Page 35 of Playing With Love

It was Lily.

He got his woman back.

He went on to marry her and have a happy life.

“Can I tell you something?” I asked.

“You can tell me anything, darlin’.”

The way Lenox said that, the way he was looking at me, I believed him.

“I’ve loved Tucker for so long I can’t remember a time I didn’t and that included while I was married.”

I waited for Lenox’s repulsion at my confession. He was a married man who loved his wife. I was a woman who’d married a man while in love with a different man.

“Why’d you marry him?”

Was I going to say it? Tell the truth? Be honest with myself after denying the truth for so long?

“I started dating Arnie right after Tucker went undercover. I think I finally accepted that Tucker would never be mine, he’d never love me like I loved him. When Arnie asked me to marry him the first thing I felt was sadness. The death of a dream. The end of me and Tucker, even if there was no me and Tucker. I regretted saying yes. But I still married him.”

Lenox didn’t say anything. I fought squirming in my chair like a child waiting to get scolded.

“Liza, honey, that doesn’t explain why you married Arnie,” he noted.

“I married Arnie because I thought he was safe,” I blurted. “I knew he didn’t love me. I knew he never would. Arnie didn’t want a wife to love. He was all about his career. It was all for show, I was nothing more than a photo op to parade in front of the public. The prosecutor who’d married a woman in law enforcement. Our marriage was nothing more than a show, so when it was his time to run for DA he’d look like a respectable, family man. I was supposed to be the good wife and look the other way when he took other women to his bed. I knew this going in. Well, not the last part. I didn’t think he’d be foolish enough to cheat; that was stupid on his part, and Arnie wasn’t a man prone to stupid mistakes. I guess he thought because we weren’t a love match I wouldn’t care, so he didn’t do a very good job hiding it. And he was right, I didn’t care in the sense it hurt. I cared because it was a stark reminder I could no longer ignore I’d married a man I didn’t love to prove to my father I was good enough to marry a man like Arnie Boyer. A man who, except for the cheating as far as I know, was just like my father. Worse—I married an asshole because I was in love with Tucker and he didn’t love me.”

I closed my eyes. When that didn’t stop the shame I covered my face with my hands. I’d never admitted that to anyone, not that I had anyone I was close enough to share my secrets with—well, someone other than Tucker. He knew my secrets, but not that one. Hell, I hadn’t even admitted it to myself until I was sorting through the mess I’d made of my life. Then there was no way to block the truth—not only didn’t I love the man I’d married, I married him because I was mad the man I did love would never love me back.

“Darlin’, he loves you.” Lenox’s voice came at me sad and rumbly.

I shook my head behind my hands.

“Trust me, Liza, that man loves you. Then and now.”

I thought back to the night I invited Tucker back to my room, all those years ago. I remember watching him struggle to let me down easy, not wanting to hurt me, but still needing to make himself clear—he wasn’t interested.

“Trust me, he doesn’t,” I groaned and uncovered my face, remembering I was a grown woman. “He’s pissed because he knows I lied the other night. More pissed because I told him it was for the best our friendship ended. And if that’s not enough, he’s pissed because I basically insinuated it was his fault Arnie cheated on me.”

Lenox nodded. He glanced around the room and when his gaze came back to me he mumbled dejectedly, “I only have boys.”

Since I wasn’t following I sat quietly.

“The way a father counsels his sons, the men who work for him is…like it or not, different than how he handles a woman.”

Ah. I got it.

Kind of.

“I can’t help you there,” I told him on a shrug. “I lived in the same house as my dad but to say he wasn’t active in my life would be a nice way to say he was completely uninterested in me. That disinterest extended to everything; school, my grades, boys, dating. In an effort to get his attention I started doing things I thought boys would do; karate, dirt bike riding, and asking him to take me shooting with him.”

I noticed Lenox’s expression had turned hard. Unfortunately, I didn’t fully grasp what that expression conveyed and went on. “I think he showed up to one practice, never attended a tournament, and missed my black belt testing. Same with shooting—he took me skeet shooting with him and his friends once. And he never got me the dirt bike even though when he was younger he rode them, and from what my mother told me, was good at it.”

The unfortunate part of not grasping the change in Lenox’s expression meant I was unprepared for it to turn lethal. Then just as deadly, he whispered, “You’re shitting me.”

Since I wasn’t I shook my head. But I was so taken aback by his obvious anger on my behalf I decided not to share the rest. The level of my father’s neglect went well beyond him not being interested in having a daughter. When he did decide to impart fatherly wisdom, he wasn’t nice about sharing how he believed a woman should behave. He had all the time in the world to point out my shortcomings.

“I’m not old enough to be your father,” Lenox stated.