“If you file on grounds of physical abuse, it may speed up the process. Particularly given the fact that with the dates of some of these events, Mr. Gardner may face criminal charges if you wanted to pursue them.”
“And if he counters with grounds of adultery?” I asked.
“You said he was not aware of your relationship with ADA Zola,” Barney replied. “Was that true?”
“I—yes, I believe it was. But—” I cut myself off this time. “No, I’m not going to do that. It’s too much. Olivia will find out. My family will learn of it. No. The answer is no.”
Delia folded her lips together, clearly disagreeing. “Please just think about it, Ms. De Vries.”
“I’m paying you the earth, or at least my cousin is, Delia. I’ll think about it, but I’d ask you to think about more creative ways to get me out of this marriage. As soon as possible. Please.”
“Ms. de Vries—”
“I need a break,” I said suddenly, and stood from the couch, sweeping past Eric and Jane as they reemerged from the upstairs.
“Hey,” Jane said. “We were just going to make dinner.”
“I’m going for a walk.”
“Nina, come on, it’s raining,” Eric said. “You can go to Jane’s workshop if you need some space—”
“Going for a walk!” I practically squawked as I grabbed my favorite cashmere coat from the rack in the front hall and swept out the front door.
“Take Tony!” Jane called before the door swung shut.
But I just kept walking, where neither Jane’s voice nor her hulking security detail could follow.
Chapter Four
Matthew
“I’m going for a smoke.”
One brow rose on Jamie Quinn’s face, but my best friend (and my current boss) didn’t say anything. I knew what he was thinking. Jamie was wondering what the hell was so bad that I was smoking for the first time in ten years.
Nah, fuck that. He knew the answer to that, too. And the fucked-up thing was, neither of us had an answer to the problem. So we were, as they said, letting sleeping dogs lie. Or in my case, reacquaint themselves with nicotine.
It was almost midnight on a Monday, and I was only halfway through my shift. The lounge was all but dead, with a few couples nestled in the far booths and the last remnants of the NYU crowd hanging off some of the barstools. There would be one more influx as the 24/7 folks clambered in before last call. Until then, there wasn’t much else to do.
Avoiding Jamie’s latent judgment, I took advantage of the lull and headed out the back entrance to the alley. Leaning against the cold brick wall, I pulled the crumpled pack of Camel Lights out of my back pocket, lit one, and took a long drag, then exhaled with a sigh of relief.
It was a bad habit I’d picked up on tour. Like a lot of other servicemen, I grasped at anything that would help harden my pounding heart, calm the swirl of anxiety that constantly seemed to beat there when IEDs killed one of my men every other day and the threat of insurgents loomed on every horizon.
Maybe it was the nicotine. Maybe the curling smoke. But something about a cigarette calmed the nerves, something I needed these days. Badly. This city was a war zone. Except the bombs going off weren’t IEDs—they were memories of her.
That corner over there. A restaurant two blocks down. The hotel penthouse that loomed overhead. Even this fuckin’ bar, where every night, I’d stare at the barstool where I’d first seen her, sipping on red wine, pinky raised and all.
How could you have not known? she’d asked, pain cutting through her silvery eyes like a knife.
It had cut through my chest, too.
And why didn’t I see it, huh? If I hadn’t been so busy looking for her guilt, I might have noticed proof of her innocence. I’d broken the first rule of justice: innocent until proven guilty.
I’d turned it all around out of fear, too scared to trust the woman I loved. And now I was paying for it, a blast to the heart, on every goddamn corner.
Boom. Boom. Boom.
Liver or the lungs. One of them was going down while I tried to let go of my regret. And let go of her, too.
I finished the cigarette and headed back inside, grateful for the slight haze that now clouded my thoughts. The bar was full again, right on schedule. In another hour, it would peter out for the last time. Jamie would do last call around two, then he and I would clean up, and I’d head home at the relatively early hour of three instead of four thirty or five.
Some schedule. Some fuckin’ life.
“You want me to take the door end?” I asked as I washed my hands at the sink next to the register.
Jamie finished ringing up a new tab. “No, I got it. You take the inside section. There’s someone there for you anyway.”
I frowned. “Who?”
For a moment, I wondered if it was one of the ladies who sometimes still left breathy voicemails, dreaming of “that one night” we had spent together and begging for one more. Some people might have found them pathetic, but these days, I only felt that about myself. A year ago, I would have taken those calls and thought nothing of it. Met them at some hotel out by the airport, where their husbands wouldn’t find them.
Now the thought just made me ill. Because as much as I hated it, there was only one woman I had eyes for
