Page 42

“So you’ve seen my missed calls, and you decided to—”

“Just ignore them.”

She made her way to her desk and took a seat, the massive piece of furniture now a centuries-old barrier between them.

“I knew you weren’t calling to compliment my choice of outfit, Timothy.”

His lips twitched as she expected them to, and his demeanor swung away from irritation. Not that she couldn’t deal with him when he was in one of his darker moods, but she’d had a long day, and she didn’t need his sulkiness to add to it.

“More’s the pity, because you look amazing.” His eyes traveled the length of her body, supine in her chair, and it was Willoughby’s growl that interrupted the perusal she no longer found offensive.

Apparently her cat did? Funny how she started thinking of him as ‘hers.’ The tom proceeded with his customary jump onto the windowsill pillow, and his little snarls in Timothy’s direction compelled Magdalene to reach out and trace the line of his ear. That seemed to pacify him.

When she turned back to her visitor, Timothy’s face was clouded, eyes shadowed, and the thin line of his mouth set.

Sulk it is then…

“You’re here to tell me that the board is miffed?”

She leaned forward and plucked the phone out of his hand.

“I wouldn’t be quite so dismissive of those people, Magdalene. They are more than ‘miffed’. There are things at stake here that you and I quite plainly do not understand—”

“Oh, I understand them very well. You are forgetting I spent some time in these hallowed halls. I know what’s at stake.”

Timothy scoffed and finally took off his sports coat.

“I still can’t comprehend why you are hiding your past.”

“I am not actually. Well, not anymore. Sam knows.”

The moment the name was out of her mouth, she regretted it. Even though the day had been hellish, and there were so many things about it that she would change if she could, if she had one choice, it would be this. This one tiny word. Three letters.Sam.

It put that longing look in Timothy’s eyes. The kind that never led to anything good and always cost her. As his face contorted with yearning, she stood and went to him, halting mere inches away.

“Timothy...”

“I should have held you tighter, kissed you longer—”

She stopped his hand that was reaching for her face and clasped it in her own.

“Tim.” His eyes filled with tears at the sound of the nickname she, and only she, used to call him before their marriage had started to turn sour. ”We weren’t happy. Happy people do not hurt each other the way we did.”

She chose not to dwell on the fact that she had given that relationship her best—or the very best she knew how to give at the time.

“I…” He faltered and she let go of his hand. They’d been having this conversation for years. Maybe she needed to be just a touch more assertive, since he seemed to have become immune to her usual reasons.

“We were not happy, Timothy. We simply didn’t know better. We were bumbling in the dark. And once we spilled some light into our marriage, it did what light always does. Streamed through all the cracks and exposed all the flaws.“

He rocked back on his heels, and for a fraction of a moment, she felt sorry for him. But the scene that always tended to play in front of her eyes when she had even an inkling of pity for him—of walking into their bedroom to find him deep inside his secretary—accomplished what it always did. It jolted her out of the melancholy and out of the last vestiges of sympathy she had for him. He loved her. She occasionally had use of him and, despite his transgression, she trusted him. After all these years, he was still one of the few people of whom she knew exactly what to expect. That was their relationship, when all was said and done.

Her phone rang again, jarring her from her musings, and she could see Joel’s number flash at her with angry brightness. Well, he was a pain, but he had great timing. She really didn’t want to continue this conversation with Timothy tonight.

“Since you practically accused me of not doing what’s good for me, let me take this and spare us any further unpleasantness on the subject of Houses.” Turning away from him, she pressed ‘answer’ and left the office.

* * *

The call wasmelodramatic to say the least. Joel had Ohno with him and the two were attempting a quite amateurish version of good cop, bad cop–except both of them were just awful people. And she was exhausted.