Carrying His Secret. Marie Ferrarella
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so, morning had come with its heavy mantle of guilt. He had let his guard down. Moreover, he had taken advantage of the situation and of her. There was no excuse for that.
At a loss for how to handle it, he’d felt that his only recourse was to behave as if nothing had happened.
Elizabeth had done the same, which was why he was certain that refusing to acknowledge that anything had changed between them was the right way to go.
The right way...even though he ached for her with every breath he took.
But that was his problem, not hers, and Whit was resigned to spending the rest of his life dealing with that.
What he wasn’t ready to do was spend the rest of his life without the man he’d looked up to and done his very best to emulate. Sure, for the most part, sons outlived their fathers, he knew that. But he wasn’t ready for that to happen just yet.
Not like this.
Guess what? It happened. Deal with it, a voice inside his head ordered.
The stainless steel doors parted and he followed Officer Ruiz off the elevator and down the winding corridor.
The floor could have been deserted for all the attention Whit paid to what was going on all around him. He was focused on finding Elizabeth.
“Wait right here, Mr. Adair,” the officer told him. “I’ll let Detective Kramer know that you’re here about the suspect.”
Whit was not in the mood to hang back, waiting while the officer and the detective sorted things out. The turmoil within him was building up at an alarming rate, threatening to erupt at any moment unless he found some sort of an outlet. He didn’t want to wind up yelling at anyone, but containing these emotions was becoming an increasingly difficult balancing act.
“I’ll tell him myself,” Whit informed the officer, moving ahead of Ruiz and letting himself into the room that the officer was about to open up.
His back to the door, Kramer snapped, “Not yet,” thinking that he was being interrupted by one of the uniformed patrolmen.
“Yes, yet,” Whit retorted coldly as he came in. At an imposing six feet two inches, Whit took command of any room he entered. The interrogation room was no exception.
Both the detective and the young woman he had been relentlessly questioning for the past hour turned in Whit’s direction.
If there was a single point during the entire evening’s events that she could have broken down and cried, Elizabeth thought, it would have been this very moment.
The man she had been determined to avoid until she came to grips with her private situation had suddenly been cast in the role of a white knight.
Her white knight.
Elizabeth felt more conflicted than ever.
“Mr. Adair,” she cried, remembering where they were and that their relationship was supposed to be strictly business and nothing more. To her credit, she was positive that no one else even suspected that they were anything more than two people who happened to work together and, on occasion, share a car.
He deliberately kept his face expressionless. “Elizabeth, are you all right?” he asked stiffly. With what amounted to great effort, Whit successfully suppressed the desire to sweep her into his arms and seek solace in hers.
She didn’t answer his question. Instead, because she wasn’t sure what he’d been told, she said, “Your father’s gone. I am so sorry.”
He wasn’t about to respond to that or even react to it. He couldn’t, not without breaking apart, and an Adair had to always remember to save face at all costs. So instead, he turned to the detective, his anger barely under control.
“What is Ms. Shelton doing here?” he demanded.
Obviously stunned at being challenged, Kramer was caught off guard.
“We had some questions,” he began.
“So you decided to ask them in your interrogation room?” Whit wanted to know, his tone clearly indicating that the course Kramer had taken was completely unacceptable.
“I didn’t want her distracted,” Kramer answered coolly. After fifteen years, the detective felt he knew how to play the game.
It was a weak excuse at best and a lie at worst. Whit’s brilliant blue eyes narrowed as he pinned the detective in place.
“Is Ms. Shelton being placed under arrest?” he wanted to know.
“No, but—” Kramer’s voice cracked slightly at the obvious confrontation. He hadn’t expected it to come from the family.
“Then if she’s not under arrest, she’s coming with me,” Whit informed the detective. “Anyone with eyes can see that the woman’s in shock, not to mention that she’s in desperate need of a change of clothes.”
“They offered me some sweat clothes,” Elizabeth interjected, desperately struggling to keep from breaking down. “I think one of the officers just went to get them.”
The information had no effect on Whit. “They shouldn’t have brought you here in the first place,” he said tersely, his eyes never leaving the detective’s face.
Kramer had no use for people of privilege who believed themselves to be above the law and allowed to do as they pleased.
“I’m not finished questioning her,” Kramer informed Whit.
Whit was not about to back off. He wanted to get Elizabeth out of here. He had questions of his own he wanted to ask her, but first she needed to get away from the interrogation room.
“You are for now,” Whit told him. Getting behind Elizabeth’s chair, he took hold of the back and moved it out for her as she stood. “We’re leaving, Detective,” he told the other man. There was no room for argument with his tone. “If you have any further questions, Ms. Shelton will be happy to answer them after she’s had a good night’s sleep and a change of clothes.” He barely spared her a glance as he said, “Let’s go, Elizabeth.”
Her legs felt wobbly as she walked out with Whit, but she suppressed the desire to take hold of his arm for support. Elizabeth was exceedingly relieved to get away from the detective, whose questions had come at an ever increasing rate as his tone grew more accusing.
But her sense of relief was in conflict with the sorrow she felt for the man standing beside her in the elevator.
Though she was certain that he didn’t know it, she was aware of the case of hero worship that Whit harbored when it came to his father. Knew, too, that at least on the surface, her late boss had not demonstrated any sort of displays of affection for his son. For any of his children, really, except, from what she’d heard, his daughter. The youngest Adair appeared to be near and dear to the man.
“You should have called me,” Whit told her the moment the doors closed, separating them from the rest of the police-crowded floor.
He sounded even more distant than usual, Elizabeth couldn’t help thinking.
“The detective wouldn’t let me,” she told him. “He said I didn’t need to make a phone call because I wasn’t under arrest. According to him, we were only having a friendly discussion.”
“Friendly?” Whit questioned.
“It’s a new, really loose definition of the word,” she said sarcastically. Elizabeth sighed deeply, relieved beyond words even though her heart was very heavy. “Thank you for coming to get me. How did you know I was here?”
“Some detectives came to notify me about Dad. They had me come to the morgue to make the official identification.”
But she had already told them it was Reginald Adair, Elizabeth thought. “I guess my word wasn’t good enough,” she said with a shrug.
She