Michael looked as if she’d slapped him. “Good,” she said bitterly, swiping at the tears beneath her eyes. “I hope you feel awful, because God knows you left me to feel much worse than that.”
She had to get out of there, get someplace where she could just breathe, and started walking toward the house, unable to look at him, unable to even think.
“Leah!” he called after her.
She closed her eyes, told herself to keep walking, but the masochistic part of her that apparently loved as much pain as he could heap on her stopped and turned around.
He was standing there, his head low, that lock of hair hanging over his eye. “Before you go . . . I have to tell you there is nothing wrong with your car. It was just a loose battery cable.”
Her mouth dropped open. “You lied?”
“Yes, I lied. I lied because I had to talk to you. I’ll send a car for you in the morning and have your car fixed while you’re at work.” And with that, he turned away, walked around to the driver’s side of the car. A moment later, he was backing out of her drive without looking back.
Yet Leah stood in her ugly yard long after his car had disappeared around the corner, her head pounding with memories and feelings and the very strong sense that she had just stepped off the edge into an abyss.
Subject: The Chartreuse Dress
From: Lucy Frederick <[email protected]>
To: Leah Kleinschmidt <[email protected]>
Time: 12:02 am
Okay, you cannot possibly find fault with the attached dress. I know it’s not gold, but I’ve rethought the whole color thing. And oh, I found THE cutest guaranteed-to-get-you-laid shoes ever! They are three-inch heels, straps that go around the ankles, and very sparkly gold. If you say you don’t like them, you are not going to be my maid of honor, because I really really want those shoes! Can’t wait to hear what you think.
Subject: Re: The Chartreuse Dress
From: Leah Kleinschmidt <[email protected]>
To: Lucy Frederick <[email protected]>
Time: 9:15 pm
Dress looks great. Shoes sound fab.
Subject: Re: Re: The Chartreuse Dress
From: Lucy Frederick <[email protected]>
To: Leah Kleinschmidt <[email protected]>
Time: 12:24 am
Okay, what’s going on? The last time you answered with exactly six words, you thought you were dying with that disease you found on the internet. What happened? You didn’t do anything stupid did you, Leah?
Subject: Re: Re: Re: The Chartreuse Dress
From: Lucy Frederick <[email protected]>
To: Leah Kleinschmidt <[email protected]>
Time: 12:40 am
HEELLL-LLLOOOH! WHAT DID YOU DO???
Chapter Eleven
IT was the worst night Michael had spent in years.
There had been only a couple of times in his life that he’d felt such despair—once, as a kid, being removed from the one foster home where he’d ever felt safe and put in yet another foster home. And then again on his last covert assignment in Spain, when he wondered every single day if they’d figured out who he was and if he might not leave that country alive.
But as bad as those times had been, he’d never cried. He couldn’t even remember the last time he cried. But the memory of Leah’s face as she described her despair after he’d left prompted big, fat, salty tears of deep, soul-aching regret to slide out of his eyes as he tossed and turned between the sheets, berating himself.
She was right, of course—what he’d done was insidious. What made him think he could just waltz back into her life and pick up where they’d left off? What in the hell had made him think that after dumping her, as she had so succinctly put it—and man, he’d done such a number on his own head that at the time, he honestly believed he was doing her a favor—that she would merrily let him into her life again?
It was a little distressing to discover that, at the age of thirty-eight, he could still be such an idiot.
But idiocy aside, he felt a searing need to prove to her that he really had loved her, even if he’d never been able to bring himself to say it. That his leaving had been the work of a coward—there was no other word for it—and he would never forgive himself for it. In a lifetime of trying, he’d still never make it up to her.
He also felt compelled to show her that he wasn’t really an extreme bachelor, which, in her mind, apparently, had been equated to the words male slut. She really held him in high regard, didn’t she?