And he wasn’t even Graham Long.
Alice came to another fork in the path and jogged uphill, because it was harder, because she wanted the clean sweat of hard work to wash away the ugly anger and resentment and betrayal that she was feeling.
What could she trust of what he’d told her? What part of it was real and what part was the mask that he’d shown everyone?
It didn’t make her feel any better that he’d been lying to everyone.
Everyone except Scarlet. Scarlet knew. And if Scarlet knew about Graham...
The path ended in a high wall and a closed gate marked “KEEP OUT” in red letters. Alice snarled, and turned to find somewhere else to run, then caught a whiff of Graham and knew he’d followed her.
She waited.
He wasn’t running, he was walking slowly, and by the time he got to the gate, Alice had worked herself into a fury.
“You know what Scarlet is,” she accused him, when he finally rounded the last corner and wearily approached.
“You knew what she was the whole time, and you knew what it would mean for me, that I could save my family. You lied to me. I trusted you.”
Did he understand how rare her trust was?
Graham didn’t answer, only went to the gate, opening it and going in without saying a word.
Alice hesitated a moment, then followed him.
For a moment, her anger was washed away in surprise. They walked into a garden, a beautiful, riotous, protected little area of green glory. An open greenhouse lay in one direction, uncovered beds, groaning in flowers and fruit, in the other. Jungle towered above it on the island side, open fields to the ocean side. Even in the darkness, it was gorgeous.
And it smelled... like home.
This was Graham’s haven, she realized. The forbidden garden, his secret place.
But she wasn’t ready to forgive him, or accept this gift as any kind of compensation for his lies and deception.
“Why didn’t you tell me about Scarlet?” she demanded, only a few steps into the garden. She turned and glared at Graham, not letting herself drink in the peacefulness of the plants around them. She didn’t want peacefulness, she wanted Graham to suffer some fraction of the agony she was feeling.
“Her secrets aren’t mine to tell,” Graham growled, in that low voice that masked accents.
“I might have accepted that,” Alice snarled. “But you let me believe you didn’t know.”
Graham was silent. Insufferably silent.
“You lied about who you are,” she went on, hating the silence worse than the lies. “You lied to me and talked about trust and honesty, and I don’t know how I’m supposed to ever believe you about anything again.”
“I’m sorry...” Graham started to say.
But Alice didn’t
want an apology any more than she wanted peace.
She was angry, and hurting, and she wanted to fight him, because she didn’t know what else to do.
“You’re only sorry you got caught,” Alice hurled back at him. “You would have cheerfully continued to deceive me... for how long? Until I left after Mary and Neal’s wedding? What if I’d decided to quit my job and stay here with you? Would you have let me sacrifice my whole world for a complete fiction?”
“I wouldn’t have...”
“How can I believe anything you say!” Alice snapped, hating his gentleness, resenting his calm. “I don’t know what you would have, what you might have, I only know what you did. What you said. How you lied. I told you everything. You let me believe you were being honest with me.”
She was being impossible, she knew, and that was the very worst part. She was the one who had pushed him away, held him at arm’s length. She was the one who had tried to deny that their bond was anything more than sexual need. No kissing, she’d told him, as if that had protected her heart in the slightest.