Chapter 9 #3
“I’m sure he does. It would explain the time Benjie told me in no uncertain words that Cooper would never marry me.”
“All that would explain was Benjie’s knowing Cooper’s feelings about Cyrill.”
“No. It was more. Benjie’s vehemence was exactly like that of a kid being loyal to his mother—or wishing that one day his parents would get back together.”
“It could have just been Benjie’s natural raunchiness,” Peter said.
I was wondering the same thing. Then I shook my head. “Cooper wouldn’t keep something like that from him.” I paused. “Would he?”
“I’m the wrong one to be asking. You’ve known him far longer than I have.”
“But as a man, looking at Cooper, considering your impressions of him, what do you think?”
Peter seemed confused as he looked into my face. “I’d guess no, but that’s all it is, a guess.” He let out a soft breath. “But whether Benjie knows the truth or not, the facts of his parentage go a long way in explaining the complexity of Cooper’s feelings toward him.”
I returned my cheek to Peter’s chest. “It’s so strange—Cooper being Benjie’s father.
So hard to believe, after all these years.
” But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that it wasn’t so hard to believe after all.
“It gives new meaning to lots of things Cooper’s said about Benjie.
” For a minute, I was lost in thought. Then, looking up at Peter, I went straight to the heart of the matter.
“Do you think Benjie smuggled those diamonds onto the Free Reign?”
“I don’t know.”
“Do you think Cooper knows?”
Peter arched a brow and shrugged.
I thought of Cooper loving Cyrill and being hurt. I thought of his loving Benjie and being hurt. “Cooper’s always been so good. He’s always been there for Benjie. But the stakes have never been so high before. It breaks my heart to think of his going to prison for him.”
“If he’s as innocent as he claims, he’s prepared to go to prison for someone.”
He fell silent, but something in his words caught in my mind. The same something caught in his mind, too, because I felt the slight pickup of his pulse at the same time that his eyes opened wider. “I wonder.”
“Is it possible?”
“Anything’s possible.”
“Probable, then?”
“If he loved deeply, he’d protect one nearly as staunchly as the other.”
“But where is she now?”
“Good question.”
“How do we go about finding an answer?” I asked, but Peter was already shifting me on the sofa and rising. Wearing nothing but a pair of sleek navy briefs, he padded around the desk, opened a drawer and removed the Manhattan phone book.
“No Cyrill Stockland,” he concluded after he’d run through the list. He removed a second phone book from the drawer and checked, then a third.
He wound up with five C. Stocklands, none of whom he could call at one in the morning, and by that time, I’d had enough of looking at the bunching muscles of his shoulders as he leaned over the desk.
With the afghan draped shawllike around me, I went to his side and spread the shawl to cover him, too.
Turning to me, he said gently, “We’ll find her, babe. Trust me. We’ll find her.”
He did, though it took four more days and a private investigator to do the trick.
But the wait produced a bonus. Cyrill Stockland did, indeed, live in New York, but under the name of Cyrill Kane.
Though she hadn’t quite made the fortune she’d hoped for twenty years before, she was still trying.
She ran with a fast and dubious circle of friends, one of whom was reputed to be a jewel thief.
Even more condemning, one of the investigator’s sources had heard rumor that Cyrill and the thief had a new angle that involved Cyrill’s “kid.”
Peter told me all of this on the phone in the middle of the week, and I nearly went out of my mind with frustration keeping it to myself until he arrived late Friday afternoon.
But I couldn’t tell Swansy, who already felt guilty for having put us onto Cyrill, and we’d agreed to confront Cooper together.
It was a wise agreement. In all the years I’d known Cooper, he’d never turned as dark as he did when Peter told him about what we’d learned.
Cooper kept his voice low, but there was a palpable tension in it. “I said I didn’t want an investigator.”
It was a revealing first statement. “You knew?” I asked in a dismayed whisper.
He glared at Peter. “Who told you to hire an investigator?”
“As your lawyer, it was my decision to make.”
“I didn’t want one.”
“That’s not the issue,” I put in. “Did you know?” Still he didn’t confirm or deny what we’d learned. “Cooper?”
The force of his gaze was on Peter. He didn’t look at me once. “Can you defend me the way we originally planned?”
“Without mentioning any of this?”
“That’s right.”
“It’s crazy, man.”
“Can you do it?”
“Sure, I can do it—”
“You can’t!” I broke in.
Peter held up a hand to me. To Cooper, he said, “But it doesn’t make any sense.
It was one thing when we thought that a total stranger had stashed those diamonds on the boat.
But if Benjie is in business with Cyrill, you’ve got a problem that isn’t going away so fast. If you’re acquitted, he’ll keep at it until he’s caught.
If you’re convicted, he’s going to have to live with that. Think he can?”
Cooper’s eyes were coal black. “Benjie is innocent.”
“Perhaps in the most general sense,” Peter said, “but if he was the one who put those diamonds on the Free Reign, then stood by and watched you go through hell, somewhere along the line he stops being so innocent.”
I felt totally stymied. “Does he know that you know the truth?”
Cooper spared me a glance then. Its harshness was moderated only slightly by the feelings he had for me. As though knowing he couldn’t—or didn’t dare—sustain any semblance of gentleness for long, he looked back at Peter. “I don’t want him touched.”
Peter tried to reassure him. “Benjie would be all right. I could get him off with a suspended sentence because of his age and the circumstances—”
“I don’t want his name brought into this at all.”
“He’d end up with nothing more than probation. It might do him good.”
“No.”
“Cooper—” I began to protest, but he’d apparently had enough. Storming past us, he whipped his coat from a hook by the door and left with the slam of aged oak.
I looked at Peter. Then I grabbed my own coat from the chair on which I’d dropped it moments before. “I’m going after him.”
“Maybe you should give him time to think.”
“If I do that, he’ll convince himself he’s doing the right thing.”
“He already has.”
“Then my job will be harder, but I have to try.”
“I’ll come,” Peter said.
He was reaching for his coat when I put a hand on his arm.
“No. It’d be better if I see him alone.” The look in Peter’s eyes said that he wasn’t so sure about that, but I knew what I was doing.
“Cooper and I have something special.” I moved my hand to his face and brushed my thumb across his lips.
“It’s not what you and I have, but it’s still deep.
I want to appeal to it, but if you’re there, it’ll be harder.
Cooper will use you to keep me at arm’s length. ” I paused. “I have to try, Peter.”
He didn’t move, didn’t make any attempt to change my mind.
Going up on my toes, I put my mouth where my thumb had been.
I love you, I thought, and nearly said the words.
At the last minute they caught in my throat.
I didn’t know whether it was the particular circumstance, or whether I just wasn’t ready to say them, but by the time I returned my heels to the floor, the moment had passed.
I quickly fastened my parka, pulled up my hood and turned toward the front door, only to be stopped by an unexpected sight.
Benjie was standing stiffly in the kitchen doorway.
He had clearly overheard my final conversation with Peter and, just as clearly, had seen me kiss him, but how much he’d heard of what we’d said to Cooper, I didn’t know. Nor, at that moment, did I care. Cooper was my main concern. I was very happy to leave Benjie to Peter.
I sent Benjie a look that I hoped was at the same time dignified and imploring, cast a last glance at Peter, then left in search of Cooper.
Dusk was beginning to settle over the coast, bringing with it an increase in the wind and the cold.
When I didn’t immediately see Cooper on the pier, I huddled more deeply into my coat and headed down Main Street.
At the very end, I worked my way down a twisting path that opened onto a small cluster of rocks.
Cooper was squatting on one of the larger rocks, tossing pebbles into the frothing sea.
I continued on down until I stood close behind him. Without turning, he knew I’d come. No doubt he’d been expecting me.
His voice rose above the tumult of the tides. “It won’t work, Jill. You can talk until you’re blue in the face, but I’m not changing my mind. I don’t want Benjie involved, and that’s that. The issue is closed.”
I opened my mouth to launch into my arguments anyway, then closed it again and rethought what I wanted to say. Cooper glanced at me. Pressing my fists deep into my pockets, I came down on my haunches by his side so I wouldn’t have to shout.
“Tell me about her, Cooper. Tell me what she was like.”
He shot me another glance, this time in mild surprise.
Then he tossed a few more pebbles into the sea, and just when I was beginning to wonder whether he’d answer, he began to speak quietly.
“She was beautiful. Tall, blond, curvy in all the right places. The first time I saw her, I felt like I’d been hit. Knocked the air right out of me.”
I certainly knew what that was like, but I’d never imagined Cooper being susceptible to lightning like that. “Love at first sight?”