Ah. I had forgotten about the dinner with them. I’m guessing he came here to make me feel guilty about it. Well, I’m not interested.
“That’s nice. I hope you told them hello for me,” I say breezily. “Anything else?”
“Well… I thought that since you weren’t willing to join me last night, in advance of the gala this Wednesday, I’d ask again if you would go with me. Please. It’s one small thing. You’re going anyway. Why not just accept a ride from me?”
“Because I don’t want to, Mark,” I reply. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have some work to finish up in my office. If that’s all you came to talk to me about, then I’ll see you out.”
“There is one more thing, actually.” The scowl etched on his face eases. “I have a bit of good news, for both of us.”
“What’s that?”
Mark flashes me his best ingratiating smile, the one I’ve seen him use on his clients. “I don’t know if you remember my great uncle Harold. He died about a year ago?”
I knit my brows together. “Doesn’t ring a bell,” I admit.
“Well, Harold left me a plot of land in his will, which I had more or less forgotten about until recently. It’s in Massachusetts, not far from Cape Cod. Five acres, unbuilt. Apparently, its assessed value is in the neighborhood of one-hundred thousand dollars.”
I blink at him. “Wow. So, are you planning to sell it?”
“Well, there’s the rub, and the reason I’m here.” He gives me a conspiratorial smirk. “It turns out, there are two years of back taxes owed on the property, which I’ll need to pay before I sell the land. But I have a bit of a cash flow problem.”
“So…” I frown. “What are you proposing?”
“If you can give me the account information on our joint investment account, then I can pull the money from there. It amounts to about five-thousand-dollars. In exchange, I promise to split the money from the sale of the land with you, fifty-fifty.” Mark’s grin widens. “That’s a pretty good return on investment, yes? Spend twenty-five hundred to get fifty thousand?”
I have to admit, that does sound good. And I could sure use that kind of money from the sale of the land. I’m broke as a joke lately, especially because I haven’t wanted to ask Mark for money for the mortgage payments. Mark was always fairly lax about remembering our account information, so it’s no surprise he’d need to get it from me.
“When would you be putting the land up for sale?” I ask.
“Just as soon as I pay the property taxes. The realtor I’ve been speaking to already has a couple of interested buyers. He assures me that he should be able to get the land sold within a month or two.”
I tilt my head, considering. “I suppose that sounds good.”
I go to a console table by the stairs and pull out a pen and pad of paper from one of the shallow drawers. From memory, I write down the username and password for the account he wants to borrow from. “Five-thousand?” I repeat as I rip off the sheet and hand it to him.
“Five thousand,” he agrees as he takes it from me. “You won’t regret it, Ember. This is win-win, for both of us.”
For some reason, the moment he utters the word regret, I start to wonder if maybe I should re-think this. But just then, Striker calls my name from outside. Mark’s mouth tightens into a thin line.
“I’ve got places I need to be,” Mark glowers, tucking the paper with the account information into the pocket of his chinos. “You really ought to think twice about letting someone like that into your house, Ember. Even just to mow the lawn.”
He grabs the doorknob and abruptly pulls the door open. Striker is approaching from the garage, and Mark flashes him an angry scowl as he walks outside and then stomps down the sidewalk to his Beemer.
Striker and I watch as Mark gets into his BMW and starts the engine. The tires make an anemic squeal as he pulls away.
“Wow,” Striker remarks. “You married that.”
“Temporary insanity,” I sigh. “You must be thirsty. You want something to drink?”
18
Striker
My nerves are jumping after Ember’s ex leaves. But my adrenaline rush doesn’t have all that much to do with his weak ass.
My heart is pumping because of Ember.
Standing there with her, making sure Panty doesn’t push her buttons, I can’t stop thinking about something I’ve been trying to push into the far recesses of my mind all along.
I want to fight for her, but it’s more than that.
I want her. I can’t stop wanting her.
I want to get lost in her body and never find my way out.
As I watch Panty drive away, I keep repeating the same phrases in my head, hoping they’ll take root.
Stop wanting her.
Don’t touch her.
“What’s with the flowers, anyway?” I ask Ember.
She’s staring at the bouquet Panty left now, which is lying on the counter. I’m at the kitchen island with a glass of ice water, adrenaline still buzzing. I’ve pulled my sweat-drenched T-shirt back on, but I thought I caught her stealing a glance or two at my naked torso before I did.
“They’re a ‘Get out of jail free’ card,” she answers, a bitter edge to the words.
“What do you mean?”
She pushes them away. “Giving me flowers is sort of Mark’s version of an insurance policy. It’s always been that way. Mark is a charming bastard. He’s a financial advisor, specializing in helping people invest their money. His entire professional identity is based on projecting a certain image and convincing people it’s real.” Her lips tighten into a thin line. “What I didn’t know at first is that that extended to our relationship, too.”
I get the feeling Ember is processing more than just Panty’s visit, and I’m not wrong. I don’t say anything in response, and she jumps into the silence and runs with it.
“Do you know, Mark gave me flowers every single Friday of our relationship?” she asks, turning to face me. “In the beginning, I was absolutely charmed by it. How romantic, right? What a perfect boyfriend. Everybody said so.” She clasps her hands and mimes a swoon. “Once we got married and moved into this house, he bought me that table and the giant vase for the foyer, just as a display for my Friday flowers. From then on, the bouquets got bigger and more impressive. They were right there in the front hallway, the first thing that anyone who came in the house would see.”
Ember rolls her eyes, but she looks a little sad, too. “It took me a while to realize that the flowers had nothing to do with me at all. They weren’t even for me. They were for him. To make him seem like the perfect husband in the eyes of all our friends and his business associates. God, Mark loved it when people would come over and immediately exclaim at the beautiful bouquet. That was my cue start the proud, fawning wife act, and tell everyone how he always bought me fresh flowers every single Friday. And I started to notice that whenever we got into a fight, he always managed to bring up the flowers. ‘Don’t I do enough to show you I love you?’ he’d ask. ‘Don’t I bring you flowers every week?’ As though that meant he never did anything that he should excuse himself for. I realized toward the end of our marriage that I had never actually heard him utter the words, ‘I’m sorry.’”