“Beer? You can’t drink.”
He lifted one brow. “Watch me.”
“I mean, on the job. You can’t drink while you’re working.”
“I’m a private investigator. I can do whatever the hell I want.” When she scowled, he added more softly, “A beer or two is not going to prevent me from protecting you, and we’re perfectly safe here. Nobody except Seth, my brothers, and your father know where we are. And Seth just thinks we’re on our honeymoon.”
Her stomach twisted at a sudden, painful memory she’d long since buried. He’d promised her this. Exactly this. The house tucked away in a tropical garden, the in-ground pool, the hot tub, Key West. The morning after he asked her to marry him, he’d promised to bring her here, to his friend’s vacation house, one of his favorite places in the world, for their honeymoon. And she, foolish girl that she was, had drifted through her classes that day on a cloud of naive happiness, showing everyone her ring with its pathetic diamond, dreaming of the wedding, the honeymoon, their life together. By the time her friends took her out to celebrate that weekend, she’d had them living in wedded bliss in the suburbs with three kids, a dog, and a cat.
In fact, she’d been so blinded with love that she almost missed his betrayal entirely. Her friends tried to tell her when he walked into the club with another woman, but she brushed them off as jealous. It wasn’t until her roommate had taken her by the arm and spun her around to face the bar, that she finally understood. Jude sat on one of the stools with a stunning brunette standing between his legs, her long body pressed as close to him as she could get with clothes on, and her tongue down his throat. Even then, with the evidence of his cheating staring Libby in the face, she hadn’t wanted to believe it. She thought maybe this was some kind of misunderstanding or a case of mistaken identity like in the movies. But Jude lifted his head and looked right at her, his pale blue eyes cold. Heartless. Like he hadn’t proposed to her only two days before.
Without a single word, she strode up to him and dropped the ring into his drink. Then she turned away, and as tears smeared her mascara and blurred her vision, she’d heard the brunette ask him who she was. His response killed every last tender feeling she might have harbored for him.
Nobody.
She was nobody to him.
He never tried to call, never offered any kind of excuse, lame or otherwise. He just vanished. She tortured herself for years, wondering what she’d done in the two days between his proposal and his betrayal to make him change his mind.
Libby shoved that all out of her thoughts. It didn’t matter. It was like a previous conviction that couldn’t be brought in front of the jury and had no bearing on their current situation.
Jude was still talking, oblivious to her trip down ugly memory lane, and she forced herself to focus on what he was saying.
“…my brothers are keeping an eye out for K-Bar, and Seth has this place wired up better than the CIA.” He exhaled a hard breath and shook his head. “Guess some good came out of his paranoid psychosis after all.”
And there was the perfect segue to ask the question that had been bothering her since Seth left. Plus, it had the added benefit of taking her mind off the past. The way he’d acted with Seth flew in the face of everything she thought she’d known about Jude Wilde.
“What did he mean when he said he doesn’t blame you?”
“You know what? A beer or six sounds like an excellent idea.” He detoured to the fridge and grabbed a six-pack out of the door. “Let’s indulge. This is our honeymoon, babe.”
“Don’t call me babe.” But she took one of the bottles he handed her and trailed him out to the patio. Watched as he pulled the cover off the hot tub and started the jets. He settled into the steaming water with a sigh, letting his head drop back against the padded side, and said nothing more for several long moments.
When she didn’t go back inside, he lifted his head. “You gonna stand there all night or join me?”
God, she was tempted. It looked like a slice of heaven, but… No. Way too intimate.
She settled for sitting down on the edge and dipping her feet into the water. “So you’re not going to answer me?”
“About what?” he mumbled, the question slurred like he was already half-asleep.
“About what Seth said.”
He studied her, then took a long pull from his beer. “You’re not gonna drop it, are you?”
“No.”
“Well, shit. You can’t think any worse of me.” He drained the beer, his Adam’s apple bobbing in his strong neck with each swallow. When he finished, he snagged another bottle.
“Slow down,” she said. Considering they hadn’t eaten dinner, she’d be scraping him off the bottom of the tub before long if he kept this up.
He ignored her, twisted off the cap, and tapped the neck against her bottle. “To friends.”