Рони Лорен – Need You Tonight (страница 2)

Tessa blinked, almost too stunned to speak. “That’s what you have to say for yourself?”

“You don’t want to hear what I have to say.” He adjusted his cuffs like it was any other day of getting ready for work and not like the whole foundation of their marriage had shattered beneath them.

“Oh, no. I really do,” she said, seething.

His mouth curled in condescension. “Fine. You want to hear that I need something on the side? That you don’t satisfy all of my needs?”

“Your needs?” If she’d had another piece of citrus to throw, she would’ve reached for it then. How many nights had she put all she had into pleasing him even when he hadn’t put half the effort toward her? How many times had she donned expensive lingerie trying to catch his eye? She’d been willing to do anything for him. She’d loved him.

And he’d been screwing around on her the whole time. With her best friend. The thought almost doubled her over. She reached out and grabbed the edge of the counter.

“Look, you’re upset. I get it. But, Tessa, it’s just sex. I don’t love them, and I’m not going to leave you for any of them. They’re not a threat to you.”

“You have the nerve to talk to me about love right now?” she asked, her throat trying to close. Them. So it was more than Marilyn. She wondered if Marilyn knew she was just the tramp in the Tuesday slot on his calendar. “You’re disgusting.”

His lips curved back into that patronizing smirk he was so good at. “And you’re boring in bed and my intellectual inferior, but I’ve learned to live with it. At least you’re nice to look at now that you’ve gotten your gym routine back on course.”

The hateful words knocked the breath right out of her. Doug had said mean things to her before in the heat of the moment. They’d been together since high school, so of course they’d had their fights. He could be critical beyond reason, always watching that she didn’t eat too many calories or go outdoors without makeup or say the wrong thing in public. She’d tolerated it because she knew how concerned about image he was in his role as the great Pastor Barrett of the Living Light mega-church. And she’d comforted herself with those moments when he was sweet and indulgent with her behind closed doors. He had the capacity to make her feel like a princess. And even though those times had grown few and far between over the last few years, she’d had no idea his opinion of her had sunk so low. Boring in bed. Inferior. Stupid.

God, is that what he told the women he cheated on her with? My wife isn’t too bright, and she’s clueless in the sack.

She grabbed her purse, her stomach threatening to toss up all its contents. She couldn’t stand here for another second and look at his smarmy face, smell the scent of sex in the air. “Go to hell, Doug. I hope you’re happy with your college-educated whores. Now you won’t have to worry about me getting in the way.”

He scoffed. “Come on, Tessa. Stop being melodramatic. You’re not going to divorce me. Your life and everything in it exists because of me. Leave and it all goes away. You’re going to give up all this just because I like a novel fuck every now and then? Please. You wouldn’t even know how to survive without a man taking care of you.” He grabbed his wallet and flipped a piece a plastic her way. “Here, take the credit card. Go punish me by buying something useless and extravagant—you’re good at that—and we’ll move on.”

The credit card landed at her feet, and she had the urge to spear its platinum face with the heel of her Jimmy Choo pump. He was right. If she left him, every bit of her lifestyle would disappear in a poof. From the clothes on her back to the oranges she’d hurled—all of it was funded by him. There’d be no way to prove his affair in court, not with the legal demons he could afford to hire. And she’d signed a prenup. She’d be left with a pittance of alimony. All the comfort and security she’d worked toward her whole life would be gone. She’d be back where she started all those years ago—a nobody with nothing.

Alone. With no money of her own and only a high-school education to her name.

She bent and picked up the card from the floor, turning it in her fingers before dropping it in her purse.

Doug smiled, satisfied. Victorious.

Without another word, she turned on her heels and calmly walked back out to her Mercedes. When she made it into town, she bought the two most extravagant things she could think of.

The services of an attorney.

And a plane ticket home.

It’d be the last of Doug Barrett’s money she’d ever spend.

ONE

“Hold up. Why are you buying condoms?” Tessa snatched the box of Trojans from Sam’s fingertips and held them up like Exhibit A. “You said this was an emergency stop.”

Sam sent her an innocent look, one that Tessa had seen her use rather effectively on both sets of foster parents she’d shared with Sam. “What? I’m out. And we may need them.”

“You may need condoms,” Tessa repeated. “For a cooking class.”

Sam grabbed another box from the rack. “We may need them. I’ll get some for you, too. You never know who we might meet.”

Tessa groaned and looked up at the buzzing fluorescent lights of the drugstore. Sam’s ability to look for dating opportunities around every corner never failed to amaze Tessa. “We’re not going to meet anyone. It’s a cooking class. It’s going to be married couples, women, and gay men.”

Which is exactly why Tessa had agreed to go. After months of Sam trying to drag her out to bars or clubs on Friday nights to get her over that “dickwad ex-husband,” finally her friend had come up with something that didn’t make Tessa’s stomach turn and her body break out into a cold sweat. But now, as she took in Sam’s snug skirt and high heels, Tessa’s dread was growing. She’d thought Sam had simply chosen to dress up because the class was being held at one of the swankiest restaurants in Dallas. But now the puzzle pieces were locking together into a new picture.

“Straight men like to cook, too,” Sam pointed out as she strolled away from the prophylactics aisle toward the cosmetics section. “Particularly when it’s a Perfect Match meet-up event.”

Tessa’s shoe squeaked on the floor as she halted midstride. “Sam, you better be screwing with me.”

Sam grabbed a lip gloss off a rack and held the colored cap next to Tessa’s mouth, frowned, then picked up a different color. “I’m not screwing with you. I’m helping you. My friend is the receptionist at the local Perfect Match office. She offered to sneak us onto the list because the event wasn’t full. How could I pass it up? It was like fate tapping my shoulder. You want to scratch items off your list. This will accomplish that and maybe get you a date as a bonus. Two for the price of one.”

“Learning to cook is on my list. Dating is not. Dating is actually diametrically opposed to the whole spirit of the list.”

“Diametrically? Wow, someone’s getting As in her night classes.” Sam gave her a teasing smile and dropped the lip gloss into her handbasket. “And if I’m not mistaken, one of the items you have on that sacred to-do list of yours is to tackle being ‘boring in bed.’ How exactly do you plan to fix that one without actually coming into contact with the opposite sex?”

A guy perusing greeting cards across the aisle gave them a sideways glance and smirked. Tessa’s face heated. “Could you at least try to keep your voice down while discussing my sex life?”

“What sex life?” Sam replied, not bothering to lower her voice. “This is exactly why we’re going tonight. You need to loosen up. Be open to a world of infinite possibilities. And by possibilities, I mean hot men.”

“Ugh.” She should’ve never let Sam see her stupid list. It’d been something she’d written down in those first few weeks after she’d left Doug and her life in Atlanta. She’d landed in Dallas with no plan, no place to stay, no job. All she’d had was her suitcase and a head filled with all the critical things Doug had said to her over the course of their marriage and that final day in the kitchen.

He’d said she was nothing without him.

And as she’d sat in Sam’s guest room one night, trying to put together a resume to apply for jobs and feeling sorry for herself, she’d realized the bastard had been right on some level. Since she’d met Doug in high school, her entire existence had been centered on being who he wanted her to be. Being what everyone wanted her to be. For Doug, it was the doting girlfriend. For her classmates, it was the bubbly, popular cheerleader. For her foster parents, it was the girl who never broke the rules and went to church with them every Sunday.

She’d been a master chameleon without ever realizing it. It’d kept her from being moved to yet another home. It’d kept her safe from the vicious bullying in high school. It’d given her a way to secure a future with a man who would take care of her. She’d never be that little girl left alone and scared again.

Only the whole plan had been built out of Popsicle sticks. She’d counted on someone else for her happiness and security. A fatal mistake. How had she ever let herself be so stupid as to trust someone again? Her mother had said she’d always be there and look how that had turned out. Trust was for suckers.