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“Oh, Jesus.” Jewel’s heart wrenched. Guilt slammed into her. Vin had known? All this time? He’d known she’d gone to see Rogen—but he had no clue why. And that must have been what sent him over the edge.
Vin’s declaration when they were alone at Bristol’s flashed in her mind.
You didn’t lose me … I was just never enough for you.
Her stomach lurched. Jewel instantly felt sick.
“Fuck,” she whispered.
“Jewel, I’m so sorry.”
She believed him. Because this meant Rogen had inadvertently hurt Vin, too. And that wasn’t in Rogen’s nature.
“It’s not your fault,” she assured him, her head still spinning. “I should have told Vin up front what my plans were, or had him go with me. I just didn’t want us coming at you as a couple without giving you some advance warning. And it never really occurred to me when he didn’t respond to my calls that that was the reason he didn’t want to speak with me. If Vin thought you and I were getting back together or were seeing each other behind his back, he would have confronted us. That’s the way he is. Instead, he just … vanished. So I didn’t think it was because of us.”
“I figured it had something to do with his parents.”
“That’s exactly what I thought, at first. He was graduating high school, entering another phase of his life—and they weren’t there to see how great he’d turned out, to celebrate his perfect GPA and the fact that he’d gotten into all the Ivy League schools he’d applied to, even though he’d decided to stay in state.”
Jewel fought a wave of emotion. Sure, Vin could have been feeling uncharacteristically vulnerable at that pivotal point of his life. But the bottom line was, he’d found out about her trip to see Rogen. It all made sense now. How Vin had distanced himself from her, and from Rogen for a time. How Vin had taunted her at the gala. Why he’d been so angry and hurt at Bristol’s. Why he’d advised Rogen against giving her the land she wanted.
“Oh, goddamn,” she said on a heavy breath. “Rogen … we called him to come see us tonight, to help us with a joint venture between the two of us. How much more in-the-face is that? And … there’s no way in hell he’s going to agree to represent us.”
“This is a professional issue, Jewel. Not a personal one.”
“How can you say that?” she demanded. “Everything about the three of us is personal. Rogen, one of the reasons Vin was so hostile toward me on Sunday was because … he sort of … he was…” She tripped over the words. “He was there. At your house. The night of the party. He saw us—he watched us.”
Rogen stopped cranking dough through the pasta maker, flattening it into narrow sheets. He stared at her.
She gave a slow nod. “I opened my eyes and he was standing just inside the doors.”
Rogen’s jaw clenched. He went back to working the dough. Jewel poured more Sangiovese and kept self-medicating in hopes of easing her tension while Rogen laid out sheet after sheet on parchment paper. He appeared deep in thought and it ate at her to not know what he was thinking.
Finally, he told her, “Had I been with any other woman that night, Vin would have joined us. Vice versa.”
Her eyes popped.
Didn’t see that blatant honesty coming.
He said, “You’re not the first woman we’ve ‘shared,’ Jewel. But this is not the same thing. Not the same scenario. At all.”
She recovered and eyed him curiously. “The redhead?”
“Yeah. Holly McCormick. I’d taken her out for dinner one night, when we first met. A week or so later, Vin brought her into the city for an opera. We’d both slept with her separately, then…”
The word together was one that had become lodged in Jewel’s brain.
Rogen continued his work, not saying anything further. As tho
ugh he wanted her to process what all a ménage might entail. Was it something he wanted to engage in with her? Had he and Vin discussed this after the night of the gala?
Before she could digest all of that, Jewel had to battle a serious bout of jealousy because Rogen and Vin had been with other women. She’d accepted that long ago—in theory. The reality of them making love to someone else was actually a jagged pill to swallow. It made everything inside her pull tight until it was difficult to breathe.
Rogen gave her more to chew on. “Holly liked Vin’s aggressiveness. And she liked my—”
“Natural instinct. I’m well aware of the contrasts.” They were going to need more wine to get through this discussion. She left the kitchen to retrieve another bottle from the wet bar. She’d turned one of the spare bedrooms into a full-blown cellar and tasting room for when she entertained clients or Bayli and Scarlet came into the city for a girls’ night. But she kept a dozen or so of her favorites close at hand. Some women collected shoes; Jewel collected award-winning reds.
She returned to the island where Rogen was now running the dough through the attachment he’d snapped on, cutting long strands of linguine. Jewel poured for them both, then crossed to the far wall and pulled out the mounted wooden rods that looked like rolling pins framed by decorative black wrought-iron arms. There were three staggered tiers and she dusted them with flour, then started to hang the pasta to dry, evenly spacing out the thin strips.
