for all four years. Maybe this is a blessing in disguise,” he said, trying to cheer her up, but she wasn’t ready for that yet.
“I’m a little tired of this kind of blessing, the ones in disguise. I like the ones that sound like good news, not the ones that break your heart.”
“I know, I know… someone else will come along,” he said convincingly, although no one ever had for him. He had never had another serious woman in his life after Tallie’s mother died. He always said she had been the love of his life. Hunt hadn’t been that to her, but he had been very important to her. They had been comfortable and happy, and she had loved him a lot.
“That’s the last thing I want, Dad,” she said somberly, “for someone else to come along. This is it for me. I think I’m done. Three strikes, I’m out.”
“At least you weren’t married to him. There won’t be a lot of legal complications. And you never bought any property together. That’s always a disaster when things go sour, and you have to take it all apart.” He had always told her not to, and she had listened to him. Her father gave good advice. Except when he had made her marry Max’s father when she was twenty, but he had done that for Max, not for her, and maybe he was right about that too. At least she knew her parents had been married, if she cared. “I think you ought to fire Brigitte immediately,” he added. He was furious with her. Tallie was less angry than deeply hurt. She was profoundly wounded by what Brigitte had done, her affair with Hunt and her lies for years.
“I’ll deal with it on Monday,” she said sadly. She couldn’t imagine life without Brigitte either. They had worked together forever. Seventeen years. It was almost like a marriage. And they were best friends, as well as employer and employee. And Brigitte made her life run so smoothly. It was going to be chaos for a while. She didn’t have the heart to look for a new assistant either. Tallie felt like her whole life was upside down and broken to bits, like her heart.
Her father asked her about the Academy Awards before she left. It was coming up soon, and he wondered if she was going. She said she didn’t have the heart to now, and she didn’t want to run into Hunt, and her father agreed. Particularly if the other woman was with him.
She left a little while after that, and when she went home, she looked in all the closets and looked at Hunt’s things. He had a whole dressing room full of clothes, a kitchen full of equipment he had brought with him and added to in three years, two bookcases full of books, a home office full of his work, and odds and ends all over the house, tennis rackets, his rowing machine, a treadmill they had bought together. She didn’t know where to start. She went to the supermarket that night and got some boxes, and little by little she started packing up, and the whole time she did, she cried. Normally, she would have asked Brigitte to help her with it, but she didn’t want to do that now, not after what she’d done. She was going to pack it all herself, and then call a moving company to drop it off. She didn’t want to see him again.
Her cell phone rang at midnight, and it was Hunt. She didn’t know whether to answer it or not, but she missed him so much, she took the call.
“Are you okay?” he asked as soon as she picked it up. He sounded worried about her and unhappy. Angela had been thrilled when he showed up the night before, particularly since she was expecting his baby, but Hunt was sad. Not sad enough to want to come back and give up Angela, but sad anyway. Angela was his future now, and Tallie was his past. She had become ancient history in his life overnight. It had all happened so fast.
“No, I’m not okay,” she said, deciding to be honest about it. “I’m falling apart.” She started crying again as soon as she said it. “How would you be if you found out all those things about me?”
“Homicidal. Or suicidal. I’m not sure which. But I don’t think I’d be as decent about it as you are. Tallie, I’m so sorry.”
“You should be. It was such a rotten thing to do to me, for the whole time we were together,” she sobbed, and he felt like a total bastard.
“I don’t know what happened. Things got off on the wrong foot, when I got involved with Brig. I swear she did it on purpose. She wants to
“No, but she threatened to tell you if I stopped, and I didn’t want her to do that. I thought I’d lose you, and I did anyway.”
“That doesn’t explain why you got involved with someone else after her. Did Angela blackmail you too?”
“No, I was just a fool, and she’s a sweet girl. This isn’t her fault, or Brig’s, I guess. It’s mine. I did the wrong thing all the way.”
“Yes, you did,” Tallie agreed.
“Did you tell your father?”
“Yes.”
“He must hate me.” He was embarrassed to have Sam know how badly he’d behaved.
“He’s pretty pissed.” And he was right.
“Did you tell Max?”
“Not yet. She’s going to be heartbroken. She loves you,” Tallie said, crying. “So did I.”
“I do too. I love you both… I told you that… I love you and Angela… and Max, and your father. This is such a fucking mess.”
“Yes, it is,” Tallie agreed. And he was having a baby, which added insult to injury. Tallie wanted to hate him, but she couldn’t. She was just crushed, and he felt like a total heel. “I’ll pack your stuff up and send it to you next week,” she said sadly. It was the end of an era for both of them. He was embarrassed to tell her to send it all to Angela’s, although he had just agreed to move in with her, because of the baby. And Tallie didn’t want to ask, so she told him she’d send it to his office, and he said that was fine. There was nothing left to say except goodbye after that.
Tallie had never stopped crying during the entire conversation, and Hunt felt like a monster by the time he hung up. He didn’t know how he had expected it to end, but he realized now that if you were involved with two people and lied to one of them, this was what happened. He felt terrible about what he’d done to Tallie, and now it looked like he was jumping from one woman to the next, which was in fact what he was doing by moving in with Angela right away. But he also wanted to protect her from her ex-husband now that she was carrying his baby. That was a new concept for him too since he had never had kids nor wanted them before. And now he would have two almost immediately, since she was already four months pregnant. She had waited to tell him until it was too late to have an abortion, because she wanted his baby so much. Hunt was feeling overwhelmed too.
Tallie went on packing his things until two o’clock in the morning. She had cleared two closets and some of his books by then. He had a mountain of stuff. She wasn’t even sure she could pack it all before she left for Palm Springs. And she went back to work on it at nine in the morning on Sunday. She wanted to get it done, so she didn’t just stand there and cry every time she opened a closet and saw his things. It took two boxes just to pack everything in his bathroom. She had never realized he had this much stuff.
She was working on his office when the doorbell rang and it was Senior Special Agent Jim Kingston from the FBI. She found herself looking up at a tall, dark-haired man with blue eyes and a pleasant face, wearing a shirt, tie, blazer, and gray slacks with loafers. He had come dressed for work since it was an official visit. He introduced himself immediately and she invited him in. There were boxes everywhere. She apologized, and he could guess what they were for, but he didn’t comment.
She took him into the kitchen and offered him a cup of coffee or tea. He said he was fine, and didn’t want either. They sat down at the kitchen table, and she handed him the spreadsheet she had retrieved from her father. He glanced at it for a minute and then found himself looking into her big green eyes. She looked sad, and he could see that she was in pain.
“Let’s talk about the three possibilities here, about who might be taking your money,” he said calmly. “What do you think? What does your gut say?”
“My gut says that I’m an idiot for not suspecting it before,” she said, looking unhappy. “Apparently, a lot went on around here that I never suspected.”
“People who embezzle money are very clever about it. They know just how far to go, how much they can take,
