The second he was sure that Claire was steady on her feet, he dropped his hands from her shoulders. Making eye contact with his daughter, he winked at her.
Placing her hand so that she blocked the baby’s line of vision, Claire turned so that Bekka was against her and not between them.
Levi squelched the protest that rose to his lips. The only way he was going to get Claire back was not to antagonize her any further. That entailed walking on eggshells, but, seeing what was at stake, he was up to it. He had to be.
“I’m staying here for a while,” he told her.
Claire’s eyes widened in disbelief. Levi had never lied to her before—but he had to be lying now. There was no other explanation for what he had just said.
“No, you’re not,” she cried. Why was he messing with her mind like this? Wasn’t it enough that he had ripped her heart right out of her chest?
“Yes, I am,” he contradicted. “I convinced your grandfather to rent a room to me.”
Claire felt as if someone had just literally yanked a rug out from under her feet and sent her crashing down to the floor.
Her grandfather wouldn’t do that to her—would he? As early as this morning, she would have confidently maintained that her grandfather wouldn’t rent Levi a room because he knew how much it would upset her—not to mention that allowing Levi to stay at the boarding house would effectively negate the very reason she was staying here instead of in the two-bedroom apartment that she had shared with Levi.
But now, looking at the confident expression on her estranged husband’s face, she no longer knew if what he was telling her was a pack of lies—or actually the truth.
The look in her eyes dared him to continue with what she viewed as his fabrication. “Why would my grandfather do that?” she demanded.
It took everything Levi had in him not to just sweep her into his arms and kiss her, baby and all. But he knew he couldn’t force this. For now he had to be satisfied with giving her his most sincere look as he pleaded his case, laying it at her feet. “Maybe your grandfather sees how much you mean to me.”
Was he still doing this? Still perpetuating the lie he had tried to sell her in the wee hours of the morning when he had come stumbling in after the wedding reception had long been over? She was no more inclined to believe him now than she had been then.
Less, in fact.
There was no way she was going to let Levi think that she bought his story.
“Ha! If I meant anything to you, you’d be around more often, not working at all hours, going out of town for so-called meetings at the drop of a hat and going off to play poker when we were supposed to be spending time together on our first free night in months.”
“We were spending time together,” Levi insisted. “We went to the wedding together.”
How gullible did he think she was? “I was in a room with a crying baby while you were at a poker table surrounded by your friends and playing cards until dawn. Just how is that being together?” Claire demanded hotly. Bekka began to fuss, and Claire automatically started to rock the baby to try and soothe her.
“Okay,” Levi conceded. “But up to that point, we were together,” he reminded her.
Stressed out, Claire began to pat the baby’s bottom, trying desperately to calm her down.
“That was the whole point,” she informed Levi. “After the wedding we were supposed to spend some quality time together,” she insisted. “My grandparents were taking care of Bekka. You and I were supposed to spend a nice, romantic evening together.”
“How was I to know that? You didn’t tell me,” Levi pointed out.
Claire stared at him, stunned. He couldn’t have been that thickheaded—could he?
“I shouldn’t have to tell you,” she cried. “You’re supposed to have wanted that on your own, not had me force-feed you your lines or hold up a cue card for you.”
The only way he could think to backtrack out of the potential explosion in the making he saw coming was to apologize. So he gave it a shot.
“Look, if I messed up, I’m sorry—”
“If? If?” Claire echoed incredulously. “You most certainly did mess up, no if about it.”
She was getting him exasperated again, hitting the ball totally into his yard and then not allowing him to retrieve it or hit it back. He should have expected as much, he thought.
Mentally, Levi counted to ten, telling himself that he had to be calm or he would wind up losing any chance he had to get Claire back.
To get Bekka back.
He missed them both like crazy.
“Claire,” he said as evenly as possible, “I’m trying to apologize here.”
Her eyes were like small, intense laser beams, trained on his every move. “I’m glad you told me because I wouldn’t have known otherwise,” she informed him.
“You’re making it really hard to be nice to you,” he told her, his anger getting the best of him, at least for the moment.
“Then don’t bother,” Claire snapped coldly. She was forced to raise her voice because Bekka had started to wail again. The increased volume only made the baby cry more. “Because it’s not going to get you anywhere. Apologies have to be sincere, and I can see now that every single word out of your mouth is nothing but a fabrication, a lie.”
“What are you talking about?” Levi cried, completely confused. “When have I lied to you?”
Claire tossed her head, wanting desperately to get away from him and wanting, just as desperately, to never have gotten to this point in the first place. This wasn’t the way she envisioned her life when she’d watched Levi slip the ring on her finger two years ago.
“You said you loved me,” she accused.
“How is that a lie?” he wanted to know. “I do love you.”
“No, you don’t!” Claire cried. “If you loved me, you’d be home more often at night and you certainly wouldn’t have picked poker over me.”
He closed his eyes, searching for strength. How did he get through to her? “That again,” he retorted. “I didn’t pick poker over you—”
“Oh, someone put a gun to your head then, telling you to deal or they’d blow your brains out, is that it?”
“It wasn’t a choice between you and poker,” Levi insisted. How could she possibly think that? “You’re not in the same league.”
Was that supposed to make her happy? Claire looked at her husband coldly, doing her very best not to allow her mind to drift, to make her think back and relive exciting, intimate moments with him just because of their proximity. “Thanks.”
Her icy tone ripped through him, and Levi threw up his hands in total disgust. “I just can’t win with you, can I?”
“No, because I see right through you,” she informed him, her voice cold enough to freeze a cup of hot coffee. Just then, as if she was aware that she had lapsed into another long, quiet moment, the baby began to cry. “Now look what you’ve done. You’ve agitated the baby,” she accused.
“Me?” he said, stunned at the way she could shift blame onto someone else’s shoulders so easily. “You’re the one who’s shouting.”
Claire made no effort to back down or back off. The baby grew louder with each passing second. “If I’m shouting it’s so I can get the words through your thick skull.”
He