About That Fling (15 page)

“Is there a side you want me to hear?”

“No. I’m not interested in an endless game of
he said, she said
.” He shook his head again and took another step forward with the line. “I just want you to consider the possibility that things are more complicated than it might seem. It’s not a simple case of, ‘her husband neglected her, so she had an affair,’ nor is it a cut-and-dried instance of ‘his evil wife cheated and broke his heart.’ Both stories are completely true and completely false, and we can’t pick just one to believe.”

“Okay,” Jenna said, glancing up to see they’d almost reached the front of the line. Ellen was nowhere to be seen, which was a bigger relief than it should have been. Jenna took a few calming breaths and tried to steer the conversation onto slightly safer ground. “How did you know Mark’s ex-wife, anyway? Did you join a support group of thwarted exes or something like that?”

“Something like that,” Adam said, and took a step to the front of the line. “I slept with her.”

C
hapte
r
N
ine

Adam followed Jenna to their assigned lane, keeping a wary distance. Her shoulders were rigid and her pace was so brisk he practically had to jog to keep up.

When they reached the last lane on the end, she spun to face him with an expression that was all business. “Are you right-handed or left?”

“Right.”

“Is that comfortable in your hand?”

“Yes,” Adam answered, weighing the gun in his palm as he watched Jenna’s face for any sign of what she was really thinking. “Heavier than I expected, but yes.”

“You’ve got your ear protection?”

“Yes.”

Adam waited for the next question, pretty sure none of the questions were what she really wanted to ask him. They’d marched through the business of flashing their IDs and choosing their weapons and finding their position, all without any further comment from Jenna about his history with Ellen.

They had ten more minutes until the range was hot—a term he’d learned just five minutes ago—but Jenna’s body language was downright chilly. He could see the tension in her shoulders, but she kept her focus on the box of ammo she was tearing open with more force than it probably required.

“Jenna?”

“Yeah?” She didn’t look up.

“Do you want me to explain? To tell you more about what happened between Ellen and me?”

She shrugged and looked up. “Is it any of my business?” Her tone was softer than her words, but Adam could see something flashing in her eyes.

“It seems like something’s bothering you, and it started right before we got our guns. Either you’re uncomfortable with what I told you about Ellen, or you’re more upset than I realized that all the Glocks were rented.”

Jenna sighed and closed her eyes, letting the box of ammo rest on the narrow counter beside her. When she opened her eyes, she looked conflicted. “It’s never going to be simple between us, is it?”

“Couldn’t you say that about any relationship?”

“Sure, any relationship where one partner has bumped uglies with half the people the other person knows.”

“You’re giving me more credit than I deserve for sexual prowess. For the record, it was two times and it was almost three years ago.”

She sighed and set the box of ammo down on the counter. They had some measure of privacy here in the little lane that separated them from the other shooters, but it was still a public place. He could hear gunfire in the distance from the outdoor rifle range, but things were eerily quiet in the space around them.

“It’s fine, Adam. We both have a history. I’m just not used to the men I date having this much history with the women I know. I’m okay. It’s really none of my business, is it?”

He could tell she wanted to ask more, but something held her back. Pride? Embarrassment? Uncertainty about whether she really wanted to open this can of worms?

Adam went ahead and opened it for her. “I was pretty devastated when I found out my wife was sleeping with someone else. At first I tried to fix it. I asked her to give me three months of intensive marriage counseling to see if we could repair the marriage.”

Jenna glanced away, fingering one of the pistols. She’d chosen two different guns for them, suggesting they could trade back and forth to give him a feel for firing both a .32 and a .22. He wasn’t entirely sure what that meant, but he’d nodded anyway.

She picked up the one the clerk had called a Kel-Tec, turning it over in her hand without comment. “Did Mia agree? To the counseling, I mean.”

“At first. We went for two weeks, but it became obvious she’d already made up her mind. That’s often the way it works with marriage counseling. It’s usually about saying hello or saying goodbye. For us, there was no hope of starting over. No chance of hello. So after a couple weeks, we threw in the towel and said goodbye.”

He watched her throat move as she swallowed. A blast of gunfire sounded somewhere outside, but she didn’t jump. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. I’m fine now, but I was in a pretty dark place then. That’s where I was when Ellen found me.”

“She reached out to you?”

Adam nodded and set his own weapon on the counter beside the box of ammo. It wasn’t loaded, but the damn thing still gave him the willies. Even so, he felt ridiculous holding it in the midst of a conversation like this.

“After Mark told her their reconciliation wasn’t going to work, Ellen wanted to know why. After he told her about Mia, Ellen tracked her down. Said she wanted to meet ‘the other woman.’ Eventually, that led Ellen to me.”

Jenna was fiddling with a button that moved the target, making the paper outline of a head and shoulders zoom back and forth absurdly. She didn’t seem to realize she was doing it, so Adam said nothing.

“So you met Ellen.”

He nodded and watched the paper man bob back and forth, the head and shoulders waving like a bizarre white flag. “She thought we could support each other, maybe work together to bring our spouses back.”

Jenna met his eyes again. “And you thought having sex with each other might do that?”

He choked back a laugh. “No. Not at first. But when we realized our efforts were futile, we turned to each other for comfort. I knew it was stupid even before I did it. But people don’t always make the smartest decisions when they’re grieving.”

She snorted. “Tell me about it.”

Something in her tone told him there was a story there, but now didn’t seem like the time to push. “You can relate?”

“Who can’t?” She picked up the box of ammo and began loading bullets into the clip, a gesture Adam took as an end to that line of questioning. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt,” she said. “This is fascinating, in a way. I mean, I’ve heard of this before. Of the spouses who get cheated on finding their way into each other’s beds and arms. Isn’t it some sort of psychological phenomenon or something?”

“I don’t think there’s an actual syndrome, if that’s what you mean. I think there was a country singer who married her best friend’s ex after the friend stole her husband.”

“Shania Twain, right—I remember that.”

Adam raised an eyebrow. “Are gun fanatics required to be country music fans?”

“Are head shrinkers required to be patronizing assholes?”

“Touché,” he agreed, glad she was smiling when she said it. “Anyway, it’s easy to fall prey to that sort of fantasy. That maybe all the bad stuff happened for a reason, and now we can live happily ever after with the right person who just magically appeared out of the ashes of the affair.”

She nodded and flipped the lever on the gun to make it so it wouldn’t fire. At least that’s what Adam hoped it was. He had no idea what any of the parts were called, so he settled for watching her hands move over the intricate pieces of metal and wood. The clerk had called this one a .22 Mark III Hunter with a fluted five-inch barrel, and Adam had flinched at the word
Mark
.

Then he’d felt stupid for doing it, and forced himself to choose that gun just to prove he wasn’t bothered by it. That his ego could handle using a firearm that shared a name with the guy his wife had left him for. Christ, did the echoes of ex-lives ever get quieter, or was it just a matter of learning to ignore the noise?

Jenna picked up the other weapon and slid the clip into it, and it occurred to him this was the weirdest setting he’d ever had for a heart-to-heart discussion about relationships.

“So things didn’t work out with you and Ellen?” she asked.

“Not even close. Like I said, it only happened a couple times. It wasn’t long after that she moved away, so we really never talked about it after that.”

He waited for more questions, for a reaction that would tell him how she was feeling. She had every right to be weirded out by this. How often did a woman get together with a guy and discover she’s surrounded by females who’ve shared his bed or his heart or some combination of the two?

Still, they both had histories. She’d said it herself. Wasn’t this what modern dating was like most of the time?

She slid the clip into the other gun, seeming to decide something. When she met his eyes again, there was an odd sense of calm there.

“Come on,” she said, adjusting her earphones before fitting the gun into her palm. “Let’s blow the shit out of something.”

It was close to midnight by the time Jenna pulled the car to the curb outside Adam’s hotel and turned to face him. He watched her in the dim glow of the streetlight, a fresh pang of longing sliding over the current of adrenaline still pulsing under the surface of his skin.

“That was hands-down the best unromantic non-date I’ve ever had,” he said. “Maybe we should give the Marxist discussion a try next time.”

She laughed, leaning back against the headrest to reveal the smooth column of her throat, and Adam ached to kiss her there.

“You did great for your first time,” she said, and for a moment, Adam was still hung up on the kissing thing. “Once you got the hang of it, your aim was pretty good.”

“Thanks. If this mediation thing doesn’t work out, I can always fall back on joining a gang.”

He unhooked his seatbelt and turned so his whole body was angled toward her. “Seriously, Jenna. I had a really great time with you.”

“Me, too. Spending time with you is just—”

She didn’t finish the sentence, but she didn’t have to. She was smiling, albeit a little wistfully, but that was enough.

Adam sighed and reached out to lay a hand on her knee. “I know when we first hooked up, we thought it was just a quick fling. When we realized it couldn’t be more than that, I figured it was no big deal. There are other fish in the sea and all that. But every minute I spend with you—”

He stopped there, not sure what he meant to say. Not sure what he could say that wouldn’t make this whole thing harder.

“I know,” she said, swallowing. And he felt certain she did know. For some reason, words seemed to be failing both of them now. Perhaps it was the late hour, or maybe it was that there was too much they
could
say.

“We won’t be working together forever,” he said, reaching up to brush a lock of hair off her cheek. He left his hand there, and she leaned into it like a cat craving the touch.

Her cheek felt smooth under his palm, and for a moment they just sat there connected by only the lightest feather of contact.

“My contract with Belmont will end in a month or two,” he said. “After that, we wouldn’t have to worry about the professional side of things. About your employer claiming it’s a conflict of interest or anything like that.”

He waited for her protest, but it wasn’t the one he expected.

“You live in Chicago,” she said. “That’s a long ways away.”

“I travel all over the country for my work. It doesn’t matter that much what city I call my home base.”

“What are you saying?”

He swallowed, not sure if he’d gone too far or presumed too much. He was probably supposed to be cagier, but dammit, he liked her. He liked her enough to consider what a future with Jenna might look like. Was she on the same page?

“I have family in Seattle,” he said. “I’ve considered relocating before, just to be closer to them. I’m just saying that if things got serious between the two of us, I could see myself moving to the Pacific Northwest. Hypothetically, I mean.”

She sighed and closed her eyes, still leaning into his touch. Adam curved his palm to cup the side of her face, then slowly traced the line of her jaw and the satiny skin of her throat.

For a moment, she didn’t say anything. Just leaned into his touch, breathing in and out and mingling their breath behind the fogged-up windows of her car.

When she opened her eyes, they glittered beneath the streetlights. He could see the doubt in her expression before she uttered a single word. “We might not be working together forever, but you’ll always be my best friend’s ex-husband. There’s no getting around that, is there?”

“No,” he said slowly. “That won’t ever change. But maybe your feelings about it will?”

She sighed and shook her head. “It’s like you said earlier, Adam—things are always more complicated than that.”

“How do you mean?”