“Are you sure Quinn doesn’t mind your being here?” Clare asked, referring to Lucy’s husband. “I hate interrupting your honeymoon.”
“I’m positive.” She sat back and blew a cooling breath into her china cup. “I made him so extremely happy last night, he can’t quit smiling.” The corners of her lips curved up, and she added, “Besides, we don’t leave for Grand Bahama until tomorrow morning.”
Even though Clare had seen Lonny with her own eyes, she still couldn’t believe it had happened. Raw emotion burned in her veins and she vacillated between anger and pain. She shook her head and choked back tears. “I’m still in shock.”
Maddie leaned forward and set her cup and saucer on the marble and mahogany coffee table. “Honey, is it really a complete shock?”
“Of course it’s a shock.” Clare brushed moisture from her left cheek. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, we all thought he was gay.”
Her fingers stopped and she looked at her friends sitting in her living room on her great-grandmother’s sofa and armchair. “What? All of you?”
Their gazes slid away.
“For how long?”
“Since we first met him,” Adele confessed into her coffee.
“And none of you told me?”
Lucy reached for the delicate silver tongs and added a sugar cube to her cup. “None of us wanted to be the one to tell you. We love you and didn’t want to cause you pain.”
Adele added, “And we kind of figured you must already know on some level.”
“I didn’t!”
“You never suspected?” Maddie asked. “He made tables out of glass shards.”
Clare placed her free hand on the front of her white sleeveless blouse. “I thought he was creative.”
“You told us yourself the two of you didn’t have sex all that often.”
“Some men have low sex drives.”
“Not that low,” all three friends said at the same time.
“He hangs out at the Balcony Club.” Maddie frowned. “You knew that right?”
“Yes, but not all men who have a drink at the Balcony Club are gay.”
“Who told you that?”
“Lonny.”
The three friends didn’t say a word. They didn’t have to. Their raised brows spoke for them.
“He wore pink,” Lucy pointed out.
“Men wear pink these days.”
Adele scowled and shook her head. “Well, someone needs to tell them that they shouldn’t.”
“I wouldn’t date a guy in pink.” Maddie took a drink, then added, “I don’t want a man that in touch with his feminine side.”
“Quinn would never wear pink,” Lucy pointed out, and before Clare could argue further, she dropped the irrefutable proof. “Lonny cares way too much about his cuticles.”
That was true. He was obsessive about neat cuticles and perfectly trimmed nails. Clare’s hand fell to the lap of her green peasant skirt. “I just thought he was a metrosexual.”
Maddie shook her head. “Is there really such a thing as a metrosexual?”
“Or,” Adele inquired, “is that just another term for men on the down-low?”
“Men on the what-low?”
“I saw it on Oprah last year. Men on the down-low are homosexual men who pass themselves off as straight.”
“Why would anyone do that?”
“I imagine it’s easier to fit into society. Or perhaps they want children. Who knows?” Adele shrugged. “I don’t care about Lonny. I care about you, and you should have told us yesterday instead of holding it all inside.”
“I didn’t want to ruin Lucy’s day.”
“You wouldn’t have ruined it,” Lucy assured her with a shake of her head, her blond ponytail brushing the collar of her blue shirt. “I did wonder if something might be up when you all went missing for a while. Then when Adele and Maddie appeared again, you weren’t with them.”
“I drank a bit too much,” Clare confessed, and was relieved when no one brought up her episode at the karaoke machine belting out “Fat Bottomed Girls” or any other embarrassing moments of the previous evening.
For a second she debated whether to tell her friends about Sebastian, but in the end she didn’t. There were just some humiliating moments a girl should keep to herself. Getting drunk and slutty at her age was one of them. You told me I was the best sex you’d ever had in your life, he’d said, and laughed as he dropped his towel. You couldn’t get enough. Yeah, some things were most definitely best taken to the grave.
“Men are so evil,” she said, thinking of Sebastian’s laughter. If there was one thing Clare hated, it was being laughed at; especially by a man. More specifically, by Sebastian Vaughan. “It’s like they can see when we’re at our lowest, our most vulnerable, then they circle and wait until just the right moment to take advantage of us.”
“That’s true. Serial killers can size up the most vulnerable in a matter of seconds,” Maddie added, causing her friends to groan inwardly. Because Maddie wrote true crime novels, she interviewed sociopaths for a living and had written about some of the most violent crimes throughout history. As a result, she tended to have a warped view of mankind and hadn’t dated in about four years. “It becomes second nature.”
“Did I tell you about my date last week?” Adele asked in an effort to change the subject before Maddie got started. Adele wrote and published science fiction and tended to date very strange men. “He’s a bartender at a little place in Hyde Park.” She laughed. “Get this, he told me that he is William Wallace reincarnated.”
“Uh-huh.” Maddie took a drink of her coffee. “Why is it that everyone who has ever claimed to be reincarnated is the reincarnation of someone famous? It’s always Joan of Arc or Christopher Columbus or Billy the Kid. It’s never some peasant girl with rotted teeth or the sailor who cleaned Chris’s chamberpot.”
“Maybe only famous people get to be reincarnated,” Lucy provided.
Maddie made a rude snorting sound. “More likely it’s all crap.”
Clare suspected the latter, and asked what she thought was the first of two pertinent questions. “Does this bartender look like Mel Gibson?”
Adele shook her head. “Afraid not.”
Now the second question, which was more important than the first. “You don’t believe him, do you?” Because sometimes she had to wonder if Adele believed what she wrote.
“Nah.” Adele shook her head, and her mass of long blond curls brushed her back. “I questioned him and he knew nothing of John Blair.”
“Who?”
“Wallace’s friend and chaplain. I had to research William Wallace for the Scottish time travel I did last year. The bartender was just trying to trick me into bed.”
“Dog.”
“Jerk.”
“Did it work?”
“No. I’m not that easily tricked these days.”
Clare thought of Lonny. She wished she could say the same. “Why do men try and trick us?” Then she answered her own questions. “Because they’re all liars and cheats.” She looked at the faces of her friends and quickly added, “Oh, sorry, Lucy. All men except for Quinn.”
“Hey,” Lucy said, and held up one hand, “Quinn isn’t quite perfect. And believe me, he wasn’t anywhere near perfect when I first met him.” She paused and a smile crept across her lips. “Well, except in the bedroom.”
“All this time,” Clare said with a shake of her head, “I thought Lonny had a really low libido, and he let me think it. I thought I wasn’t attractive enough for him, and he let me think that too. How could I have fallen in love with him? There has to be something wrong with me.”
“No, Clare,” Adele assured her. “You’re perfect just the way you are.”
“Yes.”
“It was him. Not you. And someday,” added Lucy the newlywed, “you’re going to find a great guy. Like one of those heroes you write about.”