Retreat (3 page)
Authors: Liv James
So much for compassion. “Go to hell,” she
said.
“Look, I haven’t been spying on you if
that’s what you’re thinking. In fact I didn’t know about Carpenter until Marcy
told me about your engagement. That’s when I decided to do a little checking
around.”
“I bet you were thrilled with what you
found,” she said.
Unlike Clara, Marcy
still worked at Freedman’s firm in Fort
Worth with Jon. She’d only emailed Marcy a week ago
that she was getting married. Jon worked fast.
“No, I wasn’t thrilled. Do you think I
wanted to come up here and hurt you like this?”
No, she supposed he didn’t. But of all
people to expose David…
“When do you leave?” she asked.
“First thing in the morning. I have the
Cessna up at the airstrip.”
“You flew in?”
“It’s faster.”
“I know, but …”
“But what?”
“Nothing,” she said. Of course he flew in.
“Where are you staying tonight?”
“The George Washington Hotel.”
“My car’s in their lot.”
“That’s why I’m staying there. Your assistant,”
he held up a large hand to keep her from correcting him, “excuse me, the woman
who answers your phone, told me that’s where you park.”
“You don’t miss a trick, do you?”
“No.”
“Well, good. You can walk me to my car
then,” she said.
“I was hoping you’d walk me to my room,” he
said, that devilish grin resurfacing.
They finished their meal and stepped into
the cool May evening. They drifted down the broad sidewalk three blocks to the
George Washington, a historic hotel whose false façade rose up across
from Aesthetics. The rain that threatened earlier had blown over with little
more than a spattering of drops on the dark awnings overhead.
The cool air was a relief after weeks of
steamy weather that made it feel more like the Augusts Clara knew growing up
back East than early May. Back home it was spring. The lavender lilacs at her
grandmother’s bungalow would be bursting with buds desperate to bloom.
Landing in Tulsa had been a surprise, a best case at a
bad time, a place she never expected to end up, let alone live. Downtown was
the haunt of stranded business travelers, arts patrons and daring students who
ventured off campus. There were no stands of row homes, no families, no vestige
of the signs she took for downtown growing up. In Tulsa wide streets and boulevards tumbled
toward a barren countryside, a place where she could drive and drive and drive
waiting for downtown to emerge from the perfect grids of fenced-in neighborhoods,
churches, girlie clubs and Quik Trips.
As they reached the hotel entrance, a
breeze drifted off the Arkansas River,
buffeting them as they faced each other in the glow of the hotel’s marquee.
“I should be thanking you again,” Clara
said. “But honestly, there’s a part of me that wishes you never showed up
tonight. I had a plan here and it was working. At least I thought it was
working. Until now.”
“That part of you is wishing the truth were
different, Clara. But it’s not.”
“I know. So I’ll say it. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” He placed his hand on her
arm. “There’s more we need to talk about, you know.”
Here it was. “No. I don’t think there is.
Not now. Maybe not ever. I need to deal with the information you gave me.”
He nodded. “Another time, then. Soon. Do
you want me to walk you to your car?”
“No, that’s okay. It’s just around the
corner.” She pointed up the well-lit ramp to the parking garage. “You should go
get checked in.”
“Already done,” he said, pulling his room
card from his pocket.
“Okay, well, goodnight then.”
“Goodnight, Clara,” he said, stepping
closer. She backed away instinctively.
She made a mistake letting him take her
hand in the restaurant, but she was so upset that she wasn’t thinking straight.
She didn’t want to lead him on, to let him think that just because he managed
to find the right piece of dirt on David that she’d fall back into his arms.
That would require way more trust and forgiveness than she was willing to
offer.
He didn’t hide his displeasure that she was
pushing him away.
She knew he liked to
control the situation but she wasn’t going to let him.
“Good luck tonight,” he said coolly.
“Let me know how it goes.”
She nodded and repeated her goodbye, then
walked up the ramp to the parking garage, aware of Jon’s eyes following her
until she chirped off the alarm and opened the car door.
She looked up in time to see him turn the
corner and head back to the hotel.
She slid into her navy blue Acura and
stared straight ahead, going over their conversation again in her mind. She
rested her head against the steering wheel and closed her eyes.
Before tonight she felt like she was back
on track after the fiasco in Fort
Worth threw everything into disarray.
She was engaged, respected in the community,
and carefully orchestrating the perfect time to launch her own firm and her own
family. She’d been blissfully unaware that David was hiding anything from her.
The whole time she was researching the family backgrounds of Tulsa’s wealthiest philanthropists she never
thought to dig in her own backyard.
Now she’d pay for that oversight. The fact
that Jon was the one who broke the news ripped at her. Seeing him, smelling
him, and watching his dark eyes made her feel all the more foolish for not
figuring it out and, worse, for moving on so quickly.
Damn it, she thought. Marcy knew more than
anyone that seeing Jon again would shock her.
How the hell did it end up that Marcy was
still in Fort Worth
while she was here being made a fool of? Clara would have made partner by now
had she stayed, had things been different.
She slowly moved her head back and forth,
feeling the knobs of the steering wheel dig into her forehead.
She couldn’t blame Marcy. There was no way
she’d known Jon was coming. That was the only explanation. She would have sent
up a flag. She wouldn’t have let Clara walk into that trap unarmed.
And oh God she’d felt unarmed. A year of
crushing back feelings, changing everything to keep from being reminded of him
and he drops the L word as if she’d known it all along.
He must not know the meaning of the damned
word, she decided. How could he? He ditched her, humiliated her, then shows up
a year later to … to do it again.
Clara lifted her head and started the car.
At least this time her mistake wouldn’t
make the front page of the business section.
CHAPTER
2
The Acura’s headlights clicked off
automatically as Clara pulled into the garage next to the long black Cadillac,
which gleamed from its weekly detailing. Jon was right. She hated that car. It
floated along the road like Grammy Spritzer’s ancient Oldsmobile.
To be fair, David hated her car, too. He
complained that the coupe was too confining. Clara suspected that he was more
uncomfortable with the standard shift than with the car’s size, but she never
brought it up to him. She might offend his manhood if she suggested he didn’t
know how to drive a stick.
He offered to buy her a new car as a
wedding gift but she’d refused. The Acura was the first car she bought for
herself and she wasn’t about to give it up.
At least that was a moment of clarity, she
thought, slamming the car door. If only she’d given that much thought to moving
in with him.
David had been so convincing – so romantic
– with flowers and bubble bath and lovely notes inviting her to share his
house. With Jon out of the picture she hadn’t seen the harm in making herself
at home in the well-kept colonial.
She entered the spacious house through a
side door that led from the garage to the kitchen. She flipped on the light,
revealing her favorite room. It had been professionally decorated long before
she arrived.
She wondered now if Sally had managed it
all, if the soothing neutrals and greens that she so admired were the handiwork
of a woman she never knew existed, a woman who once called this place home, and
who still called David Carpenter her husband.
Clara shuddered as the magnitude of the lie
she’d been living sunk in.
She dropped her coat and purse on a chair
by the door and slipped off her heels. David hadn’t noticed the kitchen light
turn on, which meant he was either in bed upstairs or asleep on the couch.
Still, she wanted to be certain.
Man he’d had her fooled.
She padded silently across the cold tile
floor to the family room.
David was there, asleep on the couch in his
usual corner, his sandy-haired head flopped
back against the beige cushion, his mouth partly open as the television blared
a detective show.
She always found him like this when she got
home after
9:00
. She’d
gently wake him, and then he’d try to talk to her but would be so groggy that
he wouldn’t remember in the morning.
Tonight she let him sleep.
She slipped upstairs to their bedroom and
pulled her blue-flowered overnight bag from the top of the walk-in closet. The
cheap canvas duffel was better traveled than most of the people she knew.
She pulled it open and threw in a pale
green nightgown, a sensible change of underwear, a French blue blouse and a
pair of navy trouser socks. She retrieved her good moisturizer and shampoo from
the marbled bathroom, then packed a smaller bag with make-up. She selected a
navy blue pants suit wrapped in clingy plastic from the cleaner’s, then headed
back downstairs.
She stopped at the kitchen table and pulled
the photograph of David’s family from her purse. She placed it in the spot
where they left each other notes, and positioned her engagement ring on top
where it would catch the morning sun and David’s eye as he stumbled by.
She turned toward the family room. His
chest rose and fell.
How could she have been so dumb? The whole
time she thought she had the upper hand by gathering information on his friends
and associates he was trailing her along like a fool.
She cleared her throat.
No response.
Another woman would have marched into the
family room and screamed at him, shaken him, demanded to know why he’d lied.
Clara didn’t bother. She knew why. The photo proved he was a pig, just as her
mother’s third husband had been a pig. She remembered the day her mother opened
the credit card statement to find the lingerie purchases that she knew hadn’t
been for her. Her mom had railed at her stepfather, spent months in anguish,
until she finally pulled herself out of it.
Clara didn’t have the time or energy for
such dramatics.
She was surprised at how she felt – or,
more accurately, didn’t feel – watching David sleep. She didn’t feel
devastated, not the way she did when she booked out of Fort Worth, like the
very life had been ripped from her.
Had she really planned to marry this man?
The large house made familiar sounds. Fresh
ice tumbled down into the automatic dispenser in the freezer door. The clock on
the mantle in the family room clicked each second as the television droned. She
expected to come home tonight and stretch out upstairs in bed next to her
future husband, just as she did every night for more than six months.