A Taste of You (20 page)

What the hell was this?

I kept flipping and spotted bank records going back seven years, credit checks, a detailed medical history, pictures of her family. I flipped faster. There were transcripts of conversations she’d held and information on past boyfriends.

This was a dossier. It looked like the kind of file the FBI or CIA would compile. Why would William have this? I laid the report aside and found an itinerary. I scanned it and realized it was for the evening I’d first met William at Willowgrass. It detailed when she was expected to arrive that afternoon, as well as her commitments at Willowgrass in the following days. It was the same itinerary I had followed when I’d taken over for Jenny that morning.

My heart beat fast as I found the last section in the folder. This report recommended discussion topics, tips on what Jenny liked and didn’t like, along with suggestions for the number and length of dates. Another sheet made recommendations as far as when to exit the relationship.

Apparently, after eight dates, Jenny would likely get emotional. The report even recommended a parting gift. I fell back into William’s chair and stared at the blurring information. This was a dating profile. It was the kind of package I imagined a dating service would send clients, but it was way more detailed than any service would provide. This dossier contained really personal information about Jenny. I mean, the number of yeast infections she’d had over the past five years was specified! This was information beyond normal for a prospective dating partner. Not only that, all financial information had to be protected by law. The health records too. No way was this dossier legal.

So William had planned to date Jenny. That was why he was at Willowgrass that day. That was why he came on strongly in the loft. He’d thought I was Jenny. The tip sheet mentioned Jenny liked strong come-ons. But he hadn’t met her, and even though there were tons of pictures—Jenny and I didn’t resemble one another—he still went after her… me. If he did this much research on someone he had not even met, then what information must he have on me? I scanned the top of the desk. Where the hell was my dossier?

My head spun as my thoughts came fast and furious. He made dossiers on the women he dated. How fucked up was that? I’d told him all about Jace, but had he known already? Was his reaction an act? Was this whole “relationship” a manipulated lie? Had he been following recommendations for me on every date? What was his exit strategy?

The door opened, and William poked his head in. “Did…”

He must have seen something in my face because his gaze fell to the desk. He noticed the pictures and the scattered papers then stepped inside the office and closed the door.

I waited for him to speak, but he didn’t say anything.

Finally, I swallowed. “This is all just a big lie, isn’t it?” I asked, sweeping my arm to encompass both of us. I shook my head. “I’m such an idiot. I told you
everything
about me. I told you I killed my husband. I told you I was the one responsible for his death. And I
agonized
over it. But you knew it all already, didn’t you? You knew I’d had a drink and that I was at fault.”

He didn’t speak, didn’t react.

“You knew, didn’t you?” I shouted, standing. “Where’s my file? I know you have one on me.” I scattered Jenny’s papers on the floor then pulled out file after file stacked on his desk. None were dossiers as far as I could tell. I dumped them all on the floor, but he didn’t flinch at the mess I made of his perfect little world. I wanted to make a mess of his world, like he’d bulldozed mine.

“That night we met, you were going to meet Jenny. You were planning to date her. Since she wasn’t there, did you decide to take the next best thing? But then I’m not really your type, am I?”

He folded his arms over his chest, his expression unreadable but not apologetic, and not ashamed. I pulled a picture of Jenny from the pile of papers. “I’m not tall or blond or model-y. I’m not like Jenny Hill or Lara Kendall or any of the other women I saw you standing beside in photos from charity events. So what are you doing? Am I an experiment? Is this a manipulation? A game?” Tears stung my eyes, and I willed them away.

“I told you,” he said softly. “It’s different with you.”

“How? Because I’m not blond? Because you didn’t have the dossier on me before we met?”

“I’ve never felt this way. I’ve broken my rules with you. You’re different, Catherine. Our relationship is different.”

“Relationship?” I swiped at the stupid tears that were falling despite my best attempts to hold them in. “This isn’t a relationship. Relationships require honesty and openness. You’re not honest. You’re not open. This is it. I’m done.”

His look was steely, his eyes stormy.

“I can’t be with someone who isn’t honest. You call this a relationship, but you haven’t shared anything deep or personal. I’d accepted it because I know.” I sniffed and used the sleeve of his shirt to wipe my tears. “I
know
. It’s really hard to talk about loss. It brings it all back. It makes you vulnerable. You talk about trust!” I was screaming, and he was calm, completely unaffected. I don’t think he gave a shit what I was saying, but I couldn’t stop. I was furious and devastated. “You talk about trust, but you don’t trust me enough to talk to me. I thought, maybe over time, you’d trust me, and you’d open up. But…” I pointed to Jenny’s file. “That was stupid because our
relationship
was never going to last long anyway. You would have ended it before it got messy or complicated. God, you must have had a good laugh at me.” My heart was breaking. The ache in my chest cut through me, making it almost impossible to breathe. I was sobbing now, my body shaking with the effort it took to control the sobs. I put my hands palms down on his desk and forced myself to take a deep breath. I’d done this after Jace died, learned to collect myself, calm myself.

When I looked up, I’d staunched the tears. “I have to leave. And I don’t
ever
want to see you again.” I ran past him, cutting through the cold house to his bedroom. I found my dress on the floor and gathered it in my arms.

I heard William come in behind me. “Get out of my way.” I headed for the closet, but he grabbed my arm, spun me around. He pulled me hard against him and kissed me. “No!” I pushed back, slamming my fists against his chest, struggling to free myself. But he was strong, and he held me.

“It’s not like that with you, Catherine,” he said, breaking the kiss. “It’s never been like that with you. You’ve consumed me, can’t you see that?” He raked a hand through his hair, and I, too shocked by what I saw in his eyes, forgot to escape. He was terrified of my leaving, and he was desperate. The lonely little boy inside him feared his world would collapse again. “You’ve stolen my soul.” He shook me. “Yes, the dossier routine is fucked up. I’m fucked up. It’s what I do—or did—but never with you.” He stared into my eyes. “
Never
with you.”

I swayed, so exhausted and confused that I wanted to be anywhere else—with anyone else. I didn’t know what to believe. I didn’t know what was real and what was a fabrication, what was true and what was part of an elaborate plan.

I shook my head. “I don’t believe you,” I said calmly, stepping from his embrace and turning my back. I shed his shirt and pulled my dress on, cinching it tightly. “I don’t want to see you anymore.” I found my coat and threw it over my arm, stuffed my feet into the shoes. I would have left them like I was leaving the lingerie. I didn’t want any part of him, but I couldn’t go out in the freezing cold without shoes.

I pulled my coat on and closed it around me protectively. “Stay away from me.” I strode past him into the living room and pressed the button for the elevator. When it arrived, I stepped inside, rode down, and walked out of the building, telling the doorman I needed a cab.

William didn’t come after me.

I stood in the cold morning alone, watching my breath frost the air, hot tears sliding down my frozen cheeks.

Sixteen

I didn’t wait for the cab. I couldn’t stand there, crying in front of the doorman. I didn’t think William would come after me, but the longer I stood in front of his building, the more I worried he might. And the more I worried I wouldn’t be able to resist him. So I walked off, heading for the L. Since it was Saturday morning, the train was pretty empty, and no one looked at my tear-stained face and bare legs in high heels for too long. I stared out the windows and watched the cold, grey city as it blurred by.

When I got home I was grateful neither Minerva nor Hans was around. I didn’t want to answer questions. I didn’t want to speak. I was, quite simply, exhausted. My condo was lonely. I’d dropped Laird at Allison’s yesterday afternoon, and now, I regretted doing so. Laird was used to my tears and my sadness. Whenever I cried over Jace’s death, he stayed by me, chin on paws, sad look in his eyes. But I didn’t even have the comfort of my dog this morning.

I could still smell William around me—in my hair, on my skin, on my clothes. I stripped and headed into my tiny, decidedly not luxurious bathroom. I ran a hot shower and stood under the scalding spray for what seemed like hours. Once I was in the shower, I cried in earnest. Huge, wracking sobs shook my shoulders, and I fell to my knees and let the water pound my back. I cried until I was little more than a drenched ball of despair, and then I crawled out of the shower, dried off, and pulled on my oldest pair of sweatpants and a ripped T-shirt. My sheets were clean and inviting, and I climbed under the covers, making myself into a little cocoon. The tears started again, and I let them fall.

I hated William. I hated myself. I hated stupid Jenny Hill for breaking her wrist the day before William and I met. And I wanted William back. That was the pathetic truth. My body already missed his touch. And I missed the way he laughed and smiled in those rare unguarded moments. I wallowed, and I wept with abandon. I wanted to purge myself of William and all the memories flooding me.

Finally, my throat was parched, and I padded to the kitchen for a glass of water. I trudged back to my room with a pint of ice cream and a spoon. There was little rocky road ice cream couldn’t fix. I took a bite then set it aside. I couldn’t bear to eat. Even the thought of food reminded me of William.

Everything reminded me of William.

How could last night have been so perfect and this morning so awful? I’d been charmed when he’d given me that simple yet elegant watch. He seemed to always know what I needed and what I liked. I realized I’d left the watch at his penthouse—the new one as well as my regular watch. Panic gripped my chest, and I ran to where I’d dropped my keys and coat when I’d walked in. I dug through the pile but no phone.

Shit!

That damn phone was the reason I was in his study in the first place. If I’d charged it before I left, I wouldn’t have needed to borrow William’s phone, and I wouldn’t have discovered the dossier. I couldn’t decide if that was fate or my forgetfulness paying off for once. In any case, I wasn’t going back to get my phone. I didn’t want to see William again, and especially, not in my current condition. I was actually relieved I had no way to contact the outside world. I didn’t want to talk to anyone. Not even Beckett. I wanted to be alone with my shame and my self-loathing.

Why hadn’t I seen the real William sooner? Or maybe I’d seen him and didn’t want to accept what I saw. The one thing I knew was that we were totally and completely over. He was fucked up enough that he kept detailed dossiers on his “women.” It was even more disgusting that he dated that way—with exit strategies and pages of research guiding his topics of conversation. It was a calculated plan to get laid quickly and easily without messy emotions or commitment.

And I had fallen for it. I’d fallen for the whole dog and pony show. I’d thought I was opening myself up and taking a big step when I revealed to William that I was a widow. But he’d known all along. He was a good actor. I had to give him props. He had acted surprised and taken off-guard. But now, I knew the truth.

Even this morning, when I had stupidly blurted out my part in Jace’s death, when I had revealed my deepest secret, it was no secret at all. He knew all along that I was the one driving the car when Jace had been killed, and that I had alcohol in my system when I was behind the wheel.

Jace.

Fresh tears welled in my eyes. All the guilt and the horror and the sickening events of that night rushed back. My stomach heaved, and I almost lost the few bites of ice cream I’d managed to swallow.

If I could go back and do it over again…

If I had called a cab… If I had taken another road… If we’d left five minutes earlier or five minutes later… If I hadn’t accepted that beer…

But there were no do-overs in life. You got one chance, and if you fucked it up, you lived the rest of your life with the awful consequences. And I would live the rest of my life with the knowledge that I was the one who killed Jace. Not directly. I hadn’t held a gun to his temple, but I’d been driving the car.

I shouldn’t have been driving. I never should have climbed behind the wheel. I saw myself do it a thousand times in my memory. I dreamed about it over and over. Each time, I tried to call out, to stop myself, to change the inevitable. I’d had one beer. One. I wasn’t drunk. I wasn’t even tipsy, but there had been alcohol in my system. Had it impaired my judgment or slowed my reflexes? If I’d been stone cold sober would I have reacted more quickly…differently? The pickup truck had come out of nowhere. The road had been dark and empty. Jace and I had the music loud, and we were laughing and talking. We’d been so happy. We’d thought our love was invincible.

And then, in an instant, it was gone. Everything I loved, everything that mattered to me—gone. My husband, my career, my life.

I told myself there was nothing served by replaying it in my mind. I’d been over it thousands of times, but it was like a movie loop I couldn’t turn off. It repeated and repeated.

I saw myself telling Jace I was tired and wanted to go. He’d been drinking and laughing with his friends. He wanted to stay at the party and have another. “This is Hawaii, babe. No rules here. No schedules.” The bonfire on the beach cast eerie shadows, and the light from the fire flickered over his bare chest, where his shirt was unbuttoned. He wore a shark’s tooth necklace. It was cliché for a surfer, but he wore it anyway. His father had given it to him when Jace won his first surfing competition. He said it brought him luck.

“Jace, I’ve got film to edit tomorrow, and we’ve had a long day.” I’d reached out, fingered the shark’s tooth, and slid my hand down his chest. “Let’s go back to the hotel and go to bed.”

“Bed?” He’d grinned, and his teeth had looked so white against his bronze skin. “Cat, why didn’t you say so before?”

He’d said his good-byes to his friends. Neither of us knew it was the last good-bye. I couldn’t remember what we’d talked about in the car. Maybe we’d talked about Dax—how every time we saw him he was with a different girl. Maybe we’d chatted about Slater or Kai and their latest moves and how Jace could beat them at the Whalebone Classic in Australia the next month. And then, there’d been the bright lights and the sound of someone—me—screaming. The screech of brakes. The unearthly crunch of metal. The silence.

The police had done a thorough investigation. I wasn’t at fault. The truck’s driver had been drunk. Really drunk. He had several DUIs and had been driving on the wrong side of the road at high speed. We’d come around that blind corner and never had a chance. But oh, how I wished I hadn’t swerved. The passenger side, where Jace was sitting, had been hit head-on. Jace and the other driver had been killed instantly. I’d gone to the hospital with minor injuries.

I knew Jace was dead at the scene. When his parents arrived from San Francisco the next day, his mother had stood over my hospital bed, pointed at me, and said, “You killed my son. It should have been you who died.”

In the following months, I’d wished it had been me. Jace’s family blamed me, many of his friends blamed me, and I had to change my phone number and my email address because Jace’s fans wouldn’t stop harassing me. It didn’t matter that the other driver was given ninety-five percent of the blame. Jace was dead. I was alive, tormented by that five percent. I had alcohol in my system. My license had been expired. I shouldn’t have been driving.

My mom and dad stood by me. They tried to comfort me, but they couldn’t understand how much it hurt to be vilified by those who had mattered so much, by those whose support I needed. Most of Jace’s friends barely spoke to me at the funeral. His parents had nothing but hate-filled words. And his brother…

I wouldn’t think about Jace’s brother.

I truly wished I’d been the one to die.

Sometimes, I still felt that way, even though Chicago was a long way from Santa Cruz, away from the memories and the people who hurt me. I’d needed a fresh start. I’d needed a place where I could feel anonymous, where no one had heard of Jace Ryder or the ASP World Tour or a young, stupid girl named Cat Ryder.

Here, I was Catherine Kelly. Here, I could forget, for a little while, how my life had been perfect, and how I’d ruined everything.

It seemed bad decisions weren’t solely the domain of Cat Ryder. Catherine Kelly had been the one stupid enough to start a relationship with William Lambourne. It was no one’s fault but my own. I’d been warned he was a commitment-phobe. Had I really expected him to be honest? Did I have a right to be outraged and hurt that he was playing me the entire relationship? That what I had thought was something special between two people was carefully orchestrated with the end in mind?

Or maybe, what really pissed me off was that I was his second choice. It had seemed like a fairy tale—destiny had brought us together. Really, it was just a patch of ice. If Jenny hadn’t slipped, William would be seeing
her
now. If Jenny had called another photographer—Jessica Willis or Tiana Jackson—William would be seeing one of them now. I was nothing special. I was just in the right place at the right time.

It made me angry, but it didn’t hurt me. What hurt was that he’d known my secrets from the beginning. And still, he’d let me confide in him. He’d even had the gall to act shocked and surprised. All the while he’d gone on and on about breaking rules—what rule? His blond rule? He hadn’t shared himself with me. Every time I’d asked about his family, he’d shut me down. He hadn’t even shared anything innocuous—his schooling, his work, his past relationships. I knew almost nothing about him, while he knew everything about me.

And still, I’d held on, clinging to the little he did reveal, hoping he might open up. Hoping we had a future. Our “relationship” had been a farce—secrets, lies, and sex. That’s all it had ever been. Just sex. No intimacy. No love. No commitment. An easy fuck. That’s what I was.

Not anymore. It was over.

And the decision made me cry harder. I buried my head in my pillow, closing my eyes against the images that refused to fade—bright headlights, the scream of metal, the smell of
pain au chocolat
, William’s blindfold over my eyes, the feel of frozen grapes and William’s warm mouth on my body, the taste of William’s skin.

I pulled another pillow over my head and cried until I fell asleep.

*****

I woke the next morning and felt like someone had hit me with a camera stand. I stumbled out of bed and stared in the bathroom mirror at my puffy eyes and my red nose. I could feel pressure at the front of my skull, and my throat was scratchy. I was coming down with a cold. Perfect. My life couldn’t get any better.

I had to pick up Laird, so I took a quick shower and pulled on old clothes. By the time I was ready to walk out, my nose was running, and I’d sneezed half a dozen times. I opened my door and almost stepped on the padded yellow envelope in front of it. My chest clenched, and my hand shook when I lifted it. It was from William. I knew it was from William.

I ripped the envelope open and slid my phone into my hand. No watch fell out, so I shook the package again. A slip of heavy, cream-colored paper floated to the floor. I lifted it and stared at the initials, WML.

You’re better off without me. I’ll never forget the taste of you.

I had to press my hand to the wall to keep from falling to my knees. It was over. It was really over. I’d known this, but William’s message confirmed it. A small part of me had hoped he wouldn’t let me walk away. He’d come after me and tell me it was a big mistake. He’d explain everything, and like a fairy tale, it would turn out to be a big misunderstanding.

But now, I held the end of my fantasy in my hand. William wasn’t coming after me. I hadn’t misunderstood. I straightened and told myself he was right. I
was
better off without him. Then why was I so miserable?

Weary to the bone, I climbed into my Volvo and drove to Allison’s. Laird was excited to see me, but after the kids had hugged him good-bye, she pulled me aside. “What’s wrong, Catherine? You look like you’ve been crying.”

“I’m getting a cold,” I told her, not making eye contact. I couldn’t tell her about William. Not then. Not after we’d had dinner the other night, and I’d gushed about my new relationship. “I need to go back to bed.”

“Can I get you anything?”

“No, I’m fine. And you’ve done enough. Thank you for watching Laird.”

She frowned. “The kids adore him. I’m pretty sure they wore him out. He’s welcome anytime.”

“Thanks again.” I was backing up, trying to escape before I burst into tears again. “Bye!”

“Bye. Call if you need anything, Catherine.”

“Okay.”

By the time I got home, I wished I’d taken Allison up on the offer of medicine. I felt even worse. I’m sure the crying didn’t help. I collapsed on the couch and closed my eyes then my phone buzzed. I didn’t look at the caller ID.

“Hello?”

“Cat? Is that you?”

“Beckett.” Relief spiraled through me. “Yes. I have a cold. And… and…” I couldn’t get the words out. I sobbed again, and Beckett told me to calm down and explain. I couldn’t calm down. My mind chanted
It’s over. It’s really over
.