When he’d enrolled in her health club, she’d immediately been attracted to his engaging manner. She’d overlooked his portly body and had checked out his portfolio. Realizing his worth, she had set her sights on him.
He, having spent the last five years of his marriage nursing his suffering wife, had been ripe for fun, for sex, for Tori’s raunchy teasing, flirting, and flattery. Bonnell Wallace was a feared and revered businessman, shrewd in all his dealings, but he’d been putty in Tori’s talented and well-experienced hands.
However, over time she’d formed an attachment to him that was no longer just about snagging another rich husband. Beneath the flab left by good living, she’d discovered a good heart, a good friend, a good man. She had grown genuinely fond of him, and for her, that was as close as she was ever going to get to true love.
They exchanged air kisses and disconnected reluctantly. As she clutched the phone to her chest, her smile lingered for several minutes. But when her doorbell rang, she dropped her phone, bolted to the door, and flung it open.
On her threshold stood Stan Gillette. If it had been Elvis she wouldn’t have been as shocked.
She didn’t like Honor’s father-in-law, and the dislike was returned. In spades. Neither made a secret of their mutual antipathy. It went beyond being on opposite sides of the conservative/liberal coin.
The only thing they had in common was their love for Honor and Emily, and nothing except that shared love could have brought Stan to her doorstep.
Her heart practically stopped. She gripped the door for support. “Oh, God. They’re dead?”
“No. At least I hope not. May I come in?”
Weak with relief, she stood aside. He marched—the only word to describe his tread—across her threshold, which he no doubt equated to the gateway to Gomorrah, then stopped and looked around as though assessing an enemy camp. She supposed that to some extent, he was. Her furnishings were tasteful and expensive, but his lips were set with stern disapproval when he turned to her.
“How did you hear?”
She wondered how the man managed to make a simple question sound like he was about to jam bamboo shoots under her fingernails. But the circumstances called for her to be civil. “I saw it on the news.”
“You haven’t heard from Honor?”
“Why does everyone keep asking me that?”
His eyes narrowed on her. “Who else asked you that?”
“Doral. He was here when I got home from the club. Like you, he seems to think that Honor’s kidnapper would call a time out and let her contact me.”
“I don’t need your sarcasm.”
“And I don’t need you implying that if I knew what had happened to Honor and Emily I’d be standing here disliking you with every fiber of my being. I’d be out doing something to bring them safely back. Which begs the question, why aren’t you out there searching for them instead of stinking up my house with your narrow-minded, judgmental self-righteousness?”
So much for civility.
He bristled. “Can you think for one nanosecond that I care more about insulting you than I do about the welfare of my son’s widow and child, the only family I have left?” Tori understood exactly where he was coming from. Her concern for Honor and Emily overrode her hatred of him. Having had her outburst, she backed down. “No, Stan, I don’t think that at all. I know you love them.” In your overbearing and possessive fashion, she was tempted to add, but didn’t. “You must be going through hell.”
“To put it mildly.”
“Why don’t you sit down? Can I get you anything? Water? Soft drink? Stiff drink?”
He almost smiled before catching himself. “No. Thanks.” He didn’t sit, but stood in the center of her living room, looking ill at ease.
“I love them, too, you know,” she said softly. “How can I help? What do you know that the media doesn’t?”
“Nothing. Not really.”
He told her about his conversation with Doral and Deputy Crawford. “The house was a wreck. Crawford seemed more interested in knowing what might be missing from it, as if the fact that Honor and Emily were missing were secondary.”
“He’s a deputy sheriff in a backwater parish. Is he up to the task of getting them back in one piece?”
“I hope so. Of course the FBI is on the case, too. They’ve also called in assistance from other parishes and the New Orleans P.D.” He took a turn around the room, but she could tell he was preoccupied.
“Something is bothering you. What?”
He turned back to her. “It may be nothing.” For several seconds, he wrestled with the decision to air his concern, then asked a seemingly unrelated question. “Have you ever tucked Emily in for the night?”
“As recently as two weeks ago. Honor had me out for burgers on the grill. We put Emily down, then kicked back and killed a bottle of wine.”
By telling him that, she was hitting below the belt, because he considered her a bad influence on Honor.
From the moment they were introduced, he’d regarded her as a slut, unsuitable friend material for the daughter-in-law of Stanley Gillette. Which, from Tori’s standpoint, was just too effing bad. She and Honor’s friendship had been forged when they were girls, and it had endured despite the divergent paths their lives had taken.
She admired Honor’s way of life, but she didn’t envy it. Not for her was the home-and-hearth scene. Marrying your high school sweetheart wasn’t her idea of hot romance. Eddie had been an excellent husband and father, and she had liked him for loving Honor and making her happy. His death had been a tragedy.
But Stan kept him alive and present to the point where Honor felt guilty if she as much as contemplated dating. That had been one topic they’d discussed over that excellent bottle of Pinot Noir.
Not for the first time, Tori had urged Honor to start going out, to meet new people, specifically men. “Your period of grieving has been twice the accepted time. You need to kick up your heels, and I mean that in the most literal sense. What’s the holdup?”
“It would break Stan’s heart if I began dating,” Honor had replied wistfully.
Tori had argued that she wasn’t married to Stan, and who cared what he thought anyway.
Apparently Honor did. Because she was letting Stan prevent her from having a future. He was keeping her shackled to the past and to a husband who was dead and buried.
But that was an issue for another day. Today, they had to deal with one much more pressing. “What about tucking Emily in?” she asked.
“She always sleeps with two things.”
“Her bankie and Elmo.”
“They weren’t in her bed this morning.” While Tori processed that, he continued. “They weren’t in Honor’s bed either. I didn’t see them anywhere.”
“A kidnapper who let Em take her bedtime pals along? Hmm.” She thought back to Doral’s insinuation that the supposed kidnapping might not have been that at all. What was Honor into?
As though reading her mind, Stan said, “I believe in keeping confidences.”
She didn’t touch that.
“I know how close Honor is to you. I don’t understand the friendship. I don’t approve of it. But I respect it.”
“Okay.”
“But these are critical circumstances, Victoria.”
His use of her full name underscored how critical the circumstances were. As if she needed him to emphasize that to her.
“If Honor has confided to you—”
“That she’s involved with a man named Lee Coburn? Is that what you’re waltzing around? Save the dance steps, Stan. The answer is no. Honor doesn’t confide in me every thought and feeling she has, but I think I would know if she was seeing someone. Hell, I’d be celebrating it. But if she knew this man at all, I swear to you that I’m unaware of it.”
He received her answer with characteristic stoicism. He coughed behind his fist, indicating to her that there was more on his mind. “Crawford asked Doral a lot of questions about Eddie. Crawford seems to be working under the delusion that there’s a link to him in all this.”