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‘Why don’t you want them to know?’
Oh, for Pete’s sake.
‘Because I screwed up this friendship once before by screwing Marnie’s brother—and I don’t want to do it again.’
‘But you did screw him again, so whether they know or not is sort of academic, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, but...’ Gina stammered to a halt, totally lost for words in the face of Cassie’s objective reasoning. ‘I can’t believe I’ve done this again. It’s like I’ve got a genetic compulsion to screw up this friendship.’
‘Not necessarily,’ Cassie said, taking the statement literally as always. ‘To determine that you’d have to examine the cause and effect.’
‘The.... Well, it wasn’t planned, if that’s what you’re asking.’ Because who knew what the heck Cassie was on about now? ‘I went to his hotel to apologise to him.’
‘What for?’ Cassie cut in, looking shocked for the first time.
‘For the failure of his marriage.’
‘How was that your fault?’
‘Apparently it wasn’t,’ Gina added, suddenly keen to end this topic of conversation. Because the apology excuse for seeing Carter again was sounding less and less valid, even to her. ‘Do you want to hear the rest or not?’
Cassie’s eyebrows rose fractionally at the tone. ‘Yes.’
‘Fine, well, then, after he’d told me his divorce was none of my concern, we had a few drinks, one thing led to another and before I knew it we were tearing each other’s clothes off in his very nice corner suite overlooking the Hudson.’ She sighed. ‘The views really are spectacular from that hotel, by the way.’
‘What view are we talking about?’ Cassie said, so dryly Gina choked out a laugh, the burden of guilt lifting for the first time since her meltdown at the salon.
‘It’s not funny,’ she replied. ‘It’s disastrous. I know that. But the good news is, it won’t happen again. I told him in no uncertain terms this morning that we’d made a mistake.’ Well, the terms hadn’t been that uncertain, but still.
‘How was it?’ Cassie asked.
‘How was what?’
‘The mistake?’
‘You mean the sex?’
Cassie nodded.
‘Honestly?’
Another nod.
‘Fabulous.’ Why lie about it? ‘As I believe I mentioned ten years ago, the man was a gifted amateur. He’s more than lived up to that early promise.’ Which she was beginning to realise only made the mistake of sleeping with him all the more enormous—because her ability to conjure up an image of him naked and ready with complete clarity was not helping.
‘Maybe that explains it, then,’ Cassie mused.
‘Explains what?’
‘Why you slept with him, despite your misgivings. Studies have shown the release of endorphins triggered by orgasm—which for the purposes of this discussion we’ll call fabulous sex—can impair your cognitive skills. They certainly impaired mine when I had sex with Tuck the first time. And the second. And the...’
‘I get the picture,’ Gina muttered. Trust Cassie to come up with a scientific solution—that made perfect sense to her and no sense in the real world. ‘Cass, what you and Tuck have is not the same as what Carter and I have. Frankly, having sex with Carter could turn me into Dumbo, but all it would ultimately prove is that Marnie was right about me all along.’
Cassie gave a pensive hum. ‘Are you sure you’re giving Marnie enough credit? Why don’t you ask her whether she cares about you and Carter getting back together.’
Gina choked on her coffee. ‘Are you on crack or something?’ she whispered furiously. ‘Carter and I are not back together, because we never were together. This isn’t a relationship. It’s one night of madness.’
‘Two now, actually.’
