His face fell, nice-guy smile melting off his chin like cheese dripping through the oven rack. But his eyes never changed, and Cordelia suddenly found it so telling the way he could wear a smile or a frown and never have it reach the cool, glacial gleam of his eyes.
“Is that how you’re going to thank me for bringing your things?” he asked, gesturing toward the boxes on the floor. “I drove all night,” he said, walking right up to her and wrapping her in an intimate hug, the linen and lemongrass scent of his cologne engulfing her.
Cordelia stiffened in his arms, and John drew back.
“Thank you,” she said, all venom. “Now leave.”
John glanced from Cordelia to Eustace and back again. “I was hoping I could rest a moment, maybe get a decent night’s sleep.” He added quickly with a sly glance in Gordon’s direction, “I was hoping we could talk, Cordy. Just you and me.”
John had never called herCordybefore. That was Eustace’s pet name for her, and one she would only ever let her sister get away with. Hearing it come from his mouth upended her place in the world.
He smiled. “There. See? I’m not gonna bite.” He leaned towardher. “Maybe we could go somewhere private to, you know, work things out?”
Gordon cleared his throat.
“Who is he, anyway?” John asked, dripping with arrogance.
“Our bouncer,” Eustace said dryly.
“Always a pleasure, Eustace,” John said, tone flat as a pancake. “What has it been? Five years since we last spoke? The wedding?”
She pulled her vape pen out and took a puff, giving him a feline smile through the plume. “Once was enough for me.”
Cordelia motioned for John to follow her and started toward the dining room, refusing to meet Gordon’s eye. “Let me handle this,” she mouthed to Eustace as she held the door open for John. He slipped past her, and Cordelia glanced up to the tower, where a shadow gathered like rain.
“Stay here,” she told John once they were in the dining room.
But as always, he didn’t listen. He followed her into the kitchen, where she was opening and closing the cupboards, trying to find the big mugs so she might make herself a cup of that chamomile tea her sister had the other night.
“Cordelia, will you just talk to me?” he begged beside the island.
She took one look at him and decided she would need something much stronger. Mug in hand, she made her way back into the dining room to the bar, where she poured two fingers of brandy into her cup and took a long, fiery swallow. She set it down on the oversized table and turned to John.
“Are you gonna offer me one?”
“No.”
He exhaled and bent his head to his hand as if she were being the impertinent one. He pulled out a chair. “Can you sit?”
Cordelia eyed him skeptically.
“You’re making me nervous,” he said, all chivalry and sensitivity.
With slitted eyes, she slunk into the chair. He pulled out the chair at the head of the table, she noted with distaste, and sat down in it, resting his elbows on his knees. “I wish you would talk to me. I’m not a stranger. I’m your husband.”
She snorted into her brandy mug. “You’ll have to excuse me. The sight of you mounting my assistant in our kitchen made me forget all about our vows.”
He winced. “Not this again.”
“Yes, John.This.Again. And again. And again. As many times as you fucked her, that’s how many times I’ll bring it up.”
His mouth twisted. “You know I hate it when you use that word.”
The irony, Cordelia thought, was that she’d heard Allison moaning it over and over as she’d made her way from the front door to the kitchen that night—fuck me, fuck me, fuck me.Apparently, he loved when Allison said it.
Cordelia leaned back in her chair. His shirt was unbuttoned at the collar, hair combed through, nails straight and clean as any woman’s. The slender pinkness of his fingers, compared with Gordon’s rough, workman’s hands, struck her. And the tidy smell of him, so civil and boring. His shoulders were more rounded and several inches too narrow. There was nothing of Gordon’s rugged sex appeal or honest face or genuine nature. John was a caricature of a man, as unappealing as dry toast. And he did look like a Rolex ad.
“You know you very nearly got me killed,” she spat.
