The Good Girl's Guide to Bad Men (24 page)

Then I dropped the cell phone on my desk and buzzed Hadley over the intercom. I didn't even bother with a greeting after she answered. I simply said, "Is Lexi Garrett still out there?"

Hadley sighed. "Yes. I've tried to talk some sense into her, but she won't leave."

"That's okay," I replied hurriedly. "Would you please send her in?"

There was a baffled silence on the other end, and then Hadley confirmed, "Into your office?"

"Yes," I replied. "Tell her I've changed my mind."

She didn't respond right away, and I had a feeling she was taking some time formulating a reply. Or maybe a round of questions to verify my sanity. But I didn't want to take the chance that whatever she came up with might cause me to second-guess my decision, so I quickly added, "Tell her I'll take on her dad's assignment myself," and then shut off the intercom.

I grappled for a half-empty, week-old bottle of SmartWater that was left on my desk and downed the last of it in one ferocious gulp. Praying that the imaginary pill I had just swallowed was strong enough to do what I needed it to do.

I wasn't looking forward to testing Lexi Garrett's father. And I went back and forth several times on my decision to take on the case. But I finally convinced myself that there was no harm in finding out the truth about Dustin Garrett's intentions. If he passed the inspection, then there was nothing more to do. And then at least I could put this little girl's fears to rest by assuring her that her father is a devoted, caring, and loyal husband to her mother. Something I wish I could have been assured of at age twelve. Hell, at any age, really. On the other hand, if he failed the inspection, at least I could offer his wife some valuable information that she otherwise would never have known.

So after much deliberation and a short fifty-minute flight into the desert, I found myself standing in front of the bathroom mirror of my hotel room in the Hyatt Grand Champions Resort in Palm Springs. The same hotel where Dustin Garrett and his buddies were shacked up for an innocent weekend of golf, martinis, and cigars. Or so Dustin had told his wife and two children.

I suppose I would deliver the final verdict on the accurateness of the word
innocent.

I finished applying a coat of jet black eyeliner around the inside of my lower lid and touched up my mascara. Tonight I was wearing a vapor gray strapless dress that fell to just above my knees and strappy black Manolos.

I adjusted the bobby pins that were holding my sophisticated updo in place, then took one final glance in the mirror before grabbing my hotel room key and my bag and heading out the door.

As I walked down the hallway toward the elevator, I felt confident and self-assured. My legs glided steadily underneath me as if they already knew exactly where to go, what to do, how to cross. Tonight marked my first official assignment as an unretired, unattached, full-time fidelity inspector. But the way my body moved and my head stayed clear and focused, it felt as though I had never left. I had spent almost a year sitting behind that desk, watching as my five trustworthy associates took on assignment after assignment, and I'd actually managed to convince myself that the life I had traded in was a good exchange. I'd
actually
thought that I was done with this lifestyle for good. But really, it was only a temporary vacation. A short hiatus. A brief diversion thrown at me for the sole purpose of being able to realize for myself who I really am. And finally come to terms with what I'm supposed to be doing.

As the elevator doors slid open and I stepped inside, I was overcome with a familiar sensation. As if I were stepping onto a stage, assuming the role that I had been hired to play. A role that had been designed specifically for Dustin Garrett.

Tonight I would no longer be Jennifer Hunter, I would be known only as Ashlyn, an overworked executive assistant, traveling with her boss on business and trying to get away for a few hours of relaxation and a strong martini.

Everything felt natural. Instinctive, almost. Not forced and artificial like so many of the emotions I had felt with Jamie in the last couple of months. I knew that I was made to do this. Made to walk into that hotel bar. Made to follow Dustin Garrett's lead until I had reached a solid conclusion about the man I was about to encounter.

When I exited the elevator and made my way into the lounge, I searched the room for a group of early-forty-something guys who looked as if they were enjoying a weekend retreat away from their everyday wives . . . I mean,
lives.
Lexi had e-mailed me a photograph of her father, but as for the rest of the men on this trip, I was completely in the dark.

When I didn't spot them right away, I decided to head for the bar and take a seat. It would be easier (and less suspicious-looking) if I continued to survey the room from there. Lexi had sworn she had overheard her father on the phone saying that they would be grabbing a drink at the hotel bar before their eight
P.M.
dinner reservation. I checked my watch: It was almost seven-thirty. But then again, all of my intelligence had come from a person whose generation considered Facebook their primary news source. I decided to give it until eight before I modified my strategy.

The bar was fairly crowded. After I had ordered my martini, I swiveled around in my chair so I could get a better view of the clientele. I took a sip of my drink, knowing full well that I would have to pace myself if I was ever going to get through a night of drinking with a bunch of middle-aged golf buddies. I supposed it was time to start building up my tolerance again.

As I sipped, I systematically scanned each of the tables in the room, numbering them in my head from left to right and making mental notes. It was the game I always used to play when waiting for a subject to show up.

Table 1: Middle-aged married couple. Probably celebrating a relationship milestone. Fifteen-year anniversary, maybe twenty.

Table 2: Two young men in their late twenties. One straight, one pretending to be straight. The man on the right has no idea that his friend is gay. Nor does he know that his friend will do just about anything to hook up with him.

Table 3: Girls' night out. Six total. Possibly a bachelorette party. But without the visual confirmation of a white veil or any other conventionally identifying bridal trademarks, it's difficult to be certain.

Table 4: Early-forty-something male with embarrassingly younger (looking) female. With her back facing me, exact age is only a guess at this point. But given her hairstyle (long and blond), dress choice (tight and pink), and body type (thin and shapely), my guess is mid-to late twenties.

Table 5: Mother and daughter bonding . . .

Wait a minute.

I suddenly stopped and jerked my head back a few inches to Table 4. As I glimpsed past the blonde in the tightly fitted pink dress and focused my attention on the man she was with, I narrowed in on his gray dress shirt, black slacks, and half-empty wineglass sitting in front of him. Why did he look so familiar? Did I know him from somewh—

Oh, God.

My eyes widened and my jaw almost dropped to the floor. I could only imagine how I must have looked to everyone else in the room, staring . . . no,
gawking
at a perfect stranger on the other side of the room.

But that was just the thing. He
wasn't
a perfect stranger. I knew exactly who he was. That was Dustin Garrett! I was certain of it. I hadn't recognized him when I first walked in because I'd assumed he'd be with a large group of middle-aged men with beer guts hanging over their khaki golf pants. But that wasn't the context of this situation at all, was it?

He was with a woman. And from the looks of it, a young one at that.

Okay,
I told myself as I forced my mouth shut and struggled to appear normal again.
Maybe she's just a friend. Or a work colleague. Or a manager at the hotel, and they're discussing the unsatisfactory condition of his room and how she's going to make it up to him.

Just because a man is sitting at a table across from a blond woman nearly fifteen years younger than him doesn't automatically mean he's—

And just then, Dustin leaned in and rested his hand on the girl's leg as he whispered something in her ear. She started giggling flirtatiously, tipping her head back and letting her long blond hair cascade down her back in soft layers. Then, as he pulled away, he allowed his lips to playfully drag against the side of her neck. She grabbed his face in her hands and pulled him in for a deep kiss. When they finally broke apart, she reached out and seductively wiped her lip gloss from his bottom lip.

Okay, well, that settles it.

There was no way Dustin Garrett was here with a bunch of amateur golf players. That was clearly a ruse to get out of the house. These two had come here together. And judging by the girl's sultry designer dress and the hint of lingerie straps underneath, she had packed for the occasion. This was not a random meeting in a bar. This girl hadn't beaten me to the punch by just a few minutes—she had beaten me to the punch by at least a few weeks. If not more.

I spun my chair around and faced the bar again, taking a long, much less inhibited swallow from my martini glass and grimacing as the chilled, bitter liquid oozed down my throat. So Lexi Garrett was right. In fact, she was more right than she even knew. She had a feeling something was off, something wasn't right, and she assumed that her dad was
capable
of cheating on her mom. As it turns out, he had already been doing it. And for God knows how long.

I marveled once again at the keen perception of that little girl. How could she have known that? How could she have seen something that her mom has been missing for quite some time? She was supposed to be focusing on clothes and gossip and shirtless boy bands. She was not supposed to be worrying about things like this. And she was certainly not supposed to know about them.

But now she would have to know. I would have to tell her. Because she was, after all, the client. And although I had refused to take her money, no matter how much she'd persisted, she had still come to me for an answer, and therefore I was obliged to give it to her.

I took another sip of my drink.

But what if she didn't have to know? I speculated suddenly.

What if I refused to tell her and instead insisted that I break the news directly to Mrs. Garrett? Clearly, that would be the responsible way to handle this. She may have had the awareness of a ninety-year-old soul, but there was no way Lexi Garrett could know about her father's affair before her mother did. Or worse yet, bear the burden of having to
tell
her mother what she knew. I knew from firsthand experience that this was definitely not an age-appropriate responsibility to bestow upon a child.

I had to admit, though. As confident as I felt walking into this bar tonight, I was extremely relieved that I wouldn't have to go through with the assignment myself. The intention to cheat had apparently been confirmed long before I was even brought into the picture.

I downed the last of my drink and set down a twenty-dollar bill for the bartender. At least now I could enjoy a nice, relaxing evening on my own. I would order room service, take a hot bath, curl up in one of those fluffy white robes they hang on the bathroom door, and spend the night watching pay-per-view movies. And right now, nothing sounded more appealing.

I spun around on the chair and adjusted my dress as I stood up. Dustin Garrett would never even know that I was here, yet my presence tonight would undoubtedly change his life forever.

As I passed by Dustin's table on my way back to the lobby, I took one final glance in his direction. He and his date were gathering their belongings and preparing to leave. I checked my watch: It was five to eight. They were probably heading off to that eight o'clock reservation that Lexi had overheard him talking about. If only she had paid a bit more attention, she might have caught on to the fact that the reservation was only for two.

As the blonde in the pink dress slowly stood up and turned to pull her cream-colored pashmina off the back of her chair, I finally managed to get a glimpse of her face. And it was at that exact moment that she happened to glance in my direction as well.

Our eyes met and both our bodies froze, her cream pashmina slipping from her grasp and floating gracefully to the ground.

I could feel my legs start to give out beneath me, and I reached out to grab on to the nearest thing I could find to steady myself. It turned out to be the shoulder of a man in a dark suit. He looked up at me with a quizzical expression, but I didn't remove my hand. I feared that if I did, I might fall over.

To anyone else in the bar, it might have looked as though we were bitter enemies. Timeless adversaries. Having once divided the country into two equal and separate sections with the distinct understanding that she would never infiltrate my territory and I would never infiltrate hers. And now one of us had had broken that code and was standing in enemy territory.

But that couldn't have been further from the truth.

Because the woman standing in front of me in the fitted pink satin dress, ready to be whisked away to a romantic dinner with the man I had been hired to test, was not my enemy. She was one of my best friends.

And she had clearly been keeping a very dark secret from me.

"Zoë?" I finally managed to get out after my eyelids stopped blinking rapidly in utter disbelief. But the question mark in my voice wasn't for the purpose of verifying that it was really her. I knew it was her. She was standing right in front of me. And despite the fact that she
never
wore pink, or owned a dress that even remotely resembled the one she was wearing now, I recognized her right away. The question was directed more at her reason for being here. In this bar. In this city. With
this
man.

My subject.

"Jen?" she asked immediately in return, with seemingly the same motivation behind her punctuation. "What are you doing here?"

But I lobbed the question right back at her. "No, what are
you
doing here?"

She glanced anxiously between me and Dustin, clearly wondering how much I could possibly know and how much she should divulge as a result. "I'm here with my, um . . ." she stammered slightly. "My boyfriend."

"The one you refused to tell us about?"

She shifted her weight uneasily. "Uh, yeah."

"And now I know why," I stated, my voice blatantly accusatory.

Zoë hesitated again, sneaking a wary glance at Dustin. "I'm not sure what you mean."

But I didn't feel like playing this bullshitting game. So I grabbed her by the elbow and steered her into a nearby corner. She looked apologetically back at Dustin and mouthed, "I'll be right back."

"I'm on an assignment," I hissed once we were out of earshot.

Zoë still insisted on playing coy and unassuming. "Really? Wow, what a coincidence."

But I simply rolled my eyes. "And
he
is the subject." I jabbed my finger back toward Dustin.

Shock spread across Zoë's face, and I realized that she hadn't understood just how much of a coincidence this was until right now. "Dustin?" she confirmed in disbelief.

"Yes!" I gasped.

Her skin suddenly turned a very pale shade of white, which happened to be the second uncharacteristic color I had seen on her tonight.

"Oh, my God." Zoë's voice was quickly filling with panic. "Alice hired you? She sent you here?"

Now it was my turn to shift uneasily on my feet. "Well, not exactly."

"What do you mean, not exactly?"

"Actually," I began hesitantly, "Lexi hired me. She's the one who came to my office."

Zoë's eyebrows crumpled together. "Lexi, as in Dustin's
daughter
?"

I nodded. "She sensed something was going on with her dad, and I guess her friend overheard her mom talking about the agency, and so Lexi speculated that maybe her dad was a cheater."

"You took an assignment from a twelve-year-old girl?! Do you know no limits, Jen?"

I purposely ignored her jab. "Well, she was right," I pointed out, motioning toward the general vicinity of the bar.

"That's beside the point. I can't believe you would stoop that low as to take money from a child . . . for this!"

"First of all," I replied sternly, quickly losing my patience with Zoë's blatant subject avoidance, "I didn't take her money. I'm doing this pro bono. And second of all, more importantly, it doesn't matter
who
hired me. What matters is that she was right. Her father is a cheater."

Zoë placed her hands on her hips. "That's a really harsh word. With very negative connotations. I wouldn't go so far as to call him a 'cheater.'"

"Oh no?" I shot back. "What would you call him, then? He's married. With kids. And you're here canoodling with him in a hotel in Palm Springs, where he is
supposed
to be with a bunch of golf buddies. What part of that is
not
cheating, Zoë? What part of that doesn't make you the other woman? The
mistress."

Clearly she didn't like this word any better, because her eyes narrowed and I could almost see steam coming out of her nostrils. "Because it's different," she insisted. "He doesn't love his wife anymore. He loves me. And he's going to tell her about us."

I let out the most audible, irritated groan I could muster. "Oh,
please
! Do you realize how pitiful you sound right now? Do I even have to tell you that story is complete and utter bullshit? Because honestly, I thought you were smarter than that."

"I know how it sounds!" she snapped, immediately defensive. "But I believe him. I do. There's something really good between us. Something I've never felt before. I'm wearing pink, for Christ's sake! And I didn't tell you guys because—"

"Because you knew I'd flip out?" I interrupted, my voice getting louder. With a glance over Zoë's left shoulder, I could make out Dustin still standing by the doorway, looking incredibly awkward and nervous. There was no doubt he was starting to pick up bits and pieces of our increasingly heated conversation. "Honestly, Zoë, I can't believe that after everything I've been through in my life and
everything
I've seen in my career, you would actually date a married man. How could you do that to me?"

Zoë crossed her arms over her chest. "This isn't about
you,
Jen. This is about me. And it's my life and I'll date whomever I want. I promise I was going to tell you once he left his wife. Once we didn't have to sneak around anymore."

"Well, I think that day will be coming sooner than you think. Although my guess is she'll probably be the one doing the leaving."

Zoë's eyes widened. "You're going to tell Lexi about this!?"

I shook my head. "No. That's not exactly appropriate. But I
am
going to tell her mother."

Zoë's body language immediately transitioned from fury to pleading. "Jen, no, you can't do that!"

"Why not?" I asked coolly.

"Please don't. You'll ruin everything!"

I threw my hands in the air. "How will that ruin everything if he's already planning on telling her? I'm just going to make sure she gets the information from a trustworthy source."

"Because," Zoë cried, her eyes growing moist with desperation, "he has to do it at the right time. He has it all planned out."

I groaned again. "God, you sound like such a walking cliché, I can't even deal with it."

I started to turn toward the exit, but Zoë placed her hand on my arm. "You can't tell her. Please, I beg you."

But I brushed it away. "I have a duty to report my findings to my client, and if
this"
—I gave Zoë a disdainful once-over—"is what I found, then that's what she'll get."

And with that, Zoë immediately reverted to anger mode. "So you would betray our friendship? Just like that? With no regard for me or what I want or what I'm feeling? All because of some stupid client?"

I looked into her fuming eyes, my own pupils dilated with rage. But when I opened my mouth, my voice was as calm as a Buddhist monk's. "Yes."

"How dare you," she accused. "How dare you stand there and call
my
life a lie after the way you fucked yours up royally by . . . well,
lying
!"

I could feel the chills run up and down my spine as her comment touched a nerve, but I didn't respond. I just continued to glower at her.

Zoë snorted in disgust as she pushed me aside and stomped past me. "Fine!" she called back, drawing the attention of the entire bar—or the half that hadn't already started to eavesdrop on our argument. "Tell her. What the fuck do I care? I hope that makes you very happy. I hope you can sleep at night knowing that you sold out your best friend for a complete stranger!"

Then she grabbed a very nervous and inquisitive Dustin by the arm and literally dragged him out of the bar, thus ending the first fight Zoë and I had ever had in our ten years of uninterrupted friendship.

Needless to say, I didn't enjoy the relaxing evening I had originally planned for myself. Instead, I spent the rest of the night seething over what had just happened and replaying the argument over and over in my head, each time getting more enraged about the things she had said to me.

She
knew
what infidelity meant to me. She
knew
that my whole life had been built upon the crumbled and unsteady foundation that my father had left behind in the wake of his selfish affairs and halfhearted affections for my mother. Yet she'd stood there
defending
her decision to do the same thing to some other poor, defenseless little girl.

I had given up everything for this job—literally
everything
—to make sure that what happened to me didn't happen to other people. People like Lexi Garrett and her mother. People like Darcie Connors and her unadopted child. And Zoë knew that. She knew what I had sacrificed to make a difference in this world. And it was as if she didn't even care. She couldn't even be
bothered
to care. She was too selfish, too blinded by some bogus excuse for a relationship, to even see what she was doing.

It was as if she had taken an ice pick, stabbed it into my heart, and then just stepped over my lifeless, bleeding body with a shrug and a perfunctory, "Good luck with that, Jen," as she disappeared into the night to enjoy her eight
P.M.
dinner reservation with her married lover.

I attempted to distract myself with my planned pay-per-view movie and a room service cart full of fried food, but my appetite for both had vanished. And what finally calmed me down to the point where I wasn't literally pacing the hotel room, leaving zigzagging tracks across the carpet, was not a relaxing bubble bath or the hotel-supplied fluffy white robe, but the ultimate realization that this whole thing with Zoë was temporary.

There are two things that every woman knows about men (or at least should): (1) They don't change, and (2) they don't leave their wives. Obviously there are exceptions to every rule, but I happen to work in a job that pretty much proves that exceptions are meaningless in the grand scheme of things. Just as a statistician would study a set of data and systematically throw out the anomalies. Because they don't matter. What matters is what's in the middle. The majority. That section of the curve that 99.99 percent of all people fit into.

And you can't live your life hoping to land on the outskirts. Hoping to be that .01 percent exception.

Zoë would evidently have to learn this hard way.

Tomorrow, I would tell Lexi's mother the truth. And Zoë would be able to see firsthand what kind of man Dustin Garrett truly is. And when she did come around and realize the gravity in her mistake, I would be waiting with open arms to comfort her. Because she is my friend, and that's what friends do. They forgive each other's mistakes. Zoë could accuse me all day long of selling her out, betraying our friendship, whatever she wanted. But I knew the truth.

I was doing her a favor.