“Understood. Thank you.” She watched him climb into his truck.
While he had worked on her SUV, the last of the afternoon light had faded. She was horribly, unforgivably late.
When she arrived home, the house was ablaze with lights. Austin had fixed the tripped electrical circuit. High-end cars lined the side of the long driveway and the street.
His important dinner party had started. The white wine hadn’t been taken from the cooler, so it would be too cold. The hors d’oeuvres hadn’t been baked, the cake hadn’t been iced, and there had been no one to cook the chicken.
She certainly hadn’t showered, nor had she put on makeup. She caught a glimpse of her appearance in her side mirror. She looked like a half-drowned rat.
Okay, she thought. What am I going to do now?
I could go in the back way, slip upstairs and clean up, go back down and make my excuses. Austin will be furious, but he’ll hide it with warm smiles and a kiss on the cheek.
Afterward, he’ll lecture me. He might yell a bit. I could make up some lie about going to help a friend in trouble, tell the truth about my car breaking down, and the whole thing would blow over.
But no. I don’t think so.
She strode for the front door, picking up speed as she went, while the frozen lump in her chest melted into something hot and volcanic. Anger felt like a wild animal living in her chest. It made her strides long and powerful.
In the door.
Past well-dressed, startled people. Molly let the rage take over while she hovered high in one corner of her mind, watching.
The colors of the guest’s clothes seemed garish, too bright. Many of the women were beautiful, their painted mouths forming words as they stared at her, some catty and judging, others disturbed. Was the owner of the panties here? Possibly.
She stalked past partners in Austin’s firm and their significant others. Select clients. Judge Mallory. Somewhere, the new DA, Josiah Mason, would be mingling. A real up-and-comer, people called him. A man to be careful around. A man to watch.
Everyone had drinks. Several people called out questions and greetings, but she didn’t answer. She had a single objective.
She found Austin talking to Russell Sherman, the managing partner of the firm, and a tall, imposing man she didn’t recognize. When she drew close, the three turned to her. Her sense of disconnection vanished, and suddenly she slammed back into her body again.
Austin’s handsome face creased in a smile while his sharp gaze looked murderous. “There you are, honey. What happened? I was getting worried about y—”
As he talked, she reached out and dropped the wadded-up panties in his martini glass. His words cut off, like flying birds shot out of the sky.
“You broke my heart the first time you cheated on me,” she told him. “Broke it into a million pieces. I was only twenty-one and a junior in college. You were twenty-two and had just graduated, and we’d only been together for a year. But you were so sorry, and oh Lord, my mother was so damn insistent. So I stayed and gave you another chance.” She turned to Russell and the powerful-looking stranger who stood beside him. “He can be persuasive, can’t he?”
Russell stared at her like she had turned into a rattlesnake, while the new, unknown man watched her with an impassive gaze. He had a hard, strong-boned face that was distinctive rather than classically handsome. In her mind’s eye, he seemed to shimmer with a dark essence, as if he was a polished onyx that caught the light while all the people around him faded into the background like flat paper dolls in a book that told someone else’s story.
“Molly,” said Russell with an embarrassed laugh and a sideways glance around the quieting room. “This is neither the time nor the place.”
Her voice sliced across his. “This is exactly the right time and place.”
Russell turned away, moving his square, bulky body like a weapon. In a low voice, he said to Austin, “Get her under control.”
Austin had whitened. His jaw clenched, and his eyes burned with a promise of retribution. Grabbing her arm with hard fingers that bit into the muscles of her biceps, he muttered, “We’re going into the kitchen. Now.”
Fury erupted, filling her body with a flash fire. She actually saw sparks of light like lightning at the edges of her vision.
Jerking her arm free, she hissed, “I believe the legal definition of assault is laying hands on another person without their permission. Or is that battery? I can never keep those two straight. Touch me again, and I’ll call the police.”
Red spots of hectic color burned in his taut face. He bit out, “Have you lost your fucking mind?”
Over his shoulder, she caught sight of the antique Japanese Satsuma vase he had given her as a wedding present twenty years ago. They had gone to Japan on their honeymoon and discovered the vase while shopping. It had cost so much money she had walked away from it, but Austin had returned to the shop to purchase it for her.
She had felt so happy then. So full of faith in their future, the shadow of his first infidelity buried well and truly in the past.
She focused all her rage and hurt on that vase. The specks of lightning at the edges of her eyesight flared, and something—some indefinable, invisible thing—shot out of her body like a thunderbolt.
Across the room, the vase slammed into the wall and shattered, and the stand toppled over.
Hey, she thought. Wait. I… Did I do that? How the hell did I do that?
She stared numbly at the destruction while the rest of the world faded into swirls of people exclaiming and muttering in the background. Some of the dinner-party guests were slipping out the front door while others lingered to stare.
The imposing stranger regarded the fallen vase, then turned to look at her, a corner of his mouth tilting up. Against a deep suntan, his knowledgeable eyes looked yellow like a cat’s. Reaching to his forehead with long fingers, he tilted an invisible hat at her.
Austin broke the throbbing tension with a loud laugh. “I guess we should have gotten someone to fix the wobble in that vase stand,” he said in a voice pitched to carry across the silent room. “Tell you what, everybody, it’s abundantly clear Molly and I are having a rough moment. Why don’t you all head to the bar in the other room? Russell will serve you up whatever you desire while my wife and I resolve this.”
That snapped her focus back into place.
“Because resolving this should only take five minutes or so?” Her acidic retort caused his head to rear back.
“Where is your Xanax?” he muttered.
“You think drugging me is the way to deal with this?” Raising her voice, she said clearly, “The second time you cheated on me, I cried for weeks. You didn’t know I found out. I was too… something. I don’t even know what the word is. There you were, going through your life with your dick hanging out of your pants, and I was too scared or intimidated or heartsick to confront you. I felt like a failure. I thought it had to be at least partly my fault. I had fallen out of love with you by then, but I still tried to make our life together work. I’m not a quitter, I said. I would stick it out. For better or worse, right?”
As she watched, the embarrassed anger in Austin’s face switched to uncalculated fury. “You frigid bitch,” he spat out. “You don’t know the meaning of the word love. Everything always has to be portioned out with you, balanced on some kind of invisible scale. I had to earn every fuck I got from you.”