Paul realized now, so late in the game, that he had pushed her away. He’d been so worried about her, but then to have her be so passionate, so sexy, so strong and stable, in spite of the near-rape at the party, had blown his mind. Scared the hell out of him.
“That was a bonehead move, man.”
“Tell me,” Paul said. “I’m still paying for it eleven years later.”
“Real bonehead. So when’d she hook up with Peterson?”
“Couple of months later at a dance. He asked me what I thought of her, and I told him I thought she was great. He beamed and agreed.” Paul could still see Todd’s happy grin. He had been delighted that elegant Torie Hagen had decided to go out with him. Paul had been stricken. If Todd, with his upper-class ways won Torie, he, Paul would never have a chance.
“You ever tell him you dated her?”
“Yeah, but I told him there wasn’t any chemistry.”
“So you lied,” Tibbet said blandly.
Paul looked him in the eye and with a straight face, answered. “Like a damn dog.”
“You have a list of the brothers who were at this party?”
“No. It was eleven years ago.”
Tibbet watched him, then cocked his head. “Seems to me, Mister Off the Record, that you track shit. You watch. Bide your time. Now, if you weren’t the one gettin’ shot at, I might be looking at you for this. You’ve got the patience for it.” His smile was feral when he turned it Paul’s way. When Paul didn’t react, he smiled more fully. “Whatever this is, whoever’s doing it, it’s about real deep anger, backed by a lot of patient planning. This shot tonight was panic. Stupid. He’s covered his tracks, but he got rash. He thought we’d follow Torie. Stick only to her.”
“Mistake.”
“Big one. But back to you. You store information away, keep lists. You kept lists of the incidents that happened to your buddy and client, Peterson, although your buddy blew them off as chance or coincidence.”
“Yeah, I did.”
“So, this is a woman you have had a thing for. For eleven years. I’m betting you kept a list of all the guys that were there that night. Who it might have been. Who it wasn’t. I need that list.”
For several minutes, the silence hung between them. They faced off like two stallions, circling one another, deciding whether or not to leap for each other’s throats.
Finally Paul dropped his gaze. “I’ll dig it out.”
Chapter Seventeen
“So, what’s on the docket for today?” Pam asked as they drove back toward the dealership.
“Buy the Chrysler, and talk to Kuhman again about the house.”
“You want me to come with you?”
Torie looked at her friend. “You’d play hooky again today?”
Pam smiled. “Yeah. I feel like I’ve neglected you during all this. I got involved with Dev, who turned out to be the great disappearing jerk, and left my best friend in the world to dangle on her own when her house burned down.”
Torie scoffed. “You didn’t leave me to dangle, Pammie. I was okay until somebody started shooting at me.”
“Yeah, so okay that you retreated to North Carolina again?”
“Hey,” Torie protested. “I like North Carolina.”
“So do I, but you go there to hide. I shouldn’t have let you go alone.”
“Pam, don’t beat yourself up over this. Besides,” Torie added, “I wouldn’t have let you come. I needed the brooding time. I had a lot to think about.”
“Seems like you’ve been doing more thinking lately than you have in a while.”
“Since the wedding. You know what?”
“What?”
“I think I’ve been waiting, all this time, for him to come back.”
“What? That’s crazy, you have not. He did come back, remember, asked you a bunch of times to reconsider, get married.”
“I don’t mean literally.”
“Oh,” Pam rolled her eyes. “This is the deep soul-searching stuff.”
“Don’t knock it. It’s the only way I change. You know that.”
Pam smiled, despite her grousing. “I know, honey. So what did you learn on the beach?”
“That I was waiting. Waiting to do stuff. Waiting to move, to get out of what had been our house. Waiting to figure out if I still liked working for TruStructure.”
“What the hell were you waiting for?”
Torie shook her head, mildly disgusted at her realizations. “I don’t know. Now that I see that, I feel like I’ve wasted so much time. I didn’t want Todd to come back, but I sure didn’t move on with my life, did I?”
“Well, kind of. You dated a lot.”
“That turned out so well for everyone involved.” Torie shuddered as she said it. “But I wasn’t really looking, you know? I wasn’t dating people who could have been, well, you know, possible husbands or anything. I dated random people who happened to ask.”
“Nothing wrong with that,” Pam said, a bit defensively.
“No, there isn’t as long as you know it, but I kept telling myself and you, too, that I was looking for Mister Right.”
“True. And all of them were Mister Wrong, not to mention Mister Wrong Side of the Tracks.”
“Yeah, him, too.” Torie laughed, remembering the one date she’d had with a bartender. “You know, I don’t think anything ever happened to him. I should tell Tibbet.”
“Make a note, but let’s do the fun stuff first.”
“Sounds like a plan.”
For the first time in years, maybe ever, Torie felt free. She was buying a car she liked, to haul around dogs she really wanted. She was going to forget practicality and rent a house that needed massive work while she was simultaneously trying to rebuild her own house. She was, in the deepest darkest places of her mind, considering opening her own business. Given the way TruStructure had treated her when the press was hounding her, she wasn’t sure she could go back. If she did, she wasn’t sure she wanted to stay.
She hadn’t had the courage to tell Pam about the business thing yet. It was too new an idea.
Not to Paul, her subconscious whispered. He suggested it, supported it. Told you to go for it.
“Fuck Paul,” she muttered.
Unfortunately, Pam heard her.
“What did you say? Did I just hear you use the f-word again? What is this, twice in a week? Lord, you’ve gone years between breaking bad and cussing like that, and now you’re driven to fuck twice in one week?”
Torie couldn’t help it. The opening for the joke was there, and she took it.
“I only fucked him once, thank you very much.”
Pam goggled at her. Then giggled. Then laughed.
Before she knew it, the two of them were laughing hysterically, to the point of tears. Several of the sales-people had looked out of the dealership and seen them, but neither she nor Pam could stop.
“Don’t look at me,” Pam said, still snickering. She deliberately looked out the driver’s side window, up at the sky. “Don’t look at me. I’ll never stop if you keep looking at me.”
“I’m not looking at you,” Torie protested, wiping her eyes. She flipped the mirror down from the visor to check her makeup. “Jeez, I haven’t laughed like that in—” she stopped to think and couldn’t remember a time—“forever.”
Pam was taking deep breaths, and Torie started to giggle again. “You look like a dying fish with all that heaving.”
“Fish don’t have great boobs to heave,” Pam said, bursting into laughter again.
They finally got themselves under control. “I needed that,” Pam said, checking her own makeup. “Lord knows, you did, too.”