Bad Blood

by Mary Monroe

  I offered a weak smile and shook my head. “I don’t think so.”

  “Well, if you don’t mind my asking, what the hell happened?”

  “He just said he wasn’t ready to get married yet.” I forced myself to smile. “It was good while it lasted, though. He was so special to me.”

  “What a shame. How are you handling things?”

  “I’m okay, I guess. I still feel a little numb about it, but I’ll get over him.”

  Darla gave me a curious look. “That dude is not telling you something. There has to be a serious reason as to why he called off the wedding, other than him not being ready to get married. How long were you guys together?”

  “Four years,” I said hoarsely.

  “And he suddenly calls it quits? Oomph, oomph, oomph! I feel so sorry for what that asshole did to you!”

  “We had a lot of good times, though.” My voice had begun to weaken, despite how hard I had tried to keep sounding strong.

  “He’s still an asshole, and I hope that he regrets what he did to you someday!”

  I exhaled and touched Darla’s shoulder. “Thanks, Darla. I appreciate your concern.”

  “Well, I know I don’t know you that well, but would you like to get together for a drink or dinner sometime? That way, we can really have a decent conversation about this. I mean, that is if you’d like to discuss this some more. I have a lot of time on my hands these days. I’ve already resigned from my boring job, which I hated, anyway. We just moved into our new house two days ago, so after we finish getting everything in place, you’re welcome to come over. I’m sure Seth would love to meet you. Especially after what you just went through. I swear to God, I don’t know why some men do the things they do! Thank God there are still some good ones left. Seth is the most sensitive man I’ve ever known, so he’d be a good person for you to talk to.”

  Chapter 19

  Rachel

  EVEN THOUGH MY EYES WERE OPEN, EVERYTHING WENT BLACK FOR about two seconds. I could still hear Darla talking, but the only word that really jumped out at me now was her new husband’s name: Seth. “Your husband is named Seth?”

  She nodded vigorously. “He’s already told me that we’ll name our first son Seth Jr. I’m probably already pregnant. We’ve been busy since we met last April.”

  “Do you have a picture of your husband?” Had Darla not told me her husband’s name was Seth, I would not have been interested in seeing what he looked like.

  “Oh, I’ve got lots of pictures of him and me together.” Darla paused her treadmill and leaned down to lift her gym bag. She rooted around in it for a few seconds and pulled out a wallet and flipped it open. “Here’s one we took when we went to the Bahamas. We won’t get our wedding pictures until next week.”

  The picture in front of my burning eyes made my head swim. There was Seth in a floral shirt and a straw hat, standing in front of a palm tree, with his arm around Darla. There was a tall glass in his hand with a pineapple wedge and one of those cute little umbrellas hanging over the lip. The date at the bottom of the photo was one of the dates on which, he had told me, he had attended that retreat in Sacramento.

  “Have you ever seen a more handsome man?” Darla asked, sliding her tongue across her bottom lip.

  “Yes,” I mumbled. “I have. My ex was just as handsome as your new husband . . .” My head felt like it was going to explode. I ended my session on the treadmill and retrieved my gym bag off the floor, my hand shaking so hard, I almost dropped the bag. I sniffed and gave Darla a guarded look. “It’s been nice talking to you. Good luck.”

  “I wish you didn’t have to rush off. I was going to invite you to join Seth and me for drinks this evening. He’s working late, so it’ll be a couple of hours from now. I’m sure he would love to meet you. He’s got a few single friends he could introduce you to.”

  “Thanks, Darla, but I’ll have to decline your invitation. I already have plans for this evening.”

  “Well, can I get your telephone number so we can keep in touch? If I am pregnant, I don’t know how much longer I’ll be coming to the gym.”

  I pretended not to hear Darla’s request for my telephone number. I couldn’t get out of that gym fast enough. I didn’t care if I had to drive fifty miles to another gym, I’d never work out in this one again! I sprinted to the nearest exit, and I didn’t stop until I had made it outside and to the end of the block.

  I was in such a daze, I couldn’t even recall where I had parked. It took me fifteen minutes to locate my car at a meter two blocks from the gym.

  With my hands shaking and tears streaming down both sides of my face, I drove to Seth’s office. I knew that without an appointment, and with business hours over, the security guard would not allow me to enter the building, so I didn’t even try. That didn’t stop me from going into the underground parking garage.

  There were four parking levels. It took me an hour to locate his BMW. I spat a dollop of saliva smack-dab in the center of the front windshield. Then I keyed the front, the back, and both sides. Just as I was about to leave and go to a hardware store to purchase something that I could use to slash his tires and bust our every single one of his windows, a man in a gray suit appeared. He didn’t see me, so I crouched down until I heard him drive away. I decided then to forget the hardware store and instead hang around until Seth showed up so I could give him a piece of my mind and a punch in the nose if he provoked me.

  I couldn’t remain in the garage too long before somebody saw me and got suspicious enough to call security, so I left ten minutes later. Catching up with Seth so I could tell him to his face what I thought of him was not going to be easy. Especially with the way he had already been avoiding my phone calls and not returning any of my voice mail messages. Accepting an invitation from Darla to “meet” him so I could bust him in front of her—in the house that should have been my new residence—didn’t appeal to me. There was no telling what I would do to him if I confronted him at the new house he’d just purchased. And there was no telling what he would do to me.

  I couldn’t imagine what he was going to say or do when he found out I knew how he had played me. I cringed when I recalled all the nasty things Darla had told me he had said about me. The part about me being lousy in bed was especially hurtful. For all I knew, Darla was in that new house right now, stretched out on an expensive couch, with a tall drink in her hand, telling him about the poor woman she’d met at the gym whose fiancé had just dumped her. All she had to do was mention my name and a few specific details about me, and he would put two and two together and realize I was the “poor woman” who’d been dumped!

  Since it was going to cost Seth a pretty penny to get his car repaired, I had caused him some pain, anyway. Even though he had no idea who the culprit was. That was the only satisfaction I expected to get out of hurting him.

  It was enough to suit me for the time being....

  Chapter 20

  Seth

  HAD I CAUGHT THE BASTARD WHO KEYED MY CAR, I WOULD HAVE beaten the dog shit out of him. Whoever he was, he really took his time and did as much damage as he could. And for what? What kind of satisfaction did people get out of doing something as asinine as keying a car? I tortured my brain, trying to recall if I had cut some dude off in traffic. If so, maybe he had seen me enter the parking garage and had decided to follow me. Back in the day when I was a mischievous kid, my crew and I had keyed a lot of cars. Each time it had been for a reason. Once I’d done it because some old white bitch had rear-ended me and had not even bothered to stop. I’d followed her to a mall. As soon as she had parked in front of Macy’s and piled out of her shiny new Cadillac, I’d snuck over and done my business. And I hadn’t used just the keys to my old Mustang. I’d done some damage with the blade of the pocketknife I used to carry.

  I was no longer that boy who committed petty crimes on a regular basis. I was a respected businessman with a fine reputation in my community. I was determined to find out who had vandalized my car a
nd to hold him responsible. Unfortunately, it didn’t look like that was going to happen. I found out that the security cameras in the garage had been out of order and no one had witnessed the crime.

  “You were lucky. You got off real easy, my man. One of the lawyers on the second floor had a window in his Porsche broken. The thief, or thieves—these creeps usually work in pairs—stole his CD player and a couple of loose hundred-dollar bills the dude was stupid enough to leave in his glove compartment,” the parking attendant told me. “We have a lot of break-ins in this area. I guess the criminals figured out it would be more profitable for them to target the upscale areas than the projects and other low-income neighborhoods.” He sounded so indifferent, I wondered if he had been in on the vandalism and other crimes.

  It was an inconvenience and a costly setback for me to get my car repaired, but I got over it within a few days. I had too many things to be thankful for.

  I was feeling on top of the world, even more so now. Getting rid of Rachel had given me a whole new outlook on life. It felt like a huge weight had been lifted off my shoulders. Everything was now going just the way I wanted it. Well, almost everything. My son’s obnoxious mother, Caroline, called me up from L.A. at least once every two weeks to complain about how expensive everything was these days. Caroline had caused me a lot of grief over the years, but it had had little impact on the way I felt—and I felt better and better with each new day. With all the positive things in my life now, I didn’t even let a major thorn in my side like Caroline bother me too much. My ad agency was doing better than ever, and a potential new client had invited me to have drinks with him this week. And as long as I had a good, supportive woman like Darla, I was certain that I could continue to move forward.

  However, other people had begun to say things that got on my nerves. My brother Josh, who had always had my back, was one. I met up with him at a bar downtown after work one day a week after that asshole keyed my car. As usual, he was decked out in an Armani suit. Every strand of his close-cropped black hair was in place. For him to be one of the scariest pit-bull prosecutors in town, he had a very friendly-looking face. With his big brown eyes and warm smile, he looked more like a banker. I had decided not to mention the keying incident to Josh. After a few comments about work, politics, the economy, and what our family members were up to, all I could talk about was Darla. One reason was that the more I focused on her, the easier it was to keep Rachel off my mind.

  “You keep going on and on about what a good woman Darla is,” Josh pointed out. He shifted on his bar stool and swirled the cognac around in his shot glass. Then he cleared his throat and gave me a sheepish look. “You used to say the same things about Rachel.”

  “Rachel was a good woman! But like I keep telling you, she was not the woman I thought she was.”

  “Nor was her family. . . .”

  “That’s right. I was not going to burden myself with that woman and her crazy family.” It was one thing when I referred to Rachel as “that woman” when Darla and I talked about her. But when I referred to her that way in front of Josh, knowing how much he liked her, a sharp pain shot through my chest.

  “Crazy family? Isn’t that a bit extreme? Rachel doesn’t have any mental problems, and from what you’ve told me, neither does her mother or most of her other relatives.”

  “Man, let me remind you, the woman has only two siblings, and both of them are nutcases! And there are even more in her extended family! That means the tainted blood in that family is pretty potent. I never got the whole story as to just how many nuts that family has, but even one more is one too many! Now, would you want to marry a woman with that many nutcases in her background? Would you want to raise mentally challenged children?”

  “To be honest with you, now that I’ve given your situation more thought, I don’t know if I would or not. I love my wife, and we were lucky enough to have a healthy child. But had Chrissie been born with a problem, either physical or mental, I wouldn’t love her any less. And the same goes for any future children Faith and I might have.” I didn’t like the way my brother was looking at me. There was a puzzled expression on his face. His next question caught me completely off guard. “Does Rachel know you decided not to marry her because of her family?”

  “Uh, I didn’t tell her that. It probably would have caused her a lot of pain,” I said, with my chest tightening.

  “Little brother, I can assure you that the breakup alone caused her a lot of pain. Look at the facts. Rachel devoted several years of her life to you. Now you have left her and have already met and married another woman—one you didn’t know half as long as you knew Rachel before you decided you wanted to marry her. How do you think that’s going to make Rachel feel when she finds that out and the real reason you broke up with her?”

  “I don’t see her or talk to her, so I’ll probably never know,” I said with confidence.

  “I sure hope you don’t.”

  Josh’s last comment remained on my mind until I got home. “You look beat. Let me fix you a drink,” Darla said when I entered the front door of our sprawling Spanish-style house at the end of a tree-lined cul-de-sac. Our neighbors included doctors, businessmen, and a few retirees. Even though I had a long way to go to reach the lifestyle I wanted, I still felt blessed.

  I plopped down onto the plush blue velvet couch with a groan and watched Darla fix my drink at the bar facing me. I enjoyed looking at my wife. However, I had noticed that shortly after we got married, she stopped devoting a lot of attention to her appearance. I blinked at her as she waltzed across the floor toward me. Her hair was askew, her make-up was smeared, and the jeans she wore were the same ones she’d worn the past couple of days. But there were much more important things for me to be concerned about than my wife’s sloppy appearance. As long as she looked nice and smelled good when we went out or when my parents came to visit, that was all that really mattered to me.

  “Thank you, sweetie,” I said when she handed me the drink. I immediately took a sip and then set the glass on the coffee table. “Sit down and let me talk to you.” I patted the spot next to me on the couch.

  “What do you want to talk about?” Darla sat down, but not as close to me as I expected.

  “I just want you to know how much I love you. I’ve never known a woman as sweet and fine as you, and I promise I will be a good husband.”

  Darla scooted a few inches away from me. “What’s going on, Seth?”

  “I had a conversation with Josh today. He brought up Rachel’s name, and it disturbed me a little.”

  Darla frowned. “Her again? Well, what did Josh say about that heifer that was so disturbing?”

  “Oh, the fact that she had so many problems. I don’t want to go into a lot of detail, but he’s glad I’m with you and not her. I’m done with Rachel McNeal forever.”

  Darla’s face froze. She let out a yelp and leaped up like a jackrabbit. “Rachel McNeal? Is that the last name of the woman you’ve been telling me about?”

  “Yes. Why?”

  “She’s of medium height and build, bronze-colored complexion? Wears a ratty hair weave that looks like it was attached to her head with a staple gun?”

  “That’s a fairly decent description of Rachel, except she doesn’t wear a hair weave.”

  Darla’s eyes got big, her lips began to tremble, and then she began to shift her weight from one foot to the other. She couldn’t take her eyes off my face. “Oh, my God! It’s—it’s her! I know that woman!”

  There was a lot of pressure on my chest, as if somebody had squeezed the air out of me. I felt like a deflated balloon. “You what? When . . . Where did you meet her?”

  “At the gym I used to go to! She and I chatted a few times, and she told me she was engaged. The last day I saw her at the gym, which was a few days after we got married, she told me her fiancé had suddenly dumped her. I tried to get her to come with me that day so she could have a drink with us! I even told her I’d get you to introduce her to som
e of your single friends! All that time . . . all that time I was talking to the same lunatic who had made your life so miserable!”

  “Oh, my God!”

  “Do you have a picture of her?”

  “Not anymore. What makes you so sure we’re talking about the same woman?”

  “What’s the matter with you, Seth? I’m sure it’s her. What are the odds of us both knowing a Rachel McNeal in Berkeley and it being two different people?”

  Darla sat down hard on the couch arm. By now most of her body was trembling, and sweat had formed in the armpits of her blouse. “When I showed her a picture of you, she got this strange look on her face. Now I know why. Seth, that wild woman could have stalked and killed me. Why haven’t you told me everything about her?”

  “I told you everything you needed to know. If she knows who you are, and she has not followed you home or stalked you or done anything stupid to you by now, I wouldn’t worry about her if I were you. I’m sure she’s over me by now.”

  “Well, I am worried about her. What if she backslides and decides she wants to get back into your life?”

  “Sweetheart, please calm down. You don’t have to worry about Rachel. I don’t. I can assure you that if I run into her, or if she calls me for whatever reason, I will have nothing to do with her.”

  “It’s a good thing I started going to a gym closer to home. There is just no telling what that maniac might have eventually done to me now that she knows I’m the woman you married.”

  “You dodged a bullet, baby.”

  “A cannonball would be more like it.” Darla let out a sharp laugh, and I was glad to know she found the situation amusing. To me, it meant that she was no more concerned about Rachel than I was. “I don’t think you need to waste any time worrying about that woman. I’m sure she’s forgotten about you by now.”

  Darla was right, and I was not really worried about that woman. Despite Rachel’s bloodline, I had no reason to believe that she’d do something “crazy” to me or Darla. Rachel was a level-headed woman with a lot going for her. If she tried to get back at me in some way for breaking up with her, I would not hesitate to take whatever action was necessary to ensure my peace of mind and safety. Even if it meant having her arrested. Worst-case scenario was me having to kick her ass. Hopefully, it would not come to that, because I didn’t believe in hitting women or children. With my two brothers being high-powered attorneys, I knew it would be easy for one of them to help me build a strong case against Rachel if she did retaliate. Such a scandal could cost her her job, as well as her freedom. And from what I knew about Rachel, she was not that crazy.