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“Wait, Tom, you were actuallyatthe dinner that night? And heard me give my talk?”
“Unfortunately, I didn’t hear anything past the opening sentences. I’d gotten a toothache that morning, and by the time you were introduced, it was raging. I snuck out a couple of minutes after you started so I could track down my dentist and beg him to call in a painkiller prescription to the local pharmacy.”
They were in the same room, after all, just as Taylor claimed, in a group of only forty or so people and perhaps only feet away at moments.
Her stomach twists. “Tom, why wouldn’t you have ever mentioned to me that you were there that night?”
“I was sure I did.”
“When?”
“At our first meeting. As soon as I saw you up close, I realized you seemed familiar, but it took me a couple of minutes to place you.”
“No, it never came up.”
“Sweetheart, I’m sorry—I really thought I had.” He flashes a mischievous smile. “And if I’d known then what I know now about you, I would’ve stayed and fought through the pain, even if it meant stifling my moans with a napkin.”
“It’s not that I mind your missing my talk,” she says. “What I don’t like is that we were in such close proximity that night. You might not have stayed for the dinner, but you must have been at the cocktail hour.”
“And yet we didn’t spot each other across a crowded room?” He turns the ends of his mouth down, clearly in jest. “I hope you don’t think this means we aren’t soul mates after all.”
“No, Tom, please.” Emma can’t dance around her fears any longer or keep them to herself. “I’m talking about something else entirely. I told you what Peter Dunne said—thatthe cops are clearly checking you out, and I’m sure they’ve been looking at our timeline, trying to figure out exactly when we met. What if they find out we were in the same room in Miami back then?”
Tom leans back in his chair, cradling the back of his head with his hands, a position he takes when he’s pondering a topic he doesn’t yet have a handle on.
“In other words, you think that detective will wonder if we started sleeping together before Derrick was murdered,” he finally says.
“Exactly.”
He shakes his head. “But we both know the answer to that.”
“It won’t stop her from wondering.”
“The chances of her stumbling upon this are next to nil,” he says, smiling calmly. “Even if she does, we can explain we never crossed paths that night. And it’s not like anyone could claim to have seen us interreacting there.”
But someone might be confused. Emma knows from consumer research she’s done that people sometimes recall the details of events incorrectly—in the wrong order or even with the wrong participants involved.
“Honey, please don’t let this get to you.” Tom flashes another grin. “If necessary, my dentist can verify that I called him that night, begging to be put out of my misery.”
Somehow, she manages a chuckle.
But she’s going to have to let Peter Dunne know about this latest speed bump. Not really a speed bump, of course. It feels more like a buckle in the road from a minor earthquake. And she’s pretty surehewon’t find it as amusing as Tom does.
