Descended (The Red Blindfold Book 4) (6 page)

I shook out my napkin
and draped it over my leg. Damnit, it wasn’t fair. The bastard got
to spend every night next to her, touching her, hearing her gasps and
soft moans.

Did she like it? Did
she think about me when he was on top of her, fucking her exquisite
body? Had she told him what we’d done together, how she’d sucked
my cock while I’d instructed her? How I’d made her my gorgeous
plaything and slave?

It made me sick
imagining his hands on her perfect breasts and his mouth between her
legs. More than sick. It made me want to get in my truck with the
radio blasting and drive too fast until I ran out of road.

He didn’t deserve
her. And she didn’t deserve somebody who’d abandoned her.

I’d kill to taste her
one more time. To dip my tongue into her delicious pussy and make her
come even when she begged me to stop. No matter how she was shaking
and screaming, I could always make her come one more time.

I’d hated seeing them
on television, him giving smug interviews, her in snatches of video
rushing out of their brownstone and getting into a white Mercedes. So
much for her fears of being a criminal. She wasn’t a prostitute,
and nobody’d been after her in Chimayo.

They’d been after me,
the guy with the dicey history. She was a woman of privilege, just
like I’d thought from the start.

But when she and her
asshole husband started avoiding the press completely, it was worse.
Now I had no connection to Jane at all, just the occasional glimpse
of her in a supermarket parking lot. It was the first time I’d ever
been grateful to the paparazzi.

“So if you aren’t
dating my daughter,” Scott said, breaking into my obsessive
thoughts, “why have you been taking her to dinner and nightclubs?”

I sipped my ice water
and wished to hell it was straight vodka instead. “It was her
idea.” Fuck. I suddenly seemed allergic to bending the truth.

“What do you mean,
her
idea?”

“She wanted to
distract the press from the Jane story and it’s working, as I’m
sure you’ve noticed. But there’s no truth to the rumors, Scott.”

His smile looked more
like a grimace. “Something wrong with my daughter, Drex? She’s
the prettiest girl in Texas and she thinks the damn world of you.”

“Nothing wrong with
her at all,” I said. “We just had our time, and that time has
passed.”

He waved the waiter
over impatiently. “Give me a break,” he said. “You’re still
hung up on that other woman.”

Christ, how I wanted to
go off on him. But I wouldn’t. I valued control in all things –
sex, business, and conversation.

“Does it make a
difference?” I said. “Every day I’m at the office working my
ass off, as usual. I deserve privacy. I don’t ask my investors
about their personal lives.”

With an annoyed grunt,
he told the waiter to bring a soda with less ice. “If you were
putting your money on the line for them, you would,” he said.
“You’d want to know they weren’t jeopardizing your investment.”

“I wouldn’t care
what they did outside of work.”

“No? If every move
they made ended up in the tabloids? If they made decisions that
affected the company you were helping to expand? I promise you’d
think twice about it.”

He sat back as if that
were the final word on the subject, but it wasn’t. Not that I
planned to argue with him or anyone else. What I did on my own time
was my business, period.

“We see it
differently,” I said. “I’m short on time, so we’ll have to
order lunch and get down to work. Which is why we’re here.”

I smiled and opened my menu without
bothering to note Scott’s reaction. If he was miffed, that was his
problem. After what I’d been through lately, I no longer gave a
shit.

The photographs
couldn’t have been clearer.

Brooke and Drex were
back together again, less than a week after I’d left Houston.
Dinners, charity galas, parties – boy, they’d been busy. Every
day they were at another social event, arms around each other,
dressed to high heaven. Even on a Tuesday freaking night.

He looked happy,
rested, at peace – all of the things I wasn’t.

While I lay awake at
night, tears falling and fingers aching to touch his skin, he’d
moved on with his ex-girlfriend. It was obvious by his dazzling smile
and the way they looked at each other. I was out of the way, and they
were together again. Whatever problems they’d had were over.

Maybe Drex had
exaggerated their issues so I wouldn’t know how close they were.
And how temporary I was.

Stone-faced, I sat
pinned to a kitchen chair, staring at my laptop and hating them both.
Hating them for being happy and free, with their whole lives ahead of
them.

The best part of my
life – my time with Drex – was behind me, and now I had two
horrible choices: a bed with a total stranger or a cold guest room.
And every night it got harder to sleep two floors down from the
master bedroom.

He’d started to ask
when I was coming upstairs again. He’d started to look wounded,
like a husband who’d been banished to the couch for forgetting an
anniversary.

“Still up?”

I jumped at the sound
of David’s voice. Quickly shutting my laptop so he wouldn’t see
Drex’s face, I turned in my chair to face him. “Yeah. Just doing
some research on memory loss.”

He leaned against the
door frame in his heavy velour robe and crossed his ankles. “Not
tired? I thought occupational therapy wore you out.”

“It did. I’m coming
to bed right now.”

“Upstairs?” The
hope in his voice made my skin crawl.

I couldn’t shut him
out forever. Nine days had gone by since I’d left Houston. It was
time to jump back into my life with both feet. Maybe everything would
change once I did. I’d rediscover David and my marriage, and start
to feel like a wife again.

I took a long breath
and tried to steel myself for what was coming. “Yes. If that’s
okay.”

“Of course it’s
okay. I’m glad.”

Stomach clenched, I
stood up. He took my hand. When his fingers squeezed mine, I told
myself this wasn’t the first time I’d gone to bed with him. Maybe
it wouldn’t be as bad as I feared.

Still holding my hand,
he led me upstairs. Thirty seconds had never gone by so slowly.

The lights in the
bedroom were dimmed and the sheets turned down. My stomach plummeted
at the sight. “David –”

He grabbed me and
kissed me.

I was used to Drex’s
passion and the way it made me feel. Hot. Wanted. So excited I
couldn’t catch my breath. But this was forced and embarrassing, the
furthest thing from sexy.

David’s lips were
thick, his beard scratchy against my chin. He smelled like mouthwash.
My throat tightened and I felt queasy.

Somehow, I’d managed
to put up with this for six years. Either I’d gotten used to it or
I’d refused to do it anymore. Still, I’d stayed with him for some
reason. I was his wife. And wives slept with their husbands.

I gathered every ounce
of my willpower and kissed him back. I pursed my lips and opened my
mouth, but as soon as I felt his tongue I pulled back on instinct.

“You okay?” he
asked.

“Yup,” I said,
avoiding his eyes. “I’m great.”

“I’ve missed you,”
he whispered.

“Really?” I didn’t
believe him. If he’d missed me, he would have looked for me. He
wouldn’t have assumed the worst about me because someone else
thought I might be cheating.

But there was no time
to think about it now. He was pressing me back on the bed and
unbuttoning my blouse. I thought of Drex’s strong fingers and felt
a flood of excitement. Maybe that was all I had to do: pretend, lie,
and think of serving Drex before he forgot all about me with Brooke.

After pulling my
panties off, David opened the nightstand drawer and pulled out a
condom. “Just to be safe,” he muttered with an apologetic smile.
“We don’t know exactly what happened over the last few weeks.”

We? I knew exactly what
had happened, and I couldn’t get it out of my mind. “Sure,” I
said, turning my face away.

I still had my eyes
closed when he climbed on top of me. His cock was hard but small,
making it impossible to imagine Drex.

“Please…” I said,
but he was already thrusting his hips, groaning, his nose buried in
my neck. I lay under him staring at an unfamiliar ceiling, trying to
figure out how I’d done this so many times before. How I hadn’t
cried or begged for a divorce.

I kept my hands on his
shoulders, resisting the powerful urge to push him away. This was sex
without attraction, without any feeling at all. It was sex with my
husband.

“You’re wet,”
David murmured, not knowing that thoughts of Drex were the only
reason.

“You missed me, too,
even if you couldn’t remember me.”

“Of course I did,”
I choked out.

I was starting to sweat
and feel claustrophobic. I was trapped, not just by his body but a
life I didn’t recognize. I wanted out. I’d rather be back on a
park bench or hitchhiking than lying with a man I didn’t want.

He panted in my ear. I
tried hard to feel nothing. If I could just relax, it would be over
soon. But not soon enough.

Just as he was about to
climax, his phone rang on the nightstand. He tried to ignore it but
it buzzed repeatedly.

“Shoot,” he said
under his breath. “I should get that.”

“You should?”

“Yeah.”

He rolled off of me,
grabbed his robe, and ducked out into the hallway with his phone. I
was so relieved, it took me a few minutes to realize how strange it
was. He’d been making love to his amnesiac wife for the first time
since her prolonged disappearance. What late phone call could
possibly be that important?

I got up and slipped on
a nightgown, some flowered cotton disaster I couldn’t believe I’d
ever liked. I stood at the door listening, but didn’t hear his
voice.

I peered out. Though
the hallway was dark, the stairs were illuminated by a shaft of
moonlight. I tiptoed toward them, hoping the runner would keep the
floor from creaking.

Where was he? Had he
gone downstairs?

I was on the bottom
step before I heard him in the kitchen. I stood frozen, hand gripping
the banister.

“No, she doesn’t,”
he said.

His words were barely
audible, but if I turned my head and strained to listen, I could just
make them out.

“You’re right, I
should have kept you out of it, but she put me on the spot. She
wanted to know why.”

He cleared his throat.
I held my breath and waited for him to speak again. A minute crawled
by.

“We have to wait
until this blows over. I didn’t expect it to get so complicated.”
He paused. “I know, and I thought it was true. But the police don’t
think it happened that way.”

My stomach felt like a
block of ice. Who the hell was he saying this to? What did it mean?

I heard the
refrigerator open and close. A few seconds later, David poured
something into a glass. “Okay,” he said. “That’s all right.
Text if you have to, but try not to call. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

I turned and dashed up
the stairs, not stopping until I got to the bedroom. Tearing off my
nightgown, I slipped under the covers. A minute later, David sat on
the edge of the bed.

“Asleep?” he
whispered.

“Mmm. I was.” Eyes
shut, I forced a smile.

“Sorry about the
phone call,” he said. “Work.”

“That’s okay. I
know you’re busy.”

“It’s no excuse,
though.”

He stroked my hair. It
made me shiver to realize how quickly he could put it on, the gentle
touch and soft, concerned voice.

“It’s all right,
really.”

I kept my eyes shut and
lay perfectly still, hoping he would just go away. “Your memory
will come back,” he whispered. “I know it will.”

“I hope you’re
right,” I murmured back, before pretending to fall asleep again.
But for one grim instant, I actually hoped that I’d lost my memory
forever.

I already knew too much
about my life with David. Right now, I didn’t want to know anything
more.

I had to see Jane. I
didn’t care what it took, or how wrong it was.

I set up three meetings
with investors in New York. I’d relied on Scott and his contacts
for too long, and it was past time. No one needed to know I was
taking a detour to Boston, but it would require a low profile and
avoiding the paparazzi.

There was a missing
college girl in Pennsylvania, and some reporters were already peeling
away from Jane’s story to chase the newest tragedy. Ruthless
bastards. Now if only they’d investigate David Blair.

I’d done a little
digging into his background and what I’d found had surprised me. He
was Harvard-educated, the son of a doctor and a sculptor, on two
charity boards, a marathon runner. The guy was disciplined and
accomplished. So it didn’t make sense that he’d let three weeks
go by without notifying so much as a traffic cop about his missing
wife.

Something was wrong. It
had to be.

Or maybe I just wanted
to believe it was. Maybe he was exactly what he appeared to be – an
honorable professor who’d had an unfortunate lapse in judgment. He
loved his wife, but he’d had this wild theory that kept him from
trying to find her. Jealousy could do crazy things to people.

Bullshit. I didn’t
buy it for a second.

My plane touched down
in Boston on a bright, warm afternoon. I took a cab to my hotel, only
half a mile from Jane’s brownstone in the South End. Thanks to the
press, I knew where she lived, where she worked, and what kind of car
she drove. Tracking her down wouldn’t be hard, but keeping my hands
off her would be. Knowing what to say might be impossible.

I knew her husband
taught law during the day, and Jane still hadn’t returned to her
job yet. That much I’d gleaned from news reports, and I hoped
nothing had changed.