Red Tide (Siren Publishing Classic) (16 page)

“That bad, huh?”

“No, actually, he tried to be very personable. He even took Donna and me out to lunch at the Columbia.”

“Ahh, very nice. Where are you now?”

“Just got back to the Bronco. I’m leaving now. I’m going to drive back down to the house this afternoon to get the stuff I’ve got there. He said he might be going off on a business trip for a few days.”

“Want some help?”

She thought about it, thought about it very hard, and decided against it. “No, I don’t think so. I really appreciate it, but this is something I need to do myself and get it over with.”

“Okay. So I’ll be seeing you in about an hour?”

“There about. Talk to you in a little while.”

“Drive careful, hon.”

“Oh, can you go let Pete out for me? He’s probably got his legs crossed right now.”

She heard him chuckle. “He’s already here. I picked him up about a half hour ago.”

“Thanks. Don’t let him mooch off you too much.”

“Oops, too late.” They laughed together and said good-bye.

She pulled out into the traffic of downtown Tampa and struggled to keep her mind on her driving and not on the relationship she’d like to develop with Ed. Outside of the dark garage, the bright light was nearly blinding. She pulled her visor down to shield her eyes. That’s when she noticed the garage-door opener clipped to the top of it. It was for the Carrollwood house. She made a mental note to remember to return it to John that evening when she went for her things.

The hot afternoon sun cast shimmering mirages on the blacktop highway ahead of Mitch as she retraced her route north to Aripeka. Outside, the passing scenery went largely unnoticed by her as she turned everything over in her mind.

Once away from John’s presence, the picture on his office wall reentered her thoughts. She knew she had seen the other man somewhere before, and she mentally kicked herself for not remembering to ask him about it. She hated it when stuff bugged her like that.

The distracted smile John wore all throughout the tiring lunch disappeared the moment he closed the door to his office behind him, concealing him from Donna’s view. He walked over to the wall Mitch had been standing at when he first came in. He let his knees slump down a little to bring his six feet two inches to her five feet eight.

What would she have seen?

The picture hung right at eye level. He carefully recalled her reaction when he entered the office earlier, and realized that once he’d been there, her attention had totally and completely shifted and refocused on the purpose of her visit. Immediately, not as if she’d been thinking about something else.

Just in case, he took the picture down and replaced it with a different one. After a little subtle rearranging, the wall looked normal. He removed the picture from the frame and ran it through his shredder, putting the frame in his briefcase to take home.

He sat behind his desk and entered his password into his computer, then logged into the mainframe to check on a shipment due to arrive in Hernando Beach in three days. Right on schedule. He signed off and leaned back in his chair and thought about his options. He decided to leave it alone and called Jenna to let her know what time he’d be over that night.

Ten minutes later, he told Donna where he’d be and left the office for home.

* * * *

Jenna waited thirty minutes before calling John’s office. She wanted to talk to Donna, not him. The secretary sounded pleasant, and after a few minutes, Jenna finally told her what was on her mind.

“Look, I know you’ve been with John for a few years. I know this is probably wrong of me to ask, but can you tell me something about him?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean”—she chose her words carefully—“I feel like he’s hiding something from me. He told me he’s still married, but they’re separated. Is he really separated?”

“Yes, Mitch left him several years ago. She even went back to using her maiden name. In fact, she brought divorce papers in here today for him to sign. John’s not exactly what I would call perfect.”

Jenna’s heart sank. “What do you mean?”

“Well, I know in the past he’s had several girlfriends. Although I’m not sure, I think Mitch walked in on him when he was with one.”

“I know. He told me that. Is he seeing anyone else now?”

“Oh, I don’t know that. I haven’t had anyone else call here but you for a few weeks now. Usually, if he was, I’d get other calls. I know that’s no guarantee.”

Donna paused before she continued. “Look, I’m going to tell you stuff I probably shouldn’t, but John’s had a past of being less than faithful. That doesn’t mean that he’s a bad person or using you, but he just doesn’t seem to be able to settle down. My advice to you would be to not risk your heart. Have fun, but don’t let him hurt you. The only reason I tell you this is because I know he hurt Mitch a lot, and I really liked her, and I don’t want to see him do that to anyone else.”

The conversation struck Jenna as unreal. This kind of “snooping” was totally against everything Jenna believed in.
Why not just confront John outright about this?

For some reason, that thought terrified her on a deeper, visceral level. “Thank you, Donna. I appreciate it.”

“You’re welcome. I know I’m speaking out of turn by telling you all this, but this is between you and me, understand? I won’t tell him you called, either. Unless you have a message for him, that is.”

“No, no message. I really do appreciate it.”

“No problem.”

Jenna hung up and wondered what she should do. She wanted a committed, loving relationship. The longer she knew John Tyne, the less likely this result looked. The problem was, she didn’t want to just end the relationship and risk losing him if he
was
being sincere with her.

The rain started around Port Richey. By the time she reached Hudson, Mitch had to slow the Bronco down to thirty-five miles an hour and had the windshield wipers on high. In Aripeka, leaves, small branches, and dead palm fronds littered the wet roadway. The tide had come in higher than normal thanks to the extra push from the westerly winds, and most of the ditches were half full of standing water backed up from the canals.

When she reached the marina, there weren’t many cars in the lot. She parked close to the shop and made a mad dash for the cover of the building.

Pete jumped up to greet her when she burst in, his barking bringing Ed out of the back room where he was undoubtedly repairing regulators. She met his steady, inquisitive blue gaze with a halfhearted smile.

“Well?” he asked.

She sighed. “It’s almost over. Five years, and it’s almost over.”

“Five years, my ass. It ended the day you found out what the son of a bitch did behind your back.”

She dropped her purse onto her desk and collapsed in her chair behind the counter. Ed was right—almost. The marriage was doomed to begin with, considering what she now knew about John. In the back of her mind a thought struggled to surface. She toyed with it, wondering how valid it really was.

Maybe she knew from the beginning it wouldn’t last.

Maybe she had actually
hoped
it wouldn’t last. Why?

Because of Ed
.

She pushed that thought out of her mind, not wanting to face contemplating its validity.

Another rain band moved through. The heavy downpour against the store’s sheet-metal roof drowned out further conversation for a few minutes. The potholes in the shell parking lot were overflowing, but to the west, beyond the rear of the storm, she saw patches of blue sky already emerging, betraying the false fury of the downpour. It would be over in less than an hour, plenty of time for her to stop by a U-Haul store to buy some boxes before she went to Tampa.

She worked at the computer for a while, entering supplier invoices and catching up on paperwork. She hated doing it, but forcing herself to finish it was the only way she could win her lifelong battle against chronic disorganization. It seemed that no matter how hard she tried she was always either forgetting or looking for things such as her keys, her glasses, her cell phone, or her purse.

Ed called to her from the back room. She went, Pete at her heels. “What’s up?”

He held out the first stage of a regulator to her. “I can’t get it apart. Not enough hands.” She held it steady on the bench for him as he took an adjustable wrench and finally got it apart. His fingers brushed against hers in the process. She fought the warm blush that expanded to her face. As if reading her thoughts, and perhaps with thoughts of his own, he looked at her, meeting her gaze.

“Whatcha’ thinking?” he asked.

I don’t know what I’m thinking,
is what she wanted to say. Instead, “About last night.”

A nervous smile spread across his face. “I hope I wasn’t out of line.”

“No, no,” she quickly assured him. “Not at all. It just surprised me.”

Ed returned the wrench to its hook on the pegboard over the bench. “In a good or bad way?”

She smiled. “Good.”

He was about to say something else when Dan walked in. “If you don’t need me for anything else today, I’m going to head on out.”

Mitch nodded. “That’s fine. What time is it?”

He glanced at his watch. “Almost four.”

“Oh, heck. I didn’t realize what time it was. I’ve got to go.” It took her a minute to dig her keys out of her purse. She was happy to see that the rain had finally stopped. Ed waited by the front door of the shop for her.

“What time do you think you’ll be back?” he asked.

She shook her head. “I don’t know. Hopefully by nine.”

“When you get done, give me a call. I’ll take you out to dinner. My treat.”

She wanted to kiss him, not just for the offer, but for being him. She didn’t have to, however, as he leaned forward and planted a gentle peck on her lips. “Drive careful, hon.”

Mitch hugged him, enjoying the feel of his body against hers. “I will,” she whispered, kissing him on the side of the neck before walking out the door. When Pete tried to follow her, Ed called the dog back to him.

The traffic was light. Her stop to buy boxes and tape only took ten minutes. With most of the traffic heading in the opposite direction, she made good time into Tampa. It wasn’t long before she made the turnoff into Carrollwood and a strange sense of displacement settled over her. When the house came into view, she groaned at the sight of John’s Porsche sitting in the drive. Even though she knew he’d be there, she’d still hoped he wouldn’t.

She backed into the drive. The front door opened as she unloaded her boxes and packing supplies from the rear of the Bronco.

“Need any help?” he offered.

She was already halfway to the door with her first full armload when he spoke. “No, that’s okay. I’ve got it.”

An acute disorientation overcame her when she walked into the doorway. Essentially, the house looked unchanged, but what was that adage about the less things change? John was the essential neat-freak, someone Felix Unger would be proud to room with. She immediately noticed the carpet—not eggshell, not cream, but
white
—was still white. He had, however, replaced the original Berber she had chosen with a thick, soft pile, one that she loathed due to her neatness-challenged condition.

Mitch remembered her compromise to John when they were first decorating the house, how she agreed to white, but stood firm about no thick pile.

From what she saw, there wasn’t a speck of dust on anything. Even the fake ferns on the shelf over the kitchen doorway looked antiseptically clean. There were a few new pictures hanging on the walls, a few unfamiliar knickknacks, but the rest of the decor looked relatively unchanged.

Fresh vacuum marks bore silent testimony to his daily cleaning habit, regardless of whether or not the carpet needed the attention. Footprints in the plush pile led from his den to the front door. She knew his Hoover upright would get a workout as soon as she left.

“I’ll be in the den if you need me.” She watched him saunter back to his room, grateful he had taken his leave of her.

She set up the living room as her headquarters. She assembled several boxes and carried them to the back bedroom. It wouldn’t take long for her to finish. She’d moved most of her things to the Aripeka house after her father died, leaving only articles she didn’t regularly need.

Memories, good and bad, flooded her mind while the full boxes piled up in the foyer. It was hard to remember the good times with John, but there had been a few, in the beginning. It irked her that a small part of her missed those good times with him, the rare times when he would drop the facade and a charming, kind man would appear.

The
very
rare times.

She finished the bedrooms and pulled down the attic access stairs. The air still felt explosively hot compared to the cool house, but it only took her a few minutes to move the boxes she’d stored up there. Then the kitchen became the next focus of her energies. She quickly packed pots and pans, cookbooks, and assorted small kitchen appliances. It took her five trips through the dining room to the foyer to move all the boxes. It was on the last return trip to the kitchen that her trouble started.