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Pining for some fancy man in Chicago who wasn’t true enough to keep his vows, and all the while Aidan Gallagher had been pining for her.
If that wasn’t enough to burn your ass, what was?
He poured the tea strong and black and added a healthy drop of whiskey to his own.
She was standing when he came back, the fingers of her hands twisted together. Her damp hair curled madly, and her eyes were drenched. “I’ll go downstairs and apologize to your customers.”
“For what?”
“For making a scene.”
He set the cups down and drew his brows together to study her with as much bafflement as irritation. “What do I care about that? If we don’t have a scene in Gallagher’s once a week we wonder why. Will you sit down, damn it, and stop looking at me as if I was about to take a strap to you?”
He sat after she did, then picked up his own tea. Jude sipped, burned her tongue, then hastily set her cup down again.
“Why didn’t you tell me you’d been married?”
“I didn’t think of it.”
“Didn’t think of it?” His cup clattered as he snapped it down on the table. “Did it mean so little to you?”
“It meant a great deal to me,” she returned with a quiet dignity that had him narrowing his eyes. “It meant considerably less to the man I married. I’ve been trying to learn to live with that.”
When Aidan said nothing, she picked up her tea again to give herself something to do with her hands. “We’d known each other several years. He’s a professor at the university where I taught. On the surface, we had a great deal in common. My parents liked him very much. He asked me to marry him. I said yes.”
“Were you in love with him?”
“I thought I was, yes, so that amounts to the same thing.”
No, Aidan thought, it didn’t amount to the same thing at all. But he let it pass. “And what happened?”
“We—he, I should say, planned it all out. William likes to plan carefully, considering details and possible pitfalls and their solutions. We bought a house, as it’s more conducive to entertaining and he had ambitions to rise in his department. We had a very small, exclusive, and dignified wedding with all the right people involved. Meaning caterers, florists, photographers, guests.”
She breathed deep and, since her tongue was already scalded, sipped the tea again. “Seven months later, he came to me and told me he was dissatisfied. That’s the word he used. ‘Jude, I’m dissatisfied with our marriage.’ I think I said, ‘Oh, I’m sorry.’”
She closed her eyes, let the humiliation settle along with the whiskey in her stomach. “That grates, knowing my first instinct was to apologize. He accepted it graciously, as if he’d been expecting it. No,” she corrected, looking at Aidan again. “Because he’d been expecting it.”
It was hurt he felt from her now, quivering waves of it. “That should tell you that you apologize too much.”
“Maybe. In any case, he explained that as he respected me and wanted to be perfectly honest, he felt he should tell me that he’d fallen in love with someone else.”
Someone younger, Jude thought now. And prettier, brighter.
“He didn’t want to involve her in a sordid and adulterous affair, so he requested that I file for divorce immediately. We would sell the house, split everything fifty-fifty. As he was the instigator, he would be willing to give me first choice in any particular material possessions I might want.”
Aidan kept his eyes on her face. She was composed again, eyes quiet, hands still. Too composed, to his thinking. He decided he preferred it when she was passionate and real. “And what did you do about it?”
“Nothing. I did nothing. He got his divorce, he remarried, and we all got on with our lives.”
“He hurt you.”
“That’s what William would call an unfortunate but necessary by-product of the situation.”
“Then William is a donkey’s ass.”
She smiled a little. “Maybe. But what he did makes more sense than struggling through a marriage that makes you unhappy.”
“Were you unhappy in it?”
“No, but I don’t suppose I was really happy either.” Her head ached now, and she was tired. She wished she could just curl into a ball and sleep. “I don’t think I’m given to great highs of emotions.”
He too was drained. This was the same woman who’d thrown herself lustfully into his arms, then wept bitterly in them only moments before. “No, you’re a right calm one, aren’t you, Jude Frances?”
“Yes.” She whispered. “Sensible Jude.”
“So, being such, what set you off today?”
“It’s stupid.”
“Why should it be stupid if it meant something to you?”
“Because it shouldn’t have. It shouldn’t have meant anything.” Her head snapped up again, and the glitter that came into her eyes didn’t displease him in the least. “We’re divorced, aren’t we? We’ve been divorced for two years. Why should I care that he’s going to the West Indies?”
“Well, why do you?”
“Because I wanted to go there!” she exploded. “I wanted to go somewhere exotic and wonderful and foreign on our honeymoon. I got brochures. Paris, Florence, Bim-ini. All sorts of places. We could have gone to any of them, and I would have been thrilled. But all he could talk about was—was—”
She circled her hand, as words momentarily
failed her. “The language difficulties, the cultural shocks, the different germs, for God’s sake.”
Furious all over again, she leaped out of the chair. “So we went to Washington and spent hours—days—centuries—touring the Smithsonian and going to lectures.”
He’d been fairly shocked before, but this one did it. “You went to lectures on your honeymoon?”
“Cultural bonding,” she spat out. “That’s what he called it.” She threw up her hands and began to stalk around the room. “Most couples have impossibly high expectations for their honeymoon, according to William.”
“And why shouldn’t they?” Aidan murmured.
“Exactly!” She whirled back, her face flushed with righteous fury. “Better to meet the minds on common ground? Better to go to an environment that is recognizable? The hell with that. We should’ve been having crazy sex on some hot beach.”
A part of Aidan was simply delighted that that hadn’t occurred. “Sounds to me like you’re well rid of him, darling.”
“That’s not the point.” She wanted to tear her hair out, nearly did. Jude’s Irish was up now, bubbling, boiling in a way that would have made her grandmother proud. “The point is, he left me, and his leaving crushed me. Maybe not my heart, but my pride and my ego, and what difference does it make? They’re all part of me.”
“It makes no difference at all,” Aidan said quietly. “You’re right. No difference.”
The fact that he agreed, without a second’s hesitation, only added fuel to her temper. “And now, the bastard, he’s going where I wanted to go. And they’re having a baby, and he’s thrilled. When I talked about having children, he brought up our careers and lifestyles, the population, college costs, for Christ’s sake. And he made a chart.”
“A what?”
“A chart. A goddamn computer-generated chart, projecting our finances and health, our career status and time management over the next five to seven years. After that, he told me, if we met our goals, we could consider—just consider—conceiving a single child. But for the next several years, he had to concentrate on his career, his planned advancements, and his stupid portfolio.”
Fury was a living thing now, clawing viciously at her chest. “He decided when and if we would have a child. He decided should that eventuality take place there would be only one. If he could have managed it, he’d have decided on the sex of the projected baby.
“I wanted a family, and he gave me pie charts.”
Her breath hitched, and her eyes filled again. But when Aidan rose to go to her, Jude shook her head frantically. “I thought he didn’t want foreign travel and babies. I thought, well, he’s just set in his ways, and he’s so practical and frugal and ambitious. But that wasn’t it. It wasn’t it at all. He didn’t want to go to the West Indies with me. He didn’t want to make a family with me. What’s wrong with me?”
“There’s nothing wrong with you. Nothing at all.”
“Of course there is.” She dug out his handkerchief as her voice rose and fell and broke. “If there wasn’t, I’d never have let him get away with it. I’m dull. He was bored with me almost as soon as we were married. People get bored with me. My students, my associates. My own parents are bored with me.”
“That’s a foolish thing to say.” He went to her now, taking her arms to give her a little shake. “There’s nothing dull about you.”
“You just don’t know me well enough yet. I’m dull, all right.” She sniffled, then nodded for emphasis. “I never do anything exciting, never say anything brilliant. Everything about me is average. I even bore myself.”
“Who put these ideas in your head?” He would have shaken her again, but she looked so pitiful. “Did it ever occur to you that this William with his bloody pie charts and cultural whatever it was is the boring one? That if your students weren’t enthusiastic it was because teaching wasn’t what you were meant to do?”
She shrugged. “I’m the common factor.”
“Jude Frances, who’s come to Ireland on her own, to live in a place she’s never been, with people she’s never met and to do work she’s never done?”
“That’s different.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m just running away.”
He felt both impatience and sympathy for her. “Boring you’re not, but hardheaded you are. You could give a mule lessons. What’s wrong with running away if where you were didn’t suit you? Doesn’t it follow you’re running to something else? Something that does suit you?”
“I don’t know.” And she was too tired and achy to think it through.
