The answer turned out to be on the next block. If I parked at the curb, there was about a ten foot gap between two buildings where I could look directly at the back door to Ferncliff & Morton.
And that’s where I sat, while the seconds and minutes ticked by, with agonizing slowness.
All around me, people were coming out of buildings and getting into cars, driving away. It was getting close to the end of the workday and I’m sure a lot of people were hoping to get a jump on the traffic. With all the people moving to Nashville lately, our traffic problems have exploded.
The first time the back door at F&M opened, I sat up straight in my seat, my hand already reaching for the keys in the ignition. But it wasn’t Bradley. It was a blonde, dressed in a navy business suit, with a briefcase. Diana Morton, one of the senior partners. She was into her forties, so past the first bloom of youth, but still attractive, in a cool ice-queen sort of way. If Bradley was messing around with anyone at the office, it probably wasn’t Diana. Unless something had changed in the past couple of years, she had a husband, and anyway, I doubted she’d give Bradley the time of day.
She got into a white Mercedes and drove away down the alley. I went back to keeping watch.
The next time the door opened, a man came out, but it wasn’t Bradley. Tall, gray hair, dark suit. Nathan Ferncliff, another of the senior partners. His car was a BMW.
After that came someone I didn’t know, who must be new. Young, handsome, male. Another BMW. Not Bradley’s type.
The receptionist left, the same receptionist Ferncliff & Morton had employed for as long as Bradley had worked for them. Carolyn Wilkins. Middle-aged, overweight, a single mother of two. Bradley definitely wasn’t cheating on Shelby with her.
Carolyn didn’t have a Mercedes, nor a BMW. She got into a prosaic Toyota and drove away. It was a nice Toyota, just a few years old, but not on the same level as the luxury cars.
I waited some more, and finally the door opened and Bradley came out.
Last time I’d had occasion to spend time with him, I had reflected that married life—to Shelby—must agree with him, because he’d gained about twenty pounds since we got divorced, and he’d looked smug and self-satisfied.
This afternoon, that excess weight was nowhere in evidence. He must have gone on one hell of a diet to drop that much weight that fast.
Shelby hadn’t mentioned the sudden, rapid weight loss. Then again, she didn’t know I’d seen Bradley in December, so maybe she hadn’t thought it necessary.
It struck me as interesting, though.
And not only did he look almost gaunt, inside an oversized suit that hung from his shoulders, but he looked pale and drawn, too.
Granted, it was the time of years when we all looked pale. Winter was just ending, and it had been a cold one by Nashville standards. Sometimes we have temperatures in the 60s and 70s through the cold months, rendering them not cold at all, but this winter we’d had snow and sleet and just general ickiness since before Christmas. It was still a little unseasonably cold. Sometimes, by mid-March, spring is in full swing, with flowers blooming and sunny, warm weather.
Not this year. I was still wearing a jacket over my blouse and skirt, and boots instead of pumps on my feet. Sandals were just a fond memory.
Anyway, Bradley looked thin and pale. Unhealthy. Like something was wrong, either physically or emotionally.
A guilty conscience could do that to a man. I didn’t remember it happening when he’d been cheating on me with Shelby, but she was expecting a baby and things were different now.
He stood for a few moments on the steps outside the door looking around, before heading down to the SUV. I watched as he unlocked the door and got in. And then I watched as he reversed out of the parking spot and drove off down the alley. In the opposite direction of the way I was parked.
I had to scramble to get the car turned around. In fact, I was still in the middle of a highly illegal U-turn when Bradley came around the corner and saw me.
So much for hoping he wouldn’t notice I was there. There was no way he could avoid it, with the way I was skidding across his lane so he had to slow down to let me get out of the way.
And because he was already familiar with my car, of course he slowed to a stop and powered down his window. “Savannah?”
I got the Volvo straightened out and into the proper lane—except it was the improper lane now. And there was no way I could make another U-ie and fall in behind him without being transparently, blatantly obvious.
So I did the next best thing and pretended this was a coincidence. “Hi, Bradley. Sorry.”
“No problem,” Bradley said, glancing around. “Is everything OK?”
“Fine. I just had to turn the car around. And since nobody was coming, I thought I’d make it easy.” I took a breath and added, innocently, “Are you on your way home from the office?”
Bradley nodded. “You?”
“I had an appointment—” I caught sight of a sign out of the corner of my eye, “—at the internet dating agency.”
Bradley looked worried. “If you’re looking for company, Savannah, I’m sure there are safer ways to find a date.”
“I’m not.” Sheesh. “I was just... um... dropping off some paperwork. For a client. A real estate client.”
“Oh,” Bradley said, his face clearing.
“I don’t have a problem getting a date. I’m practically engaged.”
His eyes glanced off the ring on my finger, where my left hand was resting on the steering wheel. “Congratulations.”
“Thank you. How is Shelby?”
“Fine,” Bradley said. I wondered whether he truly believed it, or he had no idea that she wasn’t.
“How long before the baby comes?”
“Less than three weeks.” He looked tense at the thought.
“Are you all right?” I asked.
He met my eyes for a second, before looking away. “Fine.”
“You look...” I hesitated, “tired.”
“I’m fine,” Bradley said again and put the car in gear. “It was good to see you, Savannah.” He made no effort to sound like he meant it.
“You, too,” I said, although he was already driving away.
There was absolutely no point in trying to follow him. He’d notice me, especially now that I was already on his mind. And he knew where I lived, and that it was in the opposite direction of the one he was going, so I had no excuse for going his way. I’d be better off trying again tomorrow, and seeing if I couldn’t borrow another car before I did, one he wouldn’t recognize.
So I watched in the rearview mirror while he disappeared down the street, before I headed in the direction of the Jefferson Street Bridge and East Nashville myself.
Chapter Three
Rafe wasn’t there yet when I came home, so I started dinner while I waited for him.
When he first moved in with me, the day after Christmas, I’d gone overboard on the domesticity. I’d been so happy to have him with me full time, and so worried that he’d get tired of me and leave, that I’d done everything I could think of to make myself indispensable. Home cooked meals on the table when he walked through the door, fresh laundry every other day, sex whenever and wherever he wanted it—not that that last one was a hardship. After months of never knowing when I might see him again—if ever—being able to touch him whenever I wanted was a gift from God.
But I digress. As it turned out, the attempts to domesticate him were having the opposite effect of the one I intended.
Oh, he’d enjoyed the food and the clean laundry and especially the sex, but he was going crazy trying to be the man he thought I wanted. Someone safe and settled and out of harm’s way. We were both much happier now that he’d gone back to work for the TBI and I had stopped trying so hard to hold on to him.
So I cooked, but I didn’t worry too much about it. And I also didn’t use the downtime between stirring the pot to slip into the bedroom to change into ‘something more c
omfortable.’ I’d met him at the door in lingerie before—not that there’s anything comfortable about the kind of lingerie men like—and it had usually ended with him carrying me to bed while the food burned. But I had learned that it didn’t take lingerie to achieve that effect, and that he knew I was available even if I didn’t make it blatantly obvious. It also didn’t matter if we stopped to eat first. He knew I wanted him either way, and I was in no doubt whatsoever that he wanted me.
In short, I stopped trying so hard and let things just develop the way they wanted to. And we were both happier. Incidentally, I also felt safer about our relationship, perhaps because I was less obsessively concerned about every minute expression that flitted across his face. He loved me. He was here. I could relax a little.
So instead of changing out of skirt and blouse into stiff and scratchy satin and lace, I changed into yoga pants and a T-shirt instead, and spent the time setting the table and stirring the pot and wondering what was going on with Shelby and Bradley.
She’d looked horrible, but he surely hadn’t looked much better. Was he ill, maybe? Dying of cancer, but he just didn’t want to tell Shelby about it when she was less than a month away from giving birth?
It was hard to believe that the man I’d been married to had it in him to be that considerate, but maybe his and Shelby’s relationship was different from the way his and mine had been. He hadn’t loved me; I was well aware of that. I hadn’t loved him either, even if I’d kidded myself into thinking that maybe I did, a little. But he might love her. And if he did, he might actually be selfless enough to keep something like that from her, so as not to ruin her last month of pregnancy.
Or it could be something else. Something going on at work? Some sort of case that was taking its toll on him?
Or maybe I’d been right the first time, and he was just catting around. Just because Shelby assured me it was impossible, I wasn’t as sanguine. He’d cheated on me. As far as I was concerned, that meant he could cheat on Shelby.
I heard the key in the lock about twenty minutes after I came home. Then the door opened, and I heard the thud of Rafe’s boots hitting the floor. He padded into the kitchen on stocking feet and slipped his hands around my waist, under the T-shirt and up, his hands hot and hard against my skin. “Mmmm.” He nuzzled my hair aside to kiss the side of my neck. “Smells good.”
I wasn’t sure whether he was talking about the food or me, but it didn’t matter. I just leaned back against him, his front against my back, and closed my eyes. “Did you have a good day?”
“I got to kiss you halfway through it, so yeah.” His breath was warm and his lips soft against my skin.
“I enjoyed that,” I told him.
“I know.” There was amusement in his voice. “You been waiting for me to come home so I could do it again, haven’t you?”
No sense in denying the obvious. “Of course.”
He turned me around—or maybe I turned around—in his arms, and then he kissed me. And as usual when he did, the world went away and all that mattered was the feeling of his mouth on mine. I looped my arms around his neck and hung on, hardly even aware of the heat of the stove against my back.
“Oops.”
Rafe was aware, though, and pulled me aside, to lean against the cool front of the refrigerator instead. Before he went back to kissing me.
I was pretty sure we’d end up in the bedroom, but he must have been hungry, because after a minute—or an hour—he lifted his head. “What’s for dinner?”
“Chicken casserole,” I managed.
“What about dessert?”
“Me?”
“Sounds good.” He let me go, but not without a last lingering brush of lips. “Can I take a shower?”
“Of course.” I turned down the burner.
“Five minutes.” He blew me a kiss and headed down the hall. A minute later I heard the shower kick on.
“So what did you think of Shelby?” I asked later, when we were sitting across from one another at the dining room table. His short crop of espresso-colored hair was still damp from the shower, and he was dressed in a T-shirt and a pair of jeans, with his feet bare.
“Bradley’s an idiot,” Rafe said.
It was the exact same thing he always said when I brought up the subject of my ex. Usually, the unspoken ending of the sentence was “Bradley’s an idiot... for cheating on you,” and I took it to mean the same thing now, except it must be a reflection on Shelby and not me, since that’s what I’d asked him.
“She’s usually better looking than she was today,” I told him.
He shrugged, and muscles moved smoothly under the soft cotton. I took a sip of water. “What’d she want?”
“Something’s going on with Bradley. She wanted me to help her figure out what.”
He arched a brow, and I added, “There’s no one else she can ask. She doesn’t want to tell her friends and family that her husband’s stepping out on her.”
“Is that what he’s doing?” He conveyed a chunk of chicken to his mouth and chewed.
“I assume he is,” I said. “It’s hard to imagine what else could be going on. Although...”
When I didn’t continue, he twitched a brow at me.
“He didn’t look good. When I saw him before Christmas, he had put on about twenty pounds since I was married to him, and he looked settled and self-satisfied. You know?”
Rafe just looked at me, and I added, “It happens sometimes, when men settle down and get comfortable.”
He glanced at the plate of food, and then glanced down at his stomach, before looking back up at me.
“You don’t have to worry,” I said. “The way you look, you should be walking around naked all day, every day.”
His lips curved. I added, “What was that all about, anyway? Showing up at Brew-ha-ha this afternoon?”
“Just curious,” Rafe said and went back to eating.
And we were back where we started. Much as I would have enjoyed another reassurance that he found me more attractive that Shelby and that he thought Bradley was an idiot, I resisted the temptation to ask and forged on. “Well, if you think she looked bad, you should have seen him.”
“I’m more interested in when you saw him,” Rafe said.
Ah. Yes, I hadn’t mentioned that, had I? “She asked me to help her figure out what was going on. So I drove up to Germantown, where the Ferncliff & Morton office is. I thought I’d try to follow him when he left work for the day, to see if he went home or somewhere else.”
“What happened?”
I made a face. “He caught me. I was parked on the next street, looking at the parking lot in the back of the building, and instead of doing the logical thing and driving down the alley in the direction of home, he drove in the opposite direction and came around the block.”
“And saw you.”
I nodded. “He bought me the Volvo. I guess it was too much to expect he wouldn’t recognize it.”
There was no need, no need at all, to mention my crazy U-turn maneuver that had brought Bradley’s attention to me.
Rafe’s eyes narrowed. “You never told me that.”
“What?”
“About the car.”
What about it? “He bought it for me just after we got married. Or I guess I should say that we bought it for me, since Bradley’s money was my money back then. When I left him, I got a settlement and the car, and he got the townhouse and everything in it, except for the few things that were mine.”
“You need a new car,” Rafe said.
I wouldn’t mind a new car. There were times it rankled to still be driving the car my ex-husband had bought me. But at the moment, I didn’t have the money to buy myself a new cashmere winter coat, let alone a new car. “It’ll have to wait until I can afford it. Anyway, Bradley saw me and stopped. And he looked awful. In the past couple of months, he’s lost all the weight he’d gained, plus more. He looked ill.”
“Maybe he is ill.”
“Or maybe it’s just a guilty conscience.”
Rafe nodded. “What happened?”
“We spoke for a minute. I made an excuse for why I was there, one that had nothing to do with him. And then he drove off in his direction and I drove off in mine. I didn’t think I’d better follow him.”
“No,” Rafe said, lips twitching, “that was prob’ly a good idea.”
“Now I don’t know what to do.”
He contemplated me for a second. “You call Shelby and tell her you tried and it didn’t work out.”
I nodded. That was probably what I should do.
“What?” Rafe said when I didn’t immediately tell him I would.
“I guess I got sucked in. I’m curious now.” And in spite of myself, and my suspicion that Bradley was simply up to his old tricks, I was a little worried. I didn’t owe him any concern, not after the way he’d treated me, but I didn’t wish anything too bad on him, either.
“He’s Shelby’s problem,” Rafe said, pushing back from the table, “not yours.”
“I know that. It’s just...”
“Just what?”
“I feel bad for her. She’s so worried. And he really didn’t look good.”
Rafe hesitated. And then he picked up his plate and walked into the kitchen. It wasn’t what I expected him to do. From the look in his eyes when he’d pushed his chair back, I had assumed he was about to pick me up and take me to bed to remind me that I was supposed to have forgotten about Bradley.
“I’m sorry,” I said when he walked back in.
He shook his head. “It’s obvious I ain’t gonna get any until we figure this out.”
“You can have some whenever you want.”
“Yeah,” Rafe said, “but I don’t want you thinking about Bradley while I’m inside you.”
“I would never think about Bradley while you were... you know.” I hadn’t even thought about Bradley while Bradley was... you know.
“Who d’you think about?”
Kickout Clause (Savannah Martin Mystery) Page 3