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“When did you get back?”
“Late last night,” she replied, every word clipped as if she didn’t have the time to waste on more syllables.
“Oh, really? Where did you go? On your vacation,” he added.
“Out of town.” She smoothed a hand down the lapel of her jacket and eyed him coolly. Another moment and she’d be all the way to cold. “Did you have something you wanted to discuss?”
“This is hard to say,” he said, fingering his tie. She might be cucumber cool but he couldn’t stay still. “Actually it’s probably one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to tell someone.”
Instead of looking concerned, Diana lifted a folder and began riffling through it as if she were bored. “Whenever you’re ready.”
Fuck it. Fast was best. “I saw you at Kink last night.”
She didn’t look up from her papers. Her hand never trembled. But a scuffling noise came from beneath the desk, as if she’d dragged her heel over the rug. “You’re mistaken. I was out of town, as I said.”
“You said you got back last night.”
“Yes, very late.” She tilted her head and pursed her lips, but not before he saw the twitch in her jaw. ”Whatever Kink is, I can assure you I wasn’t there.”
“I saw the tattoo,?
? he said softly, caught between feeling for her and wondering when her vaunted control would break. “In the small of your back. It’s a blue butterfly. Last year at the company picnic, you bent over to pick up a soda out of the cooler and I saw it. You tried to cover it with makeup, I think, but sweat probably—” He broke off, shook his head. “Look, I know it was you.”
“What is Kink?” she repeated, sparing him a glance as icy as the sudden blast of air-conditioning from the vent behind him.
“You know exactly what it is. Christ, you know better than I do.” Compared to her, he’d been a damn newbie to that scene, but he’d do the dance. She could only deny the truth for so long. “It’s a sex club. Where people go to drink and dance and have a good time, with and without their clothes.”
“That’s where you go when you’re not at work?”
Diana’s derisive tone didn’t offend him, not when she’d clamped her fingers around her folder in a white-knuckled grip. Any fool could see he had her on the ropes. “Twice. I went with my friend and my girlfriend.”
Her face seemed to collapse in on itself, every ounce of her composure draining away until her blue eyes were hollow pools. “Marcia.”
“Yes. That’s why I’m here. Because she’s going to find out and I don’t have any idea what she’s going to do. She won’t tell me why she hates you.”
“I slept with her brother.” Diana’s flat voice matched her wooden expression.
“Okay.” Spencer, presumably. Adam was a bit out of her age range, though that didn’t mean much. “And?”
“I was married.”
“So I’m guessing things ended badly.”
She gave him a tight-lipped smile. “You could say that. I became pregnant, went back to my husband. Then I lost the child.” She lifted one of her almost translucently pale hands and examined her manicure. “Spencer’s job was in jeopardy until I saved it. I made sure he was taken care of. I wasn’t just some bimbo who didn’t have any feelings for him. At the beginning, fine. But things changed. I left because of him.”
Whoa. She must be really on the edge if she was admitting all of this to one of her lackeys. Though she certainly didn’t hesitate to get real personal with some of the other employees. “Did you come back because of him too?”
Her eyes flashed, heat and life surging back into them. The contrast was startling. “What did she tell you?”
“Nothing,” he said patiently. “She said it wasn’t her secret to tell.”
“She has no idea what went down. How I felt. Does she think it was easy for me to walk in here, to see him with a younger model of me? How the hell did she think that made me feel? My husband had already moved on with someone else, and Spencer, he didn’t want me either. He wanted Kelly because she’s so young and open and innocent and I’m the older, brittle ex. Marcia has no goddamn clue what I dealt with.” Diana jerked to her feet, grimacing again. “But she will, with you. You’re going to move on soon enough and then she’ll know what it’s like to be discarded and replaced.”
“I’m not moving on. I love her and I hope we’re going to have a life together.”
He didn’t just hope. Dammit, he was going to make it happen.
But Diana didn’t seem to hear him. “Who else was with you last night?”
