by Julie James
Nadia checked her watch. “Two minutes.”
Hearing that, Victoria got down to business. “All right. Here’s what you’re going to do: grab Joaquin and explain the situation. Tell him I said to start his research with People versus Melongo. I know that the Illinois Supreme Court recently struck down the state eavesdropping law as overbroad, but I’m not sure how the case law has shaken out since then. That’s the first thing we need to figure out. And tell him to also check into whether there’s any kind of exception if the eavesdropper owns the phone line on which one of the parties was talking—like some kind of implied consent.”
“Got it.”
“When you get back to the dep, don’t mention the wiretap issue yet,” Victoria said. “Take another break in forty-five minutes, and then you, Joaquin, and I will discuss whether we have a move here. Sound good?”
Nadia nodded. “Yes. Thanks.”
Moments later, Will walked into her office. “I’m going to Perry’s for lunch. Do you want me to pick up your usual?”
Always a lifesaver, this man. “That would be great—thank you. And keep my schedule clear at one o’clock. I’ll need fifteen minutes to meet with Nadia and Joaquin.”
The rest of the afternoon was nonstop, between advising Nadia and finalizing a marital settlement agreement in one of Victoria’s own cases. It was after seven o’clock when she finally got home, stripped out of her suit, and changed into jeans and a flowy, sleeveless shirt. Luckily, she had a quiet evening planned. She’d probably just rent a movie since her trusty e-reader had been failing her as of late—nothing she read seemed to grab her attention these days.
After unpacking her briefcase, she realized she’d forgotten to check her mailbox on the way up. Sticking her keys into her back pocket, she headed down the hallway and waited for the elevator while scrolling through all the work e-mails she needed to catch up on over the weekend.
Ding!
As the elevator doors opened, she looked up from her phone and saw Ford standing inside.
With an attractive blond woman next to him.
It took Victoria a moment to find her voice. “Hi.”
“Victoria—hi.” He smiled awkwardly at her while holding the elevator door open for the blonde, who gave Victoria a polite hello as she stepped out.
Ford followed the blonde out of the elevator, then—always the gentleman—he held the door open for Victoria, too.
“Thanks.” She stepped inside, and then turned around and looked at Ford.
As their eyes met, the elevator doors slid shut between them.
Swallowing, Victoria pushed the button for the ground floor. Then she looked up as the elevator descended.
Her lip began to tremble.
Shit.
Her stomach rolled. Covering her mouth, the instant the elevator doors opened she bolted out and pushed through the front door. She ran straight to the alley behind her building and dry-heaved while holding on to the brick wall with one hand.
Afterward, she leaned against the wall, catching her breath.
She couldn’t go back to her place. She couldn’t risk that she would hear them laughing, or—God—hear the bed squeaking or banging against the wall, or the blonde moaning his name, or worst of all, Ford moaning as some other woman touched him, kissed him, stroked him, and figured out all the ways to drive him crazy, like Victoria once had.
She pushed herself off the brick wall and started walking.
Several people passing by on the sidewalk did a double take when they saw her. Victoria ignored all the looks, for once not giving a shit what anyone else thought. Seven blocks later, she walked into Rachel’s boutique shop, ringing the chime on the door.
Standing behind the counter while tagging a dress, Rachel looked over. Her eyes widened. “Oh my God, Victoria, what happened? Are you okay?”
Victoria caught sight of her reflection in the mirror behind Rachel. Thick black rivulets of mascara streamed down her face, mixing with her tears.
She gave her friend a wry smile. “I think it’s safe to say I’m definitely not okay.”
* * *
AUDREY ARRIVED AT the shop ten minutes later with a bottle of bourbon in hand.
“Holy shit, Rachel wasn’t kidding. You are a mess.” Audrey sat down next to Victoria on the couch by the dressing rooms. “What happened?”
Victoria went for a joke. “Well, for starters, apparently I do like Ford.”
“Oh.” Audrey smiled. “I hate to break it to you, sweetie, but Rachel and I figured that out at the barbecue.”
Rachel came out of the back room with three coffee cups and set them down on the table in front of the couch. “He brought home another woman tonight.”
Shocked, Audrey turned to Victoria. “What?”
“I ran into them at the elevator,” Victoria said.
“And then she puked in the alley,” Rachel added.
Audrey’s head spun. “You puked in the alley? Wow. You must really like him.”
“Oh, God. Don’t say that.” Victoria bent her head over her knees and took slow, deep breaths.
“The vomiting seems to be her way of expressing her feelings toward Ford,” Rachel told Audrey.
“Aw. And they say romance is dead.”
Her head against her knees, Victoria groaned. “Don’t make me laugh—my stomach already hurts enough.” She sat up. “I keep picturing him with that other woman, and thinking about what they might be doing right now.” She looked at her friends. “I did this.”
“You? Um, no, he did this,” Audrey emphasized. “He’s the asshole, bringing home another woman while you two are seeing each other.”
“We’re not seeing each other anymore. I ended it almost two weeks ago,” Victoria said.
Now it was Rachel’s turn to look surprised. “You did? Why?”
“Well . . . that’s kind of a long story.”
Rachel reached out and squeezed her hand. “We have all night.”
Audrey held up the bottle. “And we have bourbon.”
That got a smile out of Victoria. “Okay.” As the three of them sat there, drinking bourbon out of coffee cups in the middle of the store, she proceeded to tell Audrey and Rachel everything: the flashback she’d had during the break-in, her mom’s attempted suicide, her panic attacks, the therapy with Dr. Metzel, and, ultimately, her breakup with Ford.
“It’s a lot to take in, I know,” Victoria said.
“Why didn’t you tell us about all this earlier?” Audrey asked gently. “Vic, we’re your best friends. My God, after my divorce you moved me into your place and let me stay there for almost a month.”
Victoria smiled sheepishly. “I’m good at handling other people’s problems. Just . . . not so much my own.”
Rachel put a hand to her heart. “I’m still stuck on the part when Ford carried you off the train.”
“It was either that or leave me there, clogging up the aisle at his stop,” Victoria joked. When Rachel gave her a look, she turned more serious. “I know. He was really sweet and I . . . freaked out and pushed him away.”
“So? What are you going to do about it?” Audrey asked.
Victoria pulled back. “Do about it? There’s nothing I can do. Whatever we had between us, he’s obviously moved on to some other woman.”
“You don’t know what that was,” Rachel said. “You were wrong that other time, when you saw him with the woman who turned out to be his friend.”
“Even if that were true, he’s not looking for a serious relationship,” she pointed out.
“That’s what you said, too, once,” Audrey said.
“And I’m still saying that.” Victoria paused for a moment. “Maybe.” When her friends smiled, she pointed, quick to cut them off at the pass. “No. Whatever you’re thinking, just . . . no.”
“I’m thinking you have to tell Ford how you feel,” Audrey said.
Oh, God.
Feeling her stomach clench, Victoria bent over, her head between her l
egs. “Yep. Here I go again.” Breathing deep for several moments, she turned her head to the side and peeked at her two friends. “You can’t be serious. Look at me.” She sat up. “I’m supposed to ignore the fact that Ford says he doesn’t want anything serious, and the fact that he may have already moved on to someone else, and just walk up to him and lay my feelings on the line, without having the faintest idea whether he feels the same way? Do you honestly think—even on my best day—that I’m capable of putting myself out there like that?”
Audrey and Rachel both looked her dead in the eyes. “Yes.”
Victoria blinked, not having expected them to be so unequivocal.
Then Rachel grinned. “Although on your worst day, you might end up puking on his shoes. So choose your moment wisely.”
Right. Helpful.
* * *
SEATED AT HIS dining table, Ford looked over when he heard a front door close in the hallway.
He went momentarily still, and then realized that the sound was too muted to be coming from Victoria’s place.
Turning back to his laptop, he tried to focus on his research. He was working on yet another follow-up piece in his probation department series, cross-checking arrest records against the list of nearly one thousand convicted felons who hadn’t been seen by their probation officers for two or more months. It was turning out to be a massive investigation, although at least now he had someone to share the workload.
He and Samantha, his co-worker on the Watchdog Team, had planned to meet that afternoon to divvy up the names of lost convicts. But then her one year-old son’s nanny had called in sick and Samantha had taken the day off. Eager to nevertheless get a jump on things over the weekend, and seeing how she lived only five minutes away in Bucktown, she’d offered to drop by Ford’s place that evening, after her husband got home from work, so that Ford could bring her up to speed on the investigation and give her copies of his files.
It was a wholly platonic meeting—obviously—but he knew what Victoria must have been thinking when she saw him and Samantha heading to his place. And he couldn’t decide what bothered him more: that Victoria would assume he was already hooking up with someone else, or that he found it so incredible that she might actually think that. Because he and Victoria were done. Finished. And they’d never had any kind of commitment between them even when they were together. So if he wanted to go on a date, or meet a woman for drinks, or bring a whole goddamn bachelorette party back to his place for a wild orgy, he was perfectly free to do so.
But there’d been that look that Victoria had given him when she saw him with Samantha.
And that look was bullshit.
That look had pissed him off all over again, because they’d had their nice talk last week. They’d had their closure and they’d parted ways on good terms and they were supposed to be done but that look, that fleeting, brief, probably meaningless look of hers . . . had given him hope.
And he didn’t want to have hope.
Not when he knew exactly how this would turn out.
He checked his watch and saw that it was nearly ten o’clock at night. Swearing under his breath—so much for not sitting around ruminating over Victoria—he grabbed his phone and nearly texted Charlie and Tucker before stopping himself. He knew they would be at a bar, and he had zero interest in the bar scene tonight. Texting Brooke also was out of the question, because the only reason a single man would ever text his married female friend at ten o’clock on a Friday night was to talk, and he didn’t want to talk. He just wanted to get out of his place and burn off some energy.
So he changed into his workout clothes, went to his twenty-four-hour gym, and just . . . ran. On the treadmill, for an hour. Afterward, he lifted weights, and by the time he got home it was after midnight. He took a long, hot shower that sapped every last bit of mental and physical energy out of him, and then he crashed hard.
He slept until nine o’clock, then dove back into the research he’d started the night before. All morning long, there was this nagging sensation in the back of his mind, and at noon, when he broke for lunch, he finally figured out what it was.
No hair dryer.
Granted, there’d been a couple other weekend mornings when Victoria had skipped her interminable hair-drying routine. But now that he thought about it, he hadn’t heard any sound coming from her place for nearly the last eighteen hours. No hair dryer, no heels on the hardwood floors, no shower, sink, or bathtub running, and no front door opening and closing. Not even a toilet flushing.
And that was the moment he started to get a little worried.
He thought about texting her, but to say, what, exactly? Are you okay? Did you come home last night? Because I’ve been sitting here like a loser wondering why I never heard your hair dryer or your bathtub running.
Yeah, because that wouldn’t be creepy and stalker-ish at all.
He went into the bedroom and pressed his ear against the wall, listening for any signs of life.
Nothing.
He’d slept hard last night; he supposed it was possible she’d come home after he’d gone to bed—or, maybe, while he was at the gym—and he’d missed that. And then, perhaps, he’d somehow also missed all sounds of her stirring this morning. Maybe on some subconscious level, he’d wanted to tune her out, so that he didn’t have to think about her.
Or maybe she’d just been missing for the last eighteen hours.
Fuck.
He went to her front door and knocked.
No answer.
Once back inside his loft, he told himself to keep calm, that there was no reason to believe Victoria was in any trouble. Still, to be on the safe side, he grabbed his phone, having thought of a plausible reason to text her. He would say that he planned to install a new faucet and towel bar in his master bathroom, and wanted to make sure this wasn’t an inconvenient time for her since there would be a lot of noise. It was a short, polite question, and she would write back some short, polite response. And then he would know she was okay and could move on with his day.
He was halfway through typing the message when he heard her front door open.
Thank God.
He exhaled in relief—both that she was safe and that he didn’t have to go dig out the towel bar in his closet and start drilling away in order to maintain his cover story. Realizing he never had grabbed that lunch, he stuck his wallet, keys, and phone in the pockets of his jeans, tucked his sunglasses into his shirt, and headed out.
As he was shutting his door, Victoria’s door opened. She stepped out into the hallway carrying a bag of garbage.
And wearing the same shirt and jeans that she’d had on the night before.
She spotted him and blushed, her hand instantly smoothing down her wild-ish, wavy hair. “Hi.”
Feeling as though the wind had been knocked out of him, Ford momentarily had no words.
Right.
Understood.
Judging from her hair and clothes, it was pretty clear that Victoria the Divorce Lawyer had not, in fact, slept in her own bed last night.
He somehow managed to keep his tone casual. “Hey there.”
She smiled hesitantly, probably worried he was going to say something that would make this really uncomfortable. “Heading out?”
“Uh, yes. I’m meeting someone for lunch, actually.” He even threw in a sheepish smile, as if he, too, was acknowledging the awkwardness of the situation. Because at this point, screw it. He might as well let her think he was dating Samantha. It was better than letting her think the alternative—that he was the fool who’d been worrying and waiting for her to come home all night.
“Oh.” She shifted the garbage from one hand to the other. “You know, I was—”
“Sorry.” He cut Victoria off, feigning an apologetic smile. He wouldn’t make a scene, or say anything to make her feel awkward. But he couldn’t stand there, talking like everything was normal. Not right now. “But I’m actually running a little late, so . . . ” He pointed to
his watch.
“Right—of course.” She swallowed and waved him on with her free hand. “Have a good lunch, then.”
“Thanks.” With a nod in good-bye, he headed down the hallway. Not bothering with the elevator, he pushed through the stairwell door and kept walking, down four flights of steps, and then out the building’s front door and into the bright summer sunshine.
He put his sunglasses on as he headed down the sidewalk, ignoring the ache in his chest.
So much for that last shred of fucking hope.
Thirty-one
THE NEXT MORNING, there was an unexpected knock on Ford’s front door. When he answered, he found Brooke standing there, one hand on her hip and the other one holding a ticket.
Ford frowned. “Didn’t you get my text? I said I’ll pass on the game.”
“Oh, I got your text.” Without waiting for an invitation, she bulldozed her way into his place and walked straight into his kitchen. She grabbed his phone off the counter and used it to turn on a satellite radio station. Music suddenly filled his entire loft, piping through the built-in speakers.
He raised an eyebrow. “Are we . . . having a party?”
She nodded in the direction of Victoria’s place. “Background noise.” She set his phone down. “Free skybox tickets to today’s Cubs/Sox game and you’ll pass? There isn’t a man in Chicago who would turn that down.”
“With you and Cade, Vaughn and Sidney, and Huxley and Addison? No, thanks—it’s all couples.” And while normally he would jump at the chance to watch the Crosstown Classic from one of Wrigley Field’s luxury suites, today he wasn’t in the mood to be the odd man out with a bunch of happily married or engaged twosomes.
“Fine. I’ll invite Charlie and Tucker, too,” she said.
“They might as well be a couple,” he said dryly.
She looked at him for a moment, and then pointed. “You told me men don’t do this.”
“Do what?”
She walked around the counter, speaking animatedly. “Two years ago. We were at Firelight, having drinks. Cade and I had split up and you said that men don’t mope around after a breakup. You said that men avoid issues, get drunk, and pick up a new girl to forget the old one—but that you don’t brood.”
