Exposed (3 page)

Sadie pulled away and looked back up at him with scorn. "Jack, you're always working," she replied with venom and a sweep of her hand. "You're never here!" That wasn't entirely true, but he wasn't going to argue with her this time. He just had to hear it all. "You're crappy in bed, Jack," she spat, and he felt as if a wound had opened inside him. "You don't even clean your nails when you come to bed."

"Come on, Sadie," Cooper exclaimed, grabbing her arm and pulling hard enough to move Sadie through the filming cameras.

"And you never listen!" Sadie cried into the camera lens, with tears beginning to stream down her cheeks.

Some stupid, pathetic thing inside him moved him toward those tears. "Sadie," he whispered.
Praying.

"You won't ever be social and come out with me," she cried.

He knew she meant "come to parties and drink with her
.
" So that later she could stay up drinking more at home while she argued with him. Jack stopped wanting to go toward her. What kind of fool was he thinking they had any hope left, when she had another man's sweat on her?

The timing couldn't have been more perfect—it happened just before Sadie reached the doorway. A nondescript man appeared at the open front door.

"Sadie Andersen?" the man asked.

Naturally, Sadie turned toward her name. "That's me," she said.

The man lifted a folded paper toward her, causing her to naturally lift her hand to accept it. "You've been served," the man announced loudly.

Commotion stirred then, as Jack felt some satisfaction blossoming in his chest.
You. Take. That
, he wanted to shout. But he reserved it, watching the confusion and surprise cross Sadie's face, while the hosts belted a barrage of questions at her.

"Is that divorce papers, Mrs. Andersen?"

"How do you feel now that your cheating has led to this?"

Then, "Do you have anything to say to your husband, Mrs. Andersen?"

At that question, Sadie turned to look at him with anger glittering in her rummy eyes. "Fuck you," she spat.

She turned and grabbed Cooper by the arm to drag him outside, with the cameras following. Where, hallelujah, Jack saw the preauthorized tow truck was loading up Sadie's much too expensive car: a newer Mustang convertible.

"Jack!" Sadie cried, running down the steps toward the car. "You can't do this, Jack!"

"Oh, yes I can," Jack said under his breath, coming down the steps, but he stopped at the bottom. Sadie tried to get the tow-truck driver to stop, but the repo man was immune to her pleas, and then her curses.

Jack saw the SUV with Nia in it turning around the cul-de-sac. Her pretty eyes were wide at the events taking place out front of his house. He nodded to her and her gaze turned down to her lap.

Well, he hadn't expected a victory smile. This wasn't a victory for any of them. Maybe it was a bit of get-even, and it soothed his sense of justice a little. The Mustang was too expensive and flashy for a housewife, and Sadie kept forgetting to make the payments. Just like last month, when he'd arrived home after nine in the evening and there'd been no Sadie home and no damn power in the house either. She'd supposedly forgotten to pay the power bill—or, as he’d begun to suspect, she was spending the bill money on other things.

"Jack, you can't do this! A judge will throw the book at you," Sadie yelled, stalking toward him. "I'll get the house over this, Jack! You idiot!"

Oh, man.
He clenched his fist, with a twitch in his forearm muscle. It wanted to rise and punch ... He'd been going to tell her the repossession had little to do with him, except for the fact he was allowing it to go back to the dealer. Her non-payments were what got her car repossessed, but after her last comment, he decided to just let her believe it was him.

"We will see about that," he said, trying to control his tone. "I hope in the end this was all worth it to you, Sadie. Six years of marriage, broken ... gone. Just because you couldn't keep your panties on."

"Oh!" Sadie screeched, looking as though she might launch her body at him. Cooper caught her by the waist.

"I've got a car!" Cooper yelled. "We need to get away from these fucking cameras." He practically lifted Sadie's feet off the ground, dragging her toward his car, while Sadie threw the divorce papers on the ground. Cooper continued to yell at the TV crew. "I'm not giving permission for my face to be shown on your crappy TV show!"

O
n one count Nia was grateful, and on the other she was very perturbed. Half of the producers, hosts, and camera crew took her to her car and made certain she got home, while asking if she wanted them to wait for her husband to show up. She was grateful they seemed to want to stay and protect her from that event, but they also hounded her for another hour for footage about "how she felt."

"God!" Nia slammed her front door. "I thought they'd never leave."

She swiped at the tears on her cheeks. They'd torn things out of her she'd rather not have revealed. Especially on TV. But the male host, Bob, had assured her they'd make her look good on the final show. "We always side with the victim," he'd told her.

Nia leaned back against her front door. "Is that what I am? A victim?"

She hauled herself and her purse over to the entry table where she and Dan put things like their keys when they first came home. That was so normal, so regular. It was so together. But they weren't together anymore. She tossed her heavy rattan-quilted purse onto the table, then her keys followed as she wondered what she was going to do. Where should she start? What was Dan going to do?

Nia turned toward the front door. "He'll come home. Eventually."

When he did, she would demand he leave the house, but she knew Dan, and she knew getting him to leave wasn't going to be easy. Dan wasn't exactly chivalrous, like being the one to leave because he'd done such a horrible thing. It wasn't his style. Then she remembered something bad—Dan had inherited the house from his aunt and Nia wasn't absolutely certain her name was on the title along with her husband's.

"But we're married," she argued. Surely that meant the house was as much hers as it was his?

Somewhere in her erratic thinking, she kept wondering if they could go to marriage counseling. Fix this. But seeing Dan thrusting into Sadie Andersen, doggie style, kept playing through her mind and disrupting those foolish desires.

"How could he!" she exclaimed. It was one thing knowing it, but quite another actually
seeing
it. God, he wanted that other woman ...
not
her.

"Why!"

Nia turned and ran upstairs, then ran into the master bathroom. She flipped on all the lights and walked slowly to the large mirror behind the sink, where she stood looking at her image. Judging and comparing.

"I'm younger looking than her, I know I am," she whispered, touching her face, running her fingertips over the small age lines showing.

She and Dan rarely argued. What they did was ignore each other when they were mad. So she couldn't really say, "Oh we had a bad marriage and we were at each other's throats." Plus they had sex and she never said "no" to him. But he didn't ask for it as much as he used to, she realized.

"Why didn't I notice that?" she muttered, dropping her hands and turning from the mirror to walk into the bedroom. "Because he
never
gives me orgasms," she uttered defensively. She sat on the edge of the bed with her shoulders slumped, wondering if he gave Sadie orgasms.

"He must!" she cried, with jealousy surging through her, hot and heavy.

Sadie was sexier and much sultrier than her. Nia banged her fist on the bed. She hated Sadie. Then she broke down crying, finally. One big sob and it tore free, until she lay on the bed crying.

She must have cried for over an hour before she heard the front door slamming shut downstairs. Her sobs had been slowly dwindling and the moment she heard the sound, she hurriedly sat upright, while sniffling and blowing her nose.

"He's home," she whispered, practically cringing.

Now that they were alone, maybe she could get some answers. Why didn't he come to her—embrace his wife when he was caught cheating, instead of staying by Sadie's side? She knew Dan had been angry. She'd never seen him so furious, and the entire thing had been like watching a man she didn't know.

She got up to hurry downstairs and get her answers. Halfway down the stairs, she halted, staring straight down on Sadie Andersen, who was looking up at her with wary eyes.

Nia's eyes leaped to Dan as she opened her mouth to shout at him, but he stalled her attempt.

"Nia, I'm not leaving
my
house!" he snapped. "So don't even think of trying that game!"

Game?
Nia wondered what game she was supposed to be playing. "What is she doing here?" she demanded, close to shouting. "I want her out of my house!"

Dan cussed foully once, then he stalked up the stairs and grabbed her forearm. "Come with me so we can talk," he ordered with an aggravated tone.

Nia was just ready to pull away from him, but when she heard they might talk, she let Dan pull her past Sadie. She gave Sadie a mean glare, and Sadie had the gall to look put-upon. Dan tugged her into his home office and he pushed the door halfway shut. He let go of her arm and he rounded on her.

"I can't believe you did that, Nia! I'm not giving my permission to that damned TV show. Do you know this could ruin my business and my job?"

Of all the things Nia thought her husband might start out saying, this was
not
it. She was at a loss at what to say or where to begin. "It's cruel, Dan. Get her out of my house!" she shouted as tears built in her eyes.

"My house!" he shouted back. "And after what you did, having those fucking cameras attack me—"

"They came to me!" she exclaimed over him.

Then he finished," I feel justified in kicking
you
out!"

Nia gasped as his words fell over her.

"Sadie can't go home. She's got nowhere to go," Dan continued saying, as though he hadn't just said the most awful things to her. "I want her to stay with me," he said, twisting the knife deeper into Nia’s heart. "I'm sorry, but that's just the way I feel."

Nia choked on a thousand words at once, but some self-preservation instincts welled up inside her. She would
not
grovel to her bastard husband.

"Did you
ever
love me?" she snarled. "This isn’t how you treat someone you love."

Dan started to say something, but she brushed past him with a furious stomp. She slammed open the office door, and saw Sadie had been eavesdropping. Sadie had a self-satisfied smile on her lips.

Nia nearly punched her as she swept past her and stalked upstairs.

"Nia!" Dan shouted. "What are you going to do?"

J
ack made certain all the locks were changed on the house, then he went back to work, at the business he owned out on the highway. It was what he did ... work. No one at his business had a clue about what just happened to his marriage, and he intended to keep it that way until it was impossible to.

After Sadie got half of everything he owned he would have to rebuild it all. But he wasn't going to let her take the rental business; he'd worked too hard building it. No, he'd have to take a loan against the business, and pay her the half that her lawyers would demand, even though Sadie never stepped inside the business. Then there was the house.

It was a mess. Jack looked out the front windows of Rent-All, his business on the busy main highway through town. Across the street was the large parking lot where the
Rotten Cheating Spouses
crew had ambushed Nia Cooper. Of course he'd never paid much attention to the Fabric Barn over there.

But he did realize that he'd noticed Nia's car before, parked across the street. Her car was a classic, in need of a lot of TLC. Any man would notice it, and have the rare thought about what it would be like to own and refurbish it. Jack's gaze sharpened and he leaned to the side a bit, looking across the street. Nia's car was sitting in the parking lot about halfway between him and Fabric Barn.

"I can't believe they took her home without her car," he muttered, walking from behind the counter and up to the window to get a better look. He thought her car was in a different spot from earlier that day.

All his employees were gone for the day. He was waiting for an overdue rental of a Bobcat. Jack glanced at his watch again and saw it was eight o'clock.

"Fabric Barn should be closed by now."

He would have been closed if he wasn't waiting for the guy with the Bobcat, which had to go out again first thing in the morning. So once it came back, he still had thirty minutes of work to do, getting it ready. Jack heard the bell ringing from the back of the building, and he knew his Bobcat had returned. His gaze lingered on Nia's car before he finally turned to go and finish his work.

He was tired but edgy forty-five minutes later when he finally finished and was ready to lock up. The summer night had turned dark as he grabbed his jacket, laptop, and the day's deposit bag. He was thinking about going out and getting drunk. At times he even dared himself to go find someone to take to bed.

He could now.

While he'd worked that afternoon his thoughts had bounced from Sadie and where she might be that night, to why she'd done it, and sometimes thinking about Nia Cooper.

"Comrades in misery," he mused, turning away from locking the front door of Rent-All. But he stopped with his gaze moving across the street. "She's been over there all this time and I never saw her."

He couldn't help it; he had to go look at her car. Maybe she needed someone to help her get back to it in the morning. He sure didn't think it was a great idea for Nia to be stuck at home with an angry, cheating husband and no car.

"Course, Cooper could be with Sadie," Jack muttered, approaching the car, while he noticed the window was down on the driver's side.

Just as he was about three steps from it, an overhead parking light came on. He immediately grimaced because the light illuminated Nia slumped over the steering wheel. He freed a tight breath a second later when her head moved, obviously stirred by the sudden light. For one second he'd been afraid she was dead in her car from something an angry, unfaithful husband might do in a rage.