He set the mug on the table. “A little longer than a minute or two.”
Something was wrong. Something she wasn’t seeing. She felt as if she was looking at the wrong side of a picture and not seeing what was in front of her face. Then everything shifted and turned and became really clear. “Wait.” She held up a hand like a traffic cop. “You thought I could be Breathless?”
“Yes.”
Good Lord. The guy she’d fallen in love with had thought she was a serial killer. “But you figured out right away that was ridiculous. Right?”
He shook his head slowly. “Not right away.”
“Not right away? How could you possibly think I was a serial killer for one second? Do I look like a serial killer?” Before he could answer, she said, “No, I do not!”
He sighed, and his hands moved to massage the back of his neck. “You know as well as I do that serial killers look just like anyone else.”
“Yeah, but you’re a trained detective. Aren’t you supposed to have an instinct about these things? Some sort of cop sense? Aren’t you supposed-Wait. How long before you realized that I wasn’t a serial killer?” He just looked at her, and she had to repeat her question. “How long?”
“Lucy, you have to understand-”
“How long, Quinn?” she interrupted him.
He dropped his hand to his side. “Last night.”
She sucked a shocked breath into her lungs, and her brows rose up to her hairline. “Before or after?…” His silence was her answer, and her head spun. She heard herself sputtering like an idiot, but she couldn’t stop. “You…me…I…what…the hell?” She stopped to take a few calming breaths, and when she was capable of speech again, she pointed across the table and asked, “Are you shitting me?” Not exactly brilliant, but an improvement over sputtering. “Don’t tell me the whole time we’ve dated that you thought I was a serial killer? Until last night?”
“No, I’m not shitting you. And yes to your second and third questions.”
The reality of what he was telling her hit her between the eyes. “And you took off my shirt and and and-” She tried for another calming breath as thoughts spun in her head. “You wanted to have sex with me even though you thought I’d kill you? You would have had sex with a serial killer?”
“No. We didn’t exactly have sex.”
She sucked in a hurt breath. Suddenly something that had felt pretty darn good now felt dirty.
“It’s complicated.”
Oh Lord. Oh Lord. That hit-he’d-given-her-between-the-eyes feeling was working its way south toward her throat. “What? Were you trying to get me to kill you?”
He frowned. “Something like that.”
She swallowed hard as the pain hit her chest. “So the whole time you were kissing me and undressing me last night, you were only doing it because you thought I was going to try and kill you?”
“I thought there was a chance.” He scrubbed his face with his hands. “Lucy, you have to understand something. I didn’t mean to hurt you. I never wanted to hurt anyone, but I had a job to do.”
Lucy didn’t think there was anything left that he could say that would hurt her more. She was wrong.
“I was just doing my job,” he said, adding insult to her injured heart.
“Oh my God.” She stood and placed a shaky hand on the table to keep from falling. “This past week wasn’t real. Nothing about it was. I thought you wanted to be with me because you liked me. But that wasn’t the case at all. You were doing your job, and I…”…was falling in love with a lie. “I was a complete fool.”
He stood and came around the table. “You aren’t a fool. You’re a great girl, and if things were dif-”
Before Lucy even knew she’d done it, she hauled off and slapped him across the face. She’d never hit anyone before in her life, and he looked as stunned as she felt. Her palm stung, and she curled her hands into fists. “Get out.”
He took a step back out of her reach, but he didn’t leave. “I’m sorry.”
Somehow, she doubted he was as sorry as she was. Anger and pain twisted in her chest, and she placed her hand over her heart, as if she could keep it from breaking. It broke anyway. A deep physical pain that shattered her into pieces. “Go. Please.”
“I’ll call you later.”
“I won’t answer.”
He lifted a hand toward her, then let it fall to his side. “I know you don’t believe it right now, but I am more sorry than you know.”
He was right. She didn’t believe it, and she didn’t particularly care if he was sorry. She’d fallen in love with a man who’d only dated her because it was his job.
“Good-bye, Lucy.”
She looked at the floor to keep herself from doing something stupid, like bursting into tears. For several more beats of her broken heart, he stood in her kitchen while she died a little with each passing second. Then he turned and walked from the room. She heard the front door open and lifted her gaze to see Quinn framed by the bright morning sun. He looked over his shoulder at her one last time. He opened his mouth as if he meant to say something, but in the end there was nothing to say. He shut the door behind him and was gone without a word.
For several long moments, Lucy stared at the door, reeling, her emotions and thoughts in total ruin. Her cat wove between her legs and she bent and picked him up. She took a seat at the table and buried her face against Mr. Snookums’s fur. A sob broke from her throat. How could she have fallen in love with a lie? How was that even possible? She was a smart, successful woman. She was thirty-four years old. Things like this didn’t happen in real life.
She felt so stupid.
She’d known the whole time that there had been something wrong with Quinn, but she’d made excuses and told herself it was because he was a widower. That trolling chat rooms wasn’t really weird. The signs had been there, but she’d ignored them.
Her fingers burrowed into Mr. Snookums’s fur, and a loving purr rattled his chest. “At least you love me, Snookie,” she cried as he licked her hand. But her cat’s love was no comfort. Not today.
She raised her gaze to Quinn’s coffee cup, then closed her eyes. Quinn hadn’t pursued her because he’d wanted a relationship with her. He hadn’t pushed to spend time with her because he’d been attracted to her. His intense gaze hadn’t had anything to do with longing or lust. He’d been watching and waiting for her to do a Lizzie Borden on him.
A hiccup lifted her aching chest, and she gave up on trying to hold back the flood. She’d fallen in love so fast, so ridiculously fast, and she felt so stupid. She could only hope that her heart would mend just as quickly.
Chapter 10
Hadenuf: Seeks Girl’s Best Friend…
“He was only dating me because he wanted me to kill him,” Lucy sobbed and took a drink of her wine. Her vision blurred, and she could hardly see the faces of her friends gathered in her living room. “Remember when I told you he was pursuing me hot and heavy? He was! He thought I was a serial killer.”
Her friends, being the wonderful women that they were, were shocked and outraged on her behalf. They condemned Quinn for being a jerk, a loser, and a royal a-hole.
“It all makes sense now,” Lucy cried. “All the questions about those men being killed. All the interest in whether I’d dated any of them, and I just thought he was being cautious. I excused everything because I thought we liked the same television shows!”
Two hours later, they were all feeling the buzz of alcohol and condemning all men on principle.
Maddie reached for the bottle and refilled her own glass. “Men are lying bastards.”