Confessions Bundle. Jo Leigh

older, three months less adaptable—as his master went to prison.

      Still, getting up Tuesday morning after an almost sleepless night, Blake felt better than he had in weeks.

      “Freedom, my boy, you win,” he told the whining pup as he let him out of the crate he’d purchased the day before. “Tonight you sleep on the bed, so we can both sleep.”

      Freedom yawned, shook himself, wagged his tail and peed all over Blake’s shoe.

      JULIET CALLED early Tuesday afternoon. He thought about telling her about the pup, or the series of gifts taking up every bit of available space in his office, but she was all business.

      “I’ve heard from Paul Schuster,” she told him, her tone without inflection—not welcome, doom or even boredom. “When would be a convenient time for us to meet?”

      He offered to come to her office immediately. She preferred to come to his. Blake didn’t argue.

      “SCHUSTER’S OFFERED a plea agreement.”

      She’d only just arrived, barely taken time to give him a somewhat unfocused smile of hello, before she’d taken the seat he’d indicated on the couch and opened her satchel.

      Blake had been about to offer her something to drink. Instead he sat down. Hard.

      “Meaning?”

      She met his gaze for the first time since she’d arrived. “He’s offered to lessen the charge to two counts of fraud.”

      Her suit was navy today, with a slim knee-length skirt, white blouse and short tailored jacket.

      “If I plead guilty?” he asked. Blake had been doing a lot of reading on a subject of which he’d been completely ignorant. The details of criminal proceedings had just never interested him.

      Juliet nodded.

      Slow down, he admonished himself when he might have bitten out an instant refusal. He had to take this calmly. One step at a time. Detaching from emotion so that he could think.

      “Why would he be willing to do that?” Because he wasn’t so sure he could make the original charges stick? Then why press them in the first place? Unless something had happened between last week and this.

      “Two reasons,” Juliet said, leaning forward as she explained, her voice softening to the tone he’d grown to expect from her. “First, it’s palatable to the prosecutor because it puts the onus on the judge. Second, it’s easier—and less time-consuming—than going to trial.”

      “I hadn’t read Paul Schuster as a man who takes the easy way out.” Blake still wanted to believe that something had happened to make the prosecutor less confident that he could win.

      Juliet smiled, almost as though she knew what he was thinking. “It’s not the easy way out. He’s spent a lot of time on this case, he thinks he’s got his man, and now he’s ready to move on to get the next one.”

      “He’s bored,” Blake translated.

      “I wouldn’t put it that way, but you’re a first offender, Blake, and to Schuster, this isn’t nearly as big as Eaton’s alleged fake companies. He knows, no matter how good a case he builds, you aren’t going to get a maximum sentence anyway.”

      If you stand straight, do not fear a crooked shadow.

      Blake read the Chinese proverb. He’d hung the plaque by the door to his office so he saw it every time he glanced up from his desk—and again every time he left his domain.

      “What happens if we accept the agreement?” He wasn’t going to. He couldn’t. Because to do that would be a lie. He wasn’t guilty.

      “You get a maximum of fifteen years.”

      “And realistically?”

      “Seven to seven and a half.”

      Seven and a half years in prison didn’t sound any different to Blake than a lifetime.

      “Tell Schuster no thank you.” As soon as he got home tonight he was going to teach Freedom how to run on the beach.

      “You’re sure?” Juliet asked, though her expression was completely calm, as though she’d expected as much. “You don’t want to think about it?”

      “There’s nothing to think about,” Blake told her. “I didn’t do it.”

      She didn’t reply. At least not with words. Her gaze, as it held his for seconds longer than might have happened had they not been alone, seemed to gleam with support.

      MARCIE CALLED on Wednesday night, just as Juliet was about to grab a can of Mace and a walkie-talkie that allowed her to hear if Mary Jane woke up, and head out to the beach.

      “I told Hank I was leaving.”

      Her twin sister had been crying.

      “Did you tell him why?” They’d discussed both sides of that particular issue. Juliet thought Marcie should tell him. Marcie had been afraid that if she did, and he pressured her to marry him, she’d give in.

      “Yes.”

      “And?”

      “He wants me to marry him.”

      Portable phone in hand, she stepped just outside the back door, to feel the sand beneath her bare feet and be closer to the waves that had a way of promising her that life would go on.

      “We suspected that.” In some ways, Hank was an old-fashioned guy.

      “Yeah.” Marcie sounded tired. Beaten.

      Juliet held her breath, crossed her fingers and prayed that Marcie hadn’t traded her soul for the false lure of safety and security their mother had. If Marcie was head over heels in love, that would be one thing, but…“And?”

      “I said no.”

      Whew. Juliet’s breathed hissed out on a long sigh. “How’d he take that?”

      Marcie chuckled. As much as she could while choking back tears that had obviously been falling a lot already that evening. “He said he’d like to help me move, that he was going to be financially responsible starting immediately, and that he wasn’t ever going to quit asking.”

      “In that order?”

      “Yeah.”

      “That was decent of him.”

      “He’s a decent man.”

      But not what Marcie had ever said she wanted. And not where her sister wanted, either. Marcie wanted to travel. And to meet new people. She wanted a busy life, social and involved in the world around her.

      She didn’t want to sit at home every night in Maple Grove and watch life go by on the television screen.

      And that was all Hank had ever wanted.

      Marcie wanted magic when she looked across the dinner table every night and woke up every morning.

      Juliet understood. It was what she’d always wanted, too.

      That was a part of their mother they’d both inherited. The part that, if they weren’t careful, could kill them. Just as it had her.

      ON FRIDAY NIGHT, one week after Blake’s arraignment and two days before her sister rented a truck and drove from Maple Grove to San Diego, Juliet called Marcie.

      “Hey, Jules, only two more days,” Marcie said, out of breath from packing as she answered the phone.

      She sounded energized, as though now that her decisions had been made, she was ready and hopeful about what the changes would bring.

      “Mary Jane and I are spending all day tomorrow cleaning out the playroom,” Juliet said from the beach outside her door. The child had talked of nothing else over dinner