Change of Heart

by Jenna Bennett

  He grinned, of course, since the knowledge that he has that effect on me never fails to amuse him. “Careful, darlin’.”

  “I was being careful,” I said, and managed to drop down on the bench almost gracefully, instead of as if my knees gave out. “Until I got involved with you.”

  “Too late now.” He slid into the booth opposite, and added, “I ordered you a cheeseburger and fries.”

  So much for the demure salad I’d planned to eat.

  “You’re going to make me fat,” I said.

  “Just trying to keep your strength up,” Rafe answered, his voice innocent but his eyes laughing. “I have plans for tonight.”

  “So do I, actually.” I took a sip of the dark brown liquid in front of me, and grimaced. Real Coke. Not Diet. Tastier, yes, but I could feel the sugar and carbs buzzing through my veins as I drank, headed directly for my hips.

  He quirked a brow. “Something you’re not telling me?”

  “Not at all.” We just hadn’t had time to talk. “I found out where Tim spent Friday night. I was going to go there and see whether I could find anyone who remembered him, and who could tell me whether he was alone when he left.”

  “Left where?”

  “It’s a place called Chaps,” I said. “Some kind of nightclub, I think. On Church Street.”

  “Chaps.” He had a funny look on his face.

  I tilted my head. “Have you been there?” Had it been part of some undercover operation at some point or another?

  He shook his head. “I think I should come with you, though.”

  “Why? It doesn’t sound like a particularly rough place.” Church Street is in a decent part of the midtown business district, and Chaps sounded like it was some sort of cowboy bar, maybe, like Coyote Ugly or the Wildhorse Saloon. There are plenty of those kinds of establishments around Nashville, with the country music industry. Lots of people in cowboy hats and boots, if not many actually wearing chaps. But I sincerely doubted that I’d need personal protection.

  “I don’t imagine so,” Rafe said, his face amused, “but once you get there, I think you’ll probably be happy to have me along.”

  I squinted at him. “Do you know something I don’t?”

  “I know lots of things you don’t,” Rafe said, “and I’ll be happy to show you some of’em as soon as we’re alone together.” He winked.

  “You know that’s not what I meant.” But I blushed anyway.

  He grinned. “Just deal with it, darlin’. Unless you’ve got some guy on the side you don’t want me to know about, that you’re meeting tonight?”

  “Of course not.” What would I want with another man when I had him? “You’re welcome to come along. I just didn’t want to assume you wanted to.”

  “Oh,” Rafe said, “if you’re going to a place called Chaps, I think I’d better.”

  Fine. He had nothing to worry about from other men, British or not, but I certainly wasn’t about to turn down the offer of company. I’d so much rather be with him than apart from him.

  “He emailed this morning,” I added, after the waitress had dropped two cheeseburgers and fries on the table and had taken herself off, not without a lingering glance at Rafe.

  “Tim?” He reached for the ketchup bottle, the muscles in his arm moving smoothly under the short sleeve of the white T-shirt.

  “Uh-huh,” I said, distracted.

  He grinned and lifted the bottle. “Want some?”

  “Please.” I watched as he reached across to my plate and deposited a load of ketchup there, and then did the same on his own. And then I watched as he put the bottle away. Lovely arms. Lovely muscles. Lovely... everything.

  He chuckled. “Eat your food, darlin’.”

  I nodded and reached for a fry. “I’m crazy about you.”

  “I know.” He dragged a fry of his own through the ketchup and popped it in his mouth. “I keep waiting for you to wake up and wonder what the hell you were thinking.”

  Surely not?

  It wasn’t like I’d fallen in love with him overnight, after all. It had taken months, and quite a lot of soul-searching, at least on my part. I’d known him a long time, even if I couldn’t say I’d had much to do with him back when we’d gone to school together. He’d brushed past me in the hallway once in a while, with a bold grin and a wink—“Looking good, sugar!”—whereupon I’d stuck my nose in the air and pretended I hadn’t heard him, all the while blushing furiously.

  He’d told me recently he’d liked me in high school, but he’d stayed clear because he figured my brother and Todd Satterfield would gang up on him if he did more than look at me sideways. Also, I was fourteen and jailbait, and he had enough problems with the law as it was. Besides, it wasn’t like I’d want anything to do with him anyway, he reasoned. Which was unfortunately true. I’d been afraid of him back then. He was three years older than me, and from the wrong side of the tracks, with a bad reputation and a blatant sexuality, even at seventeen, that had set my nerves to jangling.

  But I’d been aware of him. Very much aware. And back then, the story about fourteen-year-old LaDonna Collier getting herself in the family way by someone we’d never seen, someone from outside our small community, and having a mixed race baby... well, it all sounded sort of romantic, rather than sordid, the way my mother made it out to be. Shades of Romeo and Juliet.

  As I got older, I realized it couldn’t have been much fun for LaDonna, literally left holding the baby at such a young age. And when I got pregnant myself—at twenty seven, but out of wedlock and by LaDonna Collier’s good-for-nothing colored boy—I got a crash course in just what it was like.

  Losing that baby, and then losing Rafe, is the hardest thing I’ve ever had to go through. And when he came back, I was ready. I had admitted—to myself and anyone else who would listen—that I loved him. Not just liked him, not just got weak in the knees when he smiled at me—but loved him. Couldn’t imagine being without him anymore.

  The fact that he still wanted me, after everything I’d put him through, was a source of constant amazement to me, and there was no way on God’s green earth I’d change my mind. As far as I was concerned, he was perfection incarnate, and anyone who said differently got an instant earful of all the reasons they were wrong.

  “Not going to happen,” I said.

  He shrugged. “So he emailed this morning.”

  “Who?”

  “Tim,” Rafe said. “Isn’t that what you were telling me?”

  Oh. Right. “While I was sitting at Brittany’s desk, withdrawing the Armstrongs’ house from the market. The email program dinged, and I thought I’d better make sure it wasn’t something important. Since Brittany wasn’t there yet.”

  “In other words,” Rafe translated, “you snooped.”

  “Someone had to. Brittany still hadn’t shown up when I left for lunch. I hope nothing’s wrong.”

  “Prob’ly just taking the day of since the boss is gone,” Rafe said. “So what did the email say?”

  “At first he just wanted to know whether there was anything he needed to take care of. I told him about the Armstrongs’ house and that I’d taken it off the market. Then I told him that the police had been to the office. That seemed to worry him.”

  “It’d worry most people,” Rafe said.

  Perhaps. More likely to worry someone who’d done something he was afraid they’d discover, I imagined.

  “I also told him the police had been to his house and that they’d found a sheet set that matched the one Mr. Armstrong had been wrapped in when he was dumped in the park. That’s when he figured out I wasn’t Brittany.”

  “Imagine that,” Rafe said dryly. “I don’t suppose you know where he’s holed up?”

  I shook my head. “I asked. He said he was at a friend’s house. But then he figured out he was talking to me and not Brittany, so he disappeared.”

  Rafe nodded. “I don’t suppose you know any of his friends?”

  “I’m afraid not,”
I said. “I’ve seen him a couple of times with a few other gay guys—once at Fidelio’s, remember?—but I don’t know who any of them are. We don’t really move in the same circles.”

  “Course.” But his lips quirked.

  “What?” I said.

  “Nothing. Eat your food.” He took a bite of his own burger, chewed, swallowed, and added, “So when d’you wanna leave tonight?”

  Chaps opened at seven, or so the website had said.

  “That prob’ly means things start getting underway at nine,” Rafe said, and sounded like he knew what he was talking about. He certainly knew better than me, since bars are not within my area of expertise. My ex-husband was a lawyer, and when he took me out, it was to the opera or the ballet. Those I’m familiar with. Bars, not so much.

  “We can wait until nine.” I glanced at him across the table. “Do you have something else you have to do?”

  “Earlier. I’ll be home in plenty of time.” He bit into his burger. I was so gratified to hear him describe my apartment as home that I forgot to ask where he was going and with whom.

  It wasn’t until much later, after we’d finished lunch and gone our separate ways—me back to the office and he to Mrs. Jenkins’s house—that it occurred to me to wonder about his plans.

  I debated back and forth for a minute whether calling and asking would be too clingy, too much like I was checking up on him—and then I decided to hell with it. We were in a committed relationship, and he called my apartment his home; I had a right to ask.

  But when I dialed his number, he didn’t pick up.

  I was still alone in the office, although in the interim I had taken it upon myself to contact Brittany and ask why she wasn’t here, when she was supposed to be. She’d given me a lousy excuse about a cold, one I could see right through, since her nose wasn’t even stuffy. I informed her that I had used her computer to withdraw the Armstrongs’ listing so she wouldn’t have to, and then I hung up so she could go back to bed and to Devon, the grungy boyfriend.

  There was nothing more for me to do, so I headed out. And—yes, I admit it—I drove in the direction of Potsdam Street and Mrs. Jenkins’s house.

  It wasn’t that I didn’t trust Rafe. It isn’t that I don’t. I have no reason not to. So I wasn’t really worried. I just wanted to see him. To make sure that nothing was wrong.

  Getting there and finding the place empty was... annoying.

  Something was obviously going on. And since he’d told me about helping Wendell the other day, but he wasn’t telling me about this, it was probably something personal.

  Naturally, the first thing that came to mind was another woman.

  As I drove back down Potsdam Street, I reminded myself that he’d never cheated.

  Other than with Carmen Arroyo, but that was in the line of duty and while we were broken up.

  He’d never indicated that he wasn’t happy with me.

  Our sex life wasn’t suffering.

  He wasn’t displaying any evidence of guilt.

  Not that he would. He’s had years to perfect his lying. If he was cheating on me, I’d never know it. Not until he told me.

  Could he be cheating?

  As I turned onto Dresden, I took the thought out and tried to look at it dispassionately.

  He was a man, and men do occasionally cheat. Not all of them, I suppose, but my ex-husband did. Maybe that’s predisposed me to think all men do. Maybe men don’t cheat any more than women, really.

  Anyway, other than the fact that he was gone and I didn’t know where, I had no reason to suspect that Rafe was cheating. There’d been no strange perfume smell, no lipstick on his collar or neck; none of the usual telltale signs of an affair.

  Then again, that was how it had started with Bradley, too. The perfume and lipstick had come later. At first it had just been late hours at the office and a waning in his desire for me. He was getting his needs met elsewhere, and I’m sure he felt guilty, so he developed a habit of falling asleep on the couch, or of working so late that I’d be sleeping by the time he came to bed. That way he wouldn’t have to deal with me in any intimate manner.

  I’d been asleep the other night when Rafe came home. He could have slipped in beside me with no fanfare. Instead, he’d woken me up to make love to me.

  Did that mean he wasn’t cheating? Or just that he wasn’t as guilt-ridden as Bradley about it?

  We weren’t married, so he might not be feeling as guilty. Cheating on a girlfriend isn’t as bad as cheating on a wife.

  Or maybe he simply realized that sex was one surefire way of keeping me quiet and unworried. He’d been able to sneak out again the next morning without waking me—and without having to answer any awkward questions—so obviously the vigorous round of lovemaking had done the trick. But was that the intention, or just a side benefit?

  Had he gotten tired of me already? Maybe it was a case of the forbidden fruit: for as long as he couldn’t have me, he’d wanted me, but once I was available, suddenly I wasn’t very exciting anymore.

  Or maybe my attempts to sell him on the charms of domestic life—the folded laundry and home-cooked dinners—were doing the opposite of what I hoped. Was I smothering him in domesticity, and now he was out there looking for sex with no strings attached?

  I drove all the way home in such unpleasant contemplation, and once I got there, fell facedown on the bed with a groan, running over and over in my head the reasons why—and why not—Rafe was surely getting some on the side.

  The more I thought about it, the more reasonable the explanation became. All the signs were there. He wasn’t where he was supposed to be. He wasn’t answering his phone, nor telling me where he was.

  On the contrary, he was lying. That story about going out for a hamburger at lunchtime yesterday... it made sense, and there was no way I could disprove it, but I was willing to bet it wasn’t what he’d been doing. It had been a story to throw me off. If I asked him later where he’d been this afternoon, he’d probably tell me he’d had to run to the hardware store for another paint roller.

  And the thing was, he might have gone to the hardware store for another paint roller. There was no way I could disprove it. There was no reason to doubt it, even. It made perfect sense. Sometimes he did need new paint rollers. No reason why he wouldn’t have needed one today.

  If I went to the hardware store right now, he probably wouldn’t be there. But he could have been and gone before I arrived. That’s what he’d tell me if I asked.

  Not that I’d ask. Because asking would make me sound like a worried, nagging, distrustful girlfriend, and nobody wants one of those.

  And the realization that I’d be willing to keep my mouth shut, to put up with what might be infidelity because I was too afraid to kick up a fuss and perhaps lose him, was both eye-opening and shameful.

  Did I love him enough—did I want to hang onto him badly enough?—that I’d put up with sharing him?

  The thought was nauseating—and instantly rejected. The idea that he’d come from someone else’s bed to mine was abhorrent. And when I narrowed it down to those terms, I couldn’t see him doing it, either. In spite of who he was—his past, his less-than-high-class family, his ten years of dealing with the dregs of society—he was honorable in his own way. When I’d asked him about Carmen Arroyo, he hadn’t denied sleeping with her. He could have prevaricated or lied, but he didn’t. He could have refused to answer, but instead he’d told me the truth, and had made sure I knew it was only in the line of duty, not because he’d wanted to. That it hadn’t had anything to do with him and me.

  Would he really sleep with someone else now? Would he sneak around like this, instead of just telling me the truth? Would he keep telling me he loved me if he were bedding someone else?

  Or was it another case of “in the line of duty”? Was something else going on, something he didn’t want me to know?

  Something that would cause me worry if I knew about it?

  He hadn’t gone back into
undercover work. That much I knew. His cover had been blown sky high a few months ago, and trying to go back to what he’d been doing before would make him an instant target for all the people he’d dealt with in the past ten years. He wouldn’t be stupid enough to try.

  Those people could equally well find him now, though. He’d been using his own name, after all, except for the last few months when he pretended to be Jorge Pena. Maybe someone had found him. Maybe someone was threatening him, and he was trying to take care of the situation without involving me.

  Or maybe Wendell and the TBI had pulled him in to tie off loose threads in the investigation. Maybe that’s all it was, and he just didn’t want me to worry about it. Maybe he didn’t tell me because there really wasn’t anything to tell. Nothing of any consequence.

  Or maybe he was with someone else right now, in her bed, while I was alone in mine.

  The dizzying swirl of my thoughts got to be too much after a while, and I shook off the self-pity and the worry to enough of a degree that I was able to make dinner. Grilled chicken salad, light on the chicken, to make up for the burger and fries for lunch. I made enough for Rafe too, since he’d said he’d be back in plenty of time before we had to go to Chaps.

  But he didn’t come home, and the food was getting cold and soggy, so I ate by myself. And when I was finished, and I’d cleaned up, he still hadn’t come home, so I sat down and waited, skipping from channel to channel on the television. The news were on, along with assorted reruns. The canned laughter of the sitcoms set my teeth on edge, so I focused on the news shows, hoping—dreading—possibly hearing something about a shootout in East Nashville, leaving a man dead and another on the run.

  But it didn’t happen. Nobody had gotten shot, there was no update on the Brian Armstrong murder—at least not for public consumption—and the headline news of the evening was an Eye-5 investigation into misconduct and neglect in local nursing homes. I watched that, getting increasingly disturbed. It ended with the news that the Milton House Nursing Home would be fined and expected to clean up their act within a month, or they’d be closed down for good. I wanted to applaud, since the Milton House was where Rafe’s grandmother Tondalia Jenkins had been living when I first met her, and it was one of the more horrible places it’s ever been my misfortune to visit. I’d thought at the time that I’d rather shoot one of my loved ones than leaving them to rot at the Milton House, and I hadn’t wasted any time in ordering Rafe to get Mrs. J out of there. He hadn’t wasted any time in obeying either, once he could prove that he was her grandson and had the right to make that decision.