Total pages in book: 151
Estimated words: 140874 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 704(@200wpm)___ 563(@250wpm)___ 470(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 140874 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 704(@200wpm)___ 563(@250wpm)___ 470(@300wpm)
“What was the second?” As if cheating weren’t bad enough. I had a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach.
“Telling Valerie.” He looked out the window, a muscle ticking near his jaw. “Or not telling her soon enough. I felt so guilty about stepping out, but I didn’t tell Valerie until a few weeks before she had Emma. By that time, three whole months had gone, and my guilt had eaten away at me. So, I told her, and I shouldn’t have.”
“Ever?” That didn’t seem right, just not telling someone that you cheated on them. “What were you going to do instead? Stay with her and keep it from her?”
“I should have let her go, and never told her. The end result would have been the same; we would have separated. But it would have spared her some pain.” He turned back to me, his brow furrowed, his green eyes intense. “I should have been honest with her from the moment I knew that our relationship wouldn’t work out.”
This was pretty heavy, after the night I’d had. “I think I would have been happier if we’d kept talking about Holli.”
“At any rate, I’m glad you know now. I wanted to tell you before we set a date for the wedding. To give you time to…consider.”
I almost got whiplash, I was so physically taken aback. “Are you kidding me?”
“Well, I’ve heard it said that once a man cheats, he’s predisposed to cheat a second time. I don’t ever want to hurt you like that, and I cannot imagine a circumstance under which I would. But you deserved to know.”
“Because your guilt was eating you up?” I paused. “You think I should have kept my involvement with Deja’s firing a secret.”
He considered his words carefully. “I think you had to. The difference between you and I is that when I told Valerie about my transgression, I didn’t beg her for a second chance. I told her, and I ended it. You didn’t tell Holli the truth because you wanted to destroy your friendship. You wanted to tell her in an effort to save it. And I think that is one of the many ways in which you are a much better person than I am.”
I studied his face, the face I was more in love with now than I had ever dreamed possible just a year ago. All of the good about him, and all the bad, I loved him, because he loved all of me, as well. That was what love was.
Since I loved Holli, and I knew she loved me, I couldn’t believe we’d never be able to reconcile our own bad and good parts.
I refused to believe our friendship was over.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
“What time was the reservation?”
“Eight,” I called to Neil from the bathroom. I grinned at myself in the mirror as I rolled a tube of dark berry lipstick over my bottom lip. Somehow, miraculously, Emma and I had managed to keep her father’s surprise party a total secret. Tonight, he was expecting a quiet dinner with me and Rudy, followed by a proper fiftieth birthday celebration after we moved into the new house in two weeks.
“A combination retirement and birthday party,” he’d described it. “I didn’t think I would make it to fifty, so I want to do it right.”
He had absolutely no idea how “right” tonight was going to be.
I checked myself in the mirror and straightened the skirt of my very snug silver sequined sheath dress. I checked the double-sided tape hiding my bra-straps beneath the thin shoulders of the dress, which were barely wider, and pushed up my cleavage. If we were just going out to dinner, I might have worn something a bit more conservative, but tonight was a party, and I was damn well going to dress like it.
“I don’t see why Emma couldn’t come—Christ, you look bloody fantastic,” Neil said as he stepped into the bathroom. He checked his hair in the mirror, sparing another sidelong glance at me. “If this is my birthday present, I’d like to unwrap it now.”
“And I’d like to eat. I’m starving.” I leaned over the counter and pretended to fix a lipstick smudge that wasn’t there. I really just wanted him to get a good look at my tits in the mirror.
“As much as I’d love a private evening with you, I don’t see what Emma was doing that was so much more important than her father’s fiftieth birthday,” he grumped for the billionth time that day.
“At least Rudy got the night off.” I ran my tongue over my teeth, in case I’d gotten any lipstick on them. “Shame about Valerie, though.”
“Oh, yes, I can see you’re quite torn up about her absence.” The corner of his mouth twitched. It was so cute, the way he thought he knew what was going on. Valerie would be there, as would two hundred of his closest friends and family members.