One Good Friend Deserves Another (10 page)

And all her systems froze.

She struggled to reboot, her mind working as sluggishly as a dinosaur-grade operating system on a grandfather-generation Pentium processor, trying to pick out the last time Cole and Trey were in the same room together, wondering if they’d even recognize each other, wondering if there were any possible way to change the trajectory of these imminently colliding particles to avoid the inevitable nuclear explosion.

“Hey, Kelly.” Cole approached, his freshly shaven face unusually bright. “I was in the neighborhood so I thought I’d stop by.”

Trey pushed away from where he leaned against the partition, his focus shifting with curiosity.

“Hey,” she stuttered, searching frantically for something to say. “Hey. I…um…that was nice.”

Cole gave a quick chin nod to Trey and Min Jee before turning his attention back to her. “Listen, I just landed a client. A nice fat one. Let’s celebrate. I’ll take you out for lunch.”

Min Jee’s mouth dropped open. Kelly caught the glimmer of light winking on Min Jee’s tongue stud.

“Sorry, buddy, but she’s got plans.” Trey thrust out his hand, a good bit of solid shoulder following close behind. “Trey Wainwright here. And you are…?”

Cole instinctively moved to shake his hand, but at the sound of Trey’s name, he stiffened like the Tin Man.

Kelly wished she could just curl into a tight little ball and not imagine the stuttering flow of Cole’s thoughts as Trey’s name rang in his head, as Cole searched Trey’s face and no doubt recognized the strong resemblance to Wendy. Kelly rifled through her lackadaisically Catholic childhood in search of prayers that would prevent Cole from remembering the whole ugly affair, but all she could come up with were fishermen’s prayers, and not all of them were saintly. Besides, there was no way in hell Cole had forgotten what had happened that terrible weekend. Cole had threatened to make a road trip to Princeton just to pummel the guy—the very man standing before him—for Trey’s intimate and public bragging about his redheaded conquest.

Then her body moved on its own. She stepped between them, placed a hand on Cole’s chest, and tried to catch his attention. “Cole, I know this is a shock to you, but let’s talk about this later.”

He took two stumbling steps backward.

“We’ll have lunch tomorrow, okay?” She silently pleaded for calm, for understanding. “We’ll talk then.”

Weaving, Cole spread his feet a little father apart. His gaze shifted to where Trey was standing behind her and then focused with a piercing intensity back on her face. “What the fuck, Kelly?”

Oh, God.

“All those phone calls.” Cole scraped his fingers through his crisply curling hair, his mind working through the past two weeks. “Now I get it. You closing your door, locking yourself in your bedroom, whispering secrets. Those calls were from
him
, weren’t they? You’ve been
seeing
him.”

“Whoa.
Whoa.
” All six foot something of Trey loomed beside her. “What’s this about your bedroom? Who the hell is this?”

“Cole is my friend,” Kelly said, turning slightly toward Trey, speaking slowly, as if to calm a child. “He’s the one I told you about. The one staying at my apartment.”

“You told me you had a girlfriend staying at your apartment.”

“No, no I did
not
.” She met Trey’s wary gaze. “I told you I had a
friend
staying—I never said it was a guy, because I knew you’d act like
this.
” She took a deep breath, struggling for calm. “Trey, this is Cole.” She held out her palm. “He’s Dhara’s ex-boyfriend.”

“Oh my God, Kelly.” Min Jee slapped a hand over her face. “You’re living with your best friend’s ex?”

“No. No!” Kelly glared at her office mate as heads popped up all across the room, like prairie dogs from burrows. “Cole is my
friend,
” she explained. “He’s staying on my
couch.
”

“This is wrong. So very wrong.” Cole backed away, his palms up. “I am totally out of here.”

“Damn right,” Trey said. “You walk your ass right out of here.”

Cole paused, his gaze a challenge. Kelly swung out an arm to hold Trey back.

“Stop it, both of you. Don’t go all Neanderthal on me.”

Kelly heard someone muttering for security just as Cole made a surly half salute and turned on his heel.

“Don’t leave, Cole. Wait!”

But Cole loped with impossibly long strides down the aisle. She panicked. She couldn’t let him leave. He’d go looking for information, and the first person he’d call would be Wendy.

“You,” she said, swiveling on Trey, “you don’t leave. This is
not
what you think.”

“Right.”

“He could ruin everything. Don’t you get it?” Her jaw was tight with frustration. “He will tell your sister.”

Trey looked at her out of hooded eyes, a look that made her blood run cold, because although they were still the same whiskey colored eyes that had gazed upon her with passion only minutes earlier, now they gleamed, impenetrable.

“Whatever. Do what you gotta do.” He swaggered into her cubicle and sprawled on her chair. “I’ll just make friends with Min Jee here.”

“Honey,” Min Jee said, “it’s me who’s going to ask the questions. I had no idea Kelly had so much going on.”

Kelly turned away, ignoring them both. Trey was angry, but he hadn’t stormed away, so he must believe her at some level. She would deal with him later. On swift feet, she headed toward the elevator banks, avoiding both Lee’s curious look and the avid stares of the guys working on the routers, who were likely to dislocate a vertebra if they strained any harder to see what was going on. She met Cole at the elevator bank, where he pressed the button with increasing annoyance.

“Didn’t realize I was putting such a cramp in your style, Kelly. I’ll be out of your apartment tonight.”

“You don’t have to do that.”

“Nothing has changed, has it?” He glared at the lights above the elevator door, rising too slowly for his taste. “You can write code that’ll make this company millions of dollars, but you wouldn’t know an asshole if he came with a blinking label.”

“Promise me you won’t say anything.”

“Right. I get it. Nobody knows. I know Wendy doesn’t.” He took one turn, and then, as Min Jee would say, he was right up in her grille. “Because if Wendy knew, she’d get the girls together and chap your ass for falling for her asshole brother again.”

Kelly tried very hard to suppress the fury that rose up within her. “You,” she said softly, “don’t know anything about it.”

“I know that guy fucked you before. And it was your first time. And then he wrote all about it, in lurid, full-color detail.”

Yes, folks, the rug matches the curtains.

She flinched. “That was fifteen years ago.”

“People don’t change. He’s going to hurt you again. It’s just a matter of time.”

The elevator rang, and the doors slid open. Cole made a move to step in, but paused as two burly men in blue swaggered out, one talking into a mouthpiece on his collar.

With a chilling sangfroid she didn’t even know she possessed, Kelly’s arm shot up. “Over there. Two guys. Human resources.”

The men nodded and strolled off. Cole slipped into the empty elevator.

“Wait.” She slapped her hand on the frame to stop it from closing and then wedged her foot against the slider. “I made you a promise, Cole. I haven’t said a word to the girls about you—your job, your apartment, anything. Now you have to make a promise to me.”

“I’m not making you any promises.”

“Wendy deserves to hear this from
me
.”

He shot a glance at her. A strange, bruised, disbelieving glance that cut her to the bone. “For Wendy’s sake, I’ll hold. But I’m not going to hide this from everyone forever.”

Kelly stepped back and the elevator slid shut. She watched the numbers drop while she wondered how she’d gotten herself into this situation. How she’d gotten herself tangled up in so many lies.

She had to get out of this office. She swiveled to return to her cubicle only to be greeted by the sight of a dozen heads shooting down, like some geek Whac-A-Mole game.

And this time when she advanced down the aisle, it was a long, hard walk of shame, and she made a point of keeping her chin high but her gaze averted. She arrived at her own desk to find Trey in full flirt mode, deep in conversation with a giggling Min Jee.

She must have looked utterly wrecked because the cocky smile he’d turned to her froze and then faded. He shifted his weight so he wasn’t leaning so close to her office mate.

“We need to get out of here,” she said, “before the security brutes figure out it’s me causing all the trouble.”

“Let’s go.”

He stood up, sidled by her, and headed down the aisle. She caught his hand and tugged him to a stop. Her throat felt like sandpaper, and her head was beginning to throb. She wove her fingers with his and stepped very close.

She spoke quietly to the knot of his tie. “Are you still interested in lunch?”

He made her wait through long, agonizing moments.

“Cover for her, Min Jee. She’s going to be very late.”

Kelly leaned back in the upholstered chair, naked under the terrycloth robe emblazoned with the logo of the hotel. She stared out the window, watching the line of yellow cabs zoom down the canyon of lower Broadway. She still felt languorous from a vigorous bout of sex with Trey, who was at the door to the hotel room right now signing for room service.

All in all, she thought, her heart pinching, a fancy hotel suite in a snobby Manhattan hotel wasn’t a bad setting for the end of a relationship.

A tall glass of ice tea appeared before her. She followed bare arm to bare chest, to Trey’s grinning face.

“I figured you’d be thirsty.”

She took the glass and forced a smile. The sheets of the bed behind him were a knotted tangle, the pillows askew, and the comforter in a heap on the floor. Jealousy, she’d discovered, was a lusty bedfellow. For though she’d explained all the way to the hotel the somewhat edited reason for Cole’s presence in her apartment—and Trey with feigned casualness had conceded he believed her—he’d nonetheless jerked her into his arms the moment the door to the hotel room closed behind them.

It was a reflex, she told herself. A very primitive need on his part to stake his claim. To think of his lovemaking in any other way was just to make a romantic muddle of it, and the last thing she needed right now was a false sense of hope. She would keep her feet flat on the floor—brace them, like she did on the trawler in a rough sea—and not let her wavering emotions unsteady her from what she knew was best.

Trey slipped two silver-domed plates on the table, along with linen napkins, silver utensils, and tiny crystal salt and pepper shakers. Before he sat down, he took away the silver domes. On the china plate before her, fragrant and warm, lay a crusty panini sandwich. Apparently, arugula was a kind of lettuce.

She savored two bites before she set the sandwich back on her plate and watched him tuck into a steak.

“I am sorry.” She twirled the glass of ice tea in its puddle of condensation. “About the whole thing with Cole.”

He shrugged and waved his knife, cutting off the whole discussion.

“It is going to cause some complications,” she added.

His chewing slowed. “You said he was leaving your apartment.”

“Oh, he is.” She traced her plate’s rippled gold edging. “The guy can’t bear to look in my face anymore. In any case, that’s not the kind of complication I’m talking about.”

His shrug was a flex of the shoulders, and his attention stayed on his food. “You think he’s going to tell my sister.”

“I
know
he’s going to tell your sister.” She curled her freckled legs up on the cushioned chair. “Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow. He hasn’t spoken to her in a while. But eventually, he will.”

“So let him.”

“Just like that?” Over the past months, she had prided herself on learning to understand every flicker of Trey’s facial muscles. She’d made a study of it, forcing herself to develop that particular skill with this particular man. But she couldn’t read anything in his expression now, as he sat with his head down, his shock of hair just showing the first signs of thinning. “Trey, we’ve been lying to her for over three months.”

“Technically, I haven’t. She never asks who I’m seeing. She’s got her hands full with this wedding.”

“That’s an excuse.” Kelly knew Trey didn’t want any friction with his sister. He’d once confessed that Wendy was the only person in his family who’d even had an inkling of compassion for him since he’d been forced out of his position in that London bank. “You didn’t want to deal with the shit storm, either.”

“If she had asked me, I’d have told her flat out.” The knife flashed in her direction. “It’s
you
who wanted to keep this on the down low.”

Trey continued to cut his steak into bite-size pieces. It was certainly true that she’d suggested they keep the relationship a secret. If the girls knew, they would have called an intervention, and she wouldn’t have been able to explain to them why she’d forgiven Trey.