My nostrils flaring, I say nothing. I don’t believe her, so what is there to say?
She stuffs the wrapper into her sandwich bag, her movements staccato. “If you really need proof, go back to your doctor and have another test.” Jerking open her purse, she pulls out her sunglasses, unfolds them, and puts them on before getting to her feet.
And I just watch her, my chest heaving with each breath. I feel like I’ve died and been reanimated, turned into a monster. A rage monster. My blood seethes with jealousy and fury and a crippling sense of betrayal.
“But let me tell you something,” she says coldly as she hooks the bag on her shoulder and grabs her trash. “When you get the results and you find out you’re part of the zero-point-whatever percent, sorry’s not gonna cut it. Because now I know what you really think of me.”
With that, she turns and marches off, tossing the garbage into the trash can a ways down the path.
The fucking bitch. Faithless, lying whore.
It could be anyone, really. Another attorney? She’d have lots of opportunities to meet one. Or a parent at one of the girls’ schools? A single dad, maybe—one who always finds time to come to school events that I don’t have time for. Hell, it could even be a teacher, though there aren’t a lot of male preschool and elementary school teachers. She also could’ve met someone at one of the many after-school activities she takes the kids to.
She can’t possibly be unprofessional enough to fuck a client, though. Right?
Maybe one of her college boyfriends found her on Facebook, and they’ve been hooking up.
And where? The perennial cliché: hotel rooms. Skeezy ones that charge by the hour. Or nicer ones if she’s found a guy with money. Yeah, that sounds more likely. Paige wouldn’t be slumming. She has standards.
Cars—her car? The one she drives our kids around in?
Or at home? In our bed?
Fucking Christ. My lungs constrict. I can’t breathe.
Why, then? Why? I thought we were happy. Sex is not a problem. It’s never been a problem. And we have two happy and smart and funny little girls, who we adore and would do anything for. We’ve learned to cohabit, keeping friction to a minimum.
I love her, for fuck’s sake. I love her so much I never feel like I can adequately express it or show it or even wrap my own mind around it. Seems like it should be impossible, loving someone this much. She’s the earth, and I’m the moon. She’s everything I’ve ever wanted.
And I thought she loved me, too. All this time, I thought she felt the same.
I sit there on the park bench for a long time, lost in a void. I’m an empty shell.
What the hell do I do now?
Chapter 19
Paige
Present Day
I wake with a start. There’s a blaring, bleeping sound coming from somewhere beside me, and I groan when I realize it’s my alarm. Rolling over onto my back, I fumble for my phone on the nightstand and hit the button on the side to mute it.
Then I sink back into the pillow, my eyes drifting shut again. Oh, my God. I feel like death. There are a thousand jackhammers in my head, and my tongue is so dry it’s glued to the roof of my mouth. Twinges in my limbs remind me of yesterday’s hike, and for a long time, I just lie there staring blearily up at the wood-paneled ceiling, not wanting to find out how much it’s going to hurt to move.
Don’t fuck him, Paige.
I squeeze my eyes shut. Then I mimic that motion with my thighs as the memories rush in, and a pulsing and throbbing starts as I recall him pushing me down on the back of the love seat, tearing off my underwear, thrusting inside me, filling me, fucking me. He was so hard, and it felt so damn good. A whole year of not getting any action that doesn’t involve batteries, and he pretty much just needed to snap his fingers to get me to give it up for the real thing. It’s embarrassing. Disgusting, even. Downright depressing.
Technically, I didn’t disobey Beth’s order, though.
I didn’t fuck him.
My stomach’s churning, and it’s not just because I’m hungover. After wanting him so badly, enjoying it so much, and coming so fast and so hard, I’m not proud of how I treated him afterward. No, I don’t wish I’d said thank you or anything, but there’s no denying I was pissed at myself and took it out on him.
Pissed at my own weakness.
Furious that I couldn’t resist him.
And enraged that all it did was give me a blissful taste of everything I can’t have anymore.
At least I don’t have to worry about getting pregnant again. When Elliott was delivered by emergency C-section, I had my tubes tied. And not long after, Logan had his vasectomy redone and is supposedly taking a test every six months or so to make sure it hasn’t grown back again. If that double protection isn’t good enough, I figure I have to accept that the universe wants me to keep popping out babies until I’m a shriveled, old crone.
Sighing, I pick up my phone and turn it on. There’s a text from my mom, asking if the girls are allowed to have chewing gum, because apparently they’re trying to convince her they are. Absolutely not, I reply quickly. And tell them I said they’d better stop lying or else.
Then I check my emails. Spam, spam, a message from a client—I read the content and see it’s not urgent, so I can answer it later—and more spam. Then I spot the name Luna Gerst and an email titled “Report.”
Suddenly I’m wide awake. Finally. The timing couldn’t be more perfect, right before the final round of negotiations. My fingertips prickle as I tap on the message. Skimming through the investigator’s brief note, I scroll to the bottom and open the attachment.
Then I start reading. By the second page, my eyes go big. By the fifth page, my heart is pounding. And when I get to the end, my stomach is in my throat.
Holy. Crap.
Without hesitation, I fire off a text to Caroline, telling her we need to talk immediately. Then I jump out of bed—wincing as my sore muscles protest—and limp hurriedly into the bathroom to get ready.
While I’m rushing through my morning routine, my phone dings with a reply from my client, telling me to come to her cabin ASAP. After answering an affirmative, I finish my hair and makeup as well as I can with my slightly shaky hands. My mind is still churning with shock and disbelief as I pull on khaki shorts and a white sleeveless blouse, which seems like a suitable work-slash-vacation outfit.
When I leave the bedroom, I falter at the sight of Logan sitting at the bar counter. In one hand he holds his phone, reading and scrolling with his thumb, and in the other he has a mug with steam rising from it. Which makes me realize that, even though I have no time for breakfast and as much as I’d like to escape without interacting with him at all, I can’t get through this morning without coffee.
Brushing past him, I head for the single-cup brewing machine on the kitchen counter. I can feel his eyes boring a hole in my back as I set my bag down, grab a pod from the carousel next to the machine, and pop it in. While it brews, I pick an insulated paper to-go cup off the stack and place it under the spout.
“Can we talk?” he says at last while my cup fills up with steaming, fragrant black liquid.
“Not now.” I put the lid on before turning around to face him.
“Why?” His eyes narrow into slits.
“I gotta go,” I announce, snatching my bag off the counter and lifting the cup to my lips while I start making my way out of the kitchen.
“We have another settlement meeting in less than an hour.” He twists on the stool, his gaze following my progress as I walk past.
“Exactly,” I can’t help saying with a faint smirk over my shoulder at him.
Ugh. I want to kick myself. That was a mistake. No way he won’t notice such obvious gloating.
He sits up straighter. “You got something.”
This time I manage to keep my mouth shut, but once I reach the door, I still flick a glance back at him. He’s picked up his phone again and is furiously tapping away.
&nb
sp; May the odds be ever in your favor, babe.
Sunlight hits me the second I step outside, bright and harsh, and one-handed, I dig my sunglasses out of my bag and put them on while striding briskly down the gravel path away from the cabin, sipping my coffee and enjoying the balmy temperature and the fresh air.
Logan’s definitely got Stevens and Hammerness’ in-house investigator trying to dig up dirt on Caroline, but he clearly has nothing yet or he would’ve thrown it in my face by now. And there’s absolutely no way they’re going to find anything to match what I’ve got.
It’s game over for him right now. He just doesn’t know it yet.
I allow myself a brief moment of feeling good about that before I go back to dreading breaking this to Caroline. It’s good for her position in the divorce, but that’s going to be overshadowed by all the ways it’s bad news. Like, seriously bad news. Ugh.
My mind goes back to Graham Weber and our pleasant stroll last night. And how not aggressive he was, compared to Logan. He gave me his business card, for God’s sake.
Then I decided to kiss him. Because I haven’t kissed a man who’s not Logan for the past decade, and I wanted to know how it would feel. I’m not sure how I wanted it to feel, because I definitely found Graham attractive, and so if I felt no spark at all, that’d bode ill for the chances of me ever truly getting over Logan. But the idea of feeling too much scared me, too, because where would I go from there?
In the end, the experience landed somewhere in the middle. Kissing Graham Weber was…nice. It definitely had potential.
And maybe that’s what I should be aiming for from now on: a perfectly nice guy who’s not too exciting. Seems less likely to end in grief that way.
The last bend in the path before Caroline’s cabin comes into sight, I run into Stuart Garnett, who’s looking frazzled, to say the least—several strands of hair out of place, his Hawaiian shirt and white pants wrinkled.
The bastard. Scumbag, asshole, piece of shit. Every insulting name under the sun, they fit him.
When he sees me, he grinds to a halt. “What the hell’s going on?”
I stop before him, wishing I could bring myself to be rude enough to ignore him and keep walking. “You know I can’t talk to you about the case.”
“First Caroline tells me to leave because she needs privacy with you,” he says, throwing his arms out, apparently not giving a crap about what I just said, “and Logan just called and said he needed to talk to me.”
Right. I don’t have the time or the patience for this man and his self-important garbage right now. Flattening my lips, I say, “See you later, Stu,” and then I march away from him, hurrying up the last stretch toward his and Caroline’s cabin.
Before I manage to knock on the front door, it swings inward, and Caroline ushers me inside. She must’ve been watching for me, and the look she gives me after shutting the door contains a mixture of eagerness and anxiety.
“All right,” she says tightly. “Let’s hear it.”
“I got the report from the investigator.” I fish my phone out of my bag. “You should read it for yourself. But let’s sit down first,” I tell her. She’ll thank me for that later.
She leads the way to living room area, and my insides clench at the sight of chair and sofas and coffee table, including a love seat identical to the one in our cabin.
God.
That’s not going to happen again.
You keep telling yourself that.
Damn him.
Once we’re seated, I bring the report from Luna back up and hand the device to Caroline, who squints at the screen, scanning it. Leaning back in my chair, I take quiet sips from my cooling coffee and try not to stare too much at the older woman, though it’s hard, because I want to watch her reaction so badly. Other than a slight pallor in her cheeks, her expression remains stoic.
“Where did he get this?” she asks after a minute or so.
“Her, actually,” I reply, suffering a twinge of annoyance that Caroline Carne, of all people, would make such a sexist assumption. “And I don’t know, but it looks legit. Payments came in from shell companies for consulting services there’s no other evidence your firm actually provided. Then payments went back out totaling the exact same amounts for services that were probably also fabricated.”
Her mouth thinning, she says nothing, confirming my statements by not contradicting them. Her index finger keeps scrolling the pages in quick, jerky motions.
Oh, yeah. Stu’s life as he knows it is about to end.
“Okay. So…” Caroline says when she’s done reading, leaning over to hand the phone back to me. “I’m not…I can’t…” She wavers, blinking rapidly. “I need to know I’m understanding all of it correctly.” Meeting my gaze straight on, she declares, “He did it.”
“Took the bribes?” I raise my eyebrows, get a nod from her in answer. “Definitely looks that way.”
The older woman blows out a labored breath. “And the reason Logan got him acquitted is because the DA’s office didn’t have any real evidence. And the reason they had no evidence is because they were looking in the wrong place.”
“Yeah. They looked for the money in his business accountings.” Swallowing hard, I add, “Not yours.”
Caroline makes a fist and folds it within her other hand, wringing and rubbing. “You know, they questioned me. More than once. Had he asked me to move money around for him? Had he invested in my company recently? Did he have access to Carne Consulting’s accounting? I told them no—and thought it was the truth.” She shakes her head. “And I guess they believed me, because they never requested to see our books. They knew he couldn’t have hidden the money that way.”
“Not by himself,” I agree, and the next words taste bitter on my tongue. “But they didn’t know he had the help of your accountant. And Johanna.”
Her accountant, Scott Mullane, has his fingerprints all over the fake transactions that laundered the money through Caroline’s company. He entered the income as real consulting fees, for businesses that didn’t exist. Then he paid it back out to Johanna’s law firm, invoices for billable hours that I can guarantee were exaggerated and fraudulent.
“And Scott resigned around the time Stu was indicted. It never occurred to me there was any kind of connection there.” My client squeezes her eyes closed, her shoulders sagging just a tad. “I don’t get it,” she grinds out. “It’s not like either of them needs the money.”
“There are plenty of people in this world who can never have enough money.” Sighing, I add, “There are also people who do shady things just because they can. And because it gives them a thrill.”
Did Johanna put him up to it? It’s not a stretch to guess she was the brains of the operation, since that’s something Garnett is in short supply of.
If I hadn’t just seen the proof with my own eyes, I’d never have believed it of Johanna. Pretty sure I’m neither naive nor gullible. Caroline certainly isn’t, and I feel like we’re equally surprised by all of this. Well, by Johanna’s part in it, anyway. As far as Stu goes, I wouldn’t be surprised if he turned out to be a serial killer.
“Look,” I say briskly, “I know you’re in shock right now. I’m pretty shook-up, too. Johanna was my mentor, and I’ve always had a ton of respect for her.”
Drawing a harsh breath, I struggle to keep my voice steady. “But it’s my job to look at the practical side of this, to look out for you. So far we’ve been negotiating from a position of weakness. You want a quick divorce, and Stu doesn’t, so he’s had the upper hand. That’s not the case now.”
Pulling away from my touch, my client pushes up from the table and heads into the kitchen, where she grabs a glass from a cupboard and fills it up with tap water.
“Actually, the divorce isn’t much of a concern anymore,” she says, leaning back against the counter, lifting the glass to her mouth. “It’s definitely not urgent.”
What? I tilt my head, frowning. “Why?”
She takes
a drink, a long one, so long that it seems like an attempt to delay answering. What the—?
There’s a buzzing sound from over by the door, a small click followed by the door crashing open, and then Stuart is barreling through the doorway like he’s being chased by bears.
As he stops just inside, a wild look in his eyes and his hair now in complete disarray, I see Logan trudging up the steps onto the patio and entering behind his client. With his hands in his pants pockets, he appears about as thrilled as a cat about to have a bath.
“What the fuck, Caroline?” Garnett bursts out. “You’re leaving me for Johanna?”
What?
Wait. Waitwaitwaitwait.
What?
Whipping my head toward my client, I gape at her, my eyes bugging. I’m expecting denial, outrage, disbelief. Instead her face freezes, pink creeping into her cheeks. Yeah. Caroline Carne, the queen of poise, is blushing.
My stomach clenches. When was she planning on telling me?
Gah. Now everything makes sense, doesn’t it? That she didn’t want anyone to know she was leaving Stu for another man is one thing. The other person actually being a woman, though? That’s the kind of salacious tidbit that would set tongues wagging, and I totally understand why she wanted to keep it quiet.
It’s also no wonder she’s lost enthusiasm for divorce all of a sudden. The “someone else” she’s met, the person who’s taught her what it’s like to truly be in love, is Johanna Masters.
And Caroline just found out the love of her life is a complete fraud.
“Is it true?” her husband spits out. “I told Logan his investigator messed up. You wanna screw Johanna, you don’t need to leave me. You know that.”
Nostrils flaring, Caroline shoves away from the counter. “Were you screwing Johanna when she and my accountant helped you launder the bribes through my company?”
Stu’s face drains of color.
Boom, asshole.
Mend (Waters Book 2) Page 25