“So you don’t think she’s really trying to patch things up with you?”
“I think she thinks she’s really trying. I don’t know what I feel.” She thought for a minute, then said, “That’s what you’re angry about, then. That I didn’t tell you about Craig.”
“I’m not angry with you, and whether or not you want to tell me something about your life, that’s your choice.” His face softened. “But I have to admit that it pisses me off that these things happened and there was no one there to stand up for you.”
“You mean you’re not mad at me,” she said thoughtfully, “you’re mad for me?” The thought that someone might be angry on her behalf had never occurred to Vanessa.
“Something like that, yes. And I think Hal was, too. As much as he cares about Maggie-and I think that’s a given-I could tell he wasn’t happy that she hadn’t stepped in there for you.”
“I don’t like to think back on that time,” she told him frankly. “It just makes me angry with her and angry with myself. Maybe she’s right and I would have blown off anything she might have said to try to dissuade me, but she didn’t even try, and that makes me see red every time I think about it. But I was stupid for going through with a wedding with someone I knew I wasn’t in love with-that’s all on me. I shouldn’t have had to depend on her to tell me no. I just wish that she had.”
“How many times had Maggie been married by then?”
“Oh, three times, maybe. But she’d had a bunch of live-ins, too.”
“Maybe you didn’t take the whole thing-marriage-as seriously as you should have because you’d never seen it portrayed as a serious pursuit. Maybe in your house it seemed more like a more casual arrangement.”
She smiled. “You have the funniest way of putting things.” Before he could ask what she meant, she added, “When you got married, did you think of it as a ‘serious pursuit’?”
“Sure. Marriage is a big deal in my family. It really bothered me a lot that Missy didn’t want my family at the wedding, that she didn’t even want them to know we’d gotten married. She said it was because the fewer people who knew, the less likely the person who had threatened her would find out where she was. In retrospect, I think it was because she knew it was a sham. The only person she needed to think we were married was Brendan, and she made sure he knew.”
“You really think she played you?”
“It’s hard not to, when you take an honest look at the facts.”
“Did you love her? When you married her, did you think it would last forever?”
“Yes, and yes.”
“Me, too. Oh, maybe not so much the first time. It didn’t take me long to figure out what Craig really liked was having a young wife he could show off to his drinking buddies. I didn’t know much, but I knew that wasn’t going to last.”
“Were you disappointed?”
She shook her head. “I just wanted out. Craig had become verbally abusive, and it was awhile before he let me leave. By the time I was able to go, it was with great relief because the bad stuff was escalating. So when this good-looking guy with a pretty car and a nice apartment and a good job came along and wanted to sweep me off my feet, I let him.” She looked up at Grady and fixed a stare. “I’m going to tell you something I never admitted to anyone. But you can’t ever tell anyone else.”
“Okay.”
“When I was a little girl, I believed in fairy tales. I believed in happy endings. I believed in romance before I ever heard the word. I believed it was all real, would be real, and if I could find the right prince, we’d live happily ever after.” She grimaced. “Fat lot I knew.”
“And now?”
“And now, what?”
“Do you still believe that? That if you met the right prince, you could live happily ever after?”
She looked at him as if he had three heads. “Are you crazy?” She snorted. “Do you still believe if you met the right ‘princess’ that you’d live happily ever after?”
“Actually, I do.”
“How can you say that when you just finished telling me that you think that possibly your wife only married you to protect herself from your brother?”
“Wrong princess.” He shrugged.
“Like I said, you are one really strange man.” She leaned back against the sofa, and he chuckled.
It had grown dark, and the streetlights outside had turned on. They sat in the dark for a while not talking, but he reached up and took one of her feet in his hands and rubbed the arch with his thumbs for a moment.
“I’ll give you until tomorrow morning to stop that,” she murmured.
“And if I don’t?”
“Then you’ll have to start on the other foot.” She slipped down onto the floor next to him, then moved onto his lap. Straddling him, she took his face in her hands and kissed him, her tongue flicking the tip of his. They teased each other for a long moment, then he clasped the back of her head and filled her mouth with his probing tongue. She placed her hands on his shoulders and eased him back onto the floor and covered his body with hers. She grabbed a throw pillow from the sofa to slip under his head. She lowered her mouth to kiss him again and he repositioned her hips so that she could feel him hard against her. His hands slid under her shirt and tugged her bra down to release her breasts and she leaned up slightly to fill his hands with her softness. A soft moan escaped her parted lips, and she pulled her skirt up around her waist and sought his zipper, pulled it down to release him to her busy hands. When she lowered herself onto him, he groaned and pushed himself up into her to fill her. When his mouth found her breasts, she rose and fell above him, taking him along with her, on an ever-faster ride to oblivion.
“Oh my God,” she said when she could catch her breath. “I should have pulled those shades. I hope no one’s looking through the windows.”
“You mean, like the guy there on the front porch with the baseball cap?”
She started to turn to look, then realized he was teasing her. “Oh, you.” She swatted at him before snuggling down against his chest to listen to his heart beat.
“Ness?”
“Hmmmm?”
“We have to get up. My neck is breaking.”
“I gave you a pillow,” she murmured sleepily.
“It slid across the floor. I think it’s in the front hall now.”
“All right.” She sighed and reluctantly removed herself, sitting back against the sofa to reposition her clothes.
“Are you getting dressed?” he asked.
“Uh-huh.”
“Why?”
“Because I can’t walk through the front hall and up the steps half naked, that’s why. And neither can you. If someone was walking by…”
“And happened to be staring through your windows, they might see something you don’t want them to see.” He laughed, but pulled his clothes on.
“Right.” She stood and reached a hand down to him. “Besides, we can take them off again when we get upstairs.”
“So, I guess this makes it a two,” he said when they reached the top of the steps.
“Two what?”
“A two-night stand.”
“You think you’re funny, don’t you?”
“Well, sometimes, yes, I do.” He chuckled as they found their way across the darkened room.
“Guys say the dumbest things,” she muttered, and he laughed good-naturedly.
Later, she sat against the headboard, her knees pulled up to her chest and her arms wrapped around her legs, listening to him breathe and wondering what her life might have been like if either of her ex-husbands had been a man like Grady Shields.
Chapter 16
ARE you sure you’re all right here by yourself?” Grady stood in Bling’s doorway and assessed the damage, which somehow, in daylight, looked even worse than it had on Saturday night.