He swept a hand back over his own head. Forgetting his hair was too short for that gesture to be satisfying anymore.
And their eyes locked.
“I was going to,” he added cruelly, evenly. “I wanted to. I wanted to want to.”
He went silent again.
They were still a peculiar distance apart. As if they were both open flames.
“What about Francone? You sleep with him? I bet he shouts his own name when he comes.”
She flinched. Despite herself, she kind of liked to hear Eli talk dirty.
She’d revealed her hand. It was her turn to demand answers. “Why are you such ajerkabout him, Eli? I’ve never seen you like this. Everybody speeds sometimes. He’s a perfectly nice guy who happens to have a glamorous job. A perfectly nice, absolutely gorgeous guy with endless supplies of money who actually asked me to go to Napa with him to meet Wyatt Congdon.”
His head jerked back as if she’d shoved a torch into his face.
“Yeah, that’s right,” she repeated slowly. “ThatWyatt ‘King’ Congdon.”
Eli was white about the mouth. He knew exactly who Wyatt Congdon was. Glory had mentioned him once or twice or a hundred times over the decades.
“I’m a jerk about him,” he said slowly, almost abstractedly as if he could hardly believe he needed to explain it, “because I think you think you might decide he’s good enough for you. Just because of who he is. And that’s a guy who wouldneverbe able to appreciate how rare you are in a million years. Or how tobe there. No matter what he says. He doesn’t know how. It’s... just not how he’s made. But if that’s who you want to be...”
A million conflicting emotions knotted her throat.
“You sure it’s not because you think he can give me something you can’t, Eli?” she said softly.
He flinched. That was a bull’s-eye. He recovered pretty quickly.
“What’s that, Glory? A communicable disease?”
“You’d have to get laid to get one of those in the first place,” she shot back.
Damned if Eli didn’t smile faintly. Crap! She’d forgotten he was the law, after all, and good at getting confessions. She’d also just as good as admitted she hadn’t slept with Franco Francone. He’d probably led her right into that confession.
No one had ever known her like he had.
They didn’t talk for a moment. The first initial burst of fury was spent.
And all the while a bird sang its fool head off.
“Okay,” he said. Quietly. With great finality. As if he’d finally run this mess through the powerfully efficient filters of his mind. “I think we’re talking about two things. So let’s talk about them. Let’s finally fucking talk about it. You start.”
She was supposed to be the eloquent one. But suddenly tears flooded her eyes. And the first words out of her mouth were “I hate you.”
He gave a short humorless laugh. “That’s one way to start.”
Her furious tears blurred him and she swiped them away violently and sniffed. But they kept coming.
He didn’t move. He gave her nothing. He just waited.
And waited.
For the dam to break. Because he knew it was about to.
And then it did. And the words were a furious, raw torrent that nearly shredded her throat.
“It wasJonah, Eli. Jonah. I saw his face when he realized what was about to happen to him. When he saw that it was you. And then when he got up and tried to talk to you... you were his friend, his best friend, and he never could hide his feelings, you know? You fucking tackled him, because you know how to dothatso well, tackled him hard. And then sort of grabbed him and flipped him around like he wasnothing. And yanked his arms behind him and I couldseethat it hurt him and you clamped the cuffs on him. Like he was someanimal. Like he was just somescum. Like you’d never hung out in the driveway with both of your heads under the hood of your Fiero, or played Horse on the playground until the sun went down and our moms had to holler themselves hoarse over and over at us to come home, or laid out on the rocks in the sun after we swam and talked about how much we hated ‘Wind Beneath My Wings’ and how we all wanted at least three kids. He can’thaveany of that stuff now. You marched him out of there like he was a fuckingtrophy.”
