Page 62 of Born to Sin

“No,” she said, “because I don’t want to cause an accident. So that’s what she does? Well, you’re right. I’m never going to be performing sex acts on the driver of a moving vehicle, so if that’s the standard, I fail. And excuse me, but when was the last timeyouran your hands overmewhile I was eating my oatmeal?”

“That’s not the point.”

“That’s exactly the point. So let’s hear it, Craig. Who is this? And how long has it been going on?” His eyes dropped to his plate, he took a swallow of wine, and she said, “Oh. It’s been going on a long time,” and felt a sickening lurch in her stomach like that crab was trying to crawl right back up. She looked around, caught a curious glance or two, and said, “And you brought me here so I wouldn’t make a scene and you could get out without a fuss. It wasn’t a treat. It was a weasel.Anotherweasel.”

He was starting to look mad, in a noble-doctor, fighting-for-my-patients way. “I brought you here because we’ve had some good times together and I wanted to acknowledge that, and yes, I did want to give you a treat. You love crab!”

“Not with red wine!” She wasn’t bothering to lower her voice. Let them hear. “And newsflash—getting dumped is never going to be a treat. Even when the dumper is you, and I’m going to know tomorrow that I’m better off. Who is she? What’s the story? I’m going to hear anyway. Tell me now.”

“She’s nobody,” he said.

“Oh,” she said. “Then, of course, I see the appeal.”

“See? That’s exactly what I’m talking about. That snark. What man goes for that? What man wants to be challenged every day?”

“I don’t know. Arealman? A strong man?”

His flush was deeper now. “Right. I tried to do this gently, but you’re not making it possible. She works at Powder Sports, and, yes, she’s beautiful. But she’s also got a degree in Communications, so, no, she’s not some bimbo. She has ambitions.”

“Uh-huh.” Quinn could feel her mouth going even drier, but she couldn’t pay attention to that. “Ambitions for her endless future, because she’s how old?”

“Almost twenty-five.” Quinn snorted hard, and he said, “And there you go. Feminine again. Most women would cry and run out, not cross-examine the man or snort like a horse.”

“Luckily,” she said, “you have your eager, unformed twenty-four-year-old to train up to your standards. So you’re, what? Moving her up from side piece to …” Something else occurred to her. “And why now?”

He said, “To wife, actually.” More stiffly than ever.

“To wife.” She said it slowly. “I hate to tell you this, but most twenty-four-year-olds—is she blonde? I’ll bet she has long blonde hair and blue eyes and thin thighs, and that she’snota better skier than you, because you couldn’t do an unconventional thing to save yourlife—well, most women like that aren’t going to be happy with your ‘no kids’ deal. Not when they’ve got degrees in Communications and are working in a ski shop.”

He went poker-straight.

“Oh,” she realized. “She’s pregnant.” She waited for her stomach to flip over some more. Weirdly, it didn’t happen. Mostly, she just had more of the hornet-brain. They were buzzing like crazy now. Her hornets weremad.

“Yes,” he said. “I didn’t want to tell you tonight, because I thought you had enough to deal with. Better to break it gradually, but, yes, she is. She’s due in three months, and she can’t stand to have a baby outside of marriage. She has traditional values. It would hurt her badly, and it would hurt her parents. It’s the right thing to do.”

She took her napkin off her lap and folded it in half, then in quarters. Finally, she set it on the table and folded it again, matching up the corners exactly. She laid her knife and fork across her plate, picked up her purse from the ground, pushed back her chair, and stood up.

Craig stood with her. “I’m sorry,” he said, and she could feel his relief at getting it over with, at only having these last, necessary,conventionalthings to say. “I should have told you sooner. I didn’t want to hurt you.”

“No,” she said. “You didn’t want to be uncomfortable. And, no, I’m not going to dump my wine over your head or invite everybody to listen while I tell them what you’ve been doing with your ‘traditional values’ girlfriend, you cheating, lying…” She took a breath. “I’m not going to tell everybody how weak you are, and how selfish, how you haven’t even been strong enough to tell me the truth, how you’ve let me waste my time and waste my life. That’s not for you. It’s for me. I’m not going to demean myself.”

“Or you can’t have an actual red-blooded moment even if you try,” he said, because she’d clearly knocked him off-script. “See? This is why. This is exactly why.”

The hornets rose. Then they swarmed, and she wasn’t in control anymore. She normally knew what she was going to say, what she was going to do, and yet the words just … came out. “All right. I just changed my mind.” She turned, clapped her hands, and said in her best courtroom voice, “Excuse me. Everybody? Your attention, please.”

Craig said, “Don’t do this. It will only embarrass you. And some of those people are my patients. You’re undermining their trust in their doctor! That’s a … a sacred bond.”

She ignored him. When the conversation stilled—first at the tables closest to hers, then, as the ripple of awareness went through the diners, everywhere else, too—she said, “Thank you for your attention. For those of you who don’t know me, I’m Quinn Jeffries. Judge Jeffries. If youdoknow me, you may want to forget you do, because if you’ve appeared before me, that probably isn’t your fondest memory. I’m guessing you have much less complicated feelings for Dr. Drummond here. Great OB/GYN, am I right? Always makes you comfortable, and he’s great-looking, too, isn’t he?”

Craig said again, “Don’t.” But didn’t seem to know what else to say.

“Too bad he’s not the man we all thought,” she said. “We’ve been together over three years, but he’s just told me he’s dumping me, because he’s knocked up his twenty-four-year-oldothergirlfriend—he’s forty-one, by the way, and his hair is thinning, if you look close—and she’s pressuring him to marry her, or maybe he wants to marry her, who knows. She’s six months pregnant, isn’t that right, Craig? Which means he’s probably been sleeping with her since she was twenty-three, because Craig is normally very careful about birth control. How long did it take you to decide she was the keeper, and you could dump me over the side of the boat? As long as she was fertile, of course. Heisan OB,” she told the gaping diners. “He knows where babies come from.”

Some shock on the faces around them, and some speculation, too. She said, “But then, if doctors never cheated, there wouldn’t be much material for all those TV shows. Such a cliché, am I right? I thought I’d get a head start on the gossip and let you know firsthand. As for me? I’m officially single again, but then, I probably always was. Who knows how many others there’ve been?”

“Now, that’s not fair,” Craig said.

“Oh,” she said, “I think I’ll allow it. Objection overruled.”

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