“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…”…
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
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
“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.”
“Sneaky, lying bastards,” Adele added, her eyes getting as glassy as Lucy’s. “Too bad we need them.”
“Why?” Lucy asked. “Sure, they come in handy when you’ve got fifty pounds of cat food loaded into your car and you need someone to tote and fetch, but that doesn’t make up for the sheer volume of all their lies. I’ve had enough of men’s crap.”
“They cook dinner sometimes,” Clare added to the conversation as she swirled the wine in her glass. “And it is nice when they make little tables out of broken tiles.” She looked at her friends and was quick to add, “But you’re right. Men for the most part are a pain in the keister. Vibrators are a girl’s best friend.”
They all fixed their attention on Clare. On the one woman in the room who believed she’d found her soul mate the moment she’d laid eyes on him. So why was a vibrator her best friend? Perhaps all was not well in romance- ville.
“Oh, don’t you all look at me like that,” she said. “I know you girls aren’t exactly sitting around waiting for a man to give you an orgasm.”
“I’m not waiting around,” Maddie said. “But I thought you were.”
Clare took a drink of her wine and licked her top lip. “Sometimes Lonny is tired. He works really hard.”
“Making tables out of tiles?” Maddie shook her head. “Honey, if a guy is too tired to have sex, doesn’t that tell you something?”
“Yes. That he’s artistic.”
Lucy cleared her throat and shook her head slightly. As drunk as she was, she wasn’t going to let anyone tell Clare that her dream man dreamed of doing men. Clare was one of the most genuinely nice people Lucy knew. She was kind and had a huge heart, and if she wanted to pretend that Lonny wasn’t gay, that was fine with Lucy. Besides, who was she to tell anyone anything about their love life? She’d fallen in love with a man who’d only dated her because he’d thought she was a serial killer. Adele had dated a guy who kept sneaking up to her house and leaving stuff on her porch like he was some sort of double-secret knot-knot spy. Maddie was so freaky that she thought every man she met was a serial something-or-another, and she hadn’t even had a date in about four years.
Frankly, Lonny and his tile tables looked pretty damn good.
Adele sat on the couch next to Lucy and rubbed her arm. “Well, at least you didn’t know Quinn long enough to fall in love with him.”
“That would have been a disaster.”
“Good thing you don’t believe in love at first sight.”
“Yeah. Good thing,” she lied and set her glass on the table before she dropped it. A sure sign that it was time to step away from the booze.
“You know I love you,” Maddie started, which always meant trouble, “but I’ve got to say it. This fits your typical pattern of dating guys you want to rescue.”
Lucy held up one finger. “Not this time. Quinn didn’t have rescue issues, and he didn’t steal my money. He’s normal.” She frowned and felt a little confused. “Well, except that he’s a lying bastard.”
“Which just made Maddie’s point,” Adele said. “He had lying bastard issues.”
Lucy felt her forehead get all wrinkled. Was there such a thing as “lying bastard issues”? “I don’t want to talk about men anymore. It’s just too depressing.”
“I know what we can talk about.” Adele sat up a little straighter. “I need help plotting the next scene of my
