Not today. Greyson wondered if it was yet another means of castigation.
He hadn’t given Greyson enough time to change, and now he felt conspicuous in the three-piece, pin-striped, navy Armani suit that he had worn for the Skype meeting.
No sooner had they set foot in the restaurant than he was accosted by a small, pale, redheaded virago. She looked pissed off as hell, glaring at him from beneath that vibrant, curly fall of hair. Martine was small, but her hair always made her seem larger and louder than life. It was a ridiculous contradiction—she was such a quiet, unassuming, and shy woman. Well, usually. Today, she looked ready to tear him limb from limb.
“Martine,” he greeted her quietly, preempting what he was sure would be yet another rude demand to know why he had dared set foot anywhere near her friend. She didn’t return his greeting; instead she shocked him by clamping her hand over his forearm and tugging him toward the back of the restaurant.
Recognizing that protesting would only antagonize her further, Greyson allowed himself to be dragged away. This confrontation was inevitable. Martine was Olivia’s best friend, and she clearly felt that gave her some right to comment on Greyson’s relationship with his wife. And while Greyson had never had a best friend, he understood that this was the kind of thing one did for one’s dearest compatriot.
“Try not to kill him, Tina,” he heard Harris say as she led him away. His brother’s voice was quiet, but he could hear an underlying tremor of amusement in the words.
“I’ll just stay here and order for us,” Harris continued in a louder voice. Yes, he was definitely amused. Greyson sighed softly and passively followed Martine into a tiny, untidy back office. Once there she immediately turned to confront him, planting her hands on her hips and glaring at him.
“What do you want, Greyson?” she demanded to know, and he schooled his features into passivity.
“Lunch. But I suppose we’re doing this instead,” he said, maintaining an even tone of voice. Her face went bright red, which clashed horrendously with her hair.
“What the hell are you doing here?” she asked angrily, her voice lowered to a fierce whisper. Knowing that she meant the town and not the restaurant, Greyson chose not to misunderstand, figuring it best to just lay his cards on the table. He hated how everybody seemed to think they had to know his business, but he understood that this was the price he had to pay for his cruel stupidity.
“I’m here for Olivia. And Clara.”
“You don’t deserve them,” she said coldly, and that uncomfortable bit of truth infuriated him. Like he didn’t know that already. Why did everybody just assume that he wasn’t aware of that reality?
His defensive anger made him tap into the icy well of control he kept reserved for just such occasions. It helped him keep a handle on the messy emotions that tended to interfere with most other people’s higher brain functions. This way he always knew what to say and how to react.
“And you don’t have the right to an opinion in this matter,” he said. “It’s between my wife and me.”
Shit. So much for controlling his higher brain functions. That was probably one of the dumbest things he could have said. She paled dramatically, losing the unbecoming red flush, and Greyson braced himself for what was to come.
But when she finally spoke, her voice was admirably quiet and contained just the smallest hint of a tremor.
“The mere fact that I was there when she needed me and you weren’t gives me the right to an opinion, Greyson,” she said, and he swallowed again, his throat tight as he barely stopped himself from nodding at the veracity of that statement. “I was at almost every doctor’s appointment. I was there when she heard your daughter’s heartbeat for the very first time. I held her hand and cried with her. Where the hell were you, Greyson?”
He had no answer to that, but she did.
“You had an important luncheon with a potential investor—that’s what Libby told me. She smiled when she told me, always trying to be so brave. But I could see how heartbroken she was. She asked them to record the ultrasound; she was so sure you’d want to see it. Did you ever watch it?”
He hadn’t, of course. Not then. Only months later, after Clara’s birth. After his recognition of the truth.
But that evening after the missed appointment, Olivia had arranged a special romantic dinner, after which she had intended for them to watch the first ultrasound together. She had been so excited, telling him she knew how disappointed he must have been to have missed the appointment. So she had tried to turn it into an occasion . . . for him.
Greyson, however, had taken one look at the romantic table setting, with candles, red wine for him, and sparkling water for her . . . and hated it! He’d resented her so much for trying to force him to participate when he had tried to make his disinterest so clear.
He had pleaded exhaustion, with no further explanation, and left the dining room. Part of him taking pleasure in the disappointment he saw in her eyes, and the other part just feeling numb and betrayed. He had moved out of their bedroom that night, the baby and imagined adultery more tangible to him after that ultrasound. Continuing to share a bed with her would have felt like a total farce to him.
He couldn’t remember what bogus excuse he had given her. Whatever it had been must have left her so damned hurt and confused.
He clenched his fists and bowed his head and allowed more of Martine’s words to crash into him. Needing to know, wanting to experience some of the pain Olivia must have felt at the time.
“Then there was the day she fell in your penthouse. Where were you that day, Greyson? When she started bleeding and was terrified she would lose the baby? She tried to call you, and it went to voice mail. Over and over again. Harris was in Johannesburg, and she didn’t want to scare her parents, so I rushed over and found her crying, too scared to move, too scared to call an ambulance, because she didn’t want to hear that she’d lost her baby.”
Greyson was fighting for every breath, feeling brutalized and bruised. His knees felt weak, but he fought to stay upright. He had to listen and hear and know . . .
The day she’d fallen . . . she had called him five times, and each time he had dismissed the call. He had been irritated by her persistence. He recalled that much. Because he’d been so fucking busy being fitted for a new tuxedo.
When he had eventually listened to her voice mails, the anxiety and fear in her voice had caused a knot of sick guilt to form in the pit of his stomach. Guilt and fear. She had sounded so terrified he had panicked. Fearing that she had hurt herself badly, he had rushed to the hospital, absolutely petrified that she would die.
But when he had gotten there, it was to find her laughing and surrounded by her parents and Martine and other friends. She had seemed fine . . . and after allowing himself a moment of absolute relief, he had turned and walked away before anyone had spotted him. He had resented her so damned much for making him worry. For making him think she was in danger when she was fine and happy and glowing and beautiful.
The baby hadn’t even crossed his mind. He felt sick with horror at that realization now. What a selfish bastard he had been. What a hateful fucking asshole. She could have lost Clara, and he hadn’t given the awful possibility a moment’s consideration.
He had gone back to see her hours later, once he’d had his emotions under strict control. And she had been so fucking happy to see him. He clearly remembered the words she had spoken when he’d walked into that hospital room. That radiant, relieved smile and those words: Greyson, I’ve been so worried about you.
She had been worried about him.
He felt a sob rise up and lodge in his throat and stumbled backward. Martine was still talking, quietly, fiercely . . . so damned magnificent in her defense of her friend.
So many words . . . so much he had deliberately missed out on. Decorating the nursery, buying toys and clothes, and speculating about the baby’s personality. Martine had been there for that. Harris had too. Olivia’s parents . .
. his parents. Everybody but him.
And then after Clara had been born, her first milestones. The time she had cried nonstop all night and Olivia had panicked. She and Martine had rushed to the hospital with Clara, who had had an ear infection.
And then he heard about all the times Olivia had cried and tried to hide it from her friend . . .
Greyson was sitting down. He didn’t know when his knees had given way, but he was staring up at Martine mutely.
There was no defending himself from this.
Saying Libby was livid when she heard from Harris that Tina had accosted Greyson and dragged him off to the office would be an understatement. She was so furious she couldn’t see straight.
How dare she? Just when Libby was striving to feel a little more understanding and sympathetic toward Tina, she went and did something like this. On Saturday there had been all of that oddness over Clara, and now she was intruding in Libby’s marriage? It was completely out of bounds.
She was so angry she could barely focus on her conversation with Harris. He had persuaded her to sit down at the table with him, and she had done so because she needed to get her temper under control before confronting Tina. But Harris’s words were starting to penetrate.
And she resented him for being so damned sensible.
“Answer me this,” Harris continued, his voice quiet. “How many friends do you have?”
What the hell kind of question was that? Libby shook her head and shrugged. “I don’t know . . . a few.”
“And since coming here? Have you made any new ones?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Of course,” he repeated with a gentle smile. “It’s easy for you—you’re sweet and warm and genuine, and people are drawn to you.”
She shrugged again, not sure where this was going. “Maybe.”
“Tina has one friend, Libby. You,” he was saying quietly, and the words made her feel defensive, guilty, and resentful. It wasn’t Libby’s fault Tina had no friends. The other woman isolated herself from people. She didn’t make any effort to be sociable.
“Well, that’s her own fault,” she said defensively. “She could have more if she wasn’t so distrustful of everybody she met.”
Libby felt small and mean and petty as soon as the words left her lips. It didn’t help that Harris—who had a historically terrible relationship with Tina—looked disappointed in her. Tina had been bullied horribly when they were younger. More so than Libby. Libby was tougher; she could handle the mean kids, but Tina had taken every slight about her weight to heart. And the kids in their school had said terrible things about Tina and her body, often to her face.
“People haven’t given her much reason to trust them in the past, Bug. You know that.” Why did Harris have to be so damned reasonable?
“I’ve been through the same experiences,” she said stubbornly. “I overcame them.”
“Your experiences haven’t been the same,” Harris said. “You had supportive parents; you had me. You had Tina. And once you went to university, you had so many new experiences, made new friends. Tina only ever had you.”
“You don’t even like Tina. I don’t understand why you’re talking like this,” she reminded Harris. Tears welled up in her eyes, and she swiped at them self-consciously. Because he was right: Tina had been lonely. Libby had known that, but she had been preoccupied with her own life and goals. And then later with Greyson and Clara.
Her friendship with Tina had been one sided. She knew that. Always skewed toward what was going on with Libby, and that had been selfish. But it had been so easy to overlook anything going on in Tina’s life because she had been so secretive and closed off since returning from her gap year. Libby had noticed, but she had never really asked Tina about it because she wasn’t sure she would have received a straight answer from the woman. It had been easier to pretend things were still the same and hope that Tina would find her own way out of her funk. Clearly that had been the exact worst thing she could have done, because now Libby wondered how far back she would have to go to find out why Tina was the way she was. Something had gone tragically wrong in her friend’s life, and Libby had been too damned preoccupied with her own concerns to recognize that fact.
“I like Tina,” Harris said, shocking the hell out of Libby. “I’ve always liked her. But I’m the reason she and I could never be friends and never got along. If she hasn’t told you about it, then I can’t. But whatever caused this rift between you, it’s making her”—he paused, and his hand moved toward his chest and grasped something through his shirt—“sad. It’s making her so sad. And I have to tell you I’m finding it . . . difficult to see her sad.”
Wow. Forgetting for a moment what Tina could possibly be saying to Greyson, Libby stared at Harris in absolute wonder. How the hell had she missed this? How could she not have any idea what was going on with her two best friends? It made her feel like a complete jerk. Okay, she had been out of the country for a significant portion of time over the last few years and hadn’t often seen Harris and Tina in the same room together, but to her it had always seemed so black and white . . . Tina had once worshipped Harris, but something had happened to sour her feelings toward him. Whatever it was had caused a massive rift between them. One neither of them would discuss. Libby now acknowledged that—partly due to her own shortcomings as a friend—Tina hadn’t shared anything real with her for a long time. But Harris . . . he talked to Libby about pretty much everything. Yet his relationship with Tina, or lack thereof, had always been off limits. Not that he’d explicitly stated that, but he tended to change the subject whenever Libby even attempted to broach it. In the end it had been easier to just go with it.
Another mistake . . . Libby was starting to recognize that she had made plenty of those in her dealings with both Harris and Tina over the years. She should have pushed them both for answers. There was real history here, and it bothered her that she had no idea what the hell had happened between them. Worse, that she was only now even realizing that it must have been something huge for it to have affected them both so deeply.
She decided to tell Harris about Tina’s reaction to Clara, testing the waters, wanting to see how well he truly knew Tina. Perhaps he could help her shed some light on why Tina was the way she was around the baby. But Harris merely looked confused by her claim that Tina seemed to hate kids.
“She adores Clara,” he said, his voice brimming with certainty. Libby wanted to believe that, she really did. But as she tried to explain Tina’s puzzling behavior to Harris, it just seemed to baffle him even further.
“I don’t know what’s going on, but there has to be a reason for it, Libby. Talk to her.”
His staunch loyalty toward Tina was staggering, and Libby nodded dazedly. “I will, Harris. Of course I will. She’s my best friend, and I do want to figure this out . . .”
The stream of quiet, vehement words staggered to a halt, and Greyson, whose head was spinning with the recognition of so many lost moments, didn’t register it at first. It was only when he heard Olivia’s voice that he finally fought his way through the suffocating waves of guilt, despair, and absolute desolation.
His head whipped up as he desperately sought reassurance that Olivia did not hate him as much as he currently hated himself, but she was staring at Martine. She looked distraught, her eyes shining with unshed tears, and Martine appeared equally distressed.
Greyson leaped to his feet, nearly losing his balance when his knees almost refused to support him. Martine looked at him, and he could see sadness and, if not regret, then dismay in her gaze. It seemed like she was about to say something to him, and Greyson tried not to grimace at the thought of even more from Martine.
She was small, but she packed a hell of a wallop. Greyson didn’t think he could survive a second round with her. But Olivia asked her to leave, and Martine nodded before glancing at Greyson again. Her expression was troubled, but she said no more. She and Olivia exchanged a few more words before Martine l
eft the room.
“Greyson?” Olivia sounded wary, and she was watching him uncertainly. Greyson wondered why she appeared so alarmed. Surely he didn’t look that bad? Or maybe he looked like he felt . . . like he’d been run over by a freight train. “Tina shouldn’t have been that . . . uh . . . blunt.”
“How much did you hear?” he asked hoarsely. His voice shocked him. He sounded like he had eaten nails for lunch.
“I think she was up to the time I nearly dropped Clara, freaked out, and rushed to the hospital. We went to the emergency room so often and for so many trivial things I was on a first-name basis with most of the staff.” Her voice was light, inviting him to share in the joke, but all Greyson could think of was how genuinely frightening each of those “trivial” things must have been for her.
“I should have been there,” he said, and she chewed on her lower lip for a few seconds before nodding.
“Yes, you should have.” Nothing else. Her voice lacked accusation, resentment, hatred . . . all of the things she should have been feeling. Instead she stated it as simple fact.
He should have been there. But he hadn’t. No denying the former, no changing the latter.
He looked completely shell shocked, and it concerned Libby somewhat. He hadn’t been himself at all these last couple of days, but this was worse. He seemed staggeringly vulnerable, and maybe it should satisfy her to see him suffering, but it didn’t. It just saddened her.
From what she had heard, Tina had let him have it with both barrels. Telling him exactly what he had missed out on by being such a prick, and it had hurt him. All of Libby’s residual anger and resentment toward Tina had evaporated when she had witnessed her friend defending her so fiercely. And she had promised the other woman that they would have that talk later. Hopefully it would help her understand what was going on with Tina and get their friendship back on track.
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