Crimson Footprints lll: The Finale (15 page)

“I’m not talking about what we did this week!” She shook, furious under his glare. “You and I both know what happened between us last summer.”

“Nothing happened between us last summer.”

“Tony, come on. Tito’s party?.”

“You got drunk,” he said. “We made out. After that, I put you in a cab. I wouldn’t take advantage of a girl like that. I couldn’t.”

Lila snorted out a laugh. “Be serious.”

“I am serious. Unconscious girls aren’t my thing. So, I don’t know who got you pregnant. But I do know who it wasn’t.”

Tony stalked off, in search of a cab ride home.

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Deena’s umbrella drooped with the weight of insistent rain, as it battered and clawed at her only defense. Howling winds cut, first one way and then the other, so that ice water sliced in sideways, buckets of permafrost hurled at her back as rivers rushed through the street.

She burst into the café and found a double pair of wide eyes staring back at her. The woman behind the counter stood tall and pale, red hair like a flickering flame. She offered neither smile nor greeting. Deena turned to greet the other person present.

“I didn’t think you’d come,” Allison Tanaka said. “You sounded like you wouldn’t on the phone.”

Deena tossed her freshly bent umbrella to the floor and dropped into the seat across from her.

“I’m here,” she said. “But why?”

John’s soon-to-be ex-wife sat back. Unlike Deena, she seemed unfazed by the rain. Dry, neat, clothes clean. With her flaxen locks pulled high into an absentminded ponytail, the lines of her face looked severe, windswept by time and worry.

Allison drummed fingers on the narrow café table, the faint line of her ring finger betraying her secret.

“You said it wouldn’t affect our friendship if I left him. You said you’d be okay with it,” Allison said.

“And it hasn’t.”

“Yet, you talk to me like this,” Allison said. She waved over the ghost-lady behind the counter.

“Two cappuccinos,” she said before turning back to Deena.

In need of something to fiddle with, Deena plucked a napkin from the silver display and turned it round and round in her hand.

“I’m not angry about you leaving him. Like I told you before, you’re the one who has to live with him, sleep with him. I have no opinion on that.” She looked up. “But for the love of God, Allison, did you have to do it right before the holidays? And after all these years, couldn’t you have told him to his face?”

“Like he told me about his secretary to my face?”

Allison 1, Deena 0.

Deena tossed her napkin.

“Like I said, it’s no business of mine. If you can’t stand your husband, you can’t stand your husband.”

“I never said I couldn’t stand my husband. Only, that I couldn’t stand the idea of him with another woman.”

Both of Allison’s hands sat on the table, pale, open, veined and shaking. Like her face, they’d aged since the last time Deena had seen her friend.

“I’m not judging you,” Deena said. “I wouldn’t be able to stand the idea of Tak with another woman.”

She thought of Aubree Daniels and quickly shared what happened, up to and including her discovery of condoms and throwing Tak out.

But Allison only rolled her eyes.

“I warned you about Mike years ago.”

“Yes, I know, but—“

“And what did I tell you?”

“Allison, what you said is completely irrelevant to—“

“You think a man being in love with you is irrelevant to what he tells you about your husband? Really, Deena, you’re supposed to be brilliant. Or something like it.”

Deena sighed. “I know he misled me. But—“

“But nothing. Your marriage to Tak is fine as long as the two of you keep the world out of it. He is so in love with you. Still. Do you know how rare that is?”

Rare?

“Allison, the question has never been one of whether John loves you—”

“You think infidelity isn’t a question of love?” She accepted her cappuccino with a snort. “I should have asked you that when you thought Tak and Aubree were bed buddies.”

Lightening scissored through the parking lot. On its heels was the boom of thunder. A car alarm protested in the distance.

“I can’t speak to your husband’s motivations,” Deena said. “He betrayed you. You have every right to be heartbroken and furious.”

“But?” Allison said. She looked, not at Deena, but to both of their untouched drinks.

“But John doesn’t talk. He barely eats, or grooms, or sleeps from the looks of him. He has bags under his eyes and hopelessness in them. He’s ruined. Whether it’s what he deserves or not is a matter for you to decide. But, for the record, he is heartbroken.”

Allison’s gooseberry eyes narrowed to slits.

“I didn’t call you here to be his advocate.”

“No,” Deena said. “You came to Aruba to spy, to feel nearer to your husband. You called me here for the same reason.”

Allison blew a gust of air from her mouth, sending wisps of ash blonde hair adrift.

“Deena. I hate his guts.”

“I don’t blame you.”

“But I love him. And I feel so weak for that.”

Weak. Allison Tanaka, the powerhouse divorce attorney that made her living by terrorizing wealthy philanderers. In some sick quirk of fate, her husband had turned into one of them.

“Maybe it’s what I deserve,” she said as if reading Deena’s mind. “This misery. After salivating at the mention of divorce all these years, maybe I deserve the most heartbreaking, gruesome variation possible. I’ve done nothing but delight in the irreparable damage of matrimony.”

Deena exhaled.

“You said you love him still.”

“Yeah?”

“So take him back.”

Allison sat back, face drained of color.

“Deena, no.”

“No?”

“I can’t. I won’t. My parents. My family? I couldn’t bare the humiliation.”

“But you can bear to see him marry another woman? To see him move on?”

Allison gasped. It was as if she’d never considered it.

“My sister would gloat,” Allison said. “You’ve met Claire. You’ve met her husband Broderick. They’re perfect.”

Perfect, Deena thought. No doubt Asami and Ken perfect.

“Are these really your concerns? Embarrassment? Because that’s temporary. Divorce is forever.”

Allison scowled.

“You’re like everyone else, chock full of answers when none of it concerns you.” She rummaged in a purse seated in an adjacent chair and slapped a few dollars on the table.

“Allison—”

“My husband slept with another woman, Deena. I can’t take him back. I can’t even look at him, okay? I just pray that you never know what this feels like.”

Allison rose, grabbed a purse and umbrella, and strode out. Deena stayed to finish her coffee.

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Deena made it back in time for lunch. She dropped down in a chair across from her husband, just as the soup was served. His gaze was on a point just past her. His mother.

“Tak?” Deena said, an edge of worry in her voice. “Is everything alright?”

He looked at her. “Where’d you go?”

She opened her mouth. Let it hang. Then her cell phone throbbed.

“Are you going to get that?” he said.

She swallowed. “No,” she said and brushed bangs from her face. “I’ll check it later.”

Of course she would.

The phone continued to throb. Tak clenched his teeth and shoved back a mocking voice of doubt. So, now he could add disappearances to a list that included secret phone calls and secrets period.

No matter. Tanakas didn’t get divorced, he reminded himself. So, whoever stayed on his wife’s phone would be shit out of luck. He’d deal with it, whatever it was. That’s what he told himself, at least.

His wife.

His.

Tak stood so fast he toppled his chair. He went over the oversized stereo in the corner and turned it on. A medley of pop emerged from the speakers. Tak returned to extend a hand to his wife.

“Dance with me,” he said and whisked her to open floor.

One song ran into the next and Tak slipped in, only to be rewarded with a livelier, demanding beat made for dancing. A wry smirk crossed his lips before he tucked into a straight line. Already, the music melted the edges of his sharp irritation.

She came to him, palm to palm, and their fingers laced. They stood close enough to kiss and smiled. Close, Tak thought, but they’d get closer still.

A child cart wheeled by.

He wrapped one of Deena’s arms behind his waist, before tucking his in behind hers, so that their bodies cinched together, tight. His wife grinned. They moved together, snug, in a sharp, seamless flow that poured from his body to hers. It was borne of lessons together and practice, of making love to the same person for years.

Tak whipped her, dipped her, and drew her up slow, warming to the thrill of closeness and smiling when they pressed nose to nose. They kissed before he released her again, parting just to whip her in quick, surprising her. She laughed, reminding him of old days, freer days, when they’d never last a song at home before he had to have her—against a wall, somewhere, anywhere.

His feet moved without thought, gaze steady on pretty pink lips. Soft lips, full lips that knew every part of him knew.

Every part.

He brought a thumb to them and traced, other arm still snug at her waist, still conscious of the music, somehow.

He’d been in love with her hair first. Rivers of cascading chocolate, honey, and chestnut, weaving a waterfall as lustrous as spun glass. Admiring her from afar might have been enough, had she never looked at him, spoken to him, saved his life on that first night. He’d been so hopelessly, irrevocably gone from the start that, by the time he made love to her, he’d known what she’d be to him—even then.

“I wonder,” Deena said. “If we could slip away unnoticed.”

“Oh, they’d notice,” Tak said, thumb still at her lip. “Not sure I’d care though.”

Deena’s gaze skated toward the exit.

“Me either,” she whispered.

His mouth made a silent ‘o.’

Hand in hand they side saddled from the ballroom to the entrance hall, where stairs would take them up. At the moment she reached for the rail, Tak snatched her back, claiming her mouth for his, pinning her to the balusters.

Maybe he wouldn’t wait for upstairs. Maybe he wouldn’t chance running into someone with some problem, some insistent thing that needed to be said.

He pulled her into the coat room and shut the door.

She met his kisses, hungry kisses, desperate kisses that probably meant more than he could make out. Still, she pressed into him with each one, arms around his neck, mouth ravenous. His hands found her backside and squeezed, before shoving up her dress, looping fingers through her thong and tearing.

Deena shuddered, strained against him, core to the crotch of his jeans. Fingers—his fingers—fumbled at his waist, shed his pants, and felt his breath almost come before he thrust into her with the hardest of strokes.

She gave way like butter.

He ran a hand down the side of her body, pausing so both could adjust. But she was so sensitive, so sensitive everywhere, that already he could sense her tremors. So close to release. Had the thought of him really brought her so close? The idea was enough to unhinge.

Tak kissed peek-a-boo nipples through the sheerness of her shirt, before coming down harder to suck. Deena yelped, back arched, fingers winding in his hair.

Tak groaned.

“Hold on,” he whispered. “I’m gonna…”

Gonna what? Try to hold on himself? Or try not to find a tempo where the whole house would know he was doing his wife in the closet?

Tak shook off the thought and thrust. She rewarded him with an outcry of pleasure. Another cry gave him a moan of the same. Tak pulsed, no longer moving, and even that minute movement earned a whimper from his wife.

“Baby,” he whispered and sunk fingers in her flesh.

There’d been a warning on his lips, but it slipped away the second she moved against him, grinding and burying to the hilt.

Too much.

Tak yanked her up by the legs so her back hit the wall and sunk. She grabbed him with both hands and pulled his mouth down on hers, both kissing as if it were much needed CPR. He remembered how to breathe again, though air dragged in and out of his lungs, forcing him to steady with a hand above her head, heart hammering.

“I love you,” she whispered. He grinned as if it were the best thing he’d ever heard.

In fact, he knew it was.

They were up against the wall, moving and pulling at each other and way too desperate. Coats clamored rained down and a fedora from another generation tumbled from the top shelf to the floor. They worked up a frenzy. God, he realized, he could have run her through the wall; they couldn’t go hard enough, fast enough, deep enough to tame him.

He took her to the floor, mounted her, knees bent, head cowering from the brush of jackets and sweaters overhead. Her legs went up again, not wrapping his waist, but further, until her feet scrapped the bottoms of fabric and she yanked him down for what should have been a kiss.

Instead, she moaned his name into his mouth. He plunged.

He went in like a riot and she buried her mouth in his neck, stifling her cries to muffles. Fingers in his hair, running, then clutching, as his strokes grew rough and frenzied. He was close, desperate, hurtling towards the finish line.