Sweet Liar (Candy #2)(7)

“Angry at me?”

“You don’t trust me, Candy.”

When I opened my mouth to say something sarcastic, he held a hand up to stop me. “Yeah. I know. You’re justified. But I thought . . .” He shook his head. “It doesn’t matter what I thought.”

Maybe it didn’t matter, but I was curious as to how he’d rationalized all he’d done. “Jonah, I don’t trust you because you lied to me.”

Unexpected fire sparked in his eyes. “I lied about one thing, the fact that I was a high school student. I never lied about my feelings for you. That’s a line I wouldn’t cross, and if you were being honest with yourself, you’d admit you believe at least that much about me.”

I glanced away because I wanted to believe it. But if I did, I’d be twice the fool I was five minutes ago. “You still lied. The number of lies is irrelevant.”

When I saw he intended to drop it, looking defeated, I threw a question at him I’d been wondering about. “Do you like what you do?”

Jonah stilled, apparently surprised by the question. “I don’t know how to answer that.”

“How about truthfully?” I studied him, wondering why he seemed so uncomfortable.

With his gaze on me, he exhaled wearily and sat down on the cold concrete floor next to my chair, where he rested his arms on his bent knees. He thought about the question far longer than I thought he would. I hadn’t realized it was such a difficult one.

“The truth is,” he finally began, “I haven’t been doing it long enough to know whether I like it or not. So far, there are good and bad things about it.”

I knitted my brows together. “How long have you been doing this exactly?”

He hesitated again. “Since about last April.”

As I realized what that meant, he almost looked embarrassed. “This is your first case?”

“I was still in school before that, up in Boston. I told you I was in Massachusetts. That was the truth.”

My eyes widened at the last sentence he threw in there. So he’d told the truth about something. Did he want a medal?

“But I only moved back a few months ago,” I pointed out, “and it’s now December. Why have you been here since last April?”

He gave me an odd smile. “I wasn’t here because of you, Candy. When you turned up, the plan changed a bit.”

“Then why were you here?”

Jonah looked down at the floor. “This is one of the parts of my job I don’t like. I can’t tell you that. Not until I get the okay from my father.”

I didn’t bother hiding my scowl. “So I just happened to walk into your plan, whatever it was?”

He nodded.

Great. I didn’t know if I should believe him or not. “How convenient for you since you were targeting my father.”

“Candy, listen.” He slid closer and rested his hand on the chair beside my leg.

Pumpkin tensed in my arms, and Jonah eyed him warily as Pumpkin jumped down onto the floor and walked toward the door. When the cat found it closed, he sat down in front of it and looked back at us.

“I think he wants to go inside,” Jonah said.

It looked to me like Pumpkin really wanted to get away from Jonah, which was something I should have wanted too.

Jonah waited for my gaze to return to him before he continued. “You should know that there’s more that I don’t like about my job. For example, I don’t like it when people get hurt, especially people I care about.”

I sat back in the chair, listening.

“When I helped you get the job at the diner,” he said, “it was because my father asked me to. Stephen and Sam work with my father sometimes. They get involved with the community and listen for information. Running some kind of bar or restaurant usually works well for that.”

My chest tightened at the thought of the diner. I knew something was off about those brothers.

“My father wanted you to have that job to keep you out of your house on the weekends when your father was away so he could search it more easily.” He glanced down and scratched his cheek, looking uncomfortable again.

Here it comes. He’s going to confess to locking me in the freezer, and then I’m going to stop holding back the scream lodged in my throat.

Jonah’s gazed was pained. “You need to know that in this business, traitors are considered the lowest of the low. Stephen and Sam hated your father before they ever met him, and they knew about your condition, Candy. They were told all about you when you got here just like I was, and when they got the chance to hurt your father by hurting you, they took it. It was one of them who locked the door on you. I’m sorry. If I knew what they had planned, I wouldn’t have let you anywhere near that place.”

It had been one of the brothers, Stephen or Sam? I stared at Jonah as I struggled with my thoughts. It sounded plausible.

Regret transformed his expression, weighing it down. But I also saw a flicker of expectation in his gaze, a small spark of hope as he watched me, wanting me to finally believe him.

All along there was a part of me that wouldn’t accept that Jonah could have hurt me so callously. Could I have fallen this hard for someone who could do that to me? I sincerely hoped I was smarter than that.

I wanted to believe him; I wanted it so badly that I let myself consider it. But whether I believed him or not, it didn’t change anything. He’d still deceived me, and my father was still gone.