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I’m tempted to look through the storage unit for my briefcase afterward, but decide against it. That unit has a siren’s call for me not unlike the one I hear from Kent’s house, and I’m never sure which call will be the one to send me crashing into the shore.
I head back to the bar afterward, eager to see Beck. I want to watch his gaze dart over my freshly blown-out hair, see that spark of desire in his eyes before he playfully grunts something about my life of leisure.
I’m halfway across the parking lot when a guy steps in my path—douchey hair sweeping over his brow and a smug, punchable face. He’s got a flashy gold Rolex on his wrist and a calculating smile on his lips and I loathe him on sight.
I mostly loathe that he jumped in my path—if he knew me better, he’d realize that’s a bad fucking idea.
“You’re Kate, right?” he asks. He extends a hand. “I’m Jeremy Boudreau.”
The name is familiar, but I don’t want to stand here long enough to figure out why. I glance past him, to the bar. “Can I help you with something?”
“Your husband is sleeping with my wife.” The words are crisp, angry. “So I thought we should have a little chat.”
Lucie’s husband.
He’d be a good resource in my battle to get Caleb back, but I resent the way he seems to be putting the blame for their union on me. “I can’t imagine what there is to talk about.”
“You came home hoping to reconcile, right?” he asks. “So we both want our spouses back, and two heads are better than one.”
I don’t like this guy, and I suspect getting to know him won’t change that fact, but I’m not really in a position to turn away help and my own paltry efforts don’t appear to be working. I was certain Caleb would tire of Lucie, that her small insecurities would go from fault lines to deep crevasses, but that’s not happening.
So perhaps I’ve been working the wrong angle. Maybe instead of waiting for Caleb to tire of Lucie, I should have been waiting for Lucie to tire ofCaleb. I love my husband, but he has his failings, especially for someone who wants—or already has—a family. I bet he’s still spending long hours at the office and that she can’t get him to sit through an entire movie without taking a work call or going on his laptop. When she finally gets him to take a day off, he insists on spending it on that boring fucking boat.
Maybe she’s starting to see the grass isn’t greener in Caleb’s backyard, and if something about her husband appealed to her again and she could be persuaded to go back, Caleb would have no reason to divorce me. Which means that, punchable face or not, Jeremy may just be my new best friend.
“Have you ever been to Mountain Brew?” I ask. “They make a nice cappuccino.”
“Love that place. Nice art there too.” His disingenuous smile is mistimed. He’s not a great liar, but I appreciate his lack of ethics—it’ll come in handy going forward.
I get back in my car and follow him down the hill to the busiest part of town. He swerves his Audi into the only spot near Mountain Brew and it takes me five minutes to hunt for a space. He’s got a cappuccino waiting for me by the time I finally walk in. I accept it without thanking him—he should have given me the fucking parking spot.
“So,” I say, grabbing two sugars and ripping them open, “I assume you have some dastardly plan to make our spouses break up?”
He hitches a shoulder. “I’m batting some ideas around. What was your plan?”
“My plan is to wait until he gets sick of her.”
“Have you seen them together?” he asks. “Because if you had, you’d know that your plan blows. He was after Lucie from the minute she moved next door to him.”
There’s a bitter taste in my mouth. I’m not sure if it’s jealousy or just anger that my dream was slipping away long before I realized it. “So what’s your big plan there,Ocean’s 11? And why do you want her back anyway? I heard the reason she left is because you were cheating.”
He sighs. “Don’t believe everything you hear. Lucie has been playing the victim card to the hilt.”
I’d love to believe the worst about his wife—and I generallydobelieve the worst, if the worst is that Lucie is weak and ineffectual and someone lacking even minimal raw intellect—but I have a deep, inexplicable distrust of this guy that makes me want answers. “That still doesn’t explain why you want her back.”
“She made mistakes, and I made mistakes. I’m willing to own my part in it even if she can’t own hers. But the important thing is our kids. We need to put them first. For their sake, if nothing else, I’m willing to leave the past in the past. This would have ended months ago if your husband wasn’t so hell-bent on makingmyfamily his.”
Is that what this is? Is Caleb only with her because he’s trying to recreate what we lost? In spite of the fact that Jeremy’s words sound rehearsed, they also resonate.
“You need to make him dislike her,” I reply. “Caleb despises weakness. If Lucie thinks he’s cheating, she’ll get suspicious and clingy, and the more he argues, the more she’ll wonder.”
He pushes his coffee away from him. “And how do I do that?”
I lean back in my seat, chewing on the stir straw from my cappuccino. The more people I bring into Operation Screw Lucie, the higher the odds are that someone will spill all of it. Jeremy could rush off and tell Lucie and Caleb everything—he’s definitely someone who would throw me under the bus when he no longer had a use for me—but right now, he needs an ally, and I’m all he has.
Plus, I could really use someone tofundmy plans.
“Caleb’s going to Miami for work on the twentieth,” I tell him, sharing the intel I got from Kayleigh. “Hire someone to photograph him walking through security.”
