All I had to do was remain innocent in his eyes. The sane to her crazy. The calm fun to her neurotic paranoia. A safe haven for his thoughts and fears. A support system who made him feel valued and protected. I’d be a better version ofher, doused in the tempting light of the forbidden.
“What are you smiling about?” His arm brushed mine as we turned left out of the open gates and onto the street.
“Nothing.” I looked down at the ground, suddenly aware of how my cheeks were split with the grin. “I was just thinking about the team members. I’ve had a bit of a breakthrough with them recently.”
“Really?”
His focus was one of the things I was starting to love about him. It was as if he stopped everything in his life and turned his full attention to me. I felt it in my initial interview, and I savored it now as the pebbles crunched under our running shoes, his head turned to me.
“Yes.” I continued my fictional story and hoped he’d see the parallels. “We’ve always had a distance, but recently they’ve begun to let me in.” We moved up the hill, hugging the edge of the road, protected from the wind by an estate’s stone wall. As we rounded the curve, the view of Palo Alto appeared through the morning fog.
We stopped at the park and stretched, my muscles now warm and pliable. I propped one shoe on the top of a bench and hopped back on the other foot, getting a deep stretch that he couldn’t help but notice. I turned to him quickly and caught the moment before his eyes darted away. Was he imagining what else my limber legs could do?
I stretched my hamstrings and thighs, then nodded to the small grassy area underneath the trees. “Stretch my back?”
I lay back on the manicured grass and lifted one leg. He settled above me, his knees on the ground, his shoulder flush against my ankle. As he leaned forward, my leg moved effortlessly, my teenage years of dance still blessing me with the ability to do a split or straddle. His brows lifted in what I took to be appreciation, and he pushed farther, his body moving in tighter to mine. This close, I could feel the heat of his body, loved the grip of his hand on my thigh, the burn of every finger.
The risk of it hit me with delicious intensity. I pictured Cat’s convertible curving along the road, the brake lights glowing when she saw her husband on top of me, his eyes on mine, pelvis pressed against my thigh. I looked up at him, and that handsome smile broke across his face, his eyes crinkling at the edges, his—
“Ready for the next leg?”
I nodded, and he settled back on his heels, placing one leg down and lifting the other. He returned to the position, and I tried to sort my way through his head. Was he on guard? He didn’t seem to be. But skittish ... yes. Still a little skittish. Wary on the edges of his appreciation. I thought of his finger brushing against my knee in the Ferrari. That beautiful moment of contact that had never been re-created. This, at least, was a move in the right direction. Touching. Proximity. It had to be pushing at the binds of his self-control.
He’d been harder to crack than I had expected, but that loyalty was one of the most attractive things about him. Every time he reestablished boundaries or held himself in check, I wanted him more. I appreciated him more. Cat griped at him when she should be thanking him. She would start needling him over our growing friendship when the smart woman would play the supportive and loving wife.
But that was what made this game so fun to play. I had the cards. I knew the hands. And she ... she didn’t even know the game.
He grunted a little, applying more pressure, my foot passing over my head, and I closed my eyes in bliss at the sound.
CHAPTER 21
CAT
Tom Beck’s full report on Neena was thirty-two pages thick. I settled into the end of our couch, a cappuccino in hand, and flipped over the embossed cover page.
The first few pages were sad but unsurprising.
She’d been poor, even more than I’d been. A small-town beauty queen whose mom had run off when she was ten, her dad following suit seven years later. She’d won the town’s sympathies while wearing the crown of ... I squinted at a grainy photo of a young Neena with a crown and a sash, the newspaper caption barely legible. The ... Strawberry Queen. Amusing. Not surprising she omitted that from her wine-charity board application. It looked like she’d lived with her aunt and uncle until graduation and then gotten married to Matthew Ryder.
From that point on, things grew boring. I quickly flipped through the pages of home deeds, credit card balances, and credit scores. All average. The medical-history section was where things got interesting.
I’d known she’d had some work done, but my mouth still dropped open at her list of surgeries. Arm lift. Butt lift. Tummy tuck. Breast augmentation. A second breast augmentation. Cheek implants. Brow lift. Eye job. Chin implant. Ear reshaping. Rhinoplasty. Neck tuck. Labia and vaginoplasty. She was Frankenstein’s monster, and I flipped quickly through the rest of the report, hoping for a before photo of the petite blonde. There wasn’t any other than the newspaper clipping, and I returned to the medical-history section of the report.
Below the cosmetic surgery list was a section marked OTHERSURGERIES. I ran my finger down an appendectomy, wisdom-teeth removal, a broken arm, sprained ankle—my nail stilled on the last item, and I scanned the details, focusing in on the date.
Eight years ago. An abortion.
It had been three days, and all I could think about was Neena’s aborted baby. All those probing questions when she knew I was struggling with my fertility. Eight years ago, she had been pregnant. Pregnant! Pregnant, and given it up. Was her story about Matt’s prostate cancer even true? And if it was, that just reaffirmed my belief that she was a cheater. I pulled our lunch from the fridge and yanked open the lid to the lobster pasta salad. William’s phone dinged, and I jerked my head to the side in time to see him silence the notification, his attention on the paperwork before him. It sounded again, and I reached across the kitchen island and grabbed it, unsurprised to see her name on the screen. Two new texts.
Brought some of my cookie dough bombs into the office. Hungry?
Are we still on for three?
I bit back the desire to ask why Neena was texting him. They had a standing meeting schedule. Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays at three. There wasn’t a need to verify it. No need for chitchatty little texts at all hours of the day. He was growing more and more comfortable with her, and my nerves were fraying with every single ding of his phone.
Their encroachment into our lives had passed any level of social norms. Matt and Neena seemed to be everywhere we were, all the time.
You’ve got a box at the 49ers’ stadium? We loooovve football.