Now, though, the idea brought her only pain and heartbreak.
Removing the miniscule needles from the piece she’d been working on last, she crossed her legs, sat back, and began tugging the end of the yarn to unravel the whole horrible mess.
“What are you doing?” Jenna shrieked, nearly jumping out of her chair when she spotted Grace’s actions.
“I’m pulling apart my wedding dress,” Grace answered, without emotion and without lifting her head. “And when I’m finished, I’m going to burn it, along with everything that asshole ever gave me, everything he left at my place, and every picture of him I can find.”
While most of the women in the group didn’t know about Zack’s recent infidelity or the demise of their relationship, they caught on quickly-and wisely kept their mouths shut. Only Melanie, a young mother of two small children and one of their closer friends who often joined them for drinks at The Penalty Box after meetings, had the nerve to ask what in God’s name was going on.
Ronnie attempted to fill her in as politely and with as few of the more gruesome details as possible. Grace wasn’t nearly as discerning. She recapped the story in a voice sharp enough to cut glass and with a generous sprinkling of four-letter words… most of them used to describe the cheating Zack-Ass bastard.
By the time she finished, a pile of curly white thread lay at her feet, the physical embodiment of a metaphor for the unraveled mess her life and engagement had recently become.
Rather than feeling distressed over undoing all the hard work she’d put into the dress-and Lord, it had been hard work; tiny needles, whisper-thin yarn, and teeny, extremely complicated stitches-she found the harsh, repetitious yank-and-pull, yank-and-pull to be cathartic. She even managed to match her motions to the chorus of “Before He Cheats,” which she was humming beneath her breath while the others chatted around her.
She hadn’t been at it twenty minutes when she noticed the change. The air around her grew suddenly brittle, and there was a distinct shift to the sounds of the store that usually surrounded them.
And then there were the footsteps. Heavy, booted footsteps moving at a fast clip.
Grace’s stomach tightened and a lump of something she preferred not to identify by name formed in her chest. She sat up straighter, steeling herself for what was to come as a dark shadow fell over her and the hot breath of doom blew on her neck.
“You.”
That one syllable was spoken so low and with so much venom, she was surprised she didn’t die of odium poisoning right there on the spot. As it was, her skin did tingle and her pulse did kick up a beat.
Slowly and very carefully, she set aside what she was doing and turned in her chair to smile pleasantly up at a red-faced Zachary Hoolihan. He towered over her, chest heaving. He looked angry enough to spit nails, and she was frankly surprised steam didn’t pour out of his ears.
Dylan stood on his left, just behind Ronnie’s chair, looking distinctly uncomfortable. Gage stood on his right, looking… well, like Gage. Sort of big, intimidating, and expressionless. Between them, Zack put her in mind of Yosemite Sam, hopping around and blustering like a crazy person.
All week, she’d been imagining how she would act the next time she ran into Zack. And she’d known she would. Cleveland might have been a nice, big city, but it wasn’t that big, and she’d expected he would make a point of tracking her down eventually to confront her about the damage she’d done to his car and apartment.
Payback, as they said, was a bitch.
“Are you addressing moi?” she asked in a voice so sweet, it nearly blew out her pancreas. Because damned if she’d let him think he’d gotten to her-aside from the recent acts of wanton destruction, that was.
“Damn right, I’m addressing you, Little Miss Smart-Ass,” Zack snapped. “You wrecked my apartment, stole my dog, and killed my car.”
“Excuse me?” Her eyes went wide in practiced innocence.
“You. Killed. My. Car.” He enunciated each word, spitting them through gritted teeth before resting both hands on the back of her chair and leaning in until they were nearly nose to nose. “You destroyed my Hummer.”
“Your Hummer?” she asked in a voice she was pretty sure Shirley Temple had used in every one of her adorable little movies. “Did something happen to that big red beast?”
Zack stood back once again, but a vein had begun to throb at his temple and she thought he might be at serious risk of popping an embolism.
Good. It would serve him right, the jerk.
“You know goddamn well something happened to it. You happened to it. You broke into the parking garage at my apartment complex and destroyed my fucking Hummer! Then you broke into my apartment and went apeshit in there, too.”
Grace placed one long index finger against her cheek, wishing now that she’d made a point of stopping at the salon before tonight’s meeting. A beautifully manicured nail would have been just the thing to show Zack that she was doing fine without him. That she didn’t care how many silicone-boobed puck bunnies he boffed.
Batting her lashes and pulling her mouth into a sympathetic pucker, she used her best Betty Boop impression to say, “But I thought you said your Hummer was indestructible.”
If possible, Zack’s face mottled an even darker shade of red. His eyes were so wide, they were practically solid white with only pinpricks of blue at the pupils, and he looked ready to explode.
“Arrest her!” he burst out instead, pointing a shaking finger at her while nudging Gage in the ribs with his elbow.
Gage raised a brow, startled by his sudden demand. He glanced from Zack to Grace and back again. “What?”
“You heard me,” Zack continued at a volume she suspected could be heard not only throughout the entire craft store, but at the other end of the strip mall where it was located. “Arrest her. Slap the cuffs on her, read her her rights, and drag her down to the pokey. I want her locked up for breaking and entering, theft because she took Bruiser, destruction of property, and just plain being a bitch.” His tone lowered at the last and he delivered the insult as though it were supposed to be a great, painful stab to her heart.
Grace nearly snorted. After walking in on him five minutes after he’d Zamboni-ed some random tramp, being called a nasty name didn’t make a dent.
Rising gracefully to her feet, she faced him full on, only the imitation-leather armchair separating them.
“I may be a bitch,” she told him, her voice turning frosty for the first time since he’d walked into the store and started tossing around accusations, “but I’m a faithful bitch. You, on the other hand, are a lying, cheating bastard, who doesn’t deserve a nice vehicle, doesn’t deserve a nice apartment, and most certainly doesn’t deserve a sweet little dog like Bruiser.”
If Zack noticed her positive reference to the Saint Bernard when in the past she’d mostly complained about how big, stinky, and in the way he was, he didn’t acknowledge it. Instead, he latched on to the rest of her diatribe.
A muscle in Zack’s jaw jumped as he ground his teeth. Leaning forward until they were nearly nose to nose, he said, “For your information, I didn’t lie and I didn’t cheat. Something I’d have explained to you if you’d stop being pissed off for five minutes and answered your goddamn phone!”
“Oh,” she replied tartly, “I suppose that bimbo was in your bed because she started choking on a salad shrimp during a promotional banquet and you decided to take her up to your hotel room to give her the Heimlich, right? And somehow during all the chaos, everybody’s clothes just fell off.”