Seeing Red (13 page)

He pulled his beer glass closer and stared at the foamy top. “Yes, I suppose I do,” he said finally. When he looked at Meg, she raised her eyebrows at him in lieu of response.

“What if they were to pop in today without warning?” Mrs. Scott asked. “Would you let them back in, just like that? No questions asked? No hard feelings?”

He looked to Meg, who remained quiet but had narrowed her dark eyes to slits. Her expression bore a warning he didn’t understand, but that he also had no desire to trespass upon. He hedged. “I don’t know. Talking is easy, acting is hard. I’d like to say I’d be wary, but I can’t say for sure.”

“Good thing you’re a big guy, or you would have gotten beat up a lot as a kid,” Mr. Scott said through a mouthful of pasta.

All Seth could do was grunt, because the man was probably right.

“I think I may be the opposite,” Meg said, still studying him.

“What do you mean?”

“I’m slow to forgive, and equally slow to realize I’ve been burned. I’m that idiot who’ll set her hand on a hot stove and not feel the pain until after a blister has formed. The one who’ll ignore things everyone else can see because certainly bad shit couldn’t happen to a girl like me. Right, Mom?” She cocked her head toward Mrs. Scott, who in turn pushed one eyebrow upward. “Silver spoon, right? Things are supposed to be easy for me? People are supposed to treat me right just because?”

“Because what?” Toby asked.

Meg opened her mouth to respond, but Seth stood and gathered up some of the soiled dishes, saying, “Because people are supposed to be decent,” before Meg could really speak her mind.

He didn’t have to be a psychic to predict that what would come out of her mouth was intended more for her parents’ ears than Toby’s. Stacking the dishes on one forearm, he grabbed Toby’s water glass and backed toward the balcony door.

“Hey, Toby, how ’bout you show me what goes into a chocolate milkshake?”

Toby streaked past him so fast, Seth nearly lost his balance, but Seth imagined any kid deprived of chocolate as much as Toby seemed to be would probably have a similar response to the offer.

Meg’s expression was inscrutable as Seth turned away from the table. Just when he’d started thinking he was boring through her diamond-hard layers, he’d reach something even harder to surpass. Maybe she’d never open up. Perhaps he’d never understand her. And probably that’s because she had never meant to be understood.

The marriage was a sham, after all. He’d do himself a favor if he could only remember that.

Chapter 10

Meg wasn’t blind, so she noticed the way women looked at Seth when they thought she wasn’t looking. Crammed on a blanket with her parents, Toby, and Seth in Raleigh’s Moore Square, she was supposed to be enjoying local bands and savoring cold North Carolina beer, but instead her radar had been thrown into some sort of hypersensitive overdrive with each turn of women’s heads.

Seth was oblivious, or perhaps distracted. Toby kept leaning onto the man’s back and handing Meg’s phone over Seth’s shoulder with the demand he work out the required physics to aim an angry bird toward the appropriate smug feral pig.

She had no way of knowing what those women were thinking, but if she’d been one of them—an outsider looking on—she’d probably think,
Lucky bitch
, and also,
He must have been desperate. Just look at her.
And then there was one special for her situation:
No wonder Spike dumped her.

Her straight posture sagged a bit, and she moved into the shadow cast by Seth’s big body, pressing her left hip against his right one. That triggered a look down from him.

His expression flitted from surprise to amusement when she snaked her left arm around his waist. He didn’t need further prompting when she tipped her chin up. He just lowered his head so his lips brushed hers. Tenderly and briefly, and the first kiss they’d shared since the wedding. The second time in their duplicitous relationship she’d kissed him just for show.

But something this time about the caress of his lips and the way he kept his face close afterward, lingering near her for a second serving, made her skin prickle and pulse race. His proximity to her was a heady thing she had no words to explain. It seemed like some sort of slow-igniting chemical reaction that burned hotter and brighter the more its components were exposed to air. So the next time she kissed him, straightening her spine to reach his face, she didn’t do it for show. She kissed him because she liked him and wanted him—because with all the women sitting around, he perked up at Meg’s attention and no one else’s.

She didn’t deserve him, and knew it, but she’d take what she could get until he figured that out.

“You smell good,” he whispered against her hair when she finally pulled her lips away. “Like berries. Fruit.”

“I’m sure it’s all the wine I’ve been guzzling the past few days. Probably leaching out through my pores now.”

“I haven’t seen you drinking.”

“You were at work.”

“Oh.”

She let her hand fall away from his back when Toby took off at a clip toward an ice-cream cart, but Seth pulled it back around him, and Mom got up to fetch the runner.

“What’s wrong?” he whispered, his lips so close, his warm breath heated her to her core.

She balled her fist into the hem of Seth’s polo shirt. It must have been another of Sharon’s shopping spree finds, but the dark gray suited him well.

What was wrong? Everything was wrong, and she certainly didn’t want to explain it within a sea of onlookers. Already, they knew too much about her. Too much of the wrong information, but too much all the same.

“Just a little stressed,” she said, finally, and let out a long exhale when her hand found the hot skin of his abdomen just beneath the shirt hem. That small connection bolstered her. Grounded her, and let things make a bit more sense.

“Want to talk about it? Am I allowed to ask you that?”

She stopped kneading his skin, and furrowed her brow at him. “Why wouldn’t you be allowed?”

His mouth opened, then closed, and his jaw tightened. He seemed to be considering his words and their consequences. After a moment, he settled on, “I was advised to be careful.”

“In what way and by whom?”

“I think I’ve already said too much.”

Meg planned to press him for more information, but Toby and Mom returned with ice-cream bars and distributed one to each of them.

Meg glowered at Seth, lest he think he was off the hook that easily, and a wide grin spanned his handsome face.

Toby plunked down between them, which made Meg pull her arm free of Seth’s waist.

Mom leaned in close and whispered, “I can’t remember ever being seen in the same venue with Spike.”

Meg licked around the base of her ice cream and pondered that. Naturally, her parents had met Spike…eventually, but had they all ever been out in the same place? If they had, Meg couldn’t remember it.

She whispered back, “Is that a judgment or an exaltation?”

Mom seemed to ponder it, then leaned back in. “I like Seth. You did good this time. He’ll take care of you.”

“I don’t need to be taken care of.”

“We all need to be taken care of. Every one of us in different ways. If anyone tells you otherwise, they’re a sociopath.”

“In what way, exactly, do I need to be taken care of?”

Mom rolled her eyes, shook her head, and bit into her ice cream’s crunch coating. “I must have failed somewhere raising you,” she said, then repeated the sentiment to Dad. “We messed up somewhere.”

“Huh?” Dad tore his gaze from the lead guitarist’s discordant solo and widened his eyes at his wife.

“We messed up,” Mom repeated.

He patted the ground beside him. “You need napkins?”

Mom sighed.

“Hey!” Toby called out with a giggle as he was lifted bodily from the blanket and tossed into the air.

Meg tipped her head back to find the child thief was only Curt, who set Toby on the ground before ruffling his messy hair.

Erica knelt in the small gap between Seth and Meg and gave the big man a bit of a squeeze. “Hey, guys. Didn’t know you were going to be here, or I would have packed a bigger picnic.”

Seth perked up noticeably in a way he never did when Meg mentioned cooking. “Picnic? What’d you pack?”

Curt squatted next to his wife and balanced his elbows on his thighs. “You were just over for dinner last night. You certainly can’t be starved already.”

Starved? Last night? Was that why he’d stumbled into the condo at ten o’clock smelling of Latin spices and refusing dinner leftovers?

“No, not at all. Just curious. Is it leftovers?”

He sounded like a kid on Christmas Eve, dying to know if that big box beneath the tree contained some great toy, or if it was just clothes.

“I’ve got some leftovers for you,” Meg cooed, leaning forward and patting his knee.

“Really?”

“Mm-hmm. You missed dinner last night.”

Erica cringed.

Good.

Seth opened his mouth to say something, but Toby cut him off.

“They’re calling people up to the stage! Come on!” He pulled Seth to his feet, who aided the process along probably with a great deal of zeal.

“I gotta see this up close,” Curt said, following in their wakes.

“That makes two of us,” Mom said. She handed Meg her ice-cream stick and called back, “Watch my purse.”

Dad sighed and scrambled to his feet next, his camera at the ready. “Your brother never believes me when I tell him about this stuff. I want proof this time.”

They were swallowed by the crowd in front of the stage, and Erica eased onto the blanket, sitting cross-legged with a sigh.

“I think I’ve got a couple of years on you,” Meg said drily. “Your joints should be in better shape than mine.”

The brunette chuckled and rolled her shoulders back. “Everything hurts. Back. Joints. Head. I’ve felt awful since Bermuda, but I’ve been putting up a good front in front of Curt so he doesn’t ask too many questions.”

Annoyance at Erica’s dinner-guest poaching temporarily forgotten, Meg asked, “Why would he ask questions?”

Erica pulled back the lid on the picnic basket and withdrew a bottle of water. “We don’t keep secrets anymore, me and Curt, but we’ve had a rough year.”

Meg hadn’t heard that. Last she knew, their marriage was airtight. Solid as a rock. They were very different people but just suited each other in a way many couples didn’t. Yin and yang.

Erica must have noticed the confusion on Meg’s face, because she put up her hands and said, “Not like that.” She took a long draught of her bottled water and screwed the cap back on. “Nobody knows. I didn’t want people to feel sorry for me, you know? Thought the first couple of times were just flukes, and then after the third one Curt didn’t want to try again. I think he took it worse than I did.”

“Try again… You mean…” The realization smacked Meg like a cold fish in the face.

Erica nodded and held up three fingers. “Three in a row, and Doc couldn’t figure out why. Said there was probably nothing wrong and that maybe fifty percent of pregnancies aren’t viable. We just happened to be on the losing end of the odds.”

“You’re afraid to get his hopes up again.”

Erica nodded and looked down at the thumbs she twirled around each other. “He thinks I’ve just been burning the candle at both ends. I go straight to bed after work.”

Meg had no words…at least, none that seemed suitable. She’d actually hidden her pregnancy with Toby until about halfway in at Spike’s behest. He’d made her feel like being pregnant was shameful—like it’d been all her fault, and he was just an innocent bystander of the process. But the truth was, even as she hid it from her closest friends and family, she bonded with that little ball of cells from the moment the little line on the pee stick turned blue. She couldn’t imagine having that glimmer of hope, only for it to be dashed so quickly afterward. Couldn’t imagine plotting out the kid’s future and starting to make plans, only for them to never come to fruition.

“So…are you okay this time, or…” It seemed crass to ask, but Erica had shared that much already, so maybe she’d been yearning to tell someone.

Erica made a waffling gesture with her hand. “So far so good. I’m around ten weeks and everything looks okay so far. Decided not to say anything to Curt until I passed the thirteen-week mark.”

“That’s grueling, having to keep that secret when it’s such a good one.”

Erica nodded and rolled her head from side to side, groaning at the kinks. “I’m sure it’ll all be worth it in the end, huh? Sometimes we have to walk through fire to get to things that seem to fall easily into other peoples’ laps.”

“I know that feeling.”

Erica nodded, lips set in a tight line. “Yeah.”

“Think he’ll make a good dad?” Meg indicated Curt, who was doubled over laughing near the stage edge as Seth danced badly with a giggling Toby on his shoulders.

Erica’s features softened and her lush lips spread into a grin. “Hope so. I can say that behind that sarcastic facade, he’s a protective brother. Fabulous godfather. Attentive son. Doting uncle. I think he’ll have a short learning curve.”