by Moira McTark
“Fine? Is…is he hurt?” The color drained from her face as quickly as it had gathered. Her words were barely more than a whisper as she fumbled with the phone she’d pulled from her slacks pocket, trying to dial. “Did Cal do something to him?”
“He’s got a shiner but he’s okay.” Lara shook her head. “Dette, Cal’s talking to Adam now.”
Dette stared at her, looked down at the phone as a man’s voice answered. Lara had never seen her sister so wracked with indecision.
Closing her eyes, Dette snapped the phone shut and straightened her shoulders. “Well, then I suppose we should go in and get this over with.”
Lara took a step back. “No, you need to talk to Adam yourself. He’s your fiancé.”
Dette grabbed her arm. “No, you’re in this with me. We are all going to sort it out together and get our stories straight.”
“You got a minute?” Cal stood in the doorway of the chart room, hands jammed into his pockets. Adam stood by the bar with two of his groomsmen, swirling a glass of amber liquid in his hand.
“Caleb, my best man. Dette is going to tan your hide for screwing with her schedule this morning. Have fun with Lara?”
“Actually, I need to talk to you alone. Can we go for a walk?”
Adam snorted. “Sounds like you’re getting your nerve up to ask me to the prom. Guys,” he said, waving them out. “Give us a couple of minutes.”
When the door closed behind him, Cal crossed the room. “Why did you ask me to be your best man? We haven’t talked in years, and honestly we were never that close.”
Adam regarded him seriously. “You were my roommate in college. And this way I didn’t have to choose one of my boys over the others. So we weren’t best friends, you seemed like the best choice. What’s this about?”
“I want to be a good friend to you, so I’m going to tell you something you won’t want to—but you need to hear.” Cal cut to the chase. “I slept with Claudette. Four weeks ago in Vegas. It wasn’t Lara.”
Adam was still, his mouth pressed in a thin line. Slowly, he raised his glass to his lips and downed the contents. “You just figure this out now? Shit, Cal. Even I can tell the difference between them.”
“Yeah, I just figured it out or I would have told you.”
Nodding, Adam’s gaze fixed on the empty glass in his hand. “Well that would explain the somewhat strained introductions. So what happened?”
“Dette says you broke up with her. That’s what Lara thinks happened. It’s why she went down there. It was one night. Not even enough meaning for me to be able to tell the difference between the girls.” That was a lie, but Adam didn’t need to know about how bad it had been with Dette, or how good it was with Lara, how blind Cal was for believing them. “If you broke things off—”
“Me?” Adam let his head fall back, rich laughter breaking free. “Are you kidding? Dette’s not the girl you throw back. I’d never be so stupid as to let an investment like Claudette Sinclair slip through my fingers. She’s the ideal wife. Fully funded, socially adept, immaculate in her appearance. Influential family. She’s the perfect politician’s wife.” The intensity of his tone was ramping fast. “The only thing wrong with my fiancée is she can’t keep her damn legs shut. Fuck!”
Adam eyed him, pouring another drink. “Who else knows?”
“Lara.”
“Fine, she won’t be spreading it around. At least Claudette had the good sense to go out of state this time.”
Cal didn’t know what to say. He’d been expecting to console Adam but, in retrospect, this was the Adam he’d roomed with in college. The man with a plan, not a broken heart. The hurt and betrayal that had ripped at Cal when Paige, someone he hadn’t even loved anymore, cheated on him wasn’t a factor here.
“There’s something else, and I don’t know for sure that it was Dette, but…last night—”
The door burst open and Dette marched into the room, trailing Lara behind in her tight grasp. “So I guess we have a situation here,” she said, refusing to meet Adam’s eye.
Adam toasted her with his glass and took another long sip.
Rolling her eyes, Dette snapped. “Go easy on the booze, would you? Do you want everyone here to know you’re a drunk?”
“I’m not a drunk, I’m getting drunk. And this coming from the queen of class, giving Cal here a free ride.” He ran a hand over his jaw and smoothed down the front of his shirt. “So, Dette, if I didn’t dump you…who did?”
Lara’s head snapped up, the hurt visible on her face. “What? Dette, how could you?”
“Please, Lara, I was completely right about the potential for damage. You saw how close Cal came to announcing that I gave him a go in Vegas when he first saw me here at the house.” She shifted uncomfortably and finally met Adam’s narrow stare. “It was Dale.”
“The one I told you to give up?”
Dette shrugged, noncommittally.
Cal took a step back toward the door. This was the kind of dysfunction he had no interest in witnessing. What kind of life were they planning together? “Lara, let’s give these two some space to figure out what they want to do.”
Dette spun on him. “What the hell is that supposed to mean, Cal? There’s nothing to work out—if you’re talking about the wedding. The only thing that matters here is keeping this quiet. Can you handle that?”
“Adam, you’re going through with this?” Lara asked, flinching from the look Dette shot at her.
Adam arched his brow, as if surprised by the question. “Of course. Though, Dette, you need to make sure this Dale is really out of the picture.” His eyes were steely hard. “I’m serious.”
Cal couldn’t be a part of any more secrets. “The boathouse, last night. I don’t know if it was them or not. But I think it was.”
Dette glared at him. “Fuck you, Cal. Yes, it was Dale. How many men do you think I’m banging over here?”
A question of honor? It was too much. Cal looked from face to face. He couldn’t understand any one of them. Even Lara with her downcast eyes—he couldn’t understand how she could be dragged into this so blindly. How she could trust her sister when, from his perspective, it looked as though Dette didn’t do a thing but lie and deceive? Adam looked like he might be the perfect match for her after all.
His head was spinning. Hurt and betrayed, confused and exhausted, not to mention disgusted with himself. Cal had had enough. “I’ve got to get out of here.”
Lara looked up at him with a pleading gaze. She wanted him to take her out of there, to rescue her, but she was half the problem. He needed time to think. He needed some space from the insanity of the Sinclair estate. With a single shake of his head, he told her no and watched the hope fade from her eyes.
He wasn’t being fair, but none of this was fair. “I’m sorry, Lara, it’s too much.”
Chapter Fifteen
Cal was gone. Gone from the room, gone from the house and probably gone from her life. Lara couldn’t blame him. If the tables had been turned, if this had been his family, she might have run for the hills too.
Closing her eyes, she drew in a long breath, forcing her lungs to fill, trying to alleviate the feeling of cold emptiness within her chest. No, she wouldn’t have been able to leave him.
Her lids lifted and her gaze settled across the room on Dette who looked to be ignoring Adam’s threats about her showing some discretion when it came to her lovers.
“You knew how I felt about him.” Lara’s words were slow and deliberate.
Adam stopped talking. Dette’s hard stare slid up to meet her own. “What’s your point?”
“You wouldn’t let me tell him, even though you knew how much he meant to me. You wanted me to lose him.”
“Don’t try and pin this on me, Lara. You could have told Cal if you really wanted to.”
“But I didn’t because I believed you when you said you loved Adam. Looking at you now, I can’t even tell if you like him.” Her brows pulled together in disbelief
as she spoke. “How does the man you are marrying not even care that you slept with someone else?”
“Marriage means different things to different people. You, with your wide-eyed romanticized view on life, want a man who will love you. You don’t care about money or society. But I’m a practical girl. I understand that to have the things in life that are important to me, to my family, sacrifices have to be made. Adam comes from the right family, has the right job, knows the right people…”
He glanced over and nodded. “Likewise.”
Lara shook her head and held up her palm. “Dette, do you hear yourself? Important to you? Important to your family? Who are you kidding? Mom and Dad aren’t even here. That’s how much they care. Your pack of bridesmaids? You’ve backstabbed each of them so many times, they’re only here out of obligation. The one person who actually loves you—who actually cares is me. Was me. But I’m done. Because I can finally see that I’m not important enough for you to just tell the truth.” Pointing her hand at Adam, she yelled, “You wouldn’t have lost anything. He doesn’t give a shit! But I’ve lost Cal, and I love him.”
Adam shifted uncomfortably, chewing on the inside of his cheek. Finally, he rubbed his hands together and glanced back at the door. “Well, I think we’re just about done here. Dette, you and I can straighten this out later. Lara…” he looked at a loss for words. “Keep your chin up.”
“Sure, Adam.” Lara stood perfectly still. If she let herself move, she feared she would explode. She needed Adam out of the room, but she wasn’t finished with Dette, not by a long shot.
“Grow up, Lara. Cal wasn’t going to stick around anyway, so stop your whining.”
Lara rounded on her. “What the hell makes you say that? Because he didn’t stick around for you?” And then she stopped. Blinked. It couldn’t be that simple. That small. And yet, with one look at Dette, wearing a small turn at the corner of her mouth, Lara knew that was it. “You’re jealous.”
The malevolent smile melted into a scowl. “And why is that so hard to believe? That I would be jealous of you—the girl who gets everything she wants, doesn’t care about finding the right kind of man but gets one handed to her on a silver platter and then falls in love with him. You get everything and you don’t even have to try!”
“What are you talking about?”
“You think if this was your wedding that Mom and Dad would still be in Mexico? You think they would fly in the night before?”
“Dette, you planned this wedding with two months’ notice. You chose a date when you knew they were going to be gone.”
“They are always gone!” she screamed. “Couldn’t they just this once come back for me? Just this one time?”
Lara shook her head. “We all know that they weren’t around enough when we were girls. That they shouldn’t have let business keep them away from us. But what’s done is done.”
“I did everything right. And when it didn’t work, I did everything wrong, but did anything work? No. Nothing I did mattered.”
“Dette, that’s not true. You took care of me when no one else was there to do it, and that mattered. Regardless of how unfair it was to you, you did it anyway, and I’ve never forgotten. But we’re adults now. It’s time to stop holding grudges and making excuses. Mom and Dad have apologized, but you keep trying to make them prove how sorry they are. You keep trying to get back at me for being the one you had to take care of, but I’m tired of taking it. All you do is test people, time and time again. Eventually it gets exhausting and people stop trying to prove that you are still the priority.”
“How can you talk to me like this? This is my wedding we’re talking about, and it’s falling apart around me… Mom and Dad should be here to help me prepare.” Dette’s bottom lip started to quiver. “It’s my special day.”
It was more than Lara could stand. Dette hadn’t heard a thing she’d said. It was time for her to become an adult.
“Every day is Dette’s special day! You did this on purpose. You! They asked you to pick any other weekend and you refused. Why? Why couldn’t you have done this next weekend, next month or next year? What’s the rush? You don’t even love this guy.”
“Go to hell, Lara. You are so naïve.”
Naïve about what? Then it came to her. “Oh, my God…you’re pregnant.”
“Shut up. Do you really think I’d be so stupid to lose my figure before I was married?”
Lara squinted, shaking her head. “Then what?”
“The money! I don’t get the cash until I’m married.”
“That’s it? Money?” She was stunned, confused. “I didn’t realize our trusts were structured like that.”
“Of course you would have no idea. Our trusts aren’t. My trust is structured like that. Mom and Dad didn’t think I was responsible enough to manage it on my own. I’ve been on an allowance, which is completely unsatisfactory. All of my resources are depleted. Until I marry ‘a suitable man’—approved by our parents, of course—who can assist me with my fortune, I can’t touch the fund!”
“You’re marrying Adam to get the money?” Lara gasped, disgusted.
“Of course I am. But it’s not like he’s some kind of a victim here. You know about his political ambitions. He’s positioning for a run at Congress. The Sinclair connection is going to get him there. And that is why he is marrying me.”
“I’m sorry, Dette. That is just about the most pathetic excuse for fucking up your life I’ve ever heard. And it does nothing to justify why you wouldn’t let me tell Cal the truth.”
“I was sick and tired of watching you get everything without trying. You live in a shack and pay your own bills, so Mom and Dad throw money at you, which you don’t even take. You don’t even know how much you have! You fall in love with some guy over email and he turns out to be Mr. Suitable, a self-made millionaire with half a dozen companies under his belt and he loves you back. I fall in love and the man I want more than anything isn’t suitable in the least. He barely graduated from high school and drives a van for a living! So yes, I’m jealous!”
Lara stopped. “You think you’re in love with Dale? Cal has all that?”
Dette glared at her. “Of course I’m in love with him. He dumped me a month ago because he couldn’t stand that I was marrying someone else. I tried to make him understand that he was the one I loved, and this way we would have the money, but he was so bullheaded. He said he wouldn’t share me and he didn’t care if we had two dimes to rub together, which was absurd, and then he left. That’s why I went to Vegas. But after three days, Dale couldn’t stay away. So I’ll have the money and, quietly, I’ll have Dale too.”
Lara stared at her sister for a long minute. Finally she said the words she knew Dette wouldn’t understand. “Dale deserves better than you.”
Dette looked like she’d been slapped.
“Why does that surprise you? Go ahead and marry Adam. Neither of you care about anything but yourself. You deserve each other. I hope Dale finds a woman who loves him more than her bank account.”
Lara turned to leave. She needed to pack. Call the airport. Who knew, maybe she’d get a ride from Dale. She was done with this whole ridiculous mess. Reaching for the doorknob, her head snapped back with a force she hadn’t experienced in years.
Dette’s cold voice hissed into her ear. “You think you’re just going to walk out? Take the high road? Well how about this? I knew it was Cal before I asked you for help. I knew it was your boyfriend.”
Stuffing his jeans into the open bag on his bed, Cal’s head snapped up at the primal scream echoing through the walls. “What the hell was that?”
Bitty, leaning against the jamb of the door, stared wide-eyed at him, a shocked smile on her red painted lips. “That’s them.”
“Lara and Dette?”
She nodded, ill-placed amusement glinting in her eyes. “Yeah, everything stayed pretty calm until Adam came out. Then it sort of escalated. I tried to go in, someone threw a vase at me—Dette probably
, she has no regard for her parents’ things. Adam won’t help. Can you please try to talk some sense into Lara? She’ll listen to you.”
“Bitty—” His protest was cut short by another shrill scream.
Bitty lunged into the room and grabbed his sleeve. “Just come!”
She half dragged him downstairs, the sounds of fighting growing with every step until they arrived outside the chart room.
The sound of bodies crashing against the doors had him pulling his lips back over his teeth. “Not just let-them-work-it-out-on-their-own sister stuff this time?”
“No way.”
He placed his hands against the wood paneled door. Pulling them apart, he paused at the threshold. “Holy shit.”
“Oh fuck,” gasped Bitty.
Papers were strewn about the floor. Books, tables and chairs were scattered, the bar overturned. It looked like animals had made the once pristine room their nesting grounds.
“—bitch!” Came the low snarl.
“Slut—” Forced through gritted teeth.
Cal couldn’t tell which sister was which. The hair of one stuck out in a wild matted bunch as she rolled on the floor, pinned by the other whose dark hair was slicked to her face with sweat.
“Lara?”
Neither registered his presence.
“Tacky trash—”A slick leg shot out and then the women were rolling, savage snarls and catty insults flying with their hair.
An open palm swung wide and smacked the already pink cheek of the woman on top. Cal staggered back in shock, but Bitty’s hands shoved him back into the room.
The woman on top let out a guttural growl as she cocked her fist back. “You fight like a girl!”
“Lara!” he yelled.
Lara, on top, froze, one fist grasping a mahogany mass of strands attached to Dette’s head, the other stalled an inch away from Dette’s eye. The color washed out of her face in a flash as she turned and looked over at him. “Cal?” Her attention snapped to Bitty beside him and the color flooded back with the blaze in her eye.