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For god’s sake. Was she going to keep making the same mistake forever? She didn’t love Brent the way she’d once convinced herself she loved Henry. But she had invested more in their night together than she should have. Or that bloody note wouldn’t have got to her the way it had.
‘That’s bullshit,’ Brent said from the opposite side of the cab, interrupting her pity party. ‘Your card wasn’t the real reason I freaked out.’
‘Then what was?’ she asked, curious despite the fact that she wasn’t sure she wanted to know the answer.
He shrugged. ‘You’d made me feel good, and I didn’t want to deal with it, I guess.’
‘What was there to deal with? It was only sex.’
‘Seriously?’ He raised a sceptical eyebrow, calling her on the lie. ‘Even that last time?’
‘That would be your endorphins talking,’ she said, the panicked flutter returning. This conversation was straying into dangerous waters. ‘And those little buggers lie, all the time.’ They’d certainly lied to her about Henry.
‘Hey, I know that,’ he said, the rueful smile on his face surprisingly endearing. ‘I married a woman who ended up hating my guts thanks to those lying bastards.’
The revealing statement sparked her curiosity, unsettling her more. She’d convinced herself she didn’t want to know anything about his past, his ex-wife. So why should this tiny glimpse make her want to probe?
Sam had told her that Brent was a hard-ass with women because of his divorce. But had he really been a hard-ass with her? They’d jumped into bed without knowing the first thing about each other but still he’d treated her with surprising care and consideration—give or take the odd playful smack on the arse! Before that bloody note, he’d made her feel good too, especially in those moments before dawn. And wasn’t that precisely why she’d been so hurt by what happened afterwards?
‘Was it very bad?’ she asked, before she could think better of it. ‘Your divorce?’ The muscle in his jaw tensed, and she instantly felt like a fraud. ‘I’m sorry, that’s none of my business.’ What right did she have to ask him such a personal question when she had absolutely no desire to share and discuss her own past?
‘Divorce is never pretty,’ he said, surprising her with an answer. ‘But the marriage was a mistake from the start. So it could have been worse.’
‘How could it have been worse?’
‘It was a heat-of-the-moment thing. I was young and stupid. And high on those pesky endorphins.’ He smiled, but he looked more rueful than amused. ‘I didn’t love her. I only thought I did. I guess she dazzled me. She looked like a supermodel, her old man was richer than Rockefeller and she had this sense of entitlement that made her seem special. I couldn’t believe she’d agreed to marry me.’ He shrugged. ‘She was slumming it at Cornell because she hadn’t gotten into Harvard. And I was on a scholarship, proud of being the first kid in my family to get past high-school graduation. It didn’t take long for the cracks to show once we’d graduated.’
‘So she was a snob,’ Tally said, not attempting to hide her contempt. The woman sounded like a bitch—although she would love to know why all the biggest bitches got to be disguised as a supermodels instead of, well, dogs.
His lips curved, the smile genuine this time. ‘I guess she hadn’t planned to slum it for the rest of her life. Anyway, by the time we called it quits, it had gotten pretty ugly. But by then we’d figured out we didn’t like each other much. So it was okay.’
‘Pretty ugly, how?’
He hitched his shoulder. ‘You know, the usual. Arguments that lasted forever, never-ending sulks about nothing. Neither one of us wanted to admit we’d made a huge mistake. But then Della got it into her head that I’d tricked her into the marriage. Things got really ugly after that.’
She could hear the regret in his voice. Why was he still shouldering so much of the blame? Surely it took two people to make a marriage work. ‘What happened?’
He stared at her, twin flags of colour highlighting his cheekbones. ‘She took a photo of my cock while I was sleeping and posted it on both our Facebook walls. The caption was something about the monster I married.’
‘Bugger off!’ Tally sucked in a breath, horrified. ‘What a cow.’ How old was this woman? Thirteen? What a nasty thing to do.
‘It was pretty damn humiliating at the time. She made me feel like a freak. But the divorce was child’s play after that.’
Shame engulfed her at the thought of her nasty tweet that morning and the furore it had caused. ‘Oh, my god! Brent, I’m so sorry about tweeting that photo of you.’
If what his wife had done was tacky, what she’d done to him wasn’t far behind. And his ex hadn’t humiliated him in front of five hundred thousand complete strangers.
‘Hey, at least I had my pants on for that one,’ he said, being surprisingly magnanimous in the circumstances. ‘And you already apologised.’
‘Yes, but I didn’t actually mean it.’ Although she did now. No wonder he wasn’t big on trust. Who could blame him? ‘Then,’ she added hastily. ‘I do mean it now. Obviously. Absolutely.’ She crossed her little finger over her heart and kissed the tip, suddenly desperate for him to believe her. To trust her, if only a little bit. ‘Pinkie swear.’
He gripped her finger, choking out a laugh. ‘I guess I’m gonna have to accept your apology, then. Again.’
She smiled back, relieved by the twinkle of humour. ‘Well, at least now you know why I’m called the Blind Date Bitch.’
He linked his fingers through hers, tugged her closer. ‘You’re not a bitch. You tell it how it is. There’s a difference.’
He actually sounded as though he meant it, the admiration in his gaze as it swept over her face unmistakable. The swell of affection blind-sided her as his lips covered hers in a tender, searching kiss that felt very much like the one he’d given her that afternoon in the closet. It had frightened her then; it terrified her now.
