Without Mercy - Lisa Jackson [63]
Of course he would. He never sugarcoated anything. He usually wasn’t harsh, just a straight shooter. Even so, Hammersley thought something about him didn’t ring quite true; she wouldn’t be surprised if Trent had a skeleton or two hidden away in his own closet.
So join the club.
“I’m not keeping secrets,” he said, as if reading her mind.
“Fine, tell her.” Why not? The minute Julia Farentino drove into the parking lot by the main gate and saw the television van and county vehicles, she’d know that the incident was something more than just an “accident.” Hammersley handed Trent the keys to one of the school’s Jeeps. “Normally, Reverend Lynch would want to handle the details, but all things considered…”
Trent glanced at the room where the kids were being interviewed, nearly a hundred of them, all in the reverend’s charge. “Looks like he’ll be busy for a while.”
“That’s why you’ve got the job. Tell her.”
Trent stood, stretched his shoulders. “She here yet?”
“Not quite, but she’s on her way, should be arriving within the next half hour or so.”
“She got a name?”
She appreciated Trent’s sense of humor, considering the grim circumstances. “That she does: Julia Farentino, from Portland.” Was it her imagination or did the corner of Trent’s mouth tighten a bit? Hammersley added, “Julia’s young, not quite twenty-five, so she should relate to the kids. I feel, if things ever calm down around here, she’s going to fit in just fine and be a real asset to the academy.”
“I hope so,” Trent said, but for some reason, his words held more than a trace of sarcasm. He snagged the keys from Hammersley’s hand and added, “I can’t wait to meet her.”
CHAPTER 16
Hammersley had to be kidding or mistaken, right?
But Trent didn’t see one glimmer of levity in the woman’s eyes. She was dead serious. And, of course, she had no idea that Trent and Jules Delaney, aka Jules Farentino, had once been lovers.
Right?
For the love of Christ, what the hell did that mean?
Nothing good.
Not one damned thing!
Every muscle in his back tightened, but somehow he kept his face impassive, snagged the keys, and headed to the garage where the Jeep was parked. Instead of cooling off, with each step he grew more infuriated, more incredulous. Jules? Here? Less than a week after her sister had become a student at Blue Rock?
Nuts, that’s what it was. Goddamned, frickin’ nuts!
He reached the garage but found the Jeep parked outside. With one of his gloves, he swiped snow from the windshield, worked on the ice, then slid inside.
“Son of a bitch,” he growled as he jabbed the key into his lock, and wheeled onto the long road leading to the main gate. “Son of a goddamned bitch!”
Why Jules? Why now?
The last time he’d seen her, she’d been falling into a million pieces. When he’d stupidly tried to help her pull herself together, she’d broken it off. Quick. Simple. Her parting words had been, Don’t touch me. Don’t call. Just get the hell out of my life! Got it, Cowboy? Leave me the hell alone. Then tears had filled her eyes. I never want to see you again.
He hadn’t believed her. He’d even gone so far as to take a step for ward, and she’d slammed the door in his face before twisting the dead bolt shut.
That resolute click had echoed through his brain.
He’d pounded. Yelled. Told her that she was making a mistake, that she shouldn’t shut him out, that he loved her, damn it, but she hadn’t responded.
Burned, his pride trampled to a pulp, he gave up. He’d gotten the message.
Loud and clear.
Much as he sometimes wanted to, he never picked up the phone or drove by her house again. If that was the way she wanted to play it, damn it, he wasn’t going to grovel. He wasn’t the send-flowers-after a-spat kind of man, and she knew it. The next thing he’d heard, she was engaged, then quickly married. A divorce had eventually followed, or at least according to B.J. Crosby, who, after a few beers somehow always needed to impart whatever he’d learned about Jules from his sister, Erin.
So now Trent was going to face