“I’ll toast to that.” I took a sip while Dean drained half of his in one swig.
Ambling around the side of my desk, he pointed his glass at the photo of Noah and me at the company’s Christmas party two years back. I liked the picture because it made me look thin and Noah’s arm was wound around me in a way that suggested total adoration.
It was a veneer of the life I pretended to have.
“That husband of yours is a better man than me.” Dean paused a few feet away from me.
Plenty of space to affirm the working relationship we had, but I couldn’t chase away the sense of intimacy his presence invoked. The hint of his cologne, the scent of bourbon on his breath, that invisible shroud of power and self-assuredness that clung to men like Dean Kincaid swung like a wrecking ball at a woman’s willpower.
I rolled my chair closer to my desk and set down the drink. “Why do you say that?”
It wasn’t until I glanced back in his direction that he answered. “Because I wouldn’t be so copacetic with my wife spending her nights in an office when I wanted her in bed with me.” He didn’t blink or look away. Instead, he leaned into the edge of my desk, a silent question in his eyes. One I wasn’t sure I wanted to decode.
One I wasn’t sure I didn’t want to translate either.
I shouldn’t have come. Some part of me had known Dean would be here. A part of me recognized the rush I felt from seeing him, the trill in my chest when he looked at me. It was reminiscent of high school when the gloriously out-of-my- league senior fired a smile in my direction for the sole sport of knowing his effect on the opposite sex.
“Then it’s a good thing you’ve chosen not to get married, Dean,” I replied, my voice a key or two off.
“Why’s that?”
“Because you have to let the other person be who they are, not who you want them to be. Or where you want them to be on any given night.” My eyebrow arched his direction before I scanned a file containing information for a new case. Another repeat offender. Another case with nothing more than circumstantial evidence to pull a conviction out of my hat with.
“And that’s the kind of marriage you and your husband have?” Leaning over the desk a bit more, his presence enveloped me. “The ideal kind?”
“No marriage is ideal.”
A stretch of silence punctuated our conversation. I braced myself for absolutely anything Dean might say next.
“How is Noah?” he asked, his voice hinting that he’d opened some distance between us. “I haven’t seen him in a while.”
“He’s good. Busy.”
“Still trying to save the world, one depraved soul at a time?”
My tongue worked into my cheek when I detected the undercurrent of accusation. “He stills sees patients and leads meetings if that’s what you’re getting at.”
“How many of those patients has he managed to reform?” Dean’s voice came from another part of the office behind me.
“I can’t give you a number.”
“How about an approximate? What percentage of patients has your husband managed to cure?”
My eyes were narrowed when I pinned them on him, back in the shadowy corner of my office, posture stiff and jaw locked. “You and I both know there’s no such thing as a cure.”
“Then how many manage to control their urges and not reoffend?” Dean’s shoulders moved beneath his white dress shirt.
“That’s really a better question for Noah to answer,” I said, giving my attention back to the case file in front of me.
“Excellent idea. What do you two have going on next Thursday night?” Dean asked.
“Work probably,” I more muttered than spoke.
“Okay, so I’ll make the dinner reservations for later. Nine o’clock, how about? My treat.” He was about to step out the door as though I’d agreed to it all.
“What? You, Noah, and me—the three of us—are going to have dinner together?” I tipped my head at Dean.
His chuckle came from deep in his chest, the smile that accompanied it the kind that made me look away. “I was thinking of making it more of a double date than a third wheel sort of situation. If that works for you?”
“A double date?”
“Yes. Believe it or not, on occasion I can find a woman to take pity on me.” Dean pulled out his phone and typed something in. “I’ll send you a calendar invite. Talk it over with Noah and let me know.”
I couldn’t recall how many times I’d reread the sentence my eyes were scrolling over on the paper below me.
“You’re seeing someone?” Even as I asked it, I realized how tragic my tone was. The way I’d sound when I asked my dad if he would be at parent day at school, or the way I’d ask my mom what she thought about my outfit in the morning.
Approval. Acceptance.
Or maybe the sensation I was chasing had more to do with not feeling rejected.
“Why? Do you have a special interest in who I am or am not seeing?” The tip his smile took indicated he hadn’t missed the change in my voice. “Anyone in mind you want to set a lonely, boorish bachelor like me up with?”
This time, I made sure to take a full breath before offering any kind of response. “You know, if you actually want people to buy into that self-deprecating act, you better fine-tune it.” I attached a smile and motioned him out of my office. “I’ve got actual work to do that doesn’t include bantering with you all night.”
“I’ll leave you to it.” Dean tapped on the door as he left. “Thursday night. It’s a date.”
Four
I’d lost.
I knew that before the jury read the verdict in court. Glancing Skovil’s direction following the verdict, my stomach churned. He wasn’t hunched forward in relief or grinning ear-to-ear like other defendants I’d tried.
No, Darryl Skovil was gloating. His posture, his expression, his eyes—he was radiating a fuck you to everyone in that courtroom.
For a fleeting moment, I was tempted to throw myself at him and shell out the punishment he deserved, but I talked myself down with the reminder that, in the eyes of the legal system, justice had been served. The jury had not been convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that Skovil was guilty of the monstrous crimes we’d accused him of.
Licking the wounds from my loss, I spent every moment of the day keeping busy. Needless activity was one of the many substances I depended on as a numbing agent.
When I heard Andee’s boots storming down the stairs, I grabbed the tray perched on the counter and rushed out of the kitchen. She didn’t hear me calling—her headphones were on and blaring—or she was ignoring me as she’d been doing for the past week.
As I jogged to catch up with her, a couple of cookies bounced off the tray onto the ivory carpet. I didn’t stop to pick them up.
“Andee!” I hollered, managing to grab a hold of the bulky army coat she’d thrown on.
When she slipped off her headphones, the standard clamor of music wasn’t piercing from them. She circled around, arms crossed. “What?”
“Where are you going?” I asked in a non-confrontational tone so as not to ignite the ever-shrinking fuse inside my child.