Intoxicated (29 page)

Ally shoved Jack away with strength that shocked both of them then shoved him again for good measure.
Married?
The asshole was still
married?
And a baby on the way? Where was her damned purse? She found it at last in a drawer beneath the counter. Shoving the strap over her shoulder, she made her way to the door. Blinded by fury, she ran into the edge of a table, striking and bruising her hip.

“Ow! Shit! Son-of-a-bitch!” She stumbled, recovered, and kept going. She didn’t trust herself to stop or she might be driven to unprecedented acts of violence. They would make movies about it later. Horrible B-grade slasher flicks about the spurned chick who slaughtered her unfaithful lover in a frenzy of supernatural violence.

“Ally, wait. Hang on a minute. Let’s talk about this.” Jack appeared to have worked through whatever emotional turmoil was going on behind his fathomless black eyes and made a step toward her. She shot a look at him intending to wither his privates and set his hair on fire. It must have worked because he stopped short and took a step back.

Hurt welled up inside her with painful intensity so sharp that tears sprang to her eyes. Somehow she could only think that this was her fault, that once again she had made the wrong decision, had chosen the wrong man. Would she never learn? The answer was
yes
. In that moment, she made a vow to herself. Never again would this happen to her. Never again would a man make a fool of her. Never again would she let someone behind her carefully construction wall of self-preservation.
Never
.

“Seriously, Jack? That’s all you’ve got?” She snorted and shook her head, one hand on the door. “Because from where I’m standing, this looks pretty bad.”

He stopped halfway between her and Chelsea. His chest rose and fell as he took in a slow deep breath. The long fingers of his hands, so adept at pleasuring her body, curled into fists at his sides then relaxed. One side of him was bathed in soft yellow light from the tiny window next to the door, the other side obscured by the darkness of the bar. He looked more beautiful than ever, dark hair tousled.
 

“I know it looks bad.” He came at her again and grabbed her by the biceps, willing her to listen. “But it’s not what you think. You’re getting all worked up over nothing.”

“It’s not
nothing
. You lied to me.” When he saw the look in her eyes, he released her and took a step back. “She’s
pregnant
, for heaven’s sake. Did you really think you could hide that?”

“I didn’t lie…I just didn’t tell you.”

“A lie of omission is still a lie.”

“It’s not the same thing at all. It’s not like telling someone that you’re mother is dead when she’s not. Now
that’s
a lie.” His eyes were black and furious and directed at her…as if she was in the wrong.
 

“Don’t you turn this around on me, Jack. I told you the truth about her.”

“Only after you got caught lying to my face.”
 

“This isn’t about me!” Her voice, raised to shouting volume, echoed through the empty room. “A dead mother who isn’t in my life is nothing like a living, breathing pregnant wife.”

“Don’t yell at me. It’s not like I’ve been cheating on you. This was an accident.”

“Oh, don’t give me that bullshit.” She ripped her arm from his grasp and headed toward the door.
 

 
Jack’s footsteps followed her. “I wanted to tell you, I swear. I wanted to tell you a million different times, but there never seemed to be a good time. You’ve had so much going on with your life…I just didn’t want to hurt you for no reason.” His voice held a pleading note that she’d never heard before.

“It’s a moot point, Jack.”

“Moot? What’s moot?” Chelsea asked from her barstool. “Who the hell talks like that?”

The room became hot and claustrophobic. Ally clawed at the throat of her shirt, desperate for air.

“Everything is always black and white with you, isn’t it? There’s never any gray as far as you’re concerned.” Jack threw his hands up in frustration. “Look, the divorce has been delayed by the baby but it’s still going to happen. I didn’t tell you about the kid because I don’t even know that it’s mine. I want a paternity test before I’ll believe it.” He glared at Chelsea. “It seemed stupid to worry you over something that might not even happen.”

“Oh, it’s your baby alright.” Chelsea rose to her feet, blue eyes glittering with indignation.

“Stay out of this,” Ally and Jack snapped in unison, their gazes locked together. Chelsea scowled but shrank back to her seat.

“The fact remains that at some point or other you had sex with her.” The words were so distasteful that Ally could barely choke them out. “Did that happen before or after we met?”

“Before. I swear to God. I haven’t touched another woman since we started seeing each other.”

From the corner of her eye, Ally saw Chelsea shake her head in amusement and disbelief.

“How can I believe you? If you lied about the baby, then maybe you lied about the rest, too.”

“I don’t think that withholding information is lying.” Jack’s jaw tightened with stubbornness. “Especially if I did it out of concern for you…”
 

“I don’t care. It doesn’t matter. The fact remains that you’re still married to her. She’s pregnant. And we are over.” She didn’t wait to hear any more of his lies. Instead, she bolted out the door into the fine mist of rain.

When Ally walked out the door, she took all of Jack’s happiness with her. It was as if someone had drawn the shade on a window into his future, shutting out the light and leaving him in suffocating darkness. He started after her, but she jumped in her car and sped out of the alley with an angry squeal of tires and grinding of gears.
 

“Let her go, Jack,” Chelsea said. She opened her mouth as if to say more, but snapped it shut when she saw the look in his eyes.

“What did you say to her? You said something else to get her worked up.” With fists clenched, he charged at her. If she’d been a man instead of a pregnant female, he would’ve thrown her off that barstool and beaten the shit out of her on principle. Fortunately for her, at the sound of raised voices, Randy emerged from the back hallway and stepped between them.

“Take a breath, brother,” Randy said. He put a hand on Jack’s chest. “Not that she doesn’t deserve it.”

Chelsea didn’t flinch but raised an eyebrow and smiled. The crazy bitch was enjoying the show a little too much for his liking. He should’ve known. This was what she did. Every damn time his life got a little too sane…a little too normal for her liking…she swooped in like a bird of prey. But Randy was right; he took a deep breath and stepped back, shaking his head to clear away the violent urges.

“This is your fault. You had no business telling her.” His hands shook with fury as he searched his pockets for his truck keys. He had to find Ally and explain.

Chelsea’s voice quivered with mirth. “You’re right. It wasn’t my place to tell her.
You
should’ve told her. So don’t be pissed at me. You fucked this up all by yourself.”
 

Randy dug into his own pocket and pressed the keys to his car into Jack’s hand but didn’t release them right away. “Maybe you should give it a little time. You both need to cool off.”

Jack paid no attention but sprinted toward the exit.

“You’re going after her?” Chelsea’s high-pitched voice followed him to the door. “Are you kidding me?”

Jack stopped at the door and turned to face Chelsea, chest heaving with emotion. “Yes. I’m going after her. She’s the best thing that ever happened to me.”
 

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Because she didn’t know what else to do, Ally drove around without destination until it grew dark and she was too weary to go any further. Then she went home and sat in the dark, staring at the wall like a mindless fool. Jack called her cell phone repeatedly. She let the first few calls go to voicemail then shut off the ringer. She just couldn’t deal with his excuses and lies. Her heart broke every time she thought of it. He had lied to her…had let her believe that she was the only woman in his life…that she meant more to him than the women of his past.
 

The concept of Jack as a married man with a wife and child on the way invoked a raging jealousy within her so powerful that she wanted to punch something. She had visions of Jack sitting at the dinner table with a baby on his knee and Chelsea at his side. She should be the one at his side. It should be their child on his knee, not Chelsea’s. And why did Chelsea have to be so pretty? Why couldn’t she be the gap-toothed, pock-marked, drug addicted hag that Jack’s conversations had painted?
 

Because he’s a liar
, she thought. He lied about everything else, why wouldn’t he lie about the way Chelsea looked, too?
 

You didn’t really think he’d ever be faithful, did you? To someone like you? We’re talking about Jack here
. Chelsea’s words echoed through her brain, scorching her heart like a flaming arrow of truth.

Of course, Jack could never be faithful. The man was too beautiful and too sexed up to be contained by any one woman. Suddenly, a memory of her mother came to mind. Memories of her mother were vague and rare, but she had a sharp vision of her mother seated in a chair by the window of her childhood home, crying into a tissue, waiting for her father to come home. And even though she’d been a mere toddler at the time, the memory of her mother’s voice was loud and clear, thick with pain. “Never fall in love with a man that’s more beautiful than you, Ally. Women will always be chasing him and you’ll always be wondering if he’s chasing them back.”

A twinge of empathy for her mother caught her by surprise. Had her father been the source of her mother’s depression and misery? It would explain a lot about her mother’s erratic behavior. In some ways, Mike Taylor was very similar to Jack. They were both handsome, arrogant men with an eye for the ladies. She’d never given her father’s behavior much thought, just accepted it as normal because she’d never known anything else. As a child, she hadn’t seen much of him. He’d been overseas on active duty until she was sixteen and when he’d retired, it had been business trips and vacations with his lady friends that kept him away. She had no memories of her parents together and now she knew why.

In one of her college psych classes, she’d read that children often repeat the mistakes of their parents, caught up in a pattern of learned behavior. Victims of abuse often passed along the penchant for violence by beating their own children or spouses. Was she destined to fall into the same trap as her mother by loving a man who could never be faithful?

After awhile, she went straight to the bathroom for a shower as if she could wash away the pain. The water ran over her upturned face and the tense muscles of her neck and shoulders. Water always had a purifying effect on her, washing away the strife of life when nothing else could. The hot stream cleansed the taint of heartbreak and betrayal from her body. She watched it swirled down the floor drain, taking her strength with it, and leaned against the wall as the sobs began. Their intensity bewildered her. She’d never cried about Brian. Oh, there had been a sting of tears or an occasional blurring of the eyes, but never a flood like this one. In fact, she hadn’t cried like this since her mom left all those years ago. A low wail came from her throat as she let the pain rip through her. Her body shook until her knees gave way and she sank to her hands and knees on the floor of the shower.

“Ally? Are you okay?” Karly’s voice floated through the bathroom door. “Ally? Jack called me. He was worried about you. I let myself in with the spare key.”
 

Couldn’t she even have a nervous breakdown in privacy? Damn that spare key. She left it there for all the times she locked herself out of the house or came home drunk and couldn’t find her keys. Of course, Karly knew where the key was hidden. They’d used it on plenty of occasions. She tried to pull it together long enough to send Karly away, but the sobs continued until her breath came in huge gasps and her lungs ached with the pain of it. She needed to stop…wanted to stop… but had lost all control.

“Ally, I’m coming in.” The bathroom door opened and Karly came inside. “I’m just going to sit here, okay? I’m here if you need me.” She sat on the toilet while Ally sobbed. “Ally, please say something. You’re scaring me.” The alarm in Karly’s voice brought an abrupt end to her sobs.
 

“I’m alright,” Ally managed to say after a few seconds. Her voice came out broken and raspy, still thick with tears. “I’ll be alright in a minute.” The repeated reassurance was more for herself than Karly.

“Okay. Well, I put a towel on the hook for you. I’m going to step outside now, but I’ll be right here if you need me.” The door clicked shut behind Karly. Ally stepped out of the shower in a daze and gazed at her reflection in the steamy mirror. She looked older than her twenty-five years and tired, skin wrinkled and eyes swollen.

“Jack told me what happened. He’s really worried about you,” Karly said through the door. They’d had so many conversations like this in college, but back then it had been Karly crying in the bathroom, and Ally offering up comfort from the other side of the door. Back then she’d been smug in her relationship with Brian and certain that this would never, ever happen to her.