A server came by our table. Corinne ordered a salad; I ordered a drink—a double.
“So you’ve sold a tell-all to do … what?” I asked, when the server walked away. “Get back at me? Hurt Eva?”
“No. I want you to remember.”
“This isn’t the way.”
“What is the way?”
I held her gaze. “It’s over, Corinne. Exposing your memories of us isn’t going to change that.”
“Maybe not,” she conceded, sounding so sad it sent a pang of regret through me. “But you said you never loved me. At the very least, I’ll prove that wrong. I gave you comfort. Contentment. You were happy with me. I don’t see that same sort of tranquillity when you’re with her. You can’t tell me you feel it.”
“Everything you’re saying tells me you don’t care if I end up with you. But if you’re leaving Giroux, maybe you care about the money. How much did they pay you to prostitute your ‘love’ for me?”
Her chin lifted. “That’s not why I’m writing the book.”
“You just want to be sure I don’t end up with Eva.”
“I just want you to be happy, Gideon. And since you’ve met her, I’ve seen you be anything but.”
How would Eva take the book when she read it? No better, I imagined, than I was taking “Golden.”
Corinne’s gaze dropped to my left hand, which rested on the tabletop. “You gave Eva your mother’s engagement ring.”
“It hasn’t been hers for a long time.”
She took a sip of the wine she’d had on the table when I joined her. “Did you have it when you and I were together?”
“Yes.”
She flinched.
“You can tell yourself that Eva and I are incompatible,” I said tightly, “that we’re either fighting or fucking with nothing of substance in between. But the truth is that she’s the other half of me and what you’re doing is going to hurt her, which will hurt me. I’ll buy you out of the publishing contract if you’ll withdraw the book.”
She stared at me for a long minute. “I … I can’t, Gideon.”
“Tell me why.”
“You’re asking me to let you go. This is a way for me to do that.”
I leaned forward. “I’m asking you, Corinne, if you feel anything for me at all, to please drop this.”
“Gideon …”
“If you don’t, you’re going to turn what were good memories for me into something I hate.”
Her turquoise eyes shone with tears. “I’m sorry.”
I pushed back from the table and stood. “You will be.”
Turning away, I walked out of the restaurant to the waiting Bentley. Angus opened the door, his gaze shifting to look beyond me into Tableau One’s massive front window.
“Damn it.” I slid into the back. “God fucking damn it!”
People who felt I’d wronged them in some way were crawling out of the shadows like spiders, lured by the presence of Eva in my life.
She was my biggest vulnerability, one I wasn’t hiding well. And that was becoming a problem I had to get a handle on. Christopher, Anne, Landon, Corinne … they were only the beginning. There were others who had grievances against me. Still more who held grudges toward my father.
I’d long dared them all to come at me, enjoying the challenge. Now, the bastards were coming at me through my wife. All at once. And I was being stretched thin because of it. If I didn’t have my guard up completely, my focus absolute, I would leave Eva open and unprotected.
Whatever I had to do, I had to prevent that.
“I still want to see you tonight,” Eva said, her seductive voice drifting through the phone receiver like smoke.
“That’s not in question,” I told her, leaning back in my desk chair. Outside the windows, the sun hung lower in the sky. The workday was over. Somewhere in the madness of the week, August had given way to September. “You deal with Cary, I’ll sit down with Arnoldo, and you and I will start the weekend when we’re done.”
“God, this week just flew by. I need to work out. I skipped too many days.”
“Spar with me tomorrow.”