Loves Me, Loves Me Knot

by Heidi Betts

  But somehow this felt more disappointing than she’d expected. It wasn’t the thrill and excitement of a couple wanting a child and celebrating its conception together. What had she been thinking trying to rope him into a life she wanted, but he definitely didn’t? Oh, yeah, now she remembered. She hadn’t been thinking; the tequila had.

  “Are you okay?” Ronnie wanted to know. “Has he hurt you or are you afraid he’ll hurt you?”

  “Of course not,” Jenna answered automatically. Gage would never hurt her-not physically, anyway.

  “Then… I hate to do this to you, sweetie, but you’re on your own. We’re in the middle of a major meltdown over here.”

  Jenna jerked slightly in surprise, her pulse kicking up in concern. “Why? What’s wrong?”

  If possible, Ronnie’s voice dropped even lower. “We drove to Columbus to surprise Dylan and Zack, just like we’d planned. Except Grace was the one who ended up getting the biggest shock. She walked into Zack’s room and found another woman in his bed.”

  Jenna gasped, her mouth falling open in disbelief, but before she could say anything, Ronnie went on.

  “She was understandably upset. Insisted we leave, so we drove back home. She’s spending half the time sobbing and half the time raging. I’m seriously worried she’s going to hurt herself, hurt someone else, or make herself sick with grief.”

  “Oh, no,” Jenna moaned. “This is terrible. I can’t believe he did this to her. What a jag-off.”

  “To say the least,” Ronnie grumbled. “You should hear the creative names Grace has been calling him. I knew she had a mouth on her when motivated, but she’s been really imaginative today.”

  “Where are you? Your place or hers?”

  There was an uncomfortable pause on the other end, and in the background Jenna could hear the sound of crying, punctuated by the occasional screech, peppered with thumps, bumps, and crashes. And once in a while, the deep, heartfelt bellow of Bruiser, Zack’s mammoth Saint Bernard.

  “Actually,” Ronnie responded after a moment, “we’re at Zack’s place. She wouldn’t let me take her anywhere else. And as soon as we hit the parking garage… she completely destroyed his Hummer, Jenna. Took a baseball bat to it. I should have stopped her. I tried a couple of times, but an armed and angry Grace Fisher is kind of intimidating.”

  “Good God,” Jenna muttered.

  “I hope there were no security cameras down there, or we’re both going to jail. And don’t think less of me for saying this,” Ronnie went on, “but part of me thinks the bastard deserves what he gets. The other is just downright worried about Grace. She’s acting crazed, Jenna. I’ve never seen her like this.”

  “Yeah, well, she’s never had a fiancé cheat on her before.”

  “True. I’d probably feel the same way if Dylan ever cheated on me. And I’d go straight for all his dearest, most prized possessions.”

  Maybe it was shallow and petty, but Jenna concurred.

  “I’m on my way. Don’t let her hurt herself, Ronnie. If she starts going off the deep end or things get truly scary-”

  “Why do you think I haven’t left her alone? I can’t decide if I should worry about her committing suicide or homicide. If Zack were here, I swear he’d have a skate blade buried between his eyes by now. Or his groin.”

  Jenna would have liked to laugh at that, but it simply wasn’t funny.

  “Give me half an hour,” she said before disconnecting and racing back to the dining room to grab her purse.

  After three steps, she came to a screeching halt and yelped in surprise. “Good Lord, Gage. Give a gal some warning next time, would you? Stomp your feet or whistle or something instead of sneaking up on me like that.”

  He raised a brow. “I didn’t sneak. You just weren’t paying attention. What’s with the phone call?” he asked, indicating the cordless phone she’d left on the kitchen island.

  It was clear he’d heard most, if not all, of her side of the conversation, and she was so thoroughly offended with Zack on her best friend’s behalf that she’d morphed immediately into “all men are scum” mode.

  “Your friend”-she spat the word like it was cursed-“is an asshole.”

  Despite her charge and bitter tone, his face remained impassive. “Which one?”

  “Zack, the two-timing dickweed. Grace showed up at his hotel to surprise him and found another woman in his bed. I’m headed over to help talk her down before the police show up.”

  She took a step forward and grabbed her purse, swinging the strap over her shoulder on her way to the front door. “They should arrest Zack for being a lying, cheating bastard,” she muttered, somehow deciding that if she couldn’t take out her derision on Zack himself, the nearest male-namely Gage-would do.

  But when she banged out of the house, sans the satisfying slam of the front door, she frowned and turned around to find Gage standing on the porch behind her, gently closing the door she’d intended to rattle.

  “What are you doing?” she wanted to know.

  “Going with you.”

  She made a completely unladylike noise somewhere between a scoff and a snort. “I don’t think so.”

  A slow, humorless smile stretched his lips until two rows of straight white teeth were visible in the glow of the porch light. Jenna took a breath, her heart skipping a beat as she realized he looked eerily like a rabid wolf, baring its fangs just before going for the jugular.

  “I do,” he replied, his tone remaining soft and perfectly regulated. “When I said I was sticking around until I knew for sure whether or not you’re pregnant, I meant I’m sticking to you. Consider me your new best friend.”

  “I already have a best friend,” she countered, crossing her arms beneath her breasts and belatedly realizing she’d forgotten to grab a jacket.

  Not that she’d attempt to get past him and back into the house now. Not even if they were in the middle of a blizzard, in Antarctica, and her nose had just fallen off from frostbite.

  “Two, in fact, but neither of them follow me around like my shadow day and night.”

  “A shadow,” he repeated. “That’s better. Consider me your shadow until you get your period or the stick turns blue, whichever happens first.”

  She narrowed her eyes, but couldn’t think of a logical retort to his argument. Considering the determined tilt of his jaw, it wouldn’t have mattered, anyway. Nothing she said would budge him, not when he got like this.

  “Fine,” she said, trying not to let it sound too much like a huff, even though she was frustrated enough to kick him.

  Turning back toward the car, she slid behind the wheel, then stifled a grin as Gage struggled to climb into the passenger side and find a comfortable position.

  He was so tall, his head brushed the roof of her tiny VW, and even after pushing the seat back as far as it would go, his legs were still bent nearly to his chest and bumping the dashboard.

  “We could take my bike, you know,” he told her, sounding slightly aggrieved.

  “But you’re my shadow, not the other way around, and I don’t drive a motorcycle,” she quipped, turning the key in the ignition and putting her little Volkswagen in gear.

  For several long moments, Gage didn’t say anything, but she could almost feel him mentally grumbling. Good, it served him right. If he planned to follow her around for the next few days, making her life an abject misery, then she deserved to make him moderately uncomfortable from time to time, too.

  She zipped down the gravel lane and picked up even more speed when she hit the main road. She didn’t go over the speed limit, but she wasted no time in getting back to the city, wanting to reach Ronnie and Grace as quickly as possible.

  Her mind was still spinning over the fact that Zack had cheated on Grace. Oh, he was handsome, and a jock, and famous to boot; and she knew professional athletes had gorgeous women hanging on them practically everywhere they went. But she’d thought Zack was different. She’d thought he’d sewn his wild oats already
and was truly in love with Grace, ready to settle down and be a one-woman man.

  Instead, it turned out he’d been leading Grace on. He apparently wanted to have his cake and eat it, too. Have Grace as his beautiful, clueless wife to make him look good in the press and with the home-and-family crowd while also continuing to lead a fast-and-loose bachelor lifestyle.

  The jerk.

  All men weren’t selfish bastards, were they? There had to be a few decent fellows wandering around. A few guys who knew what it meant to be faithful.

  Gage had been one of those men. One of the good guys, who understood love and respect and monogamy. At least until-

  A sudden thought popped into her head and she immediately scowled. Fingers tightening on the steering wheel, she cranked her head in his direction and demanded, “Did you cheat on me while we were married?”

  Startled not only by her accusing tone and the question itself, but by the unexpected break in the silence of the car, he jerked his gaze to look at her, brows creased in the center of his forehead.

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  Splitting her attention between him and the road, she said, “I want to know if you ever cheated on me while we were together. Is that why you suddenly pulled away and decided you didn’t want kids with me? Was there another woman you wanted to be with instead?”

  Is there another woman now?

  It shouldn’t matter. She shouldn’t care. They were divorced, for God’s sake. It was none of her business what he did or who he did it with.

  She shouldn’t care, she shouldn’t care, she shouldn’t care. But deep down inside, a teeny-tiny part of her did, dammit.

  She didn’t want to think about him being with other women.

  Didn’t want to think about him making another woman laugh, the way he used to do with her… A dirty joke, a funny face, a slight tickle while they were watching a movie.

  Or another woman being the recipient of his romantic gestures… Flowers for no particular reason. A phone call in the middle of the day telling her to dress up and meet him somewhere after work for a surprise date. The occasional piece of jewelry or simply a soft kiss pressed to her cheek or temple out of the blue.

  Yes, he’d been one of the good guys. Maybe not the perfect husband, but then, she probably hadn’t been the perfect wife. They were both only human, after all, complete with their own individual foibles and insecurities.

  But Gage had always made her feel loved and cherished and secure in their relationship… right up until things had started to go downhill. Was that because he’d found someone else? Because his loyalties had been divided?

  She knew Gage-or had always thought she did, anyway. If there had been another woman he found attractive, found himself falling in love with, that could have accounted for his behavior toward the end of their marriage. Guilt might have explained his growing sullenness, his increased absences, his change of heart about having children.

  If that was the case, Jenna thought she might just kill him. They weren’t married anymore, but he still deserved to be punished.

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” he responded in a voice that made her feel exactly that. But only moderately. The rest of what she felt was relief.

  “There was no one else?” she asked softly. “You’re sure?”

  “I think I’d know if I were having an affair,” he snapped, his annoyance at her line of questioning evident. “Jesus, Jenna, what kind of man do you think I am?”

  For a second, she remained silent, her stomach still tight, and then she said, “I don’t know. I thought you were a man I could trust. I thought you loved me. I thought we shared the same wants and needs and views, and were going to be together forever. You blew a hole the size of a Buick in all of that, so how do I know what else you changed your mind about?”

  At first he didn’t respond, but there was a scraping sound in the dark space of the car interior that she thought might have been his teeth grinding down to nubs.

  “I never cheated on you,” he finally said in a low, dangerous voice. “I don’t know what’s going on between Zack and Grace, but don’t pawn his misdeeds off on me.”

  Until that very moment, until she heard him actually mutter the words I never cheated on you, she hadn’t realized that she’d been holding her breath, waiting. She wasn’t even sure her heart was beating.

  But now both her heart and lungs lurched back into action, sending her head spinning slightly and blood pounding through her veins.

  “Fair enough,” she replied when she was once again capable of normal speech. “When we get to Zack’s apartment, though, I suggest you stay out of sight, because I doubt Grace will be feeling the least bit charitable toward anyone of the male persuasion. I wouldn’t be surprised if she takes out her anger at Zack on every man within a hundred mile radius for months to come.”

  When they arrived at Zack’s apartment building, the situation was even worse than Jenna had envisioned.

  Because Zack was a high-profile hockey player, he lived in an upscale building, complete with security cameras and a uniformed doorman. The doorman had of course waved Grace and Ronnie right in when they’d arrived, aware of Grace’s relationship with Zack. She had permission and a key, and had been there thousands of times both with and without Zack.

  For Jenna and Gage, however, he insisted on buzzing up, and only let them past the lobby once Ronnie assured him both guests were expected and welcome.

  Instead of the cacophony of wanton destruction she expected to hear as soon as they stepped off the elevator, they were met with only silence. Whatever disturbance Grace had caused when she’d first arrived had apparently passed. Either that, or Zack’s neighbors had complained to the front desk about the noise and she’d been warned that if she didn’t quiet down, the police would be called.

  “You’d better stay out here,” Jenna told Gage as they reached the door.

  He nodded, taking up position against the opposite wall. Leaning back, he crossed his booted feet at the ankles and his arms over his chest.

  “I’ll keep an eye out for cops… or cheating ex-boyfriends,” he said, proving that their minds had been running along the same track, at least partially.

  Jenna turned the knob and let herself in, and at first the apartment didn’t look much different than usual. Zack wasn’t exactly a finalist for Neatnik of the Year to begin with, so half a dozen pairs of discarded shoes and well-used dog toys littering the entryway were less than remarkable.

  But as soon as she got to the end of the short foyer, which opened to encompass a kitchen on one side and a giant open living area on the other, she realized that the normally messy room now looked as though a tsunami had hit it. Twice.

  The living room was in shambles. Clothes were strewn everywhere. Cushions were missing from the sofa. Cords were yanked loose from the television, DVD player, Playstation, stereo, and everything else that required electricity to run. Zack’s abundant and cherished hockey trophies were knocked off their display shelves. A few were broken, and one… one was rather creatively rammed head-first into the wall. A definite forfeit of his security deposit.

  Making her way to the bedroom, she found Ronnie sitting on the edge of a chair in one corner, elbows on her knees as she patted a panting Bruiser with one hand and gnawed on the thumbnail of the other.

  Grace sat cross-legged in the middle of the bed, photo albums and newspaper clippings spread all around her. Obviously she’d settled down somewhat. Or rather, she’d shifted from ranting and raving to quiet and dogged personal devastation.

  Because in her right hand, she held a pair of scissors with bright red handles, and was using them to thoroughly and methodically cut the photos and newspaper clippings surrounding her into tiny, unidentifiable slivers.

  Her face was streaked with tears and lines of what was probably supposed to be waterproof mascara. Her hair was a blond rat’s nest, frizzy in some places, pulled straight in others. She looked like she’d been, quite
literally, through the wringer.

  “I tried to stop her,” Ronnie said as soon as she spotted Jenna in the doorway. “I told her she’ll be sorry later, but she won’t listen to me.”

  “I won’t be sorry,” Grace insisted, not bothering to lift her gaze from her current project. “I could never be sorry. Zack is the one who’s going to be sorry.”

  With that, she jumped up, grabbed an armful of the scrapbooks and paper fragments from the bedspread, and headed for the French doors overlooking a small balcony. Through the doors she went, night breeze ruffling the curtains behind her as she marched to the iron railing and pitched the records of all Zack’s sporting achievements into the street.

  Some of it floated gently downward like feathers. The rest fell and landed with a resounding thunk. Jenna winced, hoping there was no one walking along the sidewalk below who might become the unwitting recipient of a memento-induced concussion or the mother of all paper cuts.

  “Grace, sweetie,” she said softly as the other woman came back into the room. “Let Ronnie and me take you home. You’ll be more comfortable there, and we can stay up the rest of the night talking.”

  “I don’t want to talk. I want to hurt him.”

  Grace rushed across the plushly carpeted floor, throwing open the closet doors and yanking garments one by one off of their hangers. Casual shirts and slacks, suits, hockey jerseys, a tuxedo… she piled up as much as she could carry and stormed back across the room, tossing everything over the railing to join the rest of Zack’s belongings on the street.

  This was getting out of control. If they didn’t stop her soon the cops really would be called, and Grace would likely be hauled away for destruction of property, littering, and breaking and entering, among other things.

  On Grace’s next trip inside, Jenna blurted out a question she knew would get her friend’s attention. “Are you sure he cheated on you?”