Chapter 12
“Hey, why don’t we take this over to your place?”
I studied him and searched my gut once again. It told me he might’ve been a charming cheater, but he didn’t mean me harm. If I’d thought he did, then I never would’ve stepped into his apartment. Even so, it never hurt to do a second gut check.
Also, I had a Taser hidden in the drawer of the coffee table. For reasons.
“Why my place?” I’d already decided my place was fine, but being a contrarian was fun.
“One, I don’t have a table.”
I looked around, and he sure didn’t. “Odd.”
“Stark, I’m not here for a long time; I’m here for a good time. Scratch that. I’m just here. Speaking of scratches, you have a kitten, and I would like to meet it.”
“Fair. She’s adorable. Maybe you’ll decide you want to keep her after all.”
“Unlikely,” he said. “Also, I have a bottle of wine, but I don’t have a corkscrew.”
“What kind of operation are you running over here?”
“A very temporary one. Do you want the wine or not?”
“What kind?”
“Malbec.”
Of course he had a Malbec, my favorite. “Yes, please.”
The first thing Malone did upon entering my apartment was scoop up my kitten as though he’d never seen a kitten before. The second was to study the framed puzzle piece on the wall.
“Uh . . . Stark?”
“Yes?” I asked from the kitchen, where I was searching for the corkscrew.
“Why do you have a single puzzle piece on the wall?”
Looking at the tiny piece surrounded by a thick navy mat made me smile. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”
“Yes. That’s why I asked.” He scratched underneath the kitten’s chin, and she looked up at him with devotion.
“After you tell me your story, maybe I’ll tell you one of mine.”
Later, we sat at my small but sturdy Ikea table, full of pizza and warmly toasty from our wine. The kitten lay nestled in the crook of Malone’s arm, sleeping without a care in the world.
“You promised me a story, I believe.”
He sighed. “That I did.”
He frowned at my puzzle piece, the only relief to unrelenting beige walls, but I could tell he was gathering his thoughts rather than crafting a lie. It felt as though he were deciding how much to share.
Feeling’s mutual, Malone.
“Remember when you told me you’d just got out of a long relationship?” he finally asked.
“Yeah.”
“Same.”
I had a million questions, but the moment felt delicate. One misstep, and I might not learn more about Malone, and I wanted—nay, needed—to hear his side of the story.
For professional reasons, clearly.
He took a deep breath and then turned his unique eyes on me. “One day, out of nowhere, she told me she couldn’t be with me anymore. Said she couldn’t stand to look at my mismatched eyes.”
Bile surged up my throat. How could Trista say such a thing to him!
Maybe my bullshit detector was irrevocably broken after all.
Maybe I was wrong about Trista, and she’d lied to me about the side chick. Now she wanted me to torment this man because his beautifully unique eyes didn’t “match”?
Anger took up all the space in my brain, to the point that I almost missed what he said next: “So she gave me back the engagement ring. Said she didn’t want to risk having children who had different-colored eyes.”
Wait. The side chick was the long-term relationship?
And just like that I was firmly Team Trista again, but my thoughts swirled.
He looked at me expectantly.
“Malone, that’s horrible.”
He shrugged. “Better to find out before children were involved.”
As if he didn’t have children in his marriage.
Now I wanted to smack him.
But he also radiated hurt. He gently stroked the kitten’s head, and I couldn’t handle the cognitive dissonance of it all. Someone wasn’t telling the truth, because neither Malone nor his actions matched Trista’s description.
“What about you, Stark? Before you tell me about the puzzle piece, what about your relationship? Who did you kick to the curb?”
“Cute how you think I was the one doing the kicking.”
His eyes traveled down my body, then met my gaze again. “What kind of idiot would dump a woman like you?”
His warm words were a balm to my wounded soul. Best I could tell, he meant them.
Unless, of course, he had sociopathic tendencies and was very much the asshole Trista had described. Thing was . . . I wanted to believe him. Tears pricked, but I used the stare-at-the-ceiling-and-blink trick to keep them at bay.
“Hey, you don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to,” he said.
I shook away any thoughts that would distract me from focusing on Malone. His reactions to my story would tell me a lot, so why not tell him?
Instead of telling my story, though, I found myself saying, “I don’t even understand what you see in me.”
He poured a little more wine for each of us. “You’re kidding, right?”
“No,” I said with a laugh. “I’m honestly not.”
“I mean, sure, you’re beautiful with curves for days, but you’re also witty. You’re philanthropic—”
I snorted.
“—very ladylike—”
Which made me snort again.
“—and I’ve always had a thing for brunettes. Beautiful smile, and the first day I met you, you were wearing that leather jacket over a tank top and looked like you’d just walked out of a rock video. Stunningly cool.”
That’s right. I had been wearing my leather jacket. Technically it had been a bit warm for that, but I’d almost left it at Nana’s house. Wearing it was far easier than packing it by that point.
“Most of all, though,” he said as he pointed to the framed puzzle piece, “you’re intriguing.”
“Now that’s an adjective no one has ever used to describe me.”
He shrugged. “Then they weren’t looking hard enough.”
“Maybe I should keep my story to myself. I’d hate to give up ‘intriguing’ within five minutes of having it used as a descriptor.”
“Oh, I doubt that’ll be a problem.”
I hesitated. If I told him my origin story—i.e., how and why I’d taken that puzzle piece from Aunt Edna—would he catch on to my ultimate plans for him?
I needn’t have worried. Once I got to the part about crawling around on the floor while pretending to look for the missing piece, he laughed out loud, startling the kitten. “Who knew you were such a vigilante for justice?”
Oh, Malone, you have no idea.
Just as I settled in, pleased with myself for making him laugh, he turned serious eyes on me. “But what about the idiot who dumped you?”
That night still felt too raw, an incident I hadn’t fully processed because I didn’t believe in processing anything. Memories and emotions went into the vault. No good ever came of sharing the darkest, most painful things, Nana had taught me that.
Something about Malone’s sympathetic gaze had me mentally undoing the combination to that emotional safe. Maybe it was the contrast between his eyes or how gently he held the kitten. Maybe my emotional vault was full of hurts and threatening to burst. Maybe I was tired from hauling it around.
After a shaky breath, I told him the story I hadn’t yet told anyone except Havisham and Salcedo.
Even then, I gave them only snippets. “One night I came home from a stakeout with a bottle of champagne. My ex had bet me I couldn’t serve papers on this guy, but I did.
He’d—the ex, that is—been distant as of late, so I thought it would be nice to reconnect with a little celebration. ”
All those old feelings welled up. The dopamine hit that had come from puzzling out where my target was, serving the papers, the witty comeback in Spanish, the urge to drink champagne and make love . . .
“So I got home after midnight. Didn’t turn on the lights because I wanted it to be a surprise. Stripped down to my birthday suit and slid into bed to surprise him . . .”
Malone’s eyes dilated ever so slightly. His jaw worked with the effort it took not to interject. His gaze suggested he would’ve loved to have been in that bed waiting for me. At this point, I wished I could go back in time and put him there instead. Maybe trace that tattoo on his bicep—
“And?”
His question jarred me back to reality.
Focus, Stella.
“And when I slid into bed, there was another woman in my place. Literally. At first, I thought Ken was sleeping in the middle of the bed again. I reached for him. Just as the scent of vanilla suggested my mistake, my hand found a naked breast.”
He winced.
“A younger, perkier breast on a younger, more svelte woman who had the audacity to not only be sleeping with my partner but also be doing so on my side of the bed.”
“That’s . . .”
“The sort of thing that only happens in books?” I swallowed more wine than I should’ve, but as raw as the memory still felt, I felt lighter for the confession.
“I was going to go with ‘horrific.’ ‘Unfair.’ ‘Rage inducing.’”
“And mortifying.”
“I don’t see why you should be embarrassed.”
“It’s bad enough to have your longtime boyfriend cheat on you, but the true mortification comes from having ever trusted him in the first place.
Even worse, we worked together. I put so much effort into the business and our home, and I don’t have a share in any of it because I never officially married him.
To top it all off, we financed the car in his name because my credit was so bad, and now he’s being a jackass about signing the title over to me. I feel so . . . stupid.”
“You aren’t stupid. He’s an asshole,” Malone practically sputtered. “I have half a mind to persuade him to be more reasonable. With my fists.”
“Only if you let me at the idiot who said those ridiculous things about your eyes.”
He looked down, and I was sorry I’d brought it up.
The next few seconds stretched like an eon, but his hearty exhale told me he’d come to some kind of decision, one that blessedly brought his eyes up to meet mine.
He held out his free hand, the one not attached to the arm that was still serving as a kitten bed.
“How about if I run across your ex, then I get to punch him. If you run across my ex, you can punch her.”
“Deal.” I took his hand, then inclined my head toward the puzzle piece on the wall. “But I don’t punch. What I do will be far worse.”
His eyes widened. “I’m going to add ‘terrifying’ to my list of adjectives for you. I can’t tell if I’m frightened or aroused or . . . yes.”
I couldn’t help but give him my scariest smile. “I use my powers for good. Mostly.”
“Aroused. Definitely aroused. Are you sure we can’t add some benefits to this pizza situation?”
I could’ve taken the kitten from the cradle of his arm and escorted him to my bedroom. Fun would’ve been had by all, but would I still love me tomorrow?
I sighed deeply. “Honestly? There’s a part of me that would love to take you up on that offer, but . . .”
“But what?”
But you are married to another woman, a woman who has hired me to use my special set of skills to bring karma to your front door.
“One, I made a promise to myself. Two, we’re both on the rebound. Three—by your own admission—you’re leaving soon.”
And are married.
“True,” he said. “But we could work things out while being friends. With benefits.”
I laughed out loud. “You are awfully persistent for someone who wouldn’t let me see his eyes for days.”
He gave me a sheepish grin. “Full disclosure: My eyes hadn’t bothered me in years.
After a particularly rough day of third grade, my grandmother spun me a story about how my eyes were magic.
That gave me enough confidence to get through school.
I must have been having a moment of insecurity after what Selena said.
I’d seen you twice with the shades on, and I liked you so much I didn’t want to ruin things. ”
“And how were we going to get the ‘benefits’ portion of the evening? What exactly was your plan?”
“Shock and awe you with my sexual prowess? By the time you saw my eyes, it would be too late. You’d be hooked.”
That part I could, quite unfortunately, believe. “So, you were going to make love to me with your sunglasses on?”
He laughed. “When you say it like that, it sounds absurd.”
“Because it is! They’re beautiful eyes. Maybe they should’ve been part of your campaign from the outset.”
He studied me. “Nah. I don’t think it would’ve done me any good. You’re a woman who knows what she wants, and I, unfortunately, am not it. The only benefit with the pizza will be kitten cuddles.”
Sweet Christmas, what was it about a man who could so gracefully take no for an answer that made me want to jump his bones?
In order to keep from acting on that impulse, I lifted my glass in a toast. “To kitten cuddles.”
He sighed. “To kitten cuddles. Sadly, I think I’ve got it worse for you now than before.”
“Oh?”
“I’m definitely more intrigued than I was before.”
I put on my best Mona Lisa smile. “Flattery will get you nowhere, Malone.”
“That’s a crying shame, Stark.”