Lush

by Beth Yarnall

  “I know you don’t want to hear this right now, but is it possible you could’ve misinterpreted what happened back there?”

  “Well, I don’t know. If you walked into your wife’s office and she had her secretary on his back on her desk and was on top of him, kissing him, what impression would you get?”

  “It’s just that I’ve seen the way he looks at you, and I can’t see him looking at any other woman that way.”

  “He was doing a lot more than looking at another woman just now. This isn’t the first time I caught him cheating on me, Sam.” Putting her hands over her face, she collapsed forward. “What am I going to do?”

  She had nowhere to go and no money that wasn’t Cal’s. She was homeless with a child to support. Things couldn’t possibly get any worse.

  “I don’t even know where to tell you to take us.” She swiped at the tears that wouldn’t stop falling. “I don’t have any money for a hotel room. There’s no way I’d ever go back to my mother’s house.”

  “I’m taking you home.”

  “I don’t have a home anymore!” Her outburst woke up Poppy, who’d been asleep in the backseat. “I’m sorry, sweetie. Sshhh. It’s all right.” Lucy handed her daughter her favorite stuffed animal and noticed a taxi behind them with a familiar outline in the backseat. “How long has that taxi been following us?”

  “Since we left Cal’s building.”

  “That son of a bitch! Pull over.”

  “What?”

  “Pull over.”

  “We’re on the highway.”

  “Sam, if you don’t pull this car over, I’m going to grab the wheel myself.”

  “All right, all right.” Sam maneuvered the car to the side of the road and stopped.

  Just as Lucy predicted, the taxi pulled up behind them. She opened her door and marched toward the other car.

  Cal climbed out of the back and stood with the door open. “Darlin’, you have to believe me. Nothing happened back there.”

  “I don’t have to do shit where you’re concerned, Cal Sellers. I told you that if you ever cheated on me, we were through. We’re officially through, you lying, no good, dick-for-brains cheat!”

  Cal slammed the car door and stalked toward her. “I didn’t cheat!”

  Lucy parked her hands on her hips. “Really? ’Cause where I’m from, crawling between the legs of your honey on top of your desk is cheating!”

  They were feet apart now, yelling and gesturing at each other. Traffic slowed to watch.

  “She attacked me. I swear to God, darlin’—”

  “Don’t call me darlin’! Don’t call me anything ever again.”

  “There isn’t another woman in this world I want more that you. I swear it. If you’ll just listen to me—”

  “Listening to you got me in this predicament in the first place. Listening to you is how I wound up in the exact same position as I was in two years ago. Listening to you is how I got my heart broken by you twice. I can’t listen to you anymore, Cal. I can’t afford your words. They cost me too much.”

  His voice softened to where she could barely hear it. “Dar—Lucy, I’m so sorry you’re hurting because of me, but I swear to you—”

  “You can swear out a formal statement in blood and I wouldn’t believe a word of it.” She threw her hands up. “I can’t believe I’ve been such an idiot where you’re concerned.”

  He started to take a step toward her, but she put a hand up to stop him. Seeing him now churned up every single emotion she had inside her. But the one that beat the others to the front was anger. She was so damned angry with him, with herself, and with the whole damn mess she was in. Before she knew what she meant to do, she hauled off and slapped him in the face. It was like something let loose inside her, and she went blind with rage, beating ineffectually at him until she was nearly out of breath and he caught her wrists.

  He put his face close to hers, his eyes pleading every bit as much as his words. “Lucy, she’s the one who was working with your ex. That’s how he knew where you’d be and when. That’s what I was doing with her before things got out of hand—getting her to admit it. On tape. I swear it. Please. You have to believe me.”

  She stopped trying to break free and stared at him, wondering how she’d gotten here. How had her life done a complete one-eighty, landing her right back where she’d last left off with him? And the thing of it was she wanted to believe him. She wanted him to prove to her that he hadn’t betrayed her again, that she wasn’t a fool to have trusted him a second time.

  “Come back to the office with me. I’ll show you. Please, Lucy.”

  Could this be true? Could he be telling the truth?

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Cal was literally fighting for his family and his life with Lucy on the side of a highway with people slowing to take photos and video. She was furious with him. He could hardly blame her. He’d let things with Felicia get out of hand. He was only now realizing what a completely stupid idea it had been to try to seduce a confession out of her. Of course Lucy had walked in. That was his dumb luck. The look on her face…just like the last time she’d caught him with his assistant on top of his desk. Lucy was right. He did have a dick for brains.

  “Come back to the office with me,” he pleaded. “I recorded the whole thing. Come and watch the tape. You’ll see I’m telling you the truth. I love you so much. I don’t know what I’d do without you. Please. Please believe me.”

  “She told Kevin where I’d be?”

  “Yes.” He could tell his words were having some effect on her. She was starting to believe him. “She gave him the code to our security gate. That’s how he got in with the flowers. She told him about the shooting range, the ball, and the party at the studio. She knew exactly where we’d be and when. I started to get suspicious of her after your interview with Priscilla Barnes. Felicia had to have been the one to feed her that info about our arrangement. She was in the outer office while you were in my office. She must’ve listened in. Don’t you see?”

  Lucy looked off past Cal. She was thinking now instead of reacting out of emotion. He could see it in the way her brow furrowed and her lips pressed together.

  “I want to see this supposed tape you have,” she said.

  All the air left Cal’s body, and he nearly dropped to his knees. She believed him. Or at the very least she was entertaining the idea of believing him. All he had to do was get her back to his office and show her the tape.

  “Stay right there. Don’t move. Let me pay my cab fare, and I’ll ride back with you.”

  “No. I’ll meet you there.”

  “Okay. That works too.” He looked up at the news helicopter that circled above and around the traffic jam they were causing. Their scene would likely make the local news. For some reason he didn’t care.

  She started to walk back to the car.

  “Lucy?”

  She stopped but didn’t turn.

  “I love you, darlin’, more than anything. Please know that.”

  She resumed walking to the car and climbed in. He ran back to the cab and jumped inside.

  “We still following that car?” the cabbie asked.

  “Yes. We’re going back the way we came.”

  The driver glanced up at the circling helicopter through the windshield and then stuck his head and arm out of his window and waved. “I’m going to be on TV.”

  “Just go. Don’t lose sight of that car.”

  It took them an extra fifteen minutes to get back to Cal’s office building, and it cost him a fortune for the cab ride, but it was worth it. Lucy would see that he was telling the truth, and everything would go back to normal. A new normal now that her asshole ex was lying in the morgue. A better normal.

  “What are you smiling at?” Lucy asked as he held the front door of his building open for her.

  “I’m looking forward to taking you home after this and celebrating our new normal without Walker, without extra security. That’s all.�
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  “You’re awfully confident this tape will prove you’re not lying, aren’t you?”

  “As confident as a man with one foot over the finish line.”

  Except he still wasn’t all that confident where she was concerned. He’d fucked up before and she’d taken him back. Things might not turn out that way a second time. She’d trusted him enough on the side of that freeway to give him the opportunity to prove he wasn’t the cheating bastard she thought he was. He wouldn’t take a full breath until she saw the tape and believed him.

  They rode the elevator in silence. He kept stealing glances at her. She was so damn beautiful with her hair fluffed out from the wind and her cheeks red from her anger. If she wasn’t so boiling mad at him, he’d be thinking about putting more flush in her cheeks. To keep himself from touching her, he put his hands behind his back.

  They exited the elevator, and he hurried ahead to open his office door for her. They both ignored the stares of the employees who had no doubt gotten quite a show with both of them tearing out of there, then coolly strolling back in.

  He closed the door and went straight for the control panel behind his desk. The system was off. It should’ve still been on from when he’d set it up before confronting Felicia.

  “Oh, shit. No.”

  He flipped some switches and waited for the monitor to come to life. Gone. The whole scene was gone. Felicia must’ve seen that he’d had it on when she went behind his desk. That was why she’d jumped him. She must’ve planned to confront Lucy with the tape. But then Lucy had come in and he’d blown the whole thing by chasing after her. Felicia had to have known his plan then and deleted the tape because it incriminated her.

  He sat down hard in his seat, fully aware that Lucy was standing a few feet away, waiting for him to prove something he had absolutely no proof of. He was totally fucked.

  “It’s gone.” He turned to face her. “Felicia must’ve deleted it off the system after we left.”

  “Right.”

  “I swear…” He had no more fight in him. All he had to rely on was her trust, which he knew he hadn’t fully earned back yet. “I swear to you I’m telling the truth.”

  There it was. All of it laid out before her for her to decide—their present and their future. If she didn’t believe him, there was nothing left between them. The one thing she’d asked of him was to not cheat on her again, and in her eyes that was exactly what he’d done. He’d promised her, and he’d screwed it up.

  “I told you that I could take anything, Cal, anything except you cheating on me. Then I walk in on you with your secretary again. And then you humiliate me by dragging me back in here to do what? Try to convince me that what I saw wasn’t what I saw? You had your hands on her. You were kissing her.”

  “That’s not what—”

  “Don’t tell me that’s not what happened! I saw it with my own damn eyes. And the night you came home with lipstick on your face and you said it was Anne Gleason’s, that was really Felicia’s lipstick, wasn’t it? How long have you and Felicia been sleeping together? From the beginning?”

  “No. I’ve never done anything with Felicia. What I told you that night was the truth. It was Anne Gleason’s lipstick.” He could see it all through her eyes, all of the things that stacked up against him and chipped away at her trust.

  “So you just go about your day and women throw themselves at you left and right. You’re completely innocent.”

  “Yes.”

  She folded her arms across her chest. “How many?”

  “What?”

  “How many women have there been, Cal? All of those late nights at work, those last-minute out-of-town meetings. And I bought into it all, believing everything that came pouring out of your mouth.”

  “That was all business. There is only you. There’s only ever been you. I swear it.” He could tell she didn’t believe him. The more he denied it the less she believed. He wanted to go to her and put his arms around her and tell her he didn’t even look at other women, that she was it for him. If she left him, there would be no other.

  She stood in front of his desk, her eyes dry, her back straight, staring at him like she couldn’t believe what was happening.

  “I’m pregnant.” She laughed as though it was some kind of joke and she was the butt of it. “I’m pregnant and alone. Again.”

  Her words ripped through him, breaking open everything inside him. She was pregnant. His mind cataloged the information and spun its wheels trying to process it. He could only stare at her in disbelief. He’d worked like a damned dog to earn back her trust only to wind up where they’d left off the first time. He’d hurt her bad before, but this time there would be no second chance. There would be no reconciliation.

  She’d have his child without him. He’d be there just outside the room, writing checks and making sure she got what she needed, but he wouldn’t see his child come into the world. She’d go it alone, taking nothing from him, wanting nothing to do with him. He’d have to stand at the back of another church and watch her pledge herself to another man. And there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it.

  Again.

  She turned and walked out of his office. And his life.

  It took everything inside of Lucy to stride out of Cal’s office as though nothing was wrong when everything was wrong. He honestly thought she’d buy that crap about a tape. That he’d get her alone, do more of his swearing to the truth and double-talking, and she’d fall right back in line. Hell, if he’d kissed her in the elevator like she knew he’d wanted to do, she might’ve caved. She was that weak where he was concerned.

  At least that bitch Felicia had the good sense to leave, or Lucy would’ve had to walk past the woman who’d destroyed her marriage. She made it just inside the elevator before breaking down. She’d told him she was pregnant and he’d sat there. No expression change at all. No elation. No disappointment. Nothing. She was carrying his child. And she was well and truly alone.

  The past might’ve partially repeated itself, but she was going to make damn sure it didn’t fully repeat. She wouldn’t turn to the first man who would have her like she’d done with Kevin. She’d find a way to make it as a single mother of two children.

  Goddamn Cal and his goddamned knack for making her believe in him then knocking her on her ass. The only way things could get worse was if she was carrying twins. She laughed out loud at the possibility, knowing she looked like a lunatic crossing the lobby with tears streaming down her cheeks. It would be her luck to not only get knocked up by the same lowlife, cheating scum—twice—but to get knocked up the second time with twins. Twins.

  Sam got out of the car when he saw her and came around to open the door for her. “No tape?”

  “No tape.”

  “Ah, damn. I’m sorry, Lucy. Are you sure about this?”

  Nodding, she climbed into the car and stared straight ahead. What was she going to do? Where was she going to go?

  Sam’s cell phone rang. He glanced at the display then answered it. “Sam here.” He listened for a few moments. “All right. I’ll tell her. Yeah. I’m sorry. Bye.” He hit the End button. “Cal says to take you home. He’ll stay somewhere else. He says the house is yours and Poppy’s. The staff and I will stay on with you. That’s what he wants.”

  “You know what I want, Sam? I want a husband who doesn’t fuck his secretaries. That’s what I want. When do I get what I want? Hmm?” She put up a hand. “Don’t answer. It was a rhetorical question. I’m not accepting his home and his employees. Or his guilt. Please drop me and Poppy off at Mi and Lucas’s.”

  “I’ll stay with you.”

  “No offense, Sam, but you’re fired. I can’t afford to pay you. Besides, we don’t need a ninja nanny anymore.”

  “But Cal—”

  “Say his name one more time and I’ll get me and Poppy out of this car, and we’ll walk to their house.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  She had no plan other than to ge
t through the next few hours. Sam insisted on going up to Mi and Lucas’s apartment with her. She caught sight of herself in the mirrored elevator doors to their apartment and nearly gasped. Her hair practically stood on end, and her eyes were red and swollen. If they didn’t take her in, she had no other options. How could they refuse her looking so pitiful with Poppy on her hip and nothing but what was in the diaper bag and her purse to call her own?

  The front desk had announced them and sent them up in the elevator, so Mi and Lucas were waiting for them when it opened into their apartment.

  “Lucy.” Mi’s voice was full of sympathy as she scooped her and Poppy into a hard hug.

  Mi’s big pregnant belly made it difficult to get very close. The thought that soon Lucy would be as big as Mi made her burst into tears all over again.

  “Oh, sweetie. Come in and sit down.” Mi guided Lucy into the living room and down onto the couch. “Here, let me take her.” Mi held her hands out for Poppy.

  Lucy handed her over and watched as Mi tried to settle the baby on what was left of her lap. “I’m sorry to barge in on you like this.” Lucy swiped at the tears that wouldn’t stop falling. “If I had somewhere else to go…”

  “I’m glad you came here. What happened? Is Cal all right?”

  “Oh, Cal’s just fine.”

  Lucy filled Mi in on what had happened between her and Cal, right down to the humiliating scene in his office when he admitted there was no tape. The image of Cal on top of Felicia with his mouth on hers played over and over in a loop through Lucy’s head. She couldn’t get the picture of him standing next to his desk, his hair rumpled with lipstick on his lips, out of her mind either. What had made him think bringing her back to the scene of his crimes would help him convince her she’d imagined the whole thing?

  “That son of a bitch,” Mi breathed. “I can’t believe he did that to you. Twice.”

  “I can’t either. And I can’t believe I fell for him and his lies all over again. And that’s not even the worst part… I’m pregnant. Oh, my God, Mi, what am I going to do?”

  “You’re going to stay here as long as you need to. We’ll help you get back on your feet.”