Marie Ferrarella - Carrying His Secret

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 would have wanted to spare Whit having to make the ID. Obviously the detective had had other ideas.

“You’re not the next of kin, I am,” Whit told her the next moment.

His voice was stony, as if he was doing his very best to keep any sliver of emotion as far away from him as possible, Elizabeth noted.

He hadn’t been like that the night they’d found themselves all but trapped in the hotel room, held captive by a freak storm.

As if on cue, the warmth, the tenderness, the passion that she had experienced that night came rushing back to her. She’d had no idea that Whit was that sort of a lover. He was so different from the way he usually acted around her. If anything, she would have said he was repressed, keeping all his emotions under virtual lock and key, so well hidden that no one would ever suspect that the man had cupped her face with his hands and initially brushed his lips against hers as lightly as a falling petal floats to the ground when cradled by a spring breeze.

That had been the start of it all—and had led to so much more.

Her heart ached for him. She wished that there was something she could do to help.

But there was nothing.

Elizabeth stopped at the base of the stairs just before the relatively empty rear parking lot.

“Why are you stopping?” Whit wanted to know.

Her eyes met his. “Whit, I am so, so sorry,” she whispered.

“Yeah, well, everyone dies sometime,” he said with a careless shrug. Inside he was struggling to keep himself under control, but he had no intentions of exposing that part of himself to anyone. “The car’s right over—”

He got no further than that, absently pointing in the general direction where he had parked his vehicle.

He got no further because at that moment, Elizabeth threw her arms around him, as much to comfort him as to be comforted by him. Her feelings of bereavement were enormous.

He’d been taught from a very young age not to show any emotion. That included responding to it if it came from anyone else.

Whit instinctively began to pull back.

Chapter 3

“I’m sorry,” Whit said stiffly, successfully managing to suppress all signs of the internal tug-of-war that was going on within of him. “I’m not very good at comforting people.”

Elizabeth forced a smile to her lips. “I’m not looking to be comforted,” she told him. It was a lie, but right now, she felt something far larger was at stake here, namely the rest of the truth. “I’m trying to comfort you .”

Her reply seemed to put him off even more than before. “Well, you don’t have to bother. I’m all right,” he proclaimed as he began heading toward his car again. “I’ll take you home,” he informed her just before he reached the vehicle.

The thought of going straight home was extremely appealing, but it would also leave her stranded the next morning. Intent on questioning her at the police station, Kramer had whisked her away in a squad car. Her own vehicle was sitting in the parking structure beneath the AdAir Corp building where she had left it.

“My car is still at AdAir Corp. If you don’t mind, I need to be dropped off there,” Elizabeth told him. Getting into the passenger seat of his sports car, she quickly secured her seat belt. “And you are not all right,” she insisted as he put his key into the ignition. Just who did the man think he was kidding? “Your father was just murdered.”