his knowing the truth made her feel repulsive.
Pierce sighed. “I’m going to go clean up the best I can. And then I’ll try calling Jude again.”
Vanessa inhaled the delicious aroma as she drizzled warm syrup over the top of her pain perdu, at the same time observing Hebert, Father Sam, and Tex, who occupied the table next to her.
Savannah poured Vanessa a coffee refill and then moved over to the table with the three men.