The Other Man (14 page)

“Surprise me.
 
No fast food, though.
 
I do expect a sit down meal.”
 

He took in a deep breath, let it out.
 
“I’m just going to pick wrong.
 
If you could tell me where you want to go, we’d both have a better evening.”
 

I studied him.
 
This was a foreign process to him, I could see that.
 
And so I made it easier on him.
 

“Okay.
 
I’ll find the right show time, and I’ll pick the restaurant.
 
But you’re driving, mister.”
 

He flashed his teeth at me in what could only be called a sinister grin.
 
“Of course I am.
 
That was never a question.”
 

I’d suggested it, but the way he said it was a bit infuriating.
 
I wasn’t the least bit surprised by his statement, though.
 
He would be the type that always had to drive.
 

He hadn’t even let me hold my own dog’s leash on this walk.
 

CHAPTER
 

FOURTEEN

I’d taken my cell phone with me on the walk as there were a few clients I was expecting calls from.
 
When it started buzzing, though, and I saw who was actually calling, I cursed.
 

My fucking ex.

He
would
call today.
 
Talk about the worst luck in the world.

Or worse, had Deborah already called and told him she’d seen me and Heath?

Dammit.
   

“What’s the matter?” Heath asked tonelessly.
 
His eyes were on my phone, and I had this strange thought that he knew who was calling.

The lock screen had lit up with
EDUARD CALLING
, and it was likely he could have read it from where he was standing.

Instead of answering, I was studying him.
 

He was fascinating to me.
 
Expressionless, toneless, but all of it somehow telling me that he was agitated.
 

I tried to shake off the suspicion, but it just wasn’t working.
 

“So how much do you know about me?” I asked him slowly.
 
“How much did you uncover in your . . . background check?”
 

“I know that’s your ex-husband calling.
 
I know you divorced him because he’s a cheating piece of shit.”

Wow.
 
He’d apparently done his research.
 
I was torn on how freaked out I should be about that.
 

“Why’s he bugging you?” he asked, through his teeth.
 
“I know you don’t have anything to do with him anymore.
 
What does he want?”
 

I grimaced.
 
I really hated to talk about this.
 
“He does this every so often, calls to chew me out.
 
He thinks it’s my fault that his sons don’t want anything to do with him anymore.
 
But if I had to guess why he’s calling
right now,
I’d say it’s because of Deborah, that neighbor you noticed I don’t like.
 
Remember how I said she’d tell my ex about seeing you and me together?
 
I didn’t think she’d work this fast, but here it is.”

My phone started buzzing again.
 
Irritated, I answered with, “What do you want, Eduard?”
 
My tone was biting.

My ex-husband took immediate exception to my tone.
 
“Is that any way to greet the father of your children?” he shot back.

“What do you want?” I repeated.

He cut right to the chase.
 
“How old is he?”

Ugh.
 
He was so predictably unpleasant about
everything
.
 
Divorce brought out the worst in everyone, but Eduard had sunk to new levels of low over the past year.
 
“Have you been talking to your good friend Deborah?”
   

“At least older than our sons, I hope?”
 
He was in a mood.
 
Usually he didn’t escalate this quickly into straight asshole when he called.
 
Generally he tried cajoling first.
 

“Not doing this,” I bit out, already thoroughly annoyed.
 

“I had no idea you were such a cougar, Lourdes.”
 

“Not doing this,” I repeated, about a second away from hanging up on him.
 

“Maybe that’s why we didn’t work out.
 
I was too
old
for you.”

That was too much.
 
“It’s not a mystery why we didn’t work out.
 
You were sleeping with my ex-best friend.”
 
I caught myself, just barely, from resorting to name-calling.
   

“You never even let me explain about that!”
 
His voice was close to a shout in my ear.
   

Oh.
 
Ugh.
 
This man.
 
How had I been fooled by him for so long?
 

“None of this matters,” I said, voice going very blank and cold.
 
I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.
 

I was starting to suspect that he enjoyed our hostile interactions.
 
Why else would he go out of his way to make them happen?

“Tell me why you’re calling,” I said slowly.
 
“And it had better be productive, or I’m hanging up in exactly five seconds.”
   

“You’re lucky, you know.
 
I could have pressed assault charges against both you and Rafael for what you did to me.”

Ugh.
 
This man.
 
Grrr.
 

He rendered me incapable of coherent thoughts he was so frustrating to deal with.

“Are you threatening to press charges against your own child right now?” I shot back, astounded that Eduard was even capable of disgusting me more than he usually did.
 
“Is this a joke?”
   

“If I had known, if I’d had any clue, that you were vindictive enough to turn my children against me—”

I hung up in the middle of his tirade.
 

“Assault?”
 
Heath’s tone was sardonic.

I looked up at him, smiling ruefully.
 
“It’s a long story.”
 

“I’m here all day.”
 

I sighed, and let it spill.
 

“For the record, I’m normally a pacifist.”
 

“Noted,” Heath drawled.
 

“But, and I guess you know this, or at least part of it, I caught him cheating on me.
 
He butt dialed me while he was having sex with my ex-best friend.
 
I heard enough to be certain that it was them and what they were doing.”
 

I paused, trying to read his expression.
 
“My reaction, more than anything, was fury.
 
I became so furious that I
did
assault him.”
   

“How?”
 

I always felt like a psycho retelling this story, especially now that I was so completely free of my ex.
 
But I told him.
 
If you wanted someone to open up to you, of course you had to reciprocate.

“I waited until he got home, honestly not knowing what to say to him, and he acted like everything was normal when he greeted me.
 
He went right away to take a shower, and that was when I lost my temper.
 
You see, he’d done that a lot, come in from wherever and gone immediately to shower.
 
He must have been stepping out on me for ages, and I hadn’t a clue.”

I studying him a while, trying and failing to gauge his reaction, and finally continued, “I grabbed the Fabuloso and his belt.”
 

“I like where this is headed,” Heath noted, and it made me smile.
 
At least he didn’t think I was a complete nutcase.
 
Yet.
 

“I sprayed the ground right in front of the shower.
 
It’s very smooth marble.
 
The second he stepped out, he slipped, cracked his head hard on the counter, and landed on his ass.”

“Good,” Heath said succinctly.
 

I smiled.
 
I should have known this wouldn’t remotely shock him.
 
“That’s when I took a belt to him, buckle first.”
 

“Good,” he repeated.
 

“I beat the shit out of him, beat him until he ran out of the house, naked, just to get away from me.
 
Then I locked him out.
 
Filed for divorce as soon as humanly possible.”
 

“That doesn’t explain why he’s threatening your son with assault charges.”
 

“Rafael, my oldest, beat him up rather severely when he found out what his father had done.
 
Still, I can’t believe Eduard would threaten his own child like that.”

“He’s a scumbag.
 
Want me to take care of him for you?”
 

I felt my eyes growing wide.
 
If it were anyone else, I’d have assumed they were joking.
 
“Do you mean . . . ?”

“I’m not talking about killing him.
 
I guarantee I can get him to leave you alone without resorting to that.”
 

Now
that
was half tempting.
 
But I restrained myself.
 

“He’s nothing I can’t handle.
 
To be perfectly honest, he just annoys me at this point.
 
And the assault charges are bogus.
 
If he was going to do that, he’d have done it ages ago, when he could’ve proven it.”

“Why do you think he’s still harassing you?
 
And why is he so concerned about who you’re seeing?
 
Do you think he’s trying to get you back?”
 

“God, no.
 
But, you know, it’s started to occur to me that there’s a motivation behind it, and it’s not that he wants to see more of our sons.”

“What then?”

“I . . . ” God, I hated talking about this.
 
“Well, you see, I’ve always had I guess what you could call a trust fund, for lack of a better word.
 
From my father.
 
And I’ve had a few successful careers over the years.
 
Long story short, I’ve got a bit of money saved up.”
 
Several hundred thousand, to be exact.
 
“And my ex knows it.
 
He thinks he can use this to somehow get more money from me.”

“Motherfucker.”
 
Heath’s voice was low, and his tone managed to achieve a rather intriguing combination of being both blank and succinct.
 
“You let me know if you change your mind, okay?
 
I’d have no problem whatsoever putting that guy in his place.”
 

I nodded, wondering what to do with him.
 

We started walking again.
 

“You should show me your house.
 
Didn’t you say it was around here?”
 

He took a deep breath, and I just knew he was about to lie to me.
 
“It’s a mess,” he hedged.
 
“I’ll take you there on another day, after I’ve straightened up.”

“Are you telling me that you’re a slob?”
 

“Yeah,” he said, no hesitation.

I didn’t believe that for one second, not any of it.
 
He either didn’t live around here, or there was another reason he wasn’t bringing me back to his place.
 

Dammit.
 
And we’d been doing okay, making progress.
 
But at this simple lie, some seeds of suspicion were planted.
 

What if he had a live-in girlfriend?
 

Fuck.
 
What if he had a wife?
 

“Do you have a girlfriend . . . or a wife?” I asked him point blank, watching his face carefully.
 

A look of very pure annoyance crossed his face, and I breathed out a sigh of relief.
 
He was genuinely offended at the question, and I found that boundlessly reassuring.
 

“No.
 
Of course not.
 
I wouldn’t be with you now if I did.
 
Is that what you think of me?”
 

Now
I
was on the defense.
 
Oh, he was good.
 
“No,” I said carefully.
 
“It’s just never bad to be clear, I figure.”
 

He grunted (this one was annoyed, I thought), and we started walking again.
 

CHAPTER
 

FIFTEEN

Next, I took him to my gym, because he asked what I liked to do on my day off, and my first and favorite choice, spending time with my boys, seemed inappropriate.
 
I didn’t even want to guess what my sons would think of Heath and our age difference.
   

My next few choices were shot down emphatically.
 
Shopping was not his thing, and I had a good feeling that I wouldn’t be changing his mind about that.
   

And no, he hadn’t changed his opinion about me photographing him.
 

So we settled on a plan.
 
We’d hit the gym, then I’d head back to my place to shower, and he’d go grab a few things from his place, make a few phone calls (for work), then come to pick me up for our date.