The P.U.R.E. (5 page)

I couldn’t stop myself from spying on them all through lunch. By the time Scarlett and I finished, I’d shredded my napkin into multiple tiny ropes I tied together to form a long chain with a noose on the end. I had no recollection of what we discussed after the moment I’d seen Jon and his lady friend.

“Come on, Scarlett. Let’s say hello on our way out.” I didn’t wait for her to join me but grabbed my purse and marched toward Jon’s table.

His head popped up, and he did a double take as I neared. Even in the darkened restaurant, I could see him blanch.

I gave him a brittle smile. “Hello, Jon. Get all your errands done?”

“Gayle. Yes, all done. Uh … Thalia, these are two of my co-workers, Scarlett and Gayle.” Though his tone stayed upbeat, his eyes betrayed his discomfort. “This is my girlfriend, Thalia Milano.”

I hoped my jaw hadn’t dropped too far at Jon’s introduction of her as his girlfriend.

Thalia was unreadable—neither friendly nor aloof.

“Nice to meet you.” She was still breathtaking but not as beautiful up close. Her voice had a whiny pitch, and she had a piece of corn stuck between her teeth.

Why had he never mentioned her? Why hadn’t he brought her to the Turner’s party? I prayed to God he hadn’t blabbed about our kiss. Surely not, since it was a one off, but did I detect her giving me the stink eye?

Get over yourself, Gayle.

As Scarlett and I walked back out into the sunshine, she asked, “Did you know he had a girlfriend?”

“No. Did you?”

“If you didn’t know, I sure as hell didn’t. Damn, that woman was gorgeous.” Her gaze squirreled off toward the storefront we approached. “Ooh, I spy a cookie shop. Whaddaya say?”

• • •

Scarlett and I made our way back to the office within our one hour lunch break. Jon returned an hour after us. He walked past my cubicle to his own without a word.

At five, when I left, he stayed. We hadn’t spoken since lunch.

“Good night, Jon. Hasta mañana,” I said.

“Good night, Gayle,” he said after a long silence.

6

I dropped my purse onto my desk with a loud thud and slipped off my jacket. A mellow version of Billy Idol’s “Rebel Yell” wormed its way in my head and demanded I sing along. Why anyone thought piping bad elevator music into an office made sense had always stumped me. We were accountants, not savages.

“Good morning, Jon.”

I’d done some soul searching the night before. Jon had always been extremely private, and I shouldn’t have been surprised to learn he had a woman tucked away.

He didn’t answer me. The shuffle of papers and the pop of his chair were the only sounds he made.

Is he mad at me? Did he not hear me say good morning?

I frowned, hoping my kiss hadn’t caused problems with his relationship.

Time to confront him and muck through any remaining awkwardness.

We met halfway at the divider wall between his cubicle and mine, where he handed me a Starbucks coffee. “Grande extra hot nonfat latte with half a pump of sugar-free cinnamon and a sprinkle of nutmeg on top,” he said.

I looked down at the cup in my hand, filled with my favorite espresso drink, and back up to his face. “Thank you?”

“I lied to you about having to run errands at lunch yesterday. I’m sorry.” He pointed to the coffee. “Peace offering.”

I dredged up some nonchalance and tried it on for size. “You didn’t have to buy me a coffee. So you had a date with your girlfriend, and you told me a little white lie. Big deal.” I shrugged to sell my point. “I’m more curious about why you’ve never mentioned her before—not that you owe me an explanation.”

“She’s not my girlfriend.”

“But you said—”

“I know. Yesterday, I told you she was.”

“You lied about that too?”

“No. She
was
my girlfriend … yesterday. No, that’s not quite true either. She was my fiancée … yesterday. She’s not anymore.”

“Oh.” I scrambled to paste on a sympathetic expression.

“We broke up.”

“Yesterday apparently. I’m so sorry, Jon.”
Liar
.

He shook his head. “Breaking up was something I needed to do, dreaded doing, but now that the deed is done, I feel a lot better.” He rolled his eyes. “She’d been seeing someone else anyway.”

His emotionless delivery puzzled me, but I resolved to play the role of compassionate friend. “Oh. Wow. I’m sorry, Jon. Are you okay?”

“I’m fine, but I’m sorry I lied to you.”

I flipped a hand at him. “Please. This was
so
not about me. No worries. Thanks for the coffee. Very sweet of you but unnecessary. Next one is on me though.”

Stuff a sock in it already, and stop licking your chops, you shameless hussy.
He did
not
break off his engagement to be with you. Plus, he’s a co-worker. Workplace romances never end well.

Did relief flood his features, or was I projecting my own conceit? He seemed more troubled over lying to me than breaking off his engagement.

“Lunch today?” he asked.

“Sure. I’ll call my husband and cancel our nooner. Kidding!” I sidled up beside him and gave a friendly nudge against his arm with the side of my head. He smiled as I retook my chair and held my gaze as I sipped my coffee. I hoped he couldn’t see me grinning like an idiot into my cup.

• • •

Jon and I went to a Chinese restaurant on Pearl and ordered two different dishes to share, family style. When our meals arrived, I confiscated his fork and handed him a pair of chopsticks instead. Jon normally refused to use them, though he swore he knew how.
Time to put up or shut up,
I had decided, and after a lame protest, he begrudgingly agreed.

“I talked to Marilyn about Doug yesterday,” I said as I tackled an oversized broccoli floret with my chopsticks.

“I gather your meeting didn’t go as you’d hoped from the expression on your face when you left her office.” He futzed around with his chopsticks as he talked, holding them all wrong.

I stifled a laugh and the compulsion to taunt him.

“You’re right; it didn’t. To paraphrase, she said, no witnesses, no definitive proof, nothing they can do. Apparently, it’s still a man’s world. I’ve got to learn to live in it and not make waves unless the wrong I suffer is witnessed
and
totally barf-worthy.”

“She actually said that?”

“I took a few poetic liberties with the exact phrasing. She said the best she could do would be to try to keep me off of Doug’s projects in the future. Shouldn’t be too hard considering the size of Anderson-Blakely’s client list.”

“How disappointing.” The ends of his chopsticks slipped past each other and formed an
x
, rendering them useless.

“To say the least. She also said I’d need more than one witness, preferably male and not someone I happen to be dating. Easy enough on the last part … ’cause I’m not.”
Don’t fish if you’re off seafood, Gayle.

“What about the text messages?”

“Unless I can link them to Doug, I can’t use them. In the meantime, all I can do is get a new number.”

“You should.”

“Probably, but dammit, why do I have to turn my life upside down for some pervert? This is so unfair. Why won’t he leave me alone? What did I ever do to him?”

Jon continued to wrestle with his stubborn chopsticks, and I continued to restrain my urge to call him out. “Maybe you intimidate him, and he’s trying to regain his power. Or, maybe he
really
wants to go to bed with you and thinks you like the club ’em over the head caveman approach.”

Though the logical part of my brain recognized Jon was kidding, the voice he used was so low and sexy I nearly forgot we were talking about Doug. I gulped to rein in my derailed thoughts and gave him a raised eyebrow of disapproval. “This is not about sex. It’s about power and anger and misogyny. Your first assumption was closer to the mark.”

“I know. You’re absolutely right.” He nodded and seemed to ponder my dilemma before finally breaking off to spear a large piece of chicken with one of his chopsticks.

A small snicker slipped out, and I launched into a new topic to smother it. “On another more interesting note, I picked up a delicious new tidbit from Marilyn. Seems she, Libby
and
Leslie Turner were sorority sisters at SMU. I said ‘small world’, and Marilyn said ‘too small’. What do you think of that little piece of coinky-dink pie?” I clicked my expertly wielded chopsticks together at him.

“Quite an interesting piece of trivia, Nancy,” he said grinning. With lightning fast reflexes, he parried my pair with his one.

I gasped at his unexpected maneuver. “Nancy?”

“Yeah, Nancy Drew? Girl detective? In the books?”

“Never heard of her.”

“You can’t be serious.” He laid down his lone chopstick next to its mate and gaped at me like I’d totally shattered his illusions of me.

“I’m kidding, you dodo. I was a huge Nancy Drew fan, surprise, surprise. Back when I was a little girl, of course.”

“You’re still a little girl in some ways.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I frowned and prepared myself for a kooky explanation or a reference to my being short.

“You have an exuberant quality about you—sort of like a kid, kind of happy-go-lucky, upbeat.” He bobbed his head from side to side like a cheerleader.

I sighed, and my shoulders fell. “Seriously? I promise I’m not always upbeat. I have my dark side like everybody else.”

“You know how some people are optimists and some are pessimists? You’re an optimist.”

“What are you?”

“An optimist—most of the time.”

“Yeah, you are.” I took a quick sip of my tea before introducing my next salacious tidbit. “I think Marilyn and Libby were more than just friends once upon a time.”

“Where did you get that idea from?”

“You should see Marilyn’s sorority photo in her office. Marilyn has her arm around Libby. Her body is angled, and her complete attention is focused on Libby as if the camera wasn’t even there. She’s gazing at her like she loves her. I’m guessing Libby didn’t feel the same way. It’s obvious Marilyn had her heart broken, and I’ll bet Libby was the one who did it.”

“This is some theory you’ve concocted based on an old photo.” He shook his head, barely containing his amusement.

“You weren’t there when Marilyn explained why she left the White House and returned to Dallas. You didn’t see the way Libby sort of squirmed as if Marilyn’s story made her a smidge uncomfortable. I did, and it all fits, and I’ll bet you Marilyn is still in love with Libby.”

“Ah, love.” He reached across his plate with his left hand, retrieved his chopsticks from where he’d abandoned them earlier with his right hand. With surgical precision, he picked up a tiny water chestnut, and with a wink, popped it into his mouth.

Why you little stinker.
He had been using his non-dominant hand all along. I should have remembered the rotter was left-handed. Score one for Jon, and a blonde moment for Gayle.

7

That afternoon, Bob insisted I drive to the Aphrodite offices to pick up a letter from management rather than use a courier or overnight mail. I didn’t really want to deal with Nicky in case she nursed a grudge from the party, nor did I relish having to wait for Kenneth Petrovich.

Almost forty-five minutes and some seriously heavy traffic later, I entered Aphrodite’s offices. Nicky did not roll out the red carpet for me. “Is Jon with you?” Her words were clipped, her posture rigid.

“No, just me. I only came to pick up a letter from Kenneth. Is he in?”

“I see. I’ll buzz him.”

Polite, but cool, no doubt because I’d foiled her plans to get closer to Jon. She’d also seen us emerge one after the other from Bob’s office after I kissed Jon, then leave together. No telling what she thought of me, but I doubted her opinion fell into the complimentary category.

“Kenneth? Gayle Lindley from Anderson-Blakely is here to pick up a letter from you. Okay, I’ll send her in.”

She hung up and motioned me on, lips pursed and a brow cocked.

“Thanks,” I said.

Kenneth sat, letter in hand, when I entered his office. He didn’t look up but motioned for me to take a seat.

I let my gaze wander around the room but found nothing interesting—not even pictures. His desk was bare but for his pen.

He wore a stoic corporate uniform of a suit and tie with a crisp white button-down, so heavy on the starch he could have been wearing poster board. His tie was a conservative yellow paisley print, and his black jacket hung on a wooden hanger inside his door.

Despite their healthy tan, his well-manicured hands screamed white collar, used to pushing nothing heavier than pens and pencils and the occasional golf club. The cuffs, with the initials “KJP” in traditional monogram fashion, caught my eye.

What does the J stand for—John, James, Jerome, something Serbian?

The cuffs were fastened around his wrists with cufflinks, gold with diamonds encrusted in them, identical to the one I found at the Turner’s house the night of the party.

My mind whirled with possibilities. If the cufflink I’d picked up belonged to Kenneth, what was it doing at the Turner’s house? And why in the gym, of all places?

Kenneth had seemed keen on looking around the bedroom during our house tour. Had he been looking for a missing cufflink the whole time?

Was Kenneth having an affair with Leslie?

I choked on my own spit and coughed.

I gotta tell Jon.

Other than raising his head with a pinched expression, Kenneth ignored me.

Thankfully, he didn’t have any questions or comments. He signed the document, handed it to me, and I headed straight back to the office.

When I arrived, I made a mad dash to Jon’s cubicle. “Walk with me,” I commanded as soon as I had deposited the letter on Doug’s desk.

Jon came with me without a word. Thank goodness he hadn’t become gun shy of me dragging him off alone.

I took him to the library on the fifty-third floor to the most remote set of bookshelves. He glanced around, nervous expectation plastered on his face. Okay, maybe he was a little gun shy.