When her phone rang again, this time with an incoming call, she bolted upright.
“Hello?” She vowed she was not running out to help Remy find that damn field.
“Erin?”
Her nerve endings tingled. Not in a good way.
“Who is this?” Her voice scratched on an uncertain note.
“Don’t hang up. It’s Patrick.”
She damn well wanted to hang up. But shock glued her fingers to the phone as the past reached through the airwaves. No words came.
“Please, Erin. We need to talk.”
Chapter Twelve
“How did youget this number?”
Anger made her voice shake. After six months, she thought she was done worrying about a call like this from the piece of slime who’d betrayed her trust. She’d changed her house phone and her cell phone so that he’d get the message in no uncertain terms that she didn’t want to speak to him again. Ever.
“I found it through an online search. It wasn’t easy, but you’re too important to me. Erin?—”
“Can you put your wife on the phone, please?” She cut him off short. She didn’t want even a shadow of him in her life. “I’d like to let her know you’re harassing me.”
Too wound up sit through this call, she flipped on the bedside lamp and paced the guest room.
“One call in six months is harassment? I’ve been separated from Kristen for months anyhow, so my soon-to-be ex-wife is not home and not a factor for us any longer.”
Too little, too late. If he was even telling the truth.
“Ah.” Erin stepped over a basket of wood-block lettersthat belonged at the store, tense with old frustration she’d managed to stuff down for so long. “How original.”
“Erin, come on, baby,” he pleaded. “She and I were having problems long before I met you.”
She stopped pacing. As much as she did not want to talk to him, she had always wondered how he justified this omission in her mind. “Did it ever occur to you I might want to know you were married and had children? All that time we were together it never came up?”
“At first, I didn’t say anything because I knew I’d never have a chance with you if you found out.”
Sitting on the edge of a pale blue wingback, she stared at a silver-framed photo of herself with her family at the Grand Canyon when she was nine years old.
“Obviously. Common social convention is to take yourself off the market once you’re married. This should not be news to you.” She told herself the only reason she stayed on the phone was to fantasize about reaching across the airwaves and strangling him. Although she couldn’t ignore the fact that a part of her wanted to understand how she could have been so gullible, to find something in what he said to help her see how this man had managed to turn her into a cliché.
“But then, once we started to spend more time with each other, I knew we were meant to be together.” He spoke with a passion that defied logic after all the time they’d spent apart and how very clearly she’d dumped him on his cheating ass.
Surely, he had something better to offer than the same arguments as before?
“And this is what you called to tell me? That we were ‘meant to be together’?” She shook her head, wishing he’d come up with something better. She’d encouraged him tofollow his dreams. He had taken up guitar when they’d been together. She thought she was special to him.
First in his heart.
Of course, there was no scenario that would have made what he’d done okay. Still, she’d spent a lot of time imagining his reasons. The romantic drivel he’d just spouted was about as disappointing an effort as she could envision.
“I know. I know.” His voice broke. “I just couldn’t let you think you’d ever come in second place to her. You were always important to me. I always planned to leave her.”
She might have bought that line five months ago when she’d still nursed a small hope in her heart. But not now. She’d done a lot of growing up since screwing up her life.
“You’re wrong, Patrick. If I was ever important to you, you would have been up front with me.” She didn’t think he could keep on hurting her, but right now, with the memory of Remy’s touches still simmering along her skin, she felt the sting of betrayal all over again.
