Fix You (37 page)

             
“They’re WASPs,” she said, and moved back into the corner of the wall where she stood, urging him in closer with her. “They all know about the divorce, but they’re all pretending it’s not happening.”

             
“Maybe,” he said, as gently as he could, “that’s because it’s been five months and you guys still aren’t divorced yet.”

             
Her eyes, the green of English ivy, came wide and shifted up to his face. “I’m not the one –  ”

             
“I know.” He sighed. “I know, I know.” But knowing didn’t change the way it stung to be reminded that the woman he slept beside every night still belonged to someone else on paper.

             
She sucked at her lower lip a moment, smudging her gloss. “I’m sorry.” She’d started saying that more and more, all watery-eyed and touchy-feely and usually kissing him afterward. “You’re so patient and –  ”

             
“Jess!” someone new called. “My God, this kitchen! You have to come tell me about it.”

             
She stepped away from the wall with a resolute sigh. Before she pinned her faux hostess smile in place, though, she flashed him a true one. “Meet me in the green room upstairs in half an hour.”

**

              “You know, I’ve never been with a cheerleader before.”

             
“Liar,” Jo accused over her shoulder as she arranged a batch of Paige’s cupcakes on a serving platter. “You went out with Mindy Duncan your senior year.”

             
Damn.

             
Beside her, Paige turned and shot him a blue glare that was full of female solidarity. Her hair – an oh-so-natural shade of fuchsia these days – framed a face that had been powdered white and sketched with makeup scars for her punk rock zombie getup. “Cheater,” she accused.

             
“Oh, no,” Jo assured. “We weren’t together. I was still a flat-chested freshman. And Mindy was a
real
cheerleader.”

             
Mindy Duncan had been dumb as paste and on the verge of going fat, but explaining to his wife that at eighteen, he’d had needs, and she’d been underage and still more of a sister to him than anything…that had never gone well. So he sighed, and raked a hand through his greased hair, and tried to decide how to turn this misstep into a win.

             
Jo had, in the spirit of Halloween, decided to be someone completely different, and she’d borrowed Jess’s old MHS cheerleading skirt and top. The blue and white pleated skirt flashed her toned legs; the gold-embroidered sleeveless top was snug and left a lean wedge of midriff exposed. With her curly ponytail and pom-poms, she looked every inch the “real” cheerleader.

             
He shot Paige a death glare of his own, but kept his voice patient. “Joey, that was a long time ago.”

             
She turned to face him, cupcake platter in one hand, licking a spot of frosting off the thumb of the other. Her smile was costume appropriate: wide and white and about as real as the sugar in Diet Coke. “I know, sweetie.”

             
But she didn’t know, which was why he fell into step behind her as she made her way toward the great room and the buffet table of desserts against the far wall of windows. She didn’t give half a damn about any of Jess’s old friends, but she smiled for them as she laid the cupcakes down and responded to what a slutty nurse asked her with convincing fake laughter.

             
He watched her and still had trouble coming to terms with this new life she’d chosen for herself. Maybe he shouldn’t be surprised – she’d always put family before everything – but the bright-eyed girl he’d always known and loved had never entertained dreams of owning a lakeside inn with her sister. Her domesticity wasn’t the most feminine; she’d never been the hospitable type. He knew she wanted more kids, and he knew she wanted to be there while they grew up, but he didn’t know if he’d ever believe that she hadn’t given up on her dreams. Maybe dreams were for children, but it didn’t seem fair that he should end up with everything he’d ever wanted while she settled.

             
She snuck another fingertip swipe of chocolate frosting and licked it away while she thought no one was watching; Tam decided he’d have to make it up to her: for all her little sacrifices. It was time to find Delta.

             
She was in the sunroom at the back of the house, looking out of place amid the yellow paint and white bead board, an Egyptian queen who’d found herself in the middle of a
Southern
Living
sun porch. She seemed right at home in the middle of Jess’s friends, but when he caught her eye, he watched irritation ripple across her beautiful face; she managed to roll her eyes only a fraction, enough to tell him how dull she found the whole thing. Tam fought a grin and tipped his head toward the door. She excused herself and joined him in the gallery that ran the length of the lower floor, just outside the parlor that had been turned into a game room.

             
“Do you have it?” he asked without preamble.

             
“I keep thinking – stupidly,” she said with a shake of her head as she reached into an interior pocket of her heavy copper dress, “that you’ll get some manners.” Her manicured hand withdrew curled around a little white box. “Leo did a fantastic job.”

             
Tam took it from her and cracked the lid.

             
“He set all the surrounding diamonds into the band on either side of the main stone,” she explained.

             
His mother’s heart-shaped ruby, flanked by the tiny diamonds that had once encircled it, winked up at him, no longer a pendant, but a ring. The engagement ring Jo had never had.

             
He snapped the lid down and didn’t miss the long-standing irony of the smile he shot his sister-in-law. “Thanks, Delta.”

             
The bitch who’d once hated him wasn’t, it had turned out, a bitch at all; she smiled back. “You’re welcome.”

**

              At the top of the main stair, the noise of the party receded. The voices all jostled against one another, fighting for supremacy, forming a singular unit of indiscernible sound. Jess paused a moment, hand on the polished cherry banister, and took a deep breath.

             
Chris hadn’t been right…at least, not completely. She didn’t
hate
the friends who’d turned out in droves to support her inn-warming party. They’d always been a bit flighty and superficial when she’d known them before – when she’d been Jessica Beaumont – and she hadn’t expected any great change in them tonight. But…

             
Well, maybe she’d wanted at least one of them – one of the women, at least – to lay a hand on her arm and grow serious and ask how she was doing with the divorce. She’d wanted someone to at least pretend that her marriage was over. Or, shock, to show some sort of disapproval of Dylan’s infidelity.

             
Instead, they’d exclaimed over her inn, the women had made eyes at her new man, and the men had asked about Dylan as if she knew or cared.

             
Okay, so Chris had been right: she hated them.

             
The hall no longer smelled of damp and rot, but of beeswax and fresh linen. The doors, polished dark like the bannister, lined the passage like glimmering playing cards. It was hard to believe this place was hers, though it wouldn’t stay that way if she couldn’t continue to pay the mortgage. The chaos downstairs was amplifying her worries, and now they crowded against the corners of her mind, making this sojourn even more necessary.

             
She’d told Chris to meet her in the green room because it was the last on the left; with a view of the side yard, it was probably the last place a wandering guest would venture. The bedroom doors didn’t have locks yet because Chris was still waiting for delivery of the antique keys and matching hardware, so she’d have to rely on distance to keep them private.

             
Chris was already waiting for her, the drapes drawn and lamps lit. He sat on at the foot of the bed, crumpling her great marshmallow-thick green comforter, elbows braced on his knees, a thoughtful frown pulling his brows together over his nose. It wasn’t the expectant smile she’d anticipated.

             
“What?” she asked as she closed the door and leaned back against it.

             
His eyes raked over her – tips of her cat ears to the spikes of her boot heels – and she warmed under the scrutiny, wondering how she’d ever thought it an affront. His gaze locked onto hers. “I want you to finalize your divorce.”

             
Jess blinked. “Just like that?”

             
“Who cares if you lose or win anymore? Just take your kid and run the hell away. Sign the papers, give him whatever he wants…whatever you gotta do. But get it over with. I can help you with the mortgage before you start turning a profit.”

             
He was so dead serious, had said it with such earnest in his voice, that her single-woman outrage didn’t rally like she thought it might. She pressed her palms back against the door. “I need the money.”

             
“I just told you I’d
give
you the money.”

             
And for a moment, how tempting that sounded. If she wasn’t pressing for a settlement, she could more than likely demand full custody of Tyler. “I don’t want him to have anything to do with Tyler.”

             
“So make him your sticking point and fuck the alimony.”

             
She closed her eyes a moment. “I don’t want to fight about this now.”

             
“Me neither.”

             
She gave him a searching look.

             
“How much have I asked for?” he said, and she didn’t answer because they both knew the answer: nothing. “Maybe I’m supposed to be patient all the time, but I think I’ve been pretty damn patient so far. I don’t wanna live with some other guy’s wife.”

             
When she stepped across the fence and looked at things from his perspective – which wasn’t as often as she should have – she was appalled at what she saw. How could any man be so patient as to wait around for her? How could he
care
that much? There was suddenly a lump in her throat. She swallowed. “And you shouldn’t have to. Chris, I’m so –  ”

             
“You don’t have to be sorry.” He sat back and braced his hands behind him. “Just make it final.” Something very much like pain flickered across his face. “Unless you don’t want to.”

             
She pushed away from the door at the challenge, chin kicked up. “I am done with that asshole.”

             
“Okay. So we’re on the same page.”

             
“We…” She sighed. “Yeah, we are.” Her boot heels clicked against the refinished floors as she crossed the room to him. “Why so serious tonight?” she asked as she drew up in front of him. “I wanted you up here for a much more enjoyable reason.”

             
He hooked his fingers through the belt loops of her pants and didn’t answer.

             
Jess raked her fingers through his thick hair, the spikes bristly against her skin. “You want me to go back down and send Shelly up instead?” she asked with a grin.

             
In answer to that, his hands locked onto her hips and he swung her around, flinging her down onto the soft landing pad of the green comforter. Her laugh was more of a squeal that died as he climbed over her and sealed his lips to hers.

             
Okay
, she agreed as he kissed her, braced above her on the bed. His hand pushed up her shirt and spanned her stomach, worked upward with slow, sweeping strokes.
Okay
. He molded her breasts through the satin cups of her bra.
Okay…

             
Their lips broke apart with a smack as he sat back and reached for the button of her too-tight leather pants. She hated the damn things: they didn’t breathe and were sticky and clung to her skin and…none of that really mattered as she watched the excited gleam in his eyes as he started tugging them down her hips. She put her heels into the mattress and lifted her spine, let him draw them all the way down to her ankles. Her boots were wrenched off and hit the rug with muffled thumps, then the pants joined them: a rustle of falling leather.

             
“What is
that
?” And she knew where he was looking.

             
She’d been…stingy…with her lingerie, not wanting to recycle pieces that Dylan had touched, not yet sure she was in a head space to play dress-up. But it was time, she’d decided, to make more of an effort. “It’s new,” she said of the black lace V-string. A shamed, hot flush stole through her when she thought of the black panties she’d pulled out of her husband’s coat pocket. Her brain kept sabotaging her like that; she kept arriving at the thought that she was no better than someone’s mistress. At the height of arousal, her stupid mind would call her a whore and she’d be left shaking, caught between how badly she craved him and how reckless she felt for doing so.