“Thanks.” She smiled. “My mom never met Blake.” He watched as she traced her finger along the edge of the glass and stared at its contents. “I never even told anyone I was back in contact with her, actually. Not Blake, not James, not Ash, not Bree, no one.” Her phone lit up again. “Speak of the devil.” She picked it up to show him that “Bree” was calling.
“Is that the best friend?” he guessed.
“That’s the one.” She made a show of sending her to voicemail.
Blake was the daughter. So that made him ask, “And Ash is?”
“My ex-husband, but he’s also my friend, my best friend now.”
Whoa. She was that close to her ex.
“And James is your husband,” he stated more than asked.
She set the phone back down, and the neon Irish flag that hung above the glass at the back of the bar caught the reflection of the diamond on her left-hand finger, causing a rainbow prism to explode.
“Was.” She slid the ring off her finger. “He forfeited that title when he used the sex swing I boughtusto spice things up with her after telling me it wasn’t reallyhis thing.”
His eyes widened slightly as his forehead creased.
“Sorry, was that TMI?”
“No.” Deacon shook his head and looked down at the floor, biting his tongue. Literally.
How could any man be married to the woman seated in front of him, have the privilege of bringing her pleasure, of making love to her and be such an asshole that he fucking cheats on her? Not that it was right for anyone to cheat, but there was just something seriously defective inJames. And why the fuck would she have to buy something to spice up their relationship? The woman could walk around in a garbage bag and look sexy. And then to tell her it wasn’t his thing? If your partner wants to try something and it doesn’t hurt you or someone else, man the fuck up.
“What?” she asked.
“Nothing.” Deacon lifted his head back up, hoping his expression was neutral.
She tilted her head to the side and narrowed her eyes, letting him know he hadn’t pulled off neutral.
“I just can’t believeyouwould have to buy anything to spice things up in a relationship,” he said bluntly. “But then again, I can’t believe any man would cheat on you, so…”
“People don’t cheat because of the person they’re with.”
The look in her eyes and the way she said that made him wonder if there was something in her past she wasn’t so proud of. He didn’t like seeing that look in her eyes. That look of shame.
He glanced over at the couple in the booth and saw they were still working on their dirty margaritas and the college kids still had two of the four pitchers they’d ordered. He’d gone back to change the Peroni because that’s what kneed-balls wanted to drink, but apparently he’d lost his thirst for it.
Deacon leaned forward, just needing to be closer to this woman once again, and rested his hands on the bar top. “So you spent a year dealing with your mom dying and you didn’t tell anyone?”
That bothered him for some reason. He’d spent his entire life dealing with things alone, which was probablywhyit bothered him. He knew what that felt like.
“No, I mean, yes, I did, but it was fine. It was better that way."
“Better forwho?”
“Better for me.” Her phone lit up again, and she sent it to voicemail before she continued answering his original question, moving on from the one that had clearly hit a nerve. “So, yeah, my mom was not a shock. And as far as James and Bree, about a year ago I started noticing little things, the way his hand would brush her lower back when he’d walk by her. The way they looked at each other when they thought no one was paying attention. The inside jokes they seemed to have that no one else was in on. I thought I was crazy at first. Bree is,waslike my sister. We’ve been friends since we were in pre-K. And James, he’s…
“My first husband is a cop. When we were married, he worked undercover, and for the last three years of our marriage, I saw him thirty days. That’s not an exaggeration. I wanted to tell him I was getting a divorce but couldn’t for six months because I had no way of contacting him. I ended up telling him when he was in the hospital after he got shot and blew his cover.
“James was,isan accountant. He came home every day at six o’clock. I thought he was stable, he wanted kids, a dog, a family. Or at least that’s what he said he wanted. Apparently, what he wanted was a cat and to fuck my best friend behind my back for four years. Anyway, like I said, I had my suspicions and ordered spy software that I installed on his phone and computer last year. But right after I ordered it, I found out about my mom and Blake started having some trouble in school and other teenage stuff, and it sort of, I don’t know, I totally forgot about it.
“But then today, actually right when I got in the car after my mom passed, I got this renewal notice for it so I logged in and pulled up the reports from the cloneddevices. There were pages and pages of texts and emails and photos. So yeah, I guess not a surprise because I was suspicious a year ago, but still sort of a shock.”
The old man at the end of the bar lifted his hand, and Deacon wished he could just throw every customer out, but he couldn’t. First off, that would freak the blonde ball-busting angel out, and second, it wasn’t his bar. Deacon went down and poured the old man another Guinness. Then he decided to head out to check on the spicy margarita couple and the frat boys at the pool table who had asked if they could DoorDash a pizza. When he said no, Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum started to argue, but Sore Nuts said, “Okay.” It seemed that the blonde beauty’s lesson, that no was a complete sentence, was working…for now.
When Deacon got back behind the bar, his heart slammed into his chest like a cartoon runaway train into a brick wall, and not in a good way. While he was gone, she must have noticed and picked up the funeral program he accidentally left out on the bar top. She was holding it in front of her.
