Loves Me, Loves Me Knot (15 page)

She knew Gage—or had always thought she did, anyway. If there had been another woman he found attractive, found himself falling in love with, that could have accounted for his behavior toward the end of their marriage. Guilt might have explained his growing sullenness, his increased absences, his change of heart about having children.

If that was the case, Jenna thought she might just kill him. They weren’t married anymore, but he still deserved to be punished.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” he responded in a voice that made her feel exactly that. But only moderately. The rest of what she felt was relief.

“There was no one else?” she asked softly. “You’re sure?”

“I think I’d know if I were having an affair,” he snapped, his annoyance at her line of questioning evident. “Jesus, Jenna, what kind of man do you think I am?”

For a second, she remained silent, her stomach still
tight, and then she said, “I don’t know. I thought you were a man I could trust. I thought you loved me. I thought we shared the same wants and needs and views, and were going to be together forever. You blew a hole the size of a Buick in all of that, so how do I know what else you changed your mind about?”

At first he didn’t respond, but there was a scraping sound in the dark space of the car interior that she thought might have been his teeth grinding down to nubs.

“I never cheated on you,” he finally said in a low, dangerous voice. “I don’t know what’s going on between Zack and Grace, but don’t pawn his misdeeds off on me.”

Until that very moment, until she heard him actually mutter the words
I never cheated on you
, she hadn’t realized that she’d been holding her breath, waiting. She wasn’t even sure her heart was beating.

But now both her heart and lungs lurched back into action, sending her head spinning slightly and blood pounding through her veins.

“Fair enough,” she replied when she was once again capable of normal speech. “When we get to Zack’s apartment, though, I suggest you stay out of sight, because I doubt Grace will be feeling the least bit charitable toward anyone of the male persuasion. I wouldn’t be surprised if she takes out her anger at Zack on every man within a hundred mile radius for months to come.”

When they arrived at Zack’s apartment building, the situation was even worse than Jenna had envisioned.

Because Zack was a high-profile hockey player, he lived in an upscale building, complete with security
cameras and a uniformed doorman. The doorman had of course waved Grace and Ronnie right in when they’d arrived, aware of Grace’s relationship with Zack. She had permission and a key, and had been there thousands of times both with and without Zack.

For Jenna and Gage, however, he insisted on buzzing up, and only let them past the lobby once Ronnie assured him both guests were expected and welcome.

Instead of the cacophony of wanton destruction she expected to hear as soon as they stepped off the elevator, they were met with only silence. Whatever disturbance Grace had caused when she’d first arrived had apparently passed. Either that, or Zack’s neighbors had complained to the front desk about the noise and she’d been warned that if she didn’t quiet down, the police would be called.

“You’d better stay out here,” Jenna told Gage as they reached the door.

He nodded, taking up position against the opposite wall. Leaning back, he crossed his booted feet at the ankles and his arms over his chest.

“I’ll keep an eye out for cops . . . or cheating ex-boyfriends,” he said, proving that their minds had been running along the same track, at least partially.

Jenna turned the knob and let herself in, and at first the apartment didn’t look much different than usual. Zack wasn’t exactly a finalist for Neatnik of the Year to begin with, so half a dozen pairs of discarded shoes and well-used dog toys littering the entryway were less than remarkable.

But as soon as she got to the end of the short foyer, which opened to encompass a kitchen on one side and a giant open living area on the other, she realized that
the normally messy room now looked as though a tsunami had hit it. Twice.

The living room was in shambles. Clothes were strewn everywhere. Cushions were missing from the sofa. Cords were yanked loose from the television, DVD player, Playstation, stereo, and everything else that required electricity to run. Zack’s abundant and cherished hockey trophies were knocked off their display shelves. A few were broken, and one . . . one was rather creatively rammed head-first into the wall. A definite forfeit of his security deposit.

Making her way to the bedroom, she found Ronnie sitting on the edge of a chair in one corner, elbows on her knees as she patted a panting Bruiser with one hand and gnawed on the thumbnail of the other.

Grace sat cross-legged in the middle of the bed, photo albums and newspaper clippings spread all around her. Obviously she’d settled down somewhat. Or rather, she’d shifted from ranting and raving to quiet and dogged personal devastation.

Because in her right hand, she held a pair of scissors with bright red handles, and was using them to thoroughly and methodically cut the photos and newspaper clippings surrounding her into tiny, unidentifiable slivers.

Her face was streaked with tears and lines of what was probably supposed to be waterproof mascara. Her hair was a blond rat’s nest, frizzy in some places, pulled straight in others. She looked like she’d been, quite literally, through the wringer.

“I tried to stop her,” Ronnie said as soon as she spotted Jenna in the doorway. “I told her she’ll be sorry later, but she won’t listen to me.”

“I won’t be sorry,” Grace insisted, not bothering to lift her gaze from her current project. “I could never be sorry.
Zack
is the one who’s going to be sorry.”

With that, she jumped up, grabbed an armful of the scrapbooks and paper fragments from the bedspread, and headed for the French doors overlooking a small balcony. Through the doors she went, night breeze ruffling the curtains behind her as she marched to the iron railing and pitched the records of all Zack’s sporting achievements into the street.

Some of it floated gently downward like feathers. The rest fell and landed with a resounding
thunk
. Jenna winced, hoping there was no one walking along the sidewalk below who might become the unwitting recipient of a memento-induced concussion or the mother of all paper cuts.

“Grace, sweetie,” she said softly as the other woman came back into the room. “Let Ronnie and me take you home. You’ll be more comfortable there, and we can stay up the rest of the night talking.”

“I don’t want to talk. I want to hurt him.”

Grace rushed across the plushly carpeted floor, throwing open the closet doors and yanking garments one by one off of their hangers. Casual shirts and slacks, suits, hockey jerseys, a tuxedo . . . she piled up as much as she could carry and stormed back across the room, tossing everything over the railing to join the rest of Zack’s belongings on the street.

This was getting out of control. If they didn’t stop her soon the cops really would be called, and Grace would likely be hauled away for destruction of property, littering, and breaking and entering, among other things.

On Grace’s next trip inside, Jenna blurted out a question she knew would get her friend’s attention. “Are you sure he cheated on you?”

As intended, the query drew Grace to a halt in the center of the room. Blond curls floated around her face as she turned on Jenna, eyes narrowed and blazing fire.

“Are you taking his side?” she demanded. “Do you think I’m making this up?”

If Jenna didn’t know better, she’d swear she was about to be on the wrong end of a rotisserie spear.

“Of course not,” she replied evenly, hoping to bring Grace’s level of rage down just a notch. “But I wasn’t there, so I don’t really know what happened. Can you fill me in?”

Behind Grace, Ronnie slowly straightened in her seat, bobbing her head up and down.
Yes, yes,
she mouthed,
keep going.

“He’s a lying, cheating bastard,” Grace spat. But she didn’t move closer to the closet or back toward the balcony. “I went there to surprise him. Ronnie and I went there to surprise both of them.”

Anger tinged her words, but there was sadness there, too, and her eyes glistened with tears. “She was in his bed, half naked, and he was in the shower. What does that tell you?”

“That he’s a lying, cheating bastard,” Jenna agreed. And then a second later, she wiped her brow with the back of her hand and said, “Boy, it’s warm in here. Are you warm? I could use a drink, how about you?”

Grace blinked a few times, as though trying to follow the rapid switch in topics. No doubt she was so focused on her own misery that nothing else made much sense to her.

Jenna had been there a time or two herself. Not dealing with infidelity, but a betrayal all the same. When Gage had started pulling away and it had become clear divorce was in her future, she’d gone a little crazy, too.

For months, she’d walked around in a daze. She functioned, she communicated, she went to work and came home, went to her Wednesday-night knitting group and for drinks afterwards with her friends.

But the whole time, she’d felt removed from everyone and everything around her. Her entire focus, her every thought had been on Gage . . . how much she’d loved him, how much he’d disappointed her, the life they were supposed to have had together, and the life they now never would. Everything else was just white noise.

So she knew how Grace felt, knew what she was going through and the kinds of thoughts that were racing around in her brain.

She also knew that if she could just keep Grace distracted, she and Ronnie might be able to calm her down enough that she wouldn’t do anything stupid or make matters worse.

“I’m sure Zack has something in the fridge. Help yourself,” Grace told her distractedly.

Jenna gave a snort, crossing her arms beneath her breasts and cocking a hip. “No, thank you. I don’t want anything from that jerk-off. And you shouldn’t, either. You don’t even want to be here, do you? I mean, why give him the satisfaction of knowing he’s hurt you? When he gets home and sees this place, he’ll realize how upset you were and probably get a kick out of it, asshole that he is.”

It took a second for Grace to absorb what Jenna was saying, but then her eyes narrowed, widened, and narrowed again.

“You’re right. Why am I even here?”

Behind her, Ronnie bounced to her feet, and Bruiser bounded up beside her.

“I’m better than this. I’m better than he is. He never deserved me.”

“No, he didn’t,” Jenna concurred, because she knew it was what Grace needed to hear. And heck, it was probably true.

“Let’s go somewhere else—your place or Ronnie’s. You can even come out to Aunt Charlotte’s and stay with me for a while, if you want.”

Grace shook her head. “I want to go home. I want to drink wine, and eat Oreos, and sleep until I’m old and gray.”

Both Jenna and Ronnie nodded, flanking their friend, each looping an arm through one of hers to lead her out of the bedroom.

“Sounds good to me,” Jenna said. “We’ll stop for massive quantities of wine and cookies on the way.”

They had Grace halfway across the living room when she stopped, muttered, “Wait,” and turned back toward the bedroom. Jenna and Ronnie raced after her, afraid of what she might be up to, but then gave mirrored sighs of relief when all she did was grab an old taped and battered hockey stick from the rear of Zack’s closet.

Grace returned a second later, stick in hand. “This is mine now,” she told them.

Jenna and Ronnie exchanged a glance, silently agreeing not to question or argue. They had Grace calmed down and moving in the right direction; that’s all that mattered. If she wanted to steal a single piece of hockey equipment in order to stick it—pun intended—to Zack, they weren’t going to fight her on it.

Gathering purses and jackets, they herded Grace toward the door, and Jenna made a point of getting there a split second before the others to frantically wave Gage away. Smart man that he was, he strolled a few yards down the hall and out of sight.

“Wait,” Grace said again when they had her halfway out the door.

Both women froze, afraid Grace had changed her mind and was about to go back on a rampage.

But instead, she merely snapped her fingers and called, “Here, Bruiser.”

The giant brown and white Saint Bernard, who had been only a couple steps behind them to begin with, padded straight to Grace, nudging her in the side with his nose and wet, panting tongue.

“He’s mine now, too,” she said to no one in particular, then turned on her heel and marched down the hall toward the elevator, the dog formerly known as Zack’s trailing along at her side.

Thanks to a lot of well-mimed signals and hand gestures, Gage got the hint that Jenna and Ronnie were carting an emotionally battered Grace off and away from causing any more damage at Zack’s apartment. He took the stairs to the lobby while they headed down in the elevator, then followed at a discreet distance as they made their way out of the building and along the sidewalk—at one point skirting piles of broken, torn, and otherwise bedraggled items that looked as though they’d once belonged to Zack—to the parking lot.

Jenna gently set her keys on the roof of her yellow VW Beetle, silently leaving them for him as she passed by and climbed into the back seat of Grace’s car with a much-worse-for-wear-looking Grace. Zack’s dog rode shotgun in the front beside Ronnie, strapped in and for all the world acting like the human he thought he was.

It was funny, he thought, as he squeezed himself into his ex-wife’s sorry excuse for a motor vehicle, that Jenna was suddenly leaving bread crumbs for him when only an hour before she’d been telling him off and insisting
he wasn’t welcome at her aunt’s farm
or
to follow her back to town for this girlfriend crisis intervention.

But that was his Jenna. She might not want him around, but she would never abandon him downtown and without a viable mode of transportation, either.