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Too much like London.
20
“I’m going out,” Jason said as he paused at the door to his wife’s bedroom.
“Now?” Sitting in her robe, brushing her hair, Nicole caught Jason’s reflection in the mirror and she wondered why she’d ever been foolish enough to think that he loved her. She glanced at her watch. “Why?”
“Late meeting.”
“It’s nearly midnight,” she said, hating the wheedling sound of protest in her voice.
“I know.”
Closing her eyes, she tried to pull together whatever it was that kept her going. She set her brush down and said calmly, “You know, Jason, I should just divorce you and get it over with. Then you wouldn’t have to lie anymore.”
“I’m not—”
She held up a hand before opening her eyes. “Please. Give me some credit, will you?”
When she looked up, Jason was smiling that waxen, tight little grin that she’d grown to hate over the years—the smile he seemed to reserve just for her. “The skillet suddenly too hot for you, darling?” he said, and her insides revolted at the endearment.
How far they’d drifted apart over the years. Too far to ever find each other again. “What’s too hot isn’t the skillet, or the fire, it’s that damned little mistress of yours,” she said evenly though her insides churned. She’d thought she’d quit loving him years ago, but still the lies hurt.
At least he had the decency to blanch.
“She called here. Kim, isn’t it? The little blonde with legs that won’t quit and no breasts?” Nicole applied a little night cream to moisturize her face and hopefully forestall a few of the determined little lines that remained on her skin as the years crept by. “You really didn’t believe I didn’t know, did you?”
He seemed to puff up a bit—like he used to do when he practiced law and stood in front of a particularly recalcitrant witness on the stand. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Come off it, Jason.” She wiped off the excess cream. “Contrary to what you would like to think, I’m not stupid. And I know what’s going on with this London thing. You’re running scared, aren’t you?” She tossed her pale hair over her shoulders and removed her earrings, diamonds that sparkled in the soft lights arranged over her vanity. She’d picked out the earrings herself, though Jason had bought them for their fifth…or was it their sixth?…anniversary. “This new little London, she just could be your sister.”
“I don’t think so.”
Sometimes, when the pain wasn’t too great, when she could distance herself from him, it amused her to watch him lie. He did it so well, with such grace and such…conviction, as if he really believed himself.
“Zachary wouldn’t be hanging around if it weren’t serious,” she said. “Nelson looks like he’s hiding something, Trisha’s worse than ever—I shudder to think what she’s on these days—and your mother, usually so remote, she seems to have taken a sudden interest in the family. Oh, you’re worried,” she said, dropping her earrings into a velvet case and snapping it shut. “All very worried.”
“And you’re not?” He walked up behind her and placed his hands lightly around her throat. Their gazes locked in the mirror and she tilted her chin up a fraction as she felt him squeeze, ever so slightly. It would be so easy for him to cut off her wind and strangle her, but Nicole wasn’t afraid. She slid a meaningful glance to the framed eight-by-ten picture poised on the corner of the vanity.
Their daughter, Shelly, laughing, her hair windswept in the breeze rising off the ocean that day, gazed back at her. Shelly was the one thing that both she and Jason cared about. The only thing.
Jason’s gaze dropped to the picture and his fingers relaxed.
He would never do anything that might cause him to lose his daughter, for, as overly doting as Witt had been with London, so was Jason with Shelly. In his eyes, his daughter could do no wrong. The little imp had him wrapped around her slim little finger.
“You know, I’d hate to see anything happen to us,” Nicole said softly, though there was a steel thread running through the words. “It would be devastating to Shelly.”
Jason’s smug smile faltered. “Kids are survivors.”
“Are they?” she asked pointedly. “What about you?”
“I’m doing okay.”
“Are you? I’m not so sure. Then there are your brothers and sister…”
His gaze met hers again in the mirror. “Zach always seems to land on his feet. The others…who can say?” He turned away from her and started for the door.
“I won’t be publicly humiliated, Jason. If your little girlfriend wants to get down and dirty, I won’t be a part of it and neither will Shelly. Either stop seeing that little bitch or control her—I don’t really care which.” That was bending the truth a little; she did care—it bothered her to think that another woman, a younger woman, could turn his head, but she was shrewd enough to understand that Jason needed more than just a wife. He needed to be adored and fawned upon and he always needed a hot little number warming his bed a
