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Every cell in my body bristling, I followed him into the kitchen, where he was pulling open the fridge. “So you wouldn’t want to know if Lake’s relatives were reaching out to me?” I challenged, keeping my voice level, not wanting this to turn into an unnecessary fight.
He went still, his jaw tightening.
“We promised each other honesty.”
Sighing, he retrieved a beer from the fridge. “We did,” he conceded, closing the door. “I apologize for not mentioning it. It didn’t occur to me that you’d want to know, but I shouldn’t have made that assumption.” Such a carefully worded statement.
And utter bullshit.
He’d known that I would want to be informed of such a matter. He’d chosen to instead hide it. “Do you keep a lot of things from me, Dax?”
A line briefly appeared between his brows. “If you’re asking if I hold back things that I feel you should be made aware of, no. This was a one-time occurrence.”
I folded my arms. “Answer me this question, then: Why would Mimi turn up here with a duffel expecting to be allowed to stay the night?”
“She’s a free-spirited sofa surfer,” he replied, grabbing a bottle opener from a drawer. “She does it to lots of people, skipping from house to house until she moves on to yet another city. She rarely sticks around for more than two weeks at a time.”
I squinted, studying his expression. “Have you slept with her?”
Even as he removed the bottle cap with a hiss of sound, his gaze flicked to mine. “No.”
I did not like just how much relief that brought me; didn’t like that a black jealousy had been hovering close, ready to slice me if his answer was anything else. “But she made a pass at you, didn’t she?”
His jaw clenching, he looked away.
“How many times did she do it?”
“A few.” He dumped the cap in the trash can. “She was blitzed.”
“I don’t think she only came onto you because she was drunk. I don’t think you believe that either.” He was too perceptive to have missed what I’d sensed.
He set the bottle opener on the counter with a short sigh. “What does it matter? How she feels and what she wants makes no difference to me.”
“Why did you dodge her calls, then? Wouldn’t it have been easier for you to break the news over the phone? Or, knowing she’d be jealous as hell, were you trying to put-off hurting her for as long as you could?”
“I didn’t tell her because it simply isn’t her business,” he stated, the ring of truth in his voice. “I’m not required to tell her anything, regardless of what she might wish to believe.”
He resented that she thought differently, I realized. He hadn’t been trying to protect her feelings by delaying the inevitable. He just refused to cater to them.
“How could she not have already heard that you got hitched?” I asked, unfolding my arms. “Wouldn’t her parents have told her?”
“Her parents moved away years ago, so they likely don’t know about it. She’s not in contact with them anyway. They distanced themselves from her and anything else that kept Gracie’s loss feeling too fresh, me included.” Dax closed the drawer and then guzzled down a mouthful of beer. “Are you in contact with Lake’s relatives?”
“I was at first. But the contact got less and less over time. It might have been different if they lived locally, but they’re in Colorado.” Recognizing that he was attempting to shift the topic onto another, I backtracked. “There are enough gossips in Redwater who could have passed on the information to Mimi. Why would they not have?”
“Mimi has burned a whole lot of bridges. There aren’t many people in Redwater who’d do her any favors—not even the few relatives here she has. They’d prefer for her to find out the hard way.”
“Does that include you? Is that why you avoided taking or returning her calls?” If he resented how she felt, it wouldn’t be surprising that he’d acted in such a way.
He shook his head. “I missed her initial call. She left me a voicemail. I didn’t like what I heard; saw no sense in returning the call.”
“What did you hear?”
He knocked back more beer. “She let me know she’d be coming to Redwater soon and said she hoped we could catch up.”
“And that’s bad because …?”
“It’s not bad. What made me disinclined to respond is that she was either having sex at the same time or faking it. All the appropriate noises could be heard,” he added, slowly stalking out of the room.
