“She knows the doorman.” Eric rolled his head from side to side and winced when he went to the right.
Any other time she would have stepped over and massaged his neck, loosened him up and then asked him to show her upstairs. Maybe a part of her even expected that ending when she’d arrived tonight all furious and ready to be soothed. Despite her reaction to the key, a part of her had hoped a serious case of cluelessness would explain his choice.
Now, seeing him there with Deana, all contingent plans crashed to her feet. Katie had reached a whole new level of sputtering rage and Eric’s side of the conversation wasn’t calming her at all.
“You expect me to believe that woman hangs out with the blue-collar crowd?” she asked.
“Her family owns the building.”
Of course they do. “How convenient.”
“Is that my fault, too?”
“Possibly.”
Even when Katie wanted to kick him, to yell at him and find the words most calculated to hurt him, she felt it. That tiny kick of sympathy and longing. He lied to her and her first inclination was to explain it away and forgive. Just went to show that no matter how many miles she’d traveled, she wasn’t one ounce smarter about men.
She was pathetic.
Even watching him with Deana and hearing the hitch in his voice as she talked about loving him wasn’t enough to stir up Katie’s hate. She longed to despise him. Life would be so much easier if she could.
“If you thought I was standing here and listening in, what was with the big love scene?” she asked.
“I’m not sure what you think you heard, but you’re wrong.” His fatigue gave way to attitude. It was as if he considered himself the injured party.
She refused to let her mind replay the scene with Deana to give him examples. Once was enough. A second time might melt her anger into an emotion she did not want to deal with.
“You asked her what you had to do to get her back,” Katie said.
“When?” He had the nerve to raise his voice.
“All that ‘what if’ stuff.”
“And from that you got that I was making a pass?”
“How else should I take it?”
He wiped a hand over his drawn face. “That was about closure, Katie. We were saying good-bye to the past and moving on.”
“Oh, please.”
“I am not in love with Deana.” The firm tone suggested he believed it. “Do you want me to write it in blood? I will if it will stop this ridiculous conversation.”
“Insults?”
Color rushed back into his cheeks. “Nothing happened.”
“Are you trying to convince me or you?”
He let out a long groan. “You are infuriating.”
“Maybe, but I’m not deaf.” What Katie felt amounted to a frenzy of heartbreak and madness. It didn’t make sense. She didn’t know him long enough to care. Certainly wasn’t close enough to him to explain this oxygen-sucking hurt deep inside.
“You are hearing what you want to hear,” he said.
“You think I wanted to hear that?” She would give almost anything to call back the last half hour. Rewind her life and get to a place before the key when she still had hope and felt a strange lightness in her belly.
“I don’t get this, Katie. There was nothing in the conversation that should make you this angry. You are taking innocent statements and changing them into something else.”
He was blaming her? “Do you have any idea how it made me feel to stand there and listen to you profess your love for her while you’re sleeping with me?”
There was a quick knock, followed by a throat clearing. “Excuse me.”
Round two with Deana. Great.
Katie let her hands fall to her sides with a slap. “And she’s back.”
“I’m sorry. I forgot my purse.” Deana slipped inside and came to a halt.
Katie understood the sharp move. The anger in the room had built up until it formed an impenetrable wall. It crushed in on her from every angle, making it hard to move or breathe.
Eric spared both women a quick glance. “Deana, this is Katie Long.”
Deana managed to look pretty even as she frowned. “You look familiar.”
“I was at your wedding.”
A sudden small smile played on Deana’s lips. “With Eric?”
“Serving the dinner.”
The smile fell. “Oh.”
“That’s probably enough conversation for one night.” Eric reached around and grabbed the purse. Before Deana could say anything else, he handed it to her and motioned toward the door. “Here you go.”
Katie wasn’t ready to give up the fight yet. “She doesn’t have to leave.”
Deana glanced from Eric to Katie. “I think I probably should.”
“Why? I’m the one intruding.”
Deana chewed on her bottom lip, seeming as nervous and out of place as anyone could look. “If I had known you were here, I wouldn’t have taken up so much of Eric’s evening.”
For the first time, doubt pricked at Katie. It started at the back of her neck and worked its way down. “I didn’t hear him complaining.”
Eric stared at the ceiling for a few seconds before responding. “Katie seems to think we’re having an affair.”
“No. That’s not the case at all.” Deana waved her hands in support of the words coming out of her mouth. “Nothing like that is going on. I wouldn’t.”
“Thanks, Deana,” he said in a dry tone.
“You know what I mean.” She sucked in a gulp of air between her teeth. “I’m trying to help.”
Strangely enough, she was. Katie didn’t see a scheming woman trying to get some sex behind her new husband’s back. Deana looked truly horrified at being stuck in this confused threesome.
“I didn’t know you were dating anyone,” Deana said to Eric, almost pleading for forgiveness.
Katie might be ready to absolve Deana, but Eric was another story. There was still the matter of the key and the hiding. Bottom line, Katie wasn’t ready to stop being angry. It was irrational but true.
“That’s because Eric is determined to hide our relationship.” Katie pretended to think about it. “Wait, is that the right word?”
Eric’s jaw clenched. “Why don’t we have this conversation in private?”
“Maybe I should say Eric doesn’t want people to know we’re sleeping together…or were.”
“Katie.” The warning came through Eric’s tone loud and clear.
“If I had known I would have—” Deana stopped talking and stood there with her purse hanging from her fist.
“What?” Katie asked.
“Called first. Something. I didn’t mean to cause a problem between the two of you.”
Guilt rolled over Katie. She was putting the blame in the wrong place. For the first time all day, Katie was at a loss for words. She’d berated Deana and looked like a nutcase in the process. This had to do with feeling replaceable and unimportant and that came from inside her. Katie knew that much.
She sighed more in anger at herself than anything else. “You didn’t. Eric did.”
“On that note, it might be a good time to go home.” Deana stumbled over her words. “It was nice to meet you.”
The only thing quicker than her blurt of words was how fast she ran for the door. Katie watched. Eric watched. Neither of them missed the slam of the door behind Deana.
Eric waited for a few beats of quiet before turning back around. “Was that necessary?”
“What, was I not nice enough to your married mistress?”
“You know there’s nothing going on between me and Deana.” He said the words without any emotion.
Katie finally abandoned her position of safety at the bottom of the stairs. She stepped closer, sliding her fingertips across the table until she landed beside him. “What I saw was a man entertaining his supposed ex.”
“You know what I think?” He sat on the table, crunching and trap
ping papers underneath him.
“I don’t care.” But she did. Everything he said mattered to her on some level.
“I’m going to tell you anyway.” He studied his hands before looking up at her again. “You’re upset about something else. You’re looking for a fight and Deana being here handed it to you.”
His words sank in. She was looking for reasons to justify feeling hurt. The key, seeing Eric’s beautiful ex, it all punched at her until nothing but anger flowed through her.
If he wanted to know the truth, fine “Brilliant deduction, counselor.”
His stern features softened. “Why not tell me what the real problem is?”
“The key.”
“What?”
“I told you I was upset about your not taking me out in public and you tried to placate me.”
“How?”
She slid her thigh onto the table and sat down next to him. “By giving me a gift that shows you always want to stay in.”
He closed one eye and peeked up at her with the other one. “When exactly did we have this deep conversation on which you’re basing this tirade?”
“Do you listen?”
“I’m trying, but this strikes me as one of those talking past each other situations.” He acted out the words with his hands.
“Then how about this? I am not a whore.” It felt good to say it. To believe it.
His mouth dropped open. “Damn, Katie. I never called you that.”
“You didn’t have to.”
His mouth dropped open twice more before he spoke. “What the hell?”
“How you feel is not a newsflash.”
He shifted until he faced her. “You are absolutely wrong.”
The way his dark eyes narrowed and grew stormy with an emotion that looked vaguely like disappointment almost convinced her. “What am I supposed to think?”
“That’s not fair. I never judged you.” He huffed as if he was searching for the right words and couldn’t grab onto them. “We were both in that bathroom the first time, and I’m sure as hell not a man whore.”
She breathed in a few times to put the brakes on her thumping heart. “Did it ever dawn on you that we should sit down and try to figure out what we feel for each other and how to handle it?”
He motioned toward the door. “That’s what the key is for.”
Man, maybe he was this clueless. “The key is about accessibility.”
“You’re purposely using negative words.”
“You wanted me to come here so you wouldn’t have to track me down. You wanted easy. Now, I admit, I gave you easy, but those days are over.”
His chin dropped against his chest. “Please stop referring to yourself like that.”
This fight was too important to let go. “Something has to change.”
“I have no idea what you’re saying.”
“That’s what scares me.”
Chapter 11
Eric walked into his office shortly after lunch the next day. He’d been in court all morning and was barely functioning on two hours of sleep. The nightmare of the evening kept playing in his head. It had gone from a rotten dinner to a battle in his dining room.
He still wasn’t clear on what he’d done wrong. Giving Katie his key sounded like a commitment to him. To her it amounted to an insult. Just when he decided he knew something about women, the universe woke him up with a big slap of reality.
“Heard you had a rough night.” Josh’s voice broke through the quiet room.
Eric groaned. Didn’t try to cover it, either. “And here I thought this day couldn’t get worse.”
Josh pushed away from the wall and extended his hand. “Good to see you, too.”
Eric juggled some files and shook Josh’s hand. “I’m not exactly comfortable with everyone knowing about my personal life.”
“It’s just me and Deana.”
“Oh, yeah, that’s better.” Eric gave up on the stack of folders in his arms and let them drop to his desk. Then he slipped into his chair because he figured he’d need to be sitting down for this conversation.
Josh threw up his hands. “Hey, at least I didn’t read it in the paper.”
“Not yet.”
“Good point.”
“I take it Deana told you she came to my house.” For some reason that fact didn’t surprise Eric. Josh and Deana had a connection. It was one of those things that arced between them.
Josh took the chair across from Eric. “You shook her up.”
“Me?”
“The fight.” Josh shook his head and smiled. “She didn’t expect a woman to be there.”
“That’s flattering.”
Josh laughed. “She had that shell-shocked look on her face when she came home. And it’s not often my wife is struck speechless.”
“She did seem quieter than usual.” And more profound than Eric could ever remember. While most of the evening was a headache-inducing black hole, he did remember Deana’s words. He wouldn’t soon forget them. “I guess you two don’t have many secrets.”
“I’d like to think none.”
Despite the time Eric had spent with Deana, he couldn’t claim the same closeness. She’d hidden her past from him under the guise of protecting him and his political career. The way Eric saw it, Katie was trying to do the same thing.
“So—” Josh picked a piece of nonexistent lint off his pants. “Katie Long?”
Eric held up his hand even though he knew the gesture wouldn’t help. “Don’t start.”
“I’m just asking how that happened.”
“Deana sent you out on recon.” The idea of being the topic of conversation in the Windsor household did not sit well with Eric.
“Let’s just say you piqued her curiosity.”
“Kind of like an animal in the zoo?”
Josh slipped a pen out of his suit jacket and tapped it against his open palm. “You know what you’re getting into there?”
“With Katie?”
“Who else are we talking about?”
“I didn’t realize you knew Katie.” Didn’t really like the thought of that either.
“Of course.”
“Can I ask how?” The idea that he and Josh had dated two of the same women instead of just one was a bit more than Eric could take on so little sleep.
“I checked out everyone who was going to work my wedding. Knew all I could about the caterer before she got near Deana.”
Sounded like the lawman in Josh never let up. “That’s a healthy dose of paranoia right there.”
“Can’t be too careful.”
“Guess not.” Since Josh was talking, Eric took advantage of the opportunity to do some investigating of his own. “Why did you use Cara’s company? Thought you would have gone with a larger, more prestigious outfit.”
“Deana picked her. She heard about her through some charity thing and insisted we use her.”
“The food was good.” Eric had no idea if that was true. The menu had been the last thing on his mind that afternoon. Hell, he couldn’t even enjoy the incredible view out over the Pacific.
“You met Katie at my wedding, right?”
“Yeah.” The only highlight of the entire wedding, as far as Eric could tell.
Josh barked out a laugh. “Did you even get a taste of the food?”
It’s not as if his sex life was a secret now, so Eric didn’t bother to hide it. “No, I’m just assuming.”
“Well, it was great, but that’s not why Deana picked the catering outfit.” Josh tapped the pen faster in his usual display of constant motion. He’d been that way for the years since he stopped smoking. “She heard about Cara having a rough time as a single mother with a crap husband and an out-of-control baby sister and Deana figured, why not throw some work the lady’s way?”
Eric wasn’t surprised. Many people looked at Deana and saw a stunning but chilly member of the ladies-who-dabble-in-charity set, but he knew better. “Not many people would risk their weddi
ng day like that.”
“Deana insisted and I just wanted the deed done, so I agreed.”
“And then you investigated everyone even remotely associated with the catering company.” Eric could almost see Josh sitting at a desk doing background searches on the florist and everyone else who came near Deana.
“That’s about right.”
Eric remembered what it was like to want to please Deana. It wasn’t a surprise Josh was stuck in the same trap. He’d likely do a better job of maneuvering through it than Eric ever did.
He stared out the window at the busy street below and thought about this moment. He sat there talking with Josh about being married to Deana. Eric never would have imagined being able to handle this.
“Speaking of weddings, why are you back in town?” he asked.
Josh shrugged. “Where do you go for a honeymoon if you already live in Hawaii?”
Since Eric never thought about things like honeymoons, he had no idea. “Good point. Somewhere cold, I guess.”
“I’ll pass.”
“Aren’t you from somewhere cold?”
“I live here now. Have for years.”
Eric loved to tweak people on this point. Insinuate they were outsiders and watch them get all defensive. “That doesn’t really count though, does it?”
“You know, it never fails to amuse me how people who were born in Hawaii view everyone who moved here as an outsider.”
Josh had fallen right into the trap. It was almost too easy for Eric. “That’s how it works.”
“Anyway, we cut the honeymoon short because I had to start my new job.”
“Congratulations.” Eric meant it. Josh had lived on Kauai for years and been a huge asset in drug cases. He’d shut down a significant trafficking operation and never got the credit he deserved. A crooked boss saw to that. But now that the boss was gone and Josh was in charge, Eric knew his drug cases would run smoother.
Yeah, that meant Josh was on Oahu and that Eric would see Josh and Deana all the time. Since the adjustment would make Eric’s job easier, he ignored the personal toll it might take.
“I was getting too old for drug raids. Sitting behind a desk is more my style now,” Josh said.
Eric wasn’t convinced but it wasn’t his business. “If you say so.”
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