“It’s the impression you give.”
“I should get an Academy Award.” She pulled away, scrunched up against the passenger door and faced him. “You asked for honesty. Here it is. You ran out because you knew that Wendy’s death was your fault. Guilt. Plain and simple.”
“You’re right. I shouldn’t have left her alone that night.”
She pointed a finger at him. “You shouldn’t have had an affair with her. When I told you about the 4Runner trying to run me down, you thought it was your wife. That, too, you figured was your fault.” She tapped her temple. “You’re like an open book.”
He stared straight ahead, his jaw worked, then he jerked the steering wheel to the right. The high school parking lot was empty except for a few cars over by the track. Nick pulled in beneath a tree and turned off the engine.
The silence didn’t bother her, but she knew it drove him nuts as he raked his hands through his razor-short hair. Finally, he grunted through clenched teeth. “I was to blame.”
“Big Nick’s responsible for everything. Whatcha gonna do now that you know your wife didn’t have anything to do with it?”
He didn’t answer directly. “I’m staying at my buddy Rick’s. Carla came by this morning. She’s lost weight. She’s not meant to be a thin woman. She’s got broad hips from having kids, and she just doesn’t...look right to me. Doesn’t feel right.”
“You want her the way she was when she thought you were a god.”
“I was just the only one who stayed with her after the first fuck.” He swallowed, then turned to look at Max. “I don’t know her anymore. I don’t want to know her. I want you.”
Yesyesyes. Wendy almost jumped out of Max’s skin.
“And I don’t mean only the sex.”
Max closed her eyes and felt the power course through her veins. God, Remy had been so right. Wendy wanted this, wanted to be wanted, to be needed, to be loved. She’d wanted it the night she died. But even more, she’d given Nick that special gift, she’d let her body explode with his. And she’d never come willingly in her life, not unless she was the one giving herself the orgasm. That climax had been more than a sexual release, it had been an epiphany.
She had found the man who wanted her more than anything, the one who wanted her beyond the physical.
Then he’d left her.
Max’s eyes snapped open. “You told Wendy you wouldn’t marry her.”
“Yes.”
“When Remy showed up, she did everything he said, even let him kill her with a minimum of resistance.”
“Is that what he told you?” An edge crept into his voice.
“He didn’t have to. He was jealous of you, but you quit, and that satisfied him for a while. But when he knew she’d left him for you, he went crazy.”
“Since when did quitting a job become a reason for murder?”
“Quitting her job? Come on, Nick, get a clue. She quit having sex with him.” She wondered where her brutality came from. Wendy. Payback for Nick’s failure.
“That’s total bullshit.” His lips tensed, the edges of his nostrils turned white. “Wendy hated him. She’d never have—”
“Wouldn’t she?”
He stared straight ahead, said nothing. She watched the slide of his Adam’s apple. His fingers tightened around the steering wheel.
“You really didn’t know, did you?”
His nostrils flared. The cords of his neck stretched with tension. “She wouldn’t have gone near him. I know it.”
“He watched the two of you. She knew it.” God, yes, Wendy had known. She’d despised herself for liking it, but it hadn’t stopped her.
“She hated Remy.” He slammed the flat of his hand against the wheel.
“She needed Remy as much as she needed you. He wanted her, but when she realized he was just another trap like her father, like Hal, she wanted you to get her out.”
His lips curled in a snarl. “Jesus Christ. It’s obscene.”
“And what do you call the things you did?”
He breathed deeply, lips thin, white. She’d punched a button.
“Shall I name them for you, Nick?” She held up a hand, ready to tick off a list of his failures. His continued silence drove her to it as much as Wendy’s insistent anger. “You had an affair. You left your family. You fucked Wendy, then you dumped her. And you let her die in the back seat of her goddamn car.”
“Shut up,” he snarled through gritted teeth. The man could crush rocks to dust with that bite.
“Can’t stand it, Nickie? Can’t stand knowing another way you failed?”
He turned away from her, looked out the side window.
Blaming Nick was fruitless. Wendy was the only one who could have rescued herself.
“All she really wanted was to be loved.” By her husband, her boss, her lover. But mostly by her father. “He won in the end,” Max whispered.
“Remy?” he asked.
“Bud Traynor. Wendy’s father.”