Power Play (Crimson Romance) (18 page)

Her voice shrank in her throat. “How can you ask me that?”

“Because you seemed to be enjoying yourself,” he ground out. “I just wanted to know.”

She fixed her eyes on a point behind his shoulder as her fingers dug into his jacket. “How could I enjoy myself this way? I’m not a monster.”

“It’s perfectly natural to want to be fought over.”

“Then I must be unnatural.”

They swayed in silence for a minute, moving in their restrained little circle. Spurred by the lack of food, several other couples joined the dance floor, among them Chris and a beautiful redhead Lila was fairly certain was attached to one of the other players. At one point Chris appeared to maneuver his partner into the other couple’s path but a swift glide brought them out of the path of harm.

Lila was dizzy from more than the giddy movement.

“It’s getting crowded,” her husband said, leading them from the floor.

The salads were at the table when they arrived and in the midst of eating and chatting with their fellow diners, there was no chance to speak to each other. Beneath the cover of noise and laughter, it was easy to conceal the fact that their eyes never met and across the room, Chris’ eyes barely left her. Lila felt every spoonful she took being monitored.

When she moved from the table it was ostensibly to powder her nose, but in reality to draw a free breath away from her husband’s side.

She bumped into a solid figure coming out of the washroom.

“Lila.”

Ignoring the urgent look he gave her, she tried to push past. “Not now, Chris.”

“Cahal sent me.”

She stopped and turned. “What?”

Though she had taken a long time in the washroom, rinsing her face and then having to reapply all of her party makeup, she couldn’t imagine that her husband would send his cousin to retrieve her.

“I’m fine,” she said. “I just needed some air.”

Chris’ ironic eye went to the washroom door. “In there?”

Lila ignored the question. “What do you want, Chris? Why did my husband send you to get me?”

Instead of answering, he surveyed the hallway and pulled her into a secluded corner by the telephone desk. Though his touch made her skin crawl, she went with him. The constant traffic to both washrooms nearby made their location public.

“My cousin wanted me to come clean about something.”

He looked extremely uncomfortable, his face red and mottled above a no longer crisp white tie, and she became curious.

“What
have
you been talking about?”

The uncomfortable look was supplanted by a more familiar sulk. “It’s none of his business, of course, but he wanted to know about that night we spent together and … ”

“Chris!” Her hand crept up to the large diamond pendant at her neck, a present from her husband for one of their anniversaries. “What did you tell him?”

The sordid details of that night were a memory she never wanted back. She was glad that she only remembered Cahal’s glorious body and Cahal’s lovemaking.

Her companion smirked. “Don’t worry, I spared him the details. Come to think of it, I’ve spared you the details, haven’t I? Don’t you think it’s time you learned the truth?”

Lila tossed her hair to cover her bare shoulder; she noticed that he kept looking at that curve of naked flesh.

“I told you, Chris, I don’t want to know.” She lowered her voice. “We had sex, that’s all it was. Meaningless sex.”

He fixed his blue eyes on a point just beyond her. “Twice,” he said. “Once on the floor of the living room, in front of the fire, and then again, in the bed. The guest bed — you refused to go into the master bedroom.”

She flinched, her shoulders meeting the cold wall.

“I don’t want to hear this.”

A sudden bark of laughter made her stiffen.

“What’s so funny?”

“You,” Chris snorted between guffaws. “Your innocence. Your belief in me. Everything.”

The parade of women he’d painted slipping in and out of her husband’s bed appeared before her. Had he lied about her husband? Cahal had always denied cheating but the way Chris explained it, all hockey players cheated. Most just didn’t get caught. Cahal was just unlucky to have delivered the proof into his teammate’s hands.

“Of course I’ve believed you,” she murmured. “Why wouldn’t I believe you?”

His shoulders moved beneath his white jacket. “Because I have every reason to lie, as my cousin has brought home to me several times in the past year. He said it again less than thirty minutes ago but you refused to listen. You’ve always taken Cahal’s side against me.”

Perhaps this was true. Chris was talented in his own right but commercial success hadn’t diminished his habit of sulking and feeling slighted at the least remark.

“I’d take your side now,” Lila told him, “but you have to tell me the truth. What is going on?”

Taking her hand, he led her still further into the hotel, toward a private waiting area rich with gilt and crystal with an air of disuse. He led her to one of the armchairs but she refused to surrender into the wealth of pillows.

Lila stood, arms crossed, waiting for an explanation.

Chris’ gaze rested on a thin beautiful rug. “I lied about that night, the night we supposedly spent together. We didn’t have sex. You passed out from the alcohol and I took you upstairs to your bed. I spent most of the night staring at you while I came up with, uh, the plan.”

“The plan?” She unconsciously dug her fingers into her arms, making the question harsh. “What plan?”

He scratched behind one ear, ruffling his short hair into artful disarray. He still couldn’t meet her eyes.

“The plan to tell you that we slept together, to get you away from
him
and make you open your eyes to reality.”

“Reality,” she repeated. A dim spark flared within her breast. “The stories you told me about Cahal’s cheating, were they true?”

Lila stared up earnestly into Chris’ blue eyes and his were the first to shift.

“Yeah, those were true. Your husband’s got a reputation. Ask anyone in the league.”

Lila would rather lead a parade around a rink in her bra and panties.

But she didn’t have to ask, did she? She had the photos — and Cahal’s incomplete explanation.

“Who?”

Her companion’s pose against a matching armchair was a little too nonchalant. “Who what?”

She was struggling with the urge to hit him. “Who has Cahal cheated on me with? Do you know their names?”

“Names!” He hooted. “As if I would know the names of disposable puck bunnies.”

The woman from the photograph hadn’t looked like a puck bunny. On the contrary, she might have been a businesswoman — or a high price prostitute.

No, she wouldn’t even allow herself those thoughts. Cahal, of all men, would never have to pay for the company of a woman.

“He went with those kinds of women?” Lila asked.

Chris nodded. “I got it straight from Brad Drummond’s mouth.”

Drummond was the Chicago teammate who shared a hotel room with her husband while they were on the road. The roommate was always considered the best authority on another player and often appealed to for inside stories by journalists hunting a scoop.

“Brad Drummond is hundreds of miles away,” Lila said.

A reckless light entered his eyes. “Janet Parker isn’t a hundred miles away or even one. She’s back in the ballroom seated right next to her husband. She told someone who told someone else who told me that she had an affair with Cahal a few years ago. Nothing major.”

Lila sat attempting to swallow this final piece of information. Her companion noted that while her features remained blank, her hands had clenched into little balls in her lap. It looked as if she might be drawing blood.

After a few minutes, she got her voice back under control.

“So which reality are you talking about?”

For the first time that evening she saw a glimpse of the Chris Wallace she knew, vulnerable and oversensitive. The man she’d tried to protect. What a joke.

“I’m talking about you and me, Lila.
Us
.”

The heated emphasis was lost on her.

“What about us?”

Searching her face, he apparently decided that he didn’t care for what he saw.

“Forget it.”

After a moment, she asked, “So is that it?”

“Yeah.” The cocky attitude was back in full force. “I thought you might like to know what you ruined your marriage for.”

“I know what I left my marriage for,” she said, “and it wasn’t that. The night we spent together — or didn’t spend together — was only the last chapter in a struggling novel. The moment I found out about my husband’s cheating was the beginning of the end. I should have known from the very start that I couldn’t live with that kind of betrayal. I still can’t.”

Chris’ fair head hung. “I guess you don’t think too much better of what I did.”

“That was a betrayal of a different sort,” Lila acceded. “But one for which I don’t think I can ever forgive you.”

His face stark beneath the mellow lighting, her companion turned and walked briskly away. He didn’t look back.

• • •

Lila went home with an armful of memorabilia from the silent auction and a rhythm drumming through her brain.
It’s over. It’s over. It’s over.

It was over. Her marriage and whatever threads of it she and Cahal had been holding on for the past few weeks without any reason. The reason for keeping up the charade had vanished back to Chicago. The ball was going to be their last night together. No, she thought, looking over at the pure hard profile of her husband in the driver’s seat, this was their last night. It was still going on.

“That dinner didn’t fill the holes in my bridgework,” Cahal said into the dim interior, even that mild statement causing her body to jerk against the back of the seat. “Those charity affairs are always the same. What do you say to a quick run through the drive-in?”

“Sure,” she said as the familiar sign came into view. Then, “I don’t care.”

He ordered for both of them, far more than she could eat, and as he retrieved the bag from the pickup window she saw the impersonal leer of the teenaged server. The kid probably saw all kinds of fancy dress at this hour of the night when the nightclubs discharged their bleary patrons onto the city streets.

Holding the greasy paper bag in one hand and Lila’s slender waist in the other, Cahal somehow managed to get them both safely into the condo without mishap. The cheap fatty food and Lila’s brilliant white dress remained at a safe distance from each other.

“Go change,” her husband ordered, propelling her into the bedroom. “Then we’ll eat and talk.”

The last word was spoken on a note she didn’t recognize, one of near anxiety … or was it excitement? Why would he be excited? Lila’s depressed mind couldn’t work its way around that essential question.

By the time she made it back to the living room, wrapped in her most worn robe, Cahal had devoured the greater part of his meal.

“Sorry.”

She sat down with him on the floor with a brisk arrangement of folds and flounces. “For what?”

“For starting without you. I was starved. I feel like I haven’t eaten a proper meal in a year.”

Her eyes shifted beneath the intensity of his stare. “That’s okay, I’m not really that hungry.”

Polishing off the last of his double cheeseburger, her husband said, “Let’s talk then.”

Nibbling at a French fry — golden crisp and salty — gave her something to do.

“Can’t it wait?”

But they were both settled down and she knew that it, whatever it was, wouldn’t wait. Not tonight.

He wiped his mouth on a paper napkin and balled it up and threw it into the bag. Wariness replaced the former … restlessness … anticipation?

“No.” He took her hand in a convulsive movement. “We’ve been living on borrowed time for the past week. With Victoria gone, the reason for our charade disappears. That particular complication no longer matters.”

What about Janet Parker, she wanted to ask. What about
that
complication? She kept her lips shut on a mouthful of half-chewed potato.

“Knowing what you know now — ,” a quick silver glance, “ — we can start again.”

She swallowed. “Just like that?”

“Why not?”

It wasn’t really a question, it was a statement of intention.

She withdrew her imprisoned hand.

“I can think of a few reasons,” she said.

He shifted, uncertain for once of what to do with his dexterous limbs. “I think those reasons are rightfully mine and I choose not to exercise them. With counseling and — ”

“We’ve been over this before.” Her voice rose. “The mistakes we’ve made aren’t the kind that can be counseled away.”

“It’s worth a try.”

He was being too reasonable and it made her want to lash out.

Suddenly she remembered what Chris had said earlier. Cahal had sent him out to find her at the ball. Cahal knew. He obviously thought
she
needed counseling after what Chris did to her and he was willing to make the personal sacrifice of restarting their marriage — for real this time — if it could help her heal.

Lila searched the chiseled face and found a tenderness that could easily be either sympathy or pity.

“It won’t work.” She faltered. “I-I can’t do it again. It was bad enough … pretending.”

“Lila.” In a swift fluid movement, he was standing over her, his face filling her field of vision. “Now that you know the truth, doesn’t it make any difference?”

Slowly, she shook her head. Now that he knew, he pitied her. It made sense. She was tempted into self-pity.

“There’s more to it than that.”

Cahal straightened. “It’s still just sex?”

He’d probably said the same thing to hundreds of women in dozens of hotel rooms. Just sex. She wanted to agree, to turn the lie into truth. But it wasn’t just sex. With Cahal, it could never be.

Her eyes fell to the frayed hem of her robe. “It was more than just sex,” she said, adding quickly, “but that’s still not enough. A marriage needs more.”

“If you want to talk about love … ” he began.

He said the word with such cool distaste that she knew it was over. The discussion was finished. They could go over the same tired ground for the rest of the night but nothing he said could erase the memory of that cold voice and hard eyes.