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To her annoyance, he drew an armchair over to the side of the bed and sat down.
“Don’t feel like you have to stay.”
He didn’t bother to acknowledge the hint that he leave. He asked how her hand was.
“Hardly stings anymore.”
“Good.”
Still, he didn’t go. He spread his knees and clasped his hands between them. Head down, addressing the floor, he said, “I’m sick about Elaine. You have every reason to doubt my sincerity, but I mean it, Talia. I had my eyes on Jasper. On you. But I should have seen this coming. Warned her. Something.”
“She wouldn’t have believed you, especially if you had warned her off Jasper.”
“Probably not. But I should have made an attempt. A word of caution might not have saved her, but I wouldn’t feel so rotten about failing her.” He sat up straight and looked at her directly. “Were they having an affair?”
“You were listening. You heard me ask, you heard Jasper deny it.”
“I heard you ask and heard him deny it. But were you asking for my benefit, or yours? Were you playing to the bug, or did you really nurse suspicions about the nature of their relationship?”
“It didn’t know anything about that damn bug! And I don’t know whether or not to believe Jasper’s denial. What I do know is that I would rather have Elaine alive and cheating with my husband than lying dead in the morgue.” Her voice cracked. “Can we postpone talking about this please? At least until morning?”
“All right,” he said with surprising empathy. “For whatever it’s worth, I liked her. A lot, in fact.”
“She was impossible not to like. I’ll miss her…her…”
“Verve and vivacity.”
She gave him a weak smile. “Good words. Maybe you should have become a writer.”
“In my next life.”
After a long stretch of silence that grew awkward for her, he looked around with curiosity, taking in the bedroom, which she had left intentionally uncluttered for the convenience of overnight guests.
But no guests had ever used the room. Jasper wasn’t keen on inviting friends to stay over for a weekend or holiday. He’d never given her a satisfactory reason why, always brushing off her protest with something like, “I prefer having you all to myself.” She’d never pressed the issue, and instead had visited out-of-town friends when she went on business trips.
As she had visited Marian when she made the trip to Key West. On the heels of that thought, she said, “I don’t remember meeting that man in the party picture. If it was Jasper, I did
n’t know it.”
He hiked an eyebrow.
“I’m telling you the truth. I didn’t pick him out that night as someone I’d like to get to know.”
“Maybe. But I’m certain he picked you out that night.”
“What do you mean?”
“We’ll circle back to that. Tomorrow. There’s a lot of ground to cover tomorrow.”
Miffed by his reticence, she said, “All the more reason for us to say our good nights now.”
“Why are you sleeping in here? Why not in the master?”
“I didn’t want you spying on me. You can’t see into this room from your living room window.”
“Fair comeback.”
His wry smile gave her a hint of the dimple, and that irritated her. “You don’t know fair from foul, Drex. You accuse me of lying, when that’s all you’ve been doing.”
