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She smiled at me. “Colin’s just eaten his lunch,” she said. “There’s more sandwiches if you’d like some.”
I held up my hand. “I’m stuffed, I ordered food at the house,” I told her. “But thank you, Alice.
She was a lovely woman, and Colin adored her.
I walked into the living room where Colin was playing with his trains and superheroes.
He grinned at me. “You feel like being tied up to the tracks?” he asked.
“Not today,” I said, wincing. My poor back had been aching and that wouldn’t help it at all. “So I guess that means I have to be the villain.”
We played for a while, with me pretending to tie Colin up with his shoelaces and putting him on the train track, making the little battery powered caboose hurry toward him.
At the last moment, Colin would get out of the loosely tied shoelaces and jump up, attacking me until I rolled over and made a dead face, sticking out my tongue and rolling my eyes back in my head.
He giggled, finding it delightful, and kids are nothing if not lovers of repetition, so we did it over and over again.
There was a banging on the door, and Alice answered it with a frown, coming downstairs from her room. Adam’s place didn’t feel anything like my own home, so I didn’t like to answer the door. Most likely, it was someone from work who wasn’t aware he was on a business trip.
The voice that demanded to know where Adam was sounded awfully familiar, though, and I walked into the living room, right in front of the door.
Toby.
He looked tired, or maybe hungover, with dark circles under his eyes.
“I need to speak to Adam,” he said to Alice, not looking at me, and I cleared my throat.
His eyes darted to me and his mouth dropped open.
“You can’t still be seeing Adam,” he said flatly, and I gave him a little smile.
“Of course I am. Hasn’t he told you that we’re expecting?”
I saw something flash across Toby’s face, something almost like regret, but it had gone so fast and was replaced by anger that I couldn’t be sure.
“He knocked you up?” Toby scoffed. “Wait until the kid comes out, or until you’re too pregnant to be sexy. Adam will be right out the door.”
I bristled, hating the way Toby knew how to jab at my insecurities. “No, he won’t. He’s going to be here for me and our babies.”
“Hi, Uncle Toby!” Colin said casually, walking up to his room, probably assuming that the adults were talking about boring stuff that wasn’t superheroes or trains.
Toby ignored Colin, which irritated me. I couldn’t believe that he could just ignore his nephew like that.
“What are you even doing here?” I spat out. “Looking for money, no doubt.”
I threw a couple of hundreds at him from the stack of cash that Adam had left me. Toby scrambled for it as it fell to the ground and I rolled my eyes.
“You sure are high and mighty for someone who’s fucking your ex’s brother,” he snarled.
I smiled thinly. “And he’s so much better at it than you are.”
“You don’t get it, do you, Kate?”
I winced, hating the way he called me Kate. No one called me Kate but Toby, not even my family.
“No, I guess I don’t,” I said dryly. I wouldn’t believe a word out of Toby’s mouth. Not ever again.
“You’re just the type of woman that men cheat on. I did it, and Adam will do it, too. You’reboring, Kate.”
