“I’m getting the impression that there’s some chemistry going on over there.” I could tell she was smiling by the tone of her voice.
I took another shaky breath, afraid to admit what I’d done but knowing it was relevant. I really wanted to confess my sins to Father Candice.
“Tell me what you’re not telling me,” she insisted.
“You’re a mind reader now, too?”
“Yes. I always have been. Did you sleep with him?”
“In Vegas? Yes.”
“No, dummy, in Oregon. Don’t play games with me. I have a color and cut in ten minutes.”
“Go ahead and go. I have to call Bradley. He’s left me a ton of messages.”
“I can get on a plane and be out there in less than six hours.” She was threatening me.
“No. Stay put. I already have enough trouble juggling what’s here. I don’t need to add you to the mix.”
“Then tell me. You had sex again, didn’t you?”
“Promise you won’t squee in the phone again.”
“Squeeee!! You totally did it, you big fat ho!” She was laughing out loud, probably in the middle of her salon.
“Yes. Last night. It was amazingly erotic and the wrong thing to do and … shit, Candice! I don’t know what the hell I’m doing!” I felt and sounded like I was on the edge of sanity.
“Of course you do! You’re going with your heart and your vagina instead of your head for a change! Good for you! It’s about time. Damn, when we were in Vegas I thought you’d finally figured it out. But then we got back and you put your head right back up into your butt. Ruby and Kelly and I thought you were a goner. But now you’re back, baby, you’re back! Don’t quit on us now. There’s too much riding on this.”
“Too much of what?” I was smiling through my tears. Candice had such a way with words.
“Too much happiness, sweetie. I think this cowboy could make you happy. Why don’t you give him a chance?”
“I can’t,” I whispered, looking up at the pictures on Ian’s shelves.
“Why not?” Candice sounded like she was going to cry right along with me.
“Because I think he has a girlfriend. I think she’s his roommate.”
“Well,” Candice said, sparking up again, “then she’s gotta go. You got there first, you’re his wife.”
“It’s not that simple.”
“Sure it is. If he had a girlfriend who meant anything would he have slept with you last night?”
“Maybe not. Or maybe he slept with me to teach me a lesson.”
“A lesson? A lesson about what?”
“I don’t know. He seemed mad at me from the moment he saw me.”
“Did he remember you were married?”
“Yes, I think so.”
“But he was mad at you, even though he took off and never called.”
“Yes.”
“Hmmmm… Well, how come you never called him? Weren’t you even curious why he disappeared?”
I shrugged, sitting alone in Ian’s room, trying to remember back to that day two years ago in the hotel room. “I couldn’t.”
“You couldn’t what?”
“Call him. I didn’t have his number.”
“Are you sure? You blacked out for half the night. You blacked out during a whole damn wedding. Surely he could have put his number in your phone and you wouldn’t have remembered that either, right?”
My face burned right along with my stomach. “I … I don’t remember seeing a strange number on there.”
“Pfft. You have like a million numbers on your phone. Didn’t you even think to look for his name?”
A memory came rushing back. “I couldn’t!”
“Why?!”
“Because you dropped my damn phone in the toilet, don’t you remember?!” I was gripping the bedsheets, feeling like I could shred them with my nails.
“Oh, crapski. I do remember that. Oh, maaaan. And all your contacts had to be loaded on to a new phone when you got back to your office.”
“Except for the one that was added in Las Vegas, since it wasn’t in my office back-up,” I said sadly. “Assuming there was one added in Vegas.”
“I guess you have a mission, then,” said Candice. “You need to ask him if he gave you his number. Maybe you were supposed to call him, and when you didn’t, he got mad.”
“But why wouldn’t I have given him my number? If he wanted to talk to me, he could have just called me, right?”
“You’ll never know until you ask.” A stranger’s voice spoke softly next to Candice. “Shit, I have to go. My next client is here. We’ll talk more about this later. Promise me you won’t disappear!”
“I promise.” I wanted to curl up in the bed and sleep the day away. This was a royal mess, and now I realized on top of everything else how I’d basically almost thrown my best friendships in the garbage. When the man-crap hits the fan, girlfriends are the only ones who can make things better. Why had I let them go for Bradley?
“Good. Chin up, gorgeous girl! We’ll figure this out. Meanwhile, I’ll bring Kelly into the loop and get an update from Ruby.”
“No! I don’t know what Ruby’s doing over there, but Bradley cannot find out what’s going on here!”
“Uhhh, it might be too late for that. Gotta go, lovebugger. Tah-tah!” The line went dead.
Chapter Twenty-Seven