Dane glared at her, stone-faced. “You missed out the part where you offered to get sterilized and I told you not to do it; that it wouldn’t make a difference to me because I wasn’t interested in a relationship. But you went ahead and did it anyway.”
“I thought you were testing me!”
“I’d never fuck with a woman that way, Jen. You should have known that. You’ve always been so sure you understand me, but you don’t. You never did. How could you possibly have loved me when you didn’t even really know me?”
Her eyes sparkled like chips of ice. “You think I would have gotten sterilized for someone I just thought I was in love with? You think I wouldn’t have been damn certain of what I felt?”
“Either way, it is not my fault that you did what you did. I was clear that I was not interested in a relationship with you. I was brutally clear, in fact, because I needed you to really heed me. But you didn’t want to hear that, so you didn’t listen. You read something else into what I said.”
“I think she knows, deep down, that the fault doesn’t lie with you, Dane,” I said. “I think she just needs to believe it does, or she has to face that she made this mess for herself.”
Honestly, a part of me felt sorry for her. I’d always wanted kids, and it would gut me to be unable to bear them. But Dane was right: she’d chosen to be sterilized, even though he’d warned her that it would make no difference. “Can’t you have the process reversed, Jen?”
“I tried,” she gritted out. “It didn’t work.”
“You told me it did,” said Dane. “Then again, you also told me that you no longer blamed me. You said that on the night you accepted Kent’s proposal of marriage. Apparently, you lied.”
“Because she needed you to believe she was happier without you,” I pointed out. “Didn’t you, Jen? I’m guessing Hope knew how you really felt about Dane. I’m guessing she capitalized on it.”
“No need to guess,” said Dane. “We can ask her. Why don’t you come closer, Hope?”
I turned at the sound of a loud sigh. Hope stood off to the side, leaning against a tree, not even bothering to conceal her presence. “You’re quite the puppet master, aren’t you?” I said. “You certainly pulled Jen’s strings, and it’s damn shitty of you to play on something that’s painful for her. I’d imagine you were quite the driving force behind Travis’s insistence on getting his share of Dane’s trust fund.”
“Oh, Travis didn’t need pushing,” said Hope. “Not until Dane had him banned from all the local casinos anyway. Before that, he’d been happy to play the game. In fact, if he’d had his way, he’d have sold o-Verve secrets to the company’s competitors, but you wouldn’t let him into Dane’s office, and Travis couldn’t get access to your computer—he said you guarded your desk like a damn bulldog.”
“What she’s not telling you,” began Jen, her eyes on Dane, “is that—inspired by Travis’s idea—she had one of her boy-toy’s try to steal Vienna’s laptop so she’d get access to company secrets, only Vienna had taken it with her to Vegas.”
Hope’s face went rock hard as she turned to her sister-in-law. “Oh, trying to shove everyone’s attention onto me, are you?”
“The burglary,” I said, shocked, as the pieces came together. “You set that up.” I looked at Dane, whose eyes now glittered with so much anger it was no wonder that Hope took a step back.
“She told the guy it was important that he make it look like a standard burglary,” Jen added, the snitch.
Hope snickered at her. “It won’t work, Jen. They’re not going to let what you did slide just because you’re giving up info on me.” Hope sliced her gaze to Dane. “Go on. Swear you’ll make me pay. Promise you’ll ruin my life. It’s already in ruins, thanks to your brother’s gambling problem. You have no idea how much we need that money, Dane.”
A muscle in his cheek flexed. “If you’d needed help, you could have asked for it. But you couldn’t swallow your pride and come talk to me. You would rather have taken what was mine right from under me.”
“Well, it’s not like you need it.”
“Neither do you,” I told her. “Not really. Travis may be in debt, but the two of you still have a lot more than most people do. Sell some stuff. Downsize. Shop in cheaper stores.”
Hope looked at me like I’d suggested she munch on dog shit. “And have everyone know about our debts? Have them laugh and ridicule us?” She shook her head. “Oh no, not a chance.”
Then Dane was right. This was about pride. She wasn’t prepared to lose face and have anyone know how far down she and Travis had fallen … just like Barron hadn’t been able to do.
“You wouldn’t have helped us, Dane,” said Hope. “You wouldn’t have cared that we were close to losing everything. You would have told Travis it was his own mess and that he’d have to fix it on his own.”
“I guess you’ll never know if you were right or not,” said Dane. “You can be sure of one thing, Hope. You really will feel like your life is in ruins by the time I’m done with you. You had countless warnings to leave Vienna alone.”
Hope scoffed. “Like you really care. I’ll admit, I fell for it in the beginning. I thought you two were serious. I thought she did indeed care for you.”
“So you tried to make me doubt him,” I said. “When that didn’t work, you upped your game. And when that failed—”
“It became obvious that this marriage isn’t real,” Hope finished. “My warnings about him didn’t send you running, the pictures didn’t send you running, the text message didn’t send you running.”
“Because I trust Dane.”
“No, because he’s paying you to stay right where you are—it’s the only thing that makes sense. You have no other reason to stick by him.”
“Really? You stuck by Travis.”
She shook her head. “I’m done trying to save that man from himself. He can’t be helped. Neither can Dane. They’re both too fucked up, thanks to Barron. I’m cutting my losses.” She looked at Dane. “You truly are welcome to come at me with everything you have. But there won’t be much for you to take from me—Travis will make sure I walk away from the marriage with little to nothing, the cunning bastard.”
Dane cocked his head. “Have you so easily forgotten that I can bide my time when need be? There’ll come a day when you have something important in your life again. I’ll make sure you lose it, just like you tried to make me lose what’s important to me.”
Fear glimmered in Hope’s eyes. “Even though my attempts came to nothing?”
“Even though,” he confirmed. “You knew what you were risking when you played these games. You played them anyway. That was your mistake.”
Hope gestured at Jen. “What about her? She wasn’t so innocent in all this, no matter what she might say.”
“Oh, I know that.” Dane looked at Jen even as he said, “Vienna, call Kent. Tell him to meet us out here. Tell him to bring Travis.”