4. Walter
Walter
ONE WEEK BEFORE THE PRESCOTT-SCHAFER WEDDING
The strangeness of his current circumstances—in the back of a luxury town car, next to a woman he barely knew, in a foreign country—kept fading in and out like a radio signal. All the snap decisions that had led to this moment felt remote and unreal, as if he’d been sleepwalking at the time.
It started at a wedding, and Hildy was involved: Those were the essential facts. Then again, that described most of the mistakes Walter had made in the last decade.
Maybe it would have been different if he’d met Maude under other circumstances.
Or if Hildy hadn’t been there. Or let’s be real: if Walter had never gotten tangled up with Hildy in the first place.
But you couldn’t rewind time, so he needed to focus on the present—starting with the woman who was actually here beside him.
Maude wasn’t the first wedding guest who had propositioned Walter.
He might be new to transatlantic travel, but there was very little about the marriage industrial complex that surprised him, and behind-the-scenes assignations were as central to the experience as white satin.
The steps were as familiar as the electric slide: a glance at his ring finger, a question about whether he was staying on-site, a casual mention of a room number.
In his case, the tacit invitations had an undertone of you’re here to do a job; why not provide this additional service?
But Maude’s approach was different. She was much more subtle, for one thing. When he accepted her invitation to meet for coffee, Walter’s only thought had been maintaining friendly relations with a source. He certainly wasn’t banking on a trip to France.
Some offers were too good to refuse.
“Mineral water?”
It wasn’t until Maude spoke that Walter realized how long they’d been sitting in silence, apart from the muffled sounds of traffic.
“I’m fine, thanks.”
He considered the woman sitting beside him.
Maude was intelligent, ambitious, dark haired—on paper, totally his type.
So what if the conversation wasn’t flowing?
Walter was fried, and she was distracted.
There were worse things than an uninterrupted stretch of quiet.
At least he and Maude weren’t at each other’s throats.
A phantom memory of the silken warmth of Hildy’s skin taunted him. Walter could almost feel the throb of her pulse against his lips.
If he was sharing this back seat with Hildy, the air would be buzzing with tension.
That was probably what happened when your first infatuation was an epic clusterfuck: a warped sense of what a relationship should be.
Once you confused danger with attraction, you were doomed to keep wanting things that were bad for you, instead of seeing the potential in someone calm and mature like Maude.
“What?” Maude asked.
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You were staring.”
Walter shook his head. “Sorry. Zoning out.”
“We’re still about an hour away, if you want to take a nap.
I’ll wake you up when we get there.” Maude had been here for weeks, supervising preparations.
She was fully adjusted to the local time zone.
Or maybe she was just more accustomed to the jetsetter lifestyle than Walter, who’d gotten his first passport two years ago.
“Thanks.” He was grateful for an excuse to close his eyes, though he had no plans to sleep. Walter had passed through exhaustion and come out the other side. Thoughts darted in and out of his consciousness, slippery as fishes, until he managed to latch onto one.
Where was Hildy right now?