Aftershocks

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

BRIANA ARRIVED home tired in mind and body. Because she needed something comforting, she made herself a cup of warm milk, then played back the two new messages on her machine. The first one was Patrick. “Hi, me again. Don’t mean to keep bothering you. I just wondered if you were home yet. Call me.” The time on that one was 8:00 p.m.

A final message had been left at ten thirty-five. It was Patrick again, sounding edgy. “Look, I’m not a stalker or anything, but I’m getting kind of worried. Is everything okay? Call me whenever you get in. I love you.”

She closed her eyes and willed his love to be strong enough to withstand her treachery. She dialed his number. He answered on the first ring.

“Hi,” she said, feeling a little breathless just to hear his voice. “It’s me. I just got in.”

“Thanks for calling. Where have you-No. Sorry. Not my business, I wasn’t trying to harass you. But the way things are going in our town, you never know what’s going to happen next.”

She smiled into the phone. “I think it’s sweet that you worried about me. No one’s worried about me in a long time.”

“I don’t only worry about you, I love you. Don’t forget that one.”

“I’m not going to forget it,” she said, feeling marginally better. There were still some good men in the world. “I took a drive up the coast today.”

“Lots to think about?”

“Yes. Um…” She had to tell him everything, but not right this minute. It was too raw. And she couldn’t tell him on the phone. This had to be done in person. “Could you find some time for me tomorrow?”

“You know I could. Briana, you sound so serious. What’s up?”

“I…” She fought the urge to unburden herself right now and get it over with. But it wouldn’t be fair to launch into such a seedy story of treachery and deceit over the phone. “I’ll tell you all about it tomorrow.”

“You’re not secretly married to someone else, are you?” He said it in a half-joking way, but she heard the hint of worry in his tone.

Well, at least what she had to tell him wasn’t as bad as that. She let herself relax. “No. It has nothing to do with my feelings for you.”

“That’s a relief, because I happen to think our personal relationship is damn fine. And it’s only going to get better.”

“I feel so much better for talking to you.”

“Me, too. Talk to my admin assistant about scheduling a meeting, will you?”

She laughed. “Will do. Night.”

“Night.”

To say she slept well would be a gross overstatement, but at least she slept. When she got up the next morning, she made herself some fresh-squeezed orange juice, figuring she needed all the vitamins and energy she could get, and cooked herself oatmeal. Good old-fashioned comfort food. Thus fueled for what she was certain would be a difficult day, she chose a muted outfit of black linen slacks and jacket and a white silk tank, then she was on her way to the office.

She hadn’t felt this nervous since she’d arrived for her first day on the job, knowing she was here under false pretenses and feeling miserable about her deceit.

When she arrived, Patrick was already in.

The minute he heard her, he came out of his office. He’d already abandoned his jacket and was in his shirtsleeves. One look at him had her hormones charging into overdrive.

“Hi,” he said with a goofy smile on his face.

“Hi,” she said back, certain there was an equally goofy smile on her own face.

He stepped forward, and for a second she thought he was going to kiss her right there in the office, but he caught himself and said, “I checked my schedule for today, but it’s pretty tight.”

“Oh, of course it is. I was forgetting.” She pulled it up on her computer as she spoke, and glanced at her watch. “You’ve got Archie coming in about fifteen minutes, then a budget meeting, then the Courage Bay Pioneer Association lunch.” She looked up. “Archie should bring your speaking notes for that when he comes in.”

She scanned the rest of the day. “I think I could fit myself into the schedule around eight o’clock tonight,” she said.

“I’m sorry, Briana. If it’s important, I’ll figure out something.”

“No.” She gave him a forced smile. “It’s nothing that important. I’ll hang around and do some paperwork, and when you’re all done for the day, maybe…Oh, no. What am I thinking? You’ll need to get home and see Dylan and Fiona before they go to bed.”

“You could come with me,” he offered. “Fiona’s been dying for you to read that new storybook you bought her. Once they’re in bed, we can talk as long as you like.” He smiled a little wistfully. “I wish I could offer you more than talk, but…”

“No. Really. I understand. I want to talk to you. The other…” She smiled at him, unable to stop herself. “The other can wait.”

“Never mind your paperwork tonight. Go home on time. Update your resume. You’re putting in for a transfer.”

“Yes. Absolutely.” But, she thought, she wouldn’t do it until tomorrow. She needed to know that Patrick was still on her side after she told him what she’d done.

BRIANA HAD SAID this meeting wasn’t about their personal life, but Patrick didn’t like the way she was acting-a little nervous, and having trouble fully meeting his eyes. He’d joked about another man, but she’d laughed and said it wasn’t that, and he believed her.

What else could be bothering her so much that she wanted to talk seriously to him the day after they formally became lovers? The day after they’d declared their love?

Archie Weld talked his ear off about the city’s communication plan and his update on disaster communications. Since Patrick had become mayor, he’d learned that every disaster involved media relations. It was essential to ensure that information provided to the media was accurate and timely and accessible so that people would stay calm and know what to do.

The city staff in Courage Bay were becoming experts at disaster communication, and he wished it weren’t because they’d had so much practice.

He had to cut Archie off to make it to his next appointment on time, and after that, his day was pretty much a dead run from meeting to meeting. He pulled himself together to give his speech at a luncheon for some of Courage Bay ’s oldest citizens, loading on the praise for the way they’d built this city and helped hold it together.

On the way to his budget planning session, he pulled his tape recorder out of his briefcase and dictated some notes. There were several hundredth birthdays coming up in the city, and he wanted to talk to Archie and Briana about organizing something special.

When he got back to the office at five o’clock, after spending all afternoon on the budget, Briana wasn’t there. She’d left the light on and the door unlocked, which could indicate she was returning, or maybe she’d simply forgotten. Probably she’d forgotten to close up properly in her haste to get working on that resume, he thought with a smug smile.

He was pleased she’d followed his orders and gone home, although he could still smell a lingering hint of her scent.

He didn’t want to rush the woman, but he had “for richer, for poorer, till death do us part” on his mind.

A few minutes remained before he had to leave for a dinner meeting, so he called home and chatted to both his kids. They sounded happy, fed and reasonably well-entertained with a Disney video, and he promised he’d be home in time to tuck them in.

With the phone still in his hand, he contemplated calling Briana at home, but after he’d hounded her shamelessly all day Sunday, and he’d already seen her in the office this morning, he thought calling her might be too much.

She’d left his correspondence for the day, ready to be signed and mailed. He scanned each item briefly and then signed it. Since she wasn’t in, he even stuck the things in the envelopes.

As he pulled his notes from the earlier meeting out of his briefcase, a glint of silver caught his eye. Right. He’d dictated some notes earlier that needed typing up.

The tape was pretty far advanced. He couldn’t remember what was on the first part, so he pressed Rewind, and then Play.

For a few seconds there was blank tape. Then some muffled sounds like someone fumbling around in a sock drawer. He must have left the machine on by mistake at some point. He was about to push Fast Forward when he heard Briana’s voice, as though she were talking from inside a sleeping bag, the words inaudible but the voice recognizably hers.

Then he heard his voice. “I want you so much, Briana. I want to make love with you.”

There was more shuffling and then Briana’s voice. “Are you taking off my blouse?”

A low chuckle answered her. “I’m trying, but damn it I’m out of practice.”

Patrick heard the passion in his voice, and in that second was transported back to that dark elevator, where heaven had seemed in his grasp.

He was stunned and laid the recorder on the desk, letting the tape continue. He knew what he was hearing, the entire encounter in the elevator the first time they’d made love. Now he recalled that the elevator repair guy had given him the recorder the following morning, so it must somehow have fallen out of his briefcase and turned itself on.

Then off? Why hadn’t the tape kept going to the end?

The funny thing was that he hadn’t recalled having the recorder with him the night they’d been trapped in the elevator. Usually, he kept it in the glove compartment of his car.

Probably, he was crazy. But he had a bad feeling in his belly. On a hunch, he ran downstairs and out to his car. He unlocked and opened the passenger side door and reached in. He felt as if he was moving in slow motion as he clicked open the glove compartment.

His tape recorder was there. Right where he’d left it. He picked it up and took it with him back to his office.

When he compared it to the other one, he saw they were almost identical. Same make, same model. One looked a little newer. The one with a recording of him and Briana on it.

He played the sex-in-the-elevator tape again. And this time, he got a sick sense of why she was asking him what he was doing. It hadn’t been for the erotic thrill of describing to each other what they were doing in the dark. She’d wanted to get what they were doing on tape.

But why?

Patrick returned to that night in his mind. It was easy enough, since he recalled every second and had relived it in memory many times.

For some reason, she’d had a tape recorder in her bag when the pair of them got on that elevator.

Could she have pushed the record button by accident? He closed his eyes, forcing his memory to stay sharp even as unease churned in his gut.

She’d gone into her purse for condoms, he recalled, and then again for her phone. But this had been activated much earlier. The recording began when he’d started to undress her.

Once more he picked up the tape recorder and inspected it. The On button was slightly depressed-all the controls were, presumably to avoid the thing being activated accidentally. She hadn’t even been holding her bag when he’d started removing her blouse. It had been on the floor somewhere beside them.

It seemed likely that she’d reached into her bag at some point and pushed the button to record. Okay, he told himself, maybe she was a woman who liked to record her own sexual encounters. It was a little on the kinky side, but only mildly so. He agreed that it was a turn-on to listen to them, or it would be if he weren’t fighting this feeling of disquiet.

His uneasiness only increased as he acknowledged that when she’d told him she had a cell phone in her bag the night of the aftershock, he’d been surprised she hadn’t mentioned it earlier. She’d explained that she didn’t believe it would work when the regular phones were down, but she was such an intelligent woman, he’d decided the shock must have made her temporarily confused. Now he wondered.

Had she known all along that her phone would work just fine? But she wouldn’t have wanted help to arrive, not if she were deliberately trying to seduce him.

Oh, that was ridiculous, he thought, rising and pacing around the small outer office. He wasn’t the president of the United States, he was a small-town mayor. What possible motive could she have to tape his sexual advances?

It was as ridiculous as her suggesting to him that the story and photograph that destroyed Cecil Thomson’s mayoralty campaign were fake.

He turned the recorder off, right when things were at their peak in that elevator. He wanted that moment to remain a good memory for him. Damn, he hoped there was an innocent explanation for why one of the most incredible, intimate experiences of his life was on tape.

Patrick wasn’t a big believer in conspiracy theories, but he was unsettled enough to think maybe it wouldn’t be a bad idea to do some checking up on Briana Bliss. Just so he could find out she was the woman he’d believed her to be when he’d fallen in love with her. Just to put his mind at rest.

Walking back into his office, he went straight for his computer and accessed the employment records. Briana Bliss. There she was. And there was her social security number. Five minutes and a few keystrokes later, he had her mother’s maiden name.

Thomson.

Of course, there were thousands, possibly millions of Thomsons in the States. It could be pure coincidence that Briana’s mother’s birth name happened to be the same as the only man in Courage Bay who hated Patrick.

But Patrick had been a politician long enough to know that people weren’t always what they seemed, and not to trust coincidences. He also knew that some part of him would never recover if his newly healed heart was broken a second time, this time not through tragedy but deliberate betrayal.

In retrospect, he wished his computer skills weren’t so good, or the system was slower. With some computer savvy and a social security number, it was amazing how much you could find out about a person. He had his answer before he’d had time to prepare for the worst.

Briana’s mother was the sister of Cecil Thomson. Which made the man who was clearly his enemy and political rival the uncle of his admin assistant.

Patrick sat back and stared at his computer screen, his fingers steepled in front of his mouth as he worked out the details of the trap he’d fallen into.

Cecil Thomson had wanted the mayor’s job.

Cecil Thomson didn’t get a majority vote because of an unsavory incident from his past, and the people of Courage Bay had had it with sexual misconduct from their civic leaders.

Sexual misconduct had caused one mayor to be booted out of office and a contender to lose his chance. If Mayor Patrick O’Shea, whose victory was based on his ethics and morality, could be caught in sexual misconduct, then he’d be history, and the chances were good that the people of Courage Bay would look at Cecil Thomson with a kinder eye.

It was such a perfect setup, Patrick almost admired the wiles that had caused Thomson to insinuate his beautiful niece into Patrick’s office and let nature take its course. If she could entrap him into sexual harassment, and provide the kind of proof the media loved, then Patrick’s career would be destroyed. Cecil Thomson would have another shot at running for mayor.

Resisting the impulse to throw back his head and howl like a wounded wolf, Patrick forced himself to consider his situation with cold reason. And what he saw didn’t impress him.

The biggest irony was that if Patrick had held on to the high standards he’d believed himself to possess, the plot would have failed. But he hadn’t counted on falling in love with the woman who was his assistant.

Briana. He moaned her name inside his head. What possible reason could she have for such betrayal?

He was going to find out. Knowing he would be incapable of acting rationally tonight, he called and canceled his evening meeting.

Then he returned, with the tape recorder, to Briana’s desk, feeling about a hundred years older than he had an hour ago, and with a bitter taste in his mouth and bleak anger in his heart.

He sat down in her chair and tried to imagine how it had felt to be her, to make love with a man for the sole purpose of destroying his life, and he found he couldn’t. It seemed as though he was going to have a chance to ask her, though, because he heard her voice talking to someone in the hall.

She hadn’t gone home, after all. Soon she was going to wish she had.