Getting Even

CHAPTER FOUR

“WELL, FUCK,” RAFAEL SAID under his breath as a triumphant-looking Veronica headed for him, accompanied by a guy who was a carbon copy of both her trust-fund-lugging husbands.

She stopped to take a glass from a passing waiter, then laughed at something Preppy Boy said as he grabbed his own glass. And in that instant Rafael may as well have been nineteen again, in that first year at college, about to go feral because some random dick of a guy had hit on her.

His hand jerked, champagne sloshing out of the glass and onto his shoe. Ordinarily he wouldn’t have been able to stop himself from cleaning that off, but the thought that Veronica would spot it, and in the process see that his shoes were handmade, stopped him. Not that he wanted to show off—she had a whole closet full of designer shoes—he just wanted to show her that he’d come a long, proud way, and the shoes were a symbol she’d understand.

Felicity gave his arm a warning squeeze. “You’re not going to strangle the poor man, are you?”

His lips twisted—half smile, half grimace. “I’m more likely to wring her neck.”

“You guys must have had fun at college if she can’t even walk beside another man without winding you up! Get it together, will you?”

And then Veronica was there, flashing a smile—what she called her finishing school smile—and he wanted to grab her by the arms and shake her and tell her not to use that smile on him. He wanted to kiss her, rip those uptight pins from her perfectly coiffed silver-blond hair and tear off her perfect dress and rattle her easy grace. He used to be able to do it. Make her as desperate and deranged as he was. Strip the cool off her just by touching her, so that she was hot and disheveled and gasping and throbbing.

And by God, he was going to do it again.

But to get her to lose her cool meant keeping his. So he quirked up an amused eyebrow, inclined his head toward the guy she thought she was waving in his face like a victory flag, and said, “Number three?”

“How’s the hip?” she quipped back, inclining her head toward Felicity.

“Unattached,” he said. “Needing a replacement. Interested?”

“Is it the balls giving you trouble?”

“It’s the socket. I need a new one, but I can use an old one in the meantime.”

At which point Felicity cleared her throat and he became conscious that he and Veronica were exuding enough heat to light a furnace.

Veronica stepped forward, that smile replastered to her face as she held out her hand to Felicity. “I’m Veronica Johnson, an old college friend of Rafael’s.”

Felicity gave her fake smile for fake smile as she took that hand, shook it. “Felicity.”

“Oh, I know who you are—my sister, Scarlett, is your biggest fan!” Veronica laughed—like sweet bells on a clear night—but it was as fake as her smile; he knew because there was no snort to it. “Not, I promise you, in a Stephen King Misery kind of way.” She pulled Preppy Boy fully into the circle. “And this is Phillip Castle.” Back to Rafael, with her eyebrows set to go-fuck-yourself. “You know how we were talking about your next book? Stamp, is it?”

“Close enough,” Rafael said as Phillip choked on his champagne.

“Well, Phillip’s with Smythe & Lowe, and he’s very interested.”

“Oh, he is, is he?”

“Yes—go figure. And since you seemed so keen to tell me about your books when we had that delightful chat earlier, I knew you’d jump at the chance to speak to someone...impartial? Meanwhile, if you can spare Felicity—” turning to Felicity “—I hope she’ll regale me with all the salacious details about what happens next with Beth and Braxton in This Time Forever so I can fill Scarlett in once I’m back home in New York.”

Felicity waved an airy hand. “Oh, Beth’s going to have a wonderfully tragic soapy end I’m afraid,” she said, and narrowed her eyes ever so slightly. “I’m leaving the show to play Julie in Catch, Tag, Release—didn’t Rafa tell you?”

Veronica’s smile slipped, which told Rafael she didn’t like what she’d just heard. The news, or the name, or both? No time to work it out, because the slip was microscopic and transient and Veronica was bouncing right back hard.

“Oh well, I’m dying to hear all about that,” she said and, before he knew it, the women were separated from the men. She’d done it, of course. A society-girl skill of hers he’d never been able to demystify. Correction—he’d never had to demystify, because she’d never used it against him before.

Well, whatever she’d done, it had worked: he was out of earshot.

Phillip—poor, clueless bastard—was paying the price for that, because valiantly though he tried to engage Rafael in conversation, Rafael simply didn’t give enough of a fuck to listen. The guy deserved better than monosyllabic nonresponses but that’s what he got. He had to know something was seriously awry by this point, but Rafael was too busy straining his ears toward Veronica to care.

Rafael finally shot Felicity a look he hoped she’d interpret correctly as Get Veronica back here now.

Felicity double-blinked at him—her way of saying she understood—and not only steered Veronica back into the circle but, like the trouper she was, engaged Phillip in a conversation about Liar, Liar.

He saw that Veronica’s champagne flute was empty and reached out to take it—just one second too late to stop a passing waiter from stopping beside her and proffering his tray. She smiled at the waiter, swapped her empty glass for a full one, then angled her body away to say something to a nearby guest.

Shit!

He kept his lips curved in a slight smile, pretending to listen to Felicity and Phillip while his nerve endings zapped, his blood simmered and his scalp twitched at the proximity of Veronica’s small, slender fingers, which used to twine tightly in his hair when she came. Unbearable to have her so close after all this time and not be able to touch her.

She timed, perfectly, the return of her attention to when there was a lull in the conversation between Felicity and Phillip, casting a sweeping glance around the marquee and saying, “Everyone’s moving in.” She made a graceful hand gesture. “See? The doors are open.” She turned to Phillip. “Shall we, Sir Galahad?”

“We shall indeed, milady,” Phillip responded promptly, and gallantly held out his arm for her to take.

She flashed her Stepford Wives smile somewhere between Rafael and Felicity. “Maybe we’ll run into each other on the dance floor later.”

And that was it. She was gone.

“Run into each other on the dance floor?” Felicity said. “That’ll be interesting!”

“Don’t worry, it won’t happen. She’s already made her point.”

“Which was?”

“That she’s over me.”

“So what are you going to do?”

“Prove that she’s not.”

CHAPTER FIVE

THE FOOD WAS FABULOUS. The wine excellent. Teague’s best-man speech was a triumph of gentle wit. Romy and Matt’s jointly delivered response weaving superheroes, damsels in distress and mere-mortal babies into a love story was flat-out adorable. And Veronica prayed for the night to be over so she could go to bed with a bottle of gin.

She’d been feeling so proud of herself out in the marquee. Parading Phillip under his nose, exuding fan-girl charm all over Felicity, resisting the urge to smash a champagne flute and stab Rafael through the heart when Felicity dropped that bombshell about playing Julie—playing her—in Catch, Tag, Release and called him “Rafa” like she owned him.

She’d entered the hall and taken her seat and told herself that elusive thing called closure was almost within her grasp.

And then Rafael had strolled in, arm-in-arm with Felicity, and sent her a look of such smugness she was all the way back to fury again.

Which had obviously made her a diabolically bad companion for Phillip, who kept disappearing whenever he wasn’t required to sit at the table to eat.

Rafael couldn’t have been much of a companion for Felicity, either, because when he wasn’t sitting at his table to eat, he spent his time gloating at Veronica from various vantage points. Yes, gloating! There was no other way to describe his secretive, self-satisfied smile.

If she hadn’t been giving zero fucks, she would have been tempted to go up to him and smack it off his face. As it was, all she could do was not look at him. Which was easier said than done because it required her to keep him in her peripheral vision to make sure she didn’t do it by accident while simultaneously directing her eyes elsewhere wearing an I-am-fascinated expression. And maintaining her eyebrows in a perpetual go-fuck-yourself arch while performing those ocular gymnastics had given her a crick in her neck and a headache.

Worst of all, the joy she felt for Romy and Matt had been tainted by a bone-deep envy she hadn’t been expecting and they didn’t deserve.

It was just that she’d somehow assumed Romy and Matt would be the way they’d been in the old days—together but not especially together; tactile but more like the way you physically interacted with your best friend; joking around but inviting the rest of the gang in for a laugh. She’d been so certain their marriage would be predicated on a position of Hey, why not do it? since they were both single and were going to have the kid Romy needed anyway. That would have meant today was more college reunion than wedding, with Veronica and Rafael tag-teaming the group hugs to avoid any partisanship.

But the reality was vastly different from her expectations. The way Matt and Romy had looked at each other in the chapel was the first indication. Then Matt’s at-the-altar kiss. And the jolts had been coming thick and fast ever since, making it abundantly clear the Romy and Matt partnership was nothing like the way it used to be. Oh, there was a glimmer of their old friendship in there, but it was embedded deep in something much more visceral.

Matt looked at Romy like he was hungry for her. He touched her like he was dying for want of her. His fingers had lingered at her lips after he’d fed her the obligatory piece of wedding cake as though they had their own taste buds and she was some kind of divine nectar. Even the smallest kiss was imbued with a sense of sexual urgency that made Veronica feel like a voyeur.

And the bridal waltz they were currently performing? It was like nothing Veronica had ever seen. Certainly nothing like either of her own, which had been carefully choreographed and perfectly executed but completely devoid of the barely tethered lust that pulsed between Romy and Matt as they glided across the floor.

They finished the dance with a bedroom kiss. The way she imagined Rafael ending their bridal waltz, and the envy inside her morphed into a boa constrictor, wrapping itself around her internal organs and squeezing tighter and tighter until she thought one of them might burst through her skin in some Alien-like horror moment.

She watched as Romy’s parents joined Romy and Matt on the dance floor—Romy going into her father’s arms, Matt dancing with Romy’s mother. A few minutes later Teague—doing duty as MC as well as everything else—invited all the guests to join in. But Veronica couldn’t bear the thought of it. Even if Phillip miraculously reappeared to ask her, she’d say no. Maybe she would have roused herself for Teague, but he was standing on the other side of the dance floor looking as though the idea of dancing after that sensual display was as nauseating to him as it was to her.

Well, that was something she could do: try to cheer Teague up.

But when Veronica’s impetuous steps took her to the edge of the dance floor, she saw that Rafael had beaten her there. God! He was turning into her nemesis!

As she watched, Rafael slung a casual arm around Teague’s shoulders and said something that made Teague throw back his head and laugh. It was the first time she’d seen Teague laugh all night and her heart softened, her hostility automatically depressurizing.

But it was a bittersweet moment.

In the old days she would have thought nothing of joining Rafael and Teague. The fact that now she couldn’t brought the truth home to her: her old life was in pieces that could never be put back together.

It didn’t make any difference to tell herself it was normal for some groups to splinter and others to form, for individuals to unexpectedly pair up and couples to split up, that that was what was supposed to happen when college students moved into the big, wide world and got jobs and changed lifestyles. Because despite knowing that intellectually, in her heart it was different. In her heart, in her soul, she’d been waiting in limbo for this moment to come...and then go. The moment when she’d accept that Rafael would never again be hers. Only now it was here, it suddenly seemed wrong for the world to keep spinning as though nothing had changed.

A spinning world invalidated the baffled suffering she’d endured since Rafael had left her. It made a mockery of her attempts to protect herself by burying her memories of him, banning herself from asking questions about him, stopping herself from reading his books, from searching online for news of him.

A spinning world told her everyone had moved on except her.

Was she really supposed to accept that life would go on the way it had been going on for the past seven years, two months, three weeks and five days? Did she have to keep enduring, with this barren rage choked inside her, this desperate desire for something too nebulous to name except to say that it was more than love, what she’d once had, what she’d lost?

Yes—that had to be the answer to those questions. Yes, she had to accept, she had to endure, she had to live...because the world kept spinning even if she had stopped.

She imagined this was how it would feel to be shut in a coffin with the lid nailed down but to still be breathing. Buried alive, screaming for someone to set you free, but nobody hearing you and life outside your airless cocoon going on without you. It’s how she’d felt growing up a Johnson, like she was stifling. How she’d felt at that finishing school she’d been sent to for a year when she’d been expelled from high school during her rebellious phase. How she’d felt when college finished and Rafael had left her and she’d gone back to New York to pick up her old life because what else was she supposed to do?

Oh God, she needed to move, needed air and peace and quiet. But her feet stayed rooted to the spot, longing for something else, unable to bear that this really was that final moment and she’d never see him again.

The decision was made almost without conscious thought—that if that were true, if she really was never to see him again, she would look her fill and add the last view of him to all those memories she couldn’t bear to resurrect. It was safe to look, from here—the crowded dance floor a perfect filter. People moving together, drawing apart. Now-you-see-him-now-you-don’t. Flashpoint vignettes so brief he’d have to know she was there to catch her at it.

And so she drank in the sight of him. The black hair, the so-white smile against his gold-bronze skin, his lean elegance in that perfectly tailored suit and of course he didn’t need the constraint of a tie...

She closed her eyes, the better to file the picture away. Enough. Surely that was enough. But it wasn’t enough, so she opened her eyes to see him once more...and found him staring at her from across the dance floor.

Now you see me.

Oh God, had he known she was there all along?

The crowd on the dance floor moved.

Now you don’t.

Go! Get out! That was the voice of reason in her head screaming at her. But her feet wouldn’t obey the order. It was as though a string connected her to Rafael despite the viewing channel having closed.

Sixty seconds...dancers shifting...her pulse thundering in her ears, her breaths coming short and shallow.

Now you see me.

And Rafael was still staring at her, like he’d been x-raying through the blood, bone and sinew of the gyrating bodies on the floor to watch her.

The dancers on the floor drew close together again, the line of sight narrowed and was gone, the music changed to something slow and romantic. Couples music.

Veronica imagined Rafael going to find Felicity, leading Felicity onto the dance floor, and the spell holding her there broke so that she was moving at last, weaving between the tables...exiting the hall...through the marquee...crossing the lawn. And she didn’t care that Johnsons never ran away, she just needed to breathe.

She was glad it was still light enough for her to see even though it was past nine o’clock, but she wouldn’t have long before she was stumbling around in the dark.

If only Rafael would leave early! Take Felicity and go. But, oh God, that would mean they’d soon be in bed together. He’d kiss her the moment they were alone. Peel off her skintight teal dress. He’d whisper to her that she was beautiful. Eres hermosa. That he loved her. Te amo. That he’d love her forever. Te amaré por siempre—

No! Not that! Not that he’d love her forever! He couldn’t say that, he couldn’t. The mere thought of him saying that to another woman made Veronica want to throw up.

Oh how she wished she could time-travel back to five minutes before he’d turned around in the chapel so she could escape through that side exit, go to her cottage, pack her things, drive to the airport and board the first plane out.

Or go further back to the day the wedding invitation had arrived and decline it.

Go all the way back to the night she’d met Rafael Velez and not fall in love at first sight.

It was the most potent of all her memories, the night they’d met, and she’d been suppressing it for so long, trying so hard to seal it off in the vault, and it wasn’t fair that it could ache in her chest now like a fresh, jagged wound.

End of first semester. Finals over. Planning one last night out with Romy before Christmas break. Deciding on Flick’s—a favorite student hangout because the drinks were cheap and nobody ever got asked for ID. Thirty seconds in, noticing a tall, hunky guy surrounded by women. Matt. But it was the lean, intense man with Matt who’d caught Veronica’s attention. Rafael.

Rafael’s dark eyes had landed on her from across the room and she’d instantly made up her mind that that was the night she’d finally go all the way. He’d leaned close to Matt, whispered something, and Matt had looked at her, his vivid green eyes undressing Veronica like a bolt of fast lightning before moving on to Romy. Matt had cocked his head to the side—presumably assessing Romy’s fuckability—given a why-not shrug, and the two of them had headed over.

Perfect, perfect night. Talking to Rafael about nothing in particular and yet everything. Matt and Romy laughing in the background. Having only one Kir Royale—her favorite cocktail—before switching to water because she wanted to remember losing her virginity. None of them wanting to call it a night at closing time. Going back to the three-bedroom town house Veronica’s father had bought to see her through university. Dumping coats and scarves, kicking off shoes.