“My name is Saul,” he said, striding forward and offering Barbie a smile and a handshake. “Pleased to meet you.”
“Likewise,” she said, and I could see the questions gathering in her eyes. To her credit, she refrained from asking any. Her beauty-queen smile was getting on my nerves, but she put it to good use, trying to charm my demon bodyguards. “Why don’t the three of us get acquainted while Morgan and Brian have a little chat?”
Raphael was still fuming, but Saul’s eyes sparked with interest. From the way he was looking at Barbie, I guessed that he, like most demons, swung both ways. I doubted he’d had the chance to do any swinging one way or the other since he’d returned to the Mortal Plain. If hopes of getting laid would keep him distracted, I was all for it.
Heart fluttering in my chest, hands clammy, I finally turned to look at Brian. He was wearing his lawyer face, the one that gave nothing away. It was an improvement over the fury and the coldness, but it wasn’t what I’d hoped to see.
I cleared my throat, afraid my voice would come out froggy if I didn’t. “Come on back,” I said to Brian, jerking my head toward the hallway that led to the guest room I’d appropriated.
He didn’t speak, just followed me like a brooding shadow. I had to rub my hands on my pants legs or I might not have been able to get the door open. Again, Brian followed without speaking, closing the door behind himself, then leaning his back against it.
The only place to sit in this room was the bed, and Brian’s body language told me not to bother asking. I sat down because I wasn’t sure my knees would hold me if I didn’t. Brian waited for me to speak. From the living room, I heard the TV turned on. I’d bet anything it was Barbie who’d thought of putting the TV on to give Brian and me some extra privacy.
I took a deep breath in a futile attempt to steady my nerves, then forced myself to meet Brian’s eyes. Still nothing.
“You’re still mad at me,” I said. “Even though you know now that I didn’t cheat on you.”
“Yes.”
I expected him to elaborate, but he didn’t. Obviously, he wasn’t going to make this easy for me. “Care to tell me why?”
His shoulders drooped, and he shook his head. “The fact that you even have to ask …” His voice faded out, and he wouldn’t look at me.
I’ve always known I’m a bit dense where interpersonal relations are concerned, but once he said that, I knew exactly what I had done wrong. Again. But it was something I was never going to regret.
“Was it so wrong of me not to want to … burden you with what I’d gone through?” I asked softly.
Brian pushed away from the door, but he only took one step closer to me, and his lawyer face was morphing into his mad face. “It was wrong of you to keep secrets, to lie to me! Or had you forgotten you’d just promised not to do that again?”
My knees felt a little steadier, so I stood up to face him. “I didn’t lie to you.”
He made a grunt of disgust. “A lie by omission is still a lie in my book.”
Brian’s book had always had a hell of a lot more stringent rules than mine. “So that’s it?” I asked, anger making my voice break. “I fail to tell you what I had to do to save your life, and that’s the end of us?”
Brian hid his own anger under the lawyer face again. “You still don’t get it. If this were an isolated incident, sure, I’d get over it. But it’s a pattern of behavior. Would you like me to list all the times you’ve lied to me or kept me in the dark ‘for my own good’ in the last couple of months? Because if I start ticking them off on my fingers, I’m going to need another set of hands.”
It was true that I’d kept a hell of a lot from him, but I had good cause. “Can you really blame me for trying to protect the man I love?” My voice broke again, but damned if I was going to let myself cry.
“When your idea of protecting me is to treat me as if I’m not able to take care of myself, then yes, I can blame you.”
“But, Brian—”
“And you know what? You may tell yourself you’re being noble by trying to protect me, but what you’re really doing is protecting your own damn self. You didn’t tell me about your deal with Adam because you didn’t trust me not to act like a caveman and treat you like damaged goods if I knew. How could you possibly believe I’d be mad at you for what you did? If there’s anyone to be mad at, it’s Adam, not you. But did you give me enough credit to believe I’d act rational? No!”
I gasped, appalled in more ways than I could name. I had never even considered that Brian might have interpreted my silence that way. Unfortunately, he wasn’t finished.
“Every time you’ve chosen not to tell me something, it’s because you’ve believed that if you told me, I’d do the worst possible thing. I’d dump you, or fly into a jealous rage, or throw myself in front of a speeding truck. So you’ve never once trusted me to look out for your best interests, or to agree with your plans, or to act like an intelligent adult. I can’t keep living like that.”
Despite my best intentions, my eyes were starting to sting. I blinked frantically, wishing I could tell him he was completely off base, and knowing I couldn’t. Time and again, he’d proven that he was someone I could trust. And time and again, I’d failed to fully trust him. How could I blame him for not wanting to be with someone who always expected the worst of him? My throat ached so much I couldn’t even talk.
There was no missing the pain in Brian’s eyes. There was also no missing the implacability. “I still love you, and probably always will. I wish things could be different between us. But I’m tired of fighting the uphill battle, and I’ve had enough. I’m sorry.”
He didn’t wait for me to regain my voice, just turned from me and slipped out the door, closing it behind him. I wanted to run after him, maybe throw myself at his feet and beg. But I knew there was nothing I could say that would change his mind.
The tears came, and I plopped down onto the floor, my back against the bed, my knees drawn up to my chest, and sobbed my heart out.
CHAPTER 22
Eventually, I managed to fight off the tears, though it wasn’t easy when my heart ached so badly. Even after the flow of tears had stopped, I couldn’t seem to find the willpower to get up off the floor.
After a few minutes, there was a soft tap on my door. I didn’t feel like talking to anyone, so I didn’t answer. I should have known better than to expect anyone in this house to respect my need for time to lick my wounds.
Barbie stuck her head in tentatively; then when she saw me in my little pocket of misery, she invited herself in.
“Why aren’t you driving Brian home?” I asked.
Since she apparently didn’t need an invitation to make herself right at home, she came to sit beside me on the floor. “He said he’d take a taxi. I’d told him about my role in getting the blood sample, so I’m not his favorite person right now.”
I bit my lip, my own misery momentarily forgotten. “That was a bad idea. He’s a bit of a … stickler.” I’d thought of him as a Goody Two-shoes once, though he’d shown a little more moral flexibility than I’d expected. But I wouldn’t put it past him to sic the police on Barbie.
A hint of worry flickered in her eyes, but she dismissed it with a shrug. “It’s too late now.” She pulled her legs up to her chest, mirroring my pose. “I guess things didn’t go so well, huh?”
I laughed bitterly. “That’s one way to describe it.”
“But he knows all the evidence was phony, right?”
“He knows.”
“Then what’s the problem?”
I turned to give her a steely look. “That’s not really any of your business.”
She smiled, not at all intimidated by the obvious “back off” signals I was shooting her. “I’m congenitally nosy. It’s part of the reason I became a PI. I can’t help noticing your entire circle of friends is male, and it’s my experience that even the best male friends are pretty much useless when a woman is having man trouble.” She shrugged. “So, if you need someone to talk to …”