Running the Numbers (8 page)

He raised his eyes to hers. “There you have it. I’m pining after a woman who reminds me of my first wife.”

Sadie thought back to the last time she’d heard the name Seth. “How’s your relationship with your son? The, uh, real one.” An awkward personal question, but Sadie needed a minute to mull over the wife stuff. So far, he’d mentioned two. The third remained unaccounted for.

“Fair enough, given our history. He starts college in the spring.”

“I recall. Headed to Purdue.”

Blake lifted one shoulder. “Probably. Quinn wants him to go to Oxford. She lives in London most of the time. Goes back to L.A. occasionally for work stuff.” With his elbows resting on the table, Blake regarded Sadie from behind hands locked together. “Are we done with my history yet?”

Not by a long shot. Curiosity niggled at her, like a rabbit with a lettuce leaf. But also, something sour lurked in her stomach. Blake was a cheating douchebag. But of course, right? Because the universe had long ago dictated Sadie couldn’t be attracted to simple, kind men. At least Blake had the redeeming quality of remorse.

She supposed her most burning question had to do with the mistress. “If Quinn’s so wonderful that you’re drawn to Amanda because of their likeness, what the heck was so great about this Kira lady?”

Blake didn’t seem to mind the question. He even picked up his fork again. “Ambition,” he said, almost curtly. “Quinn and I were both accounting majors in Los Angeles, where money is king. But when she had Seth, her priorities changed, while mine didn’t. She was content to be a stay-at-home mom and wrote to pass the time. It turned out to be a lucrative endeavor, but by the time she had any success at it, I lived in a different world. My clients were movie stars, bankers, and politicians. I wanted to go to the top of the top. I met Kira on the way, flying up the same ladder. She was everything I imagine Quinn might’ve become if it weren’t for Seth. I came home to a wife who was bored to tears by my talk of the office, while I didn’t really have an interest in what Seth had chewed on that day. Or the words he learned to say.”

Blake paused and stared off into the space beyond Sadie’s shoulder. Sadness and simple longing filled his expression until he blinked it away.

An ill feeling crept through Sadie. Blake wasn’t pulling any punches—the picture he painted did him little credit. At the same time, her heart went out to him. The lines that were always on his face were deeper now.

She guessed he spent a lot of time in this headspace, contemplating a past he was ashamed of, apparent in the way he could hardly meet her gaze.

After a short silence, an abrupt dry laugh croaked from Blake. “I’m not innocent, by any means, but Kira… That woman is like no one I’ve ever met before or since. Ambitious to a fault. Manipulative.”

His hazel gaze flicked over Sadie, hard and distrustful, before dropping to his plate.

Her skin broke out in goose bumps. What the hell was
that?

Blake turned his attention to his food, without touching it. “Weirdly, Seth actually was the one who found out about Hunter. And yet, it was months before anyone clued me in.” Blake’s lips twisted sardonically. “Quinn’s sister, Emily, did the honors. Since I’m telling the story, I should go ahead and mention she was wife number three. Divorced three years ago. She’s remarried now to some surfer dude she met in Honolulu.”

Sadie suddenly found she was the one unable to keep eye contact. For someone he claimed to love, Blake had done a real number on Quinn. First, an affair. Then he marries her sister.
I sure know how to pick ’em
. She brushed crumbs from her fingers. “I have good news for you, Blake.”

His eyebrows rose. A hint of something close to exasperation or even despair glinted behind his green-gold stare.

She looked away. “We’re definitely done with your history.”

* * * *

Sadie turned onto Brewster’s Lane with a quick peek at the dashboard clock. Hopefully, eight wasn’t too early on a Saturday morning for Blake. But the drive out to Cliff Creek took time, not to mention the actual cutting and chopping to get the wood to fit in her truck bed. Her back hurt just thinking of the splitting that came later. She’d leave that part to Blake, once she gave him a tutorial.

Her cell phone buzzed, and she grabbed it with her right hand, while using the left to smoothly navigate the first switchback.

“Hi, Kennedy. Sorry, can’t hit yard sales this weekend. I have plans.”

“Yeah, I heard.”

Her voice was like a frosty breath in Sadie’s ear. “You okay, Ken?”

“Sure, I’m fine,” Kennedy began, with blatantly false lightheartedness. “Just seems weird to me. Last weekend, you weren’t interested in Blake in
that
way. Yet, you’ve been his new little best friend ever since.”

Torn between irritation and a hint of guilt, Sadie exhaled through her nostrils. “I took him to lunch on Monday, and I told you last week I was going to offer to help him out. Which is why I’m taking him out to cut firewood. He mentioned spending a fortune on those little bundles at the grocery store, trying to learn to make a decent fire before winter. Anyone in the office could’ve offered to help him out. Besides, why do you care?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” Exasperation swept Kennedy’s cry into the realm of petulance. “Monday, I’d been two seconds from asking him out after Amanda shot him down, but you
zoomed in like Superwoman and snatched him up. All I have to do is show an interest in someone for you to suddenly be keen as hell on them. Wes is a perfect example. What’s your deal, Sadie?”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa.” Okay, she might cop to Blake, but Wes was a different matter altogether. “You’re mixed up, Ken. The thing with Wes is…” Crap. Sadie clenched her teeth. “It’s complicated. And it’s long over. You want him, he’s up for grabs. As for Blake, I’ve told you, my goal is to find out if he wants Duncan’s job. That’s it.”

Kennedy’s tone fell into tired dejection. “Yeah? Well, Wes called looking for your number again. He said you keep deleting it from his phone.”

Sadie grinned. “Eventually, he’ll quit leaving it in the breakroom.”

“This time it was important. But I think I’ll let you call Wes yourself. Maybe you can go back to pretending not to flirt with him under the guise of not wanting attention instead of pursuing Blake, with whom I’ve made my interest clear.”

Crap.
It’s last summer all over again.

The same thing had happened when a cute young guy from Utah had moved in next door to Kennedy mid-summer. Her best friend had crushed hard on the guy for months, who ended up asking Sadie out. The circumstances incited pity for her friend but also incurred a fair amount of frustration and irritation—Sadie would have said yes if it hadn’t been for Kennedy’s irrational anger that he’d dared to ask, and the not-so subtle hints that Sadie had enticed him to do so.

The kicker was that if Kennedy knew the gritty details of Sadie’s past with Wes, she wouldn’t be so blasé about her crush on him. But it was Sadie’s own fault the whole office thought of their past relationship as a mere fling.

“Look, I don’t flirt with Wes. We have history, and it shows. That’s all there is to it. Concerning Blake, you can’t claim every man who randomly shows up in our lives, okay? What if I like Blake, too? I don’t owe you first shot, Ken. And I definitely don’t have to let you treat me like crap for hanging out with him.”

The silence told her Kennedy had hung up. Wonderful. She ended the call and immediately dialed Wes.

“Hello?” He answered on the first ring, deep and slow as usual.

The one and only thing she would ever admit—and to herself alone—was the attractiveness of Wes’s disembodied voice. “If you memorized my number, you wouldn’t have to spaz and call every other person in the office to get in touch with me.”

“Yes, but if I did that, you’d probably change it just to be difficult.”

She almost laughed, then recalled Kennedy’s accusation. She wasn’t
flirting
, she simply forgot and slipped into old habits occasionally. Such as laughing at his lame jokes, which she vowed to never do again. “What’s the big story?”

“Duncan sent out a company-wide e-mail this morning. When I didn’t hear from you, I had to wonder if you’ve seen it. I’m not sure if you’re still refusing to check your office e-mail on the weekends.”

Sadie pulled up behind Blake’s rental—when was he going to get his own car?—and set the parking brake. “Yeah, well, I have a life, unlike the rest of you.”

“He announced his exit from Avery & Thorp. He and Zoey are going back to Salt Lake City in the spring. She’s pregnant, so there’s no way they can pull off the move before winter hits.”

So, Nina had gotten it right. Duncan was leaving behind the coveted chief accountant position. And Sadie’s number one obstacle was on the other end of the line.

He seemed to know it, too. “I guess this means no more games, huh? I know you’re going after the promotion. As am I.”

At that moment, Sadie caught sight of Blake, and something in her chest squealed with delight.

He crouched barefoot on the ground, pine cones and rocks scattered across the dirt and grass. In lieu of his usual starched slacks, or even the new-looking Levi’s he’d worn last weekend that still had their store creases, he wore a faded pair of jeans she’d bet anything he never wore in public. They rode low on his hips, which dipped into hollows she hadn’t imagined he might have. Shirtless, a fine sprinkling of blond chest hair glinted from the dappled morning sun shining through the pines. Sunbeams fell over his hair, reflecting like a halo. Sitting back on his heels, Sadie had a swift urge to climb right onto to those steady thighs.

Oh, damn. I’m in so much trouble.
It’d be easy to put a swift end to a crush, given Blake’s horrid relationships of yore. But if she dipped too low into the vat of physical attraction, there’d be no digging herself out of that hole.

He stretched out a hand toward one of the trees. A black snout rimmed with red fur cautiously peeked out.

“Wes, I have to go. We’ll have to talk later.”

“Lunch on Monday to discuss this new development?”

The snout emerged another inch, and the black spread into bright orange. Blake was squatted on his heels, about to feed a wild fox something from his bare hand. The idiot was going to get rabies. “Fine. That’s fine. Gotta go.” She hung up and dashed from the truck.

Blake jumped at the sound of Sadie’s truck door slamming closed.

By the time she reached him, the little red snout had disappeared, and Blake stood shirtless and sullen, looking at her like she’d broken his favorite toy. “What the hell was that? Didn’t you see how close I was?”

She swallowed and forced her gaze to meet Blake’s dead on and not wander over his collarbones. God, his bone structure was ridiculous. “Did you forget what Dale said about approaching wild animals? This isn’t L.A. There’s more to worry about than stray dogs around here.”

He blinked against a streak of sunlight that fell through the trees in a line across his face. “We have mountain lions in Los Angeles. Don’t treat me like I’m ignorant.”

“Don’t do ignorant stuff,” she shot back, frustration from several sources taking control of her mouth. “Ever try to approach a mountain lion? A fox might not try to feed you to its cubs, but their bite can be nasty, like any wild dog. Rabies could be the last of your problems. Literally.”

Blake pressed his lips together like he wanted to argue more but wouldn’t. He dropped his gaze and pushed his big toe into the dirt. “Yeah, it’s kind of stupid, isn’t it?” He let go a sad, tired exhale and looked around, like he couldn’t meet her gaze. “It just seemed like something Jack would do.” He snorted, a self-deprecating laugh.

“Jack? Who the hell is Jack?”

A pained expression took over his face. “Quinn’s husband. I mentioned him. He’s one of those guys, you know. Cool by virtue of their lack of awareness of their inherent coolness. If that makes sense. Cool because they don’t know they’re cool. The kind of guy who’d make friends with the fox in his yard.” Blake shook his head and stepped back, headed for his cabin. “It’s nothing. It’s stupid.”

Pity wrapped around Sadie’s heart. Blake seemed like two people to her—an obscenely good-looking success story but also lost, insecure, and wholly unaware of his true nature. He wasn’t the guy he used to be, obviously. His personality seemed at odds with his history. At least he’d exuded a certain self-disgust and remorse when he’d talked about it. Maybe he didn’t know who the hell he was now, caught between his old self and the person he strived to be instead.

Which would make it close to impossible for Sadie to figure out who he was. “Should I wait in the truck while you get ready?”

Blake made it to the front door and held it open. He finally allowed himself a glance at her. “I made coffee for two.” He stepped inside, then quickly looked back at her. “And his name is Eric.”

Sadie reached the door. “I thought it was Jack?”

Blake smiled, and her stomach fluttered. “No. The fox. His name is Eric.”

Sadie tucked her hair behind her ear. “You’re up, Lambert.”

Blake politely cleared his throat and leaned against the truck, angling his head against the cloudy sky to look at Sadie through the dark lenses of his retro sunglasses. Dark enough, he hoped, for her to not notice how his gaze kept returning to her bare legs.

To be fair, they were literally in his face. And the way she kept bending over the chainsaw, a lightweight model suited to her small frame, checking this and that, made it even harder to stay focused on what she was saying. “You call your chainsaw Lambert?”

She looked down on him imperiously and replied straight-faced. “That’s his name. What else would I call him?”

If she wanted to name her chainsaw Buzz McChoppy, it was no business of his. He sensed more to the simple defensive reply, but it was hard to gauge Sadie’s current mood.

She’d been a little muted since they left Fox Watch. It made the long drive out to wherever the hell they were mildly uncomfortable. He’d had the view to keep him occupied. Looming rocky cliffs, a rapid, rushing river. Anglers knee-deep in the water whipping their lines across the surface as they fly fished.