“Look,” he said, “your main concern is that I not pass on what just happened to your uncle, right? Because you don’t want him to think less of you for it. Am I close to the truth?”
“You’re avoiding my question,” she said softly.
“What question?”
“I want to know how you were dumped.”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“Everything. It’s a power issue, Jacob.”
“A...what?”
“If you know my deep dark secrets and I don’t know yours, then we’re not on equal footing. I never should have spoken so loudly inside that coffee shop.”
“So...you’re more concerned about being vulnerable than about losing the so-called love of your life? Interesting.”
Her lip quivered.
Damn. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.” Cripes, he was handling this all wrong.
He laid his head back and looked at the skylight. Watched the rain come down. The truth was, he just couldn’t give anyone any more of himself. What was private with him, he kept locked away. He had to solve this standoff with Isabel some other way.
Abruptly, she opened the door and stepped out into the rain.
“Isabel?” he called. “Where are you going?”
“My luggage, please,” she said, leaning into the open door. “I’m going to phone for another driver. You and I obviously can’t work together any longer.”
He threw open his door and got out of the SUV, then jogged around the front until he was beside her on the wet sidewalk. The rain was cold on his head and face. “You want me to talk? You want to know how I’ve been in your shoes?”
She nodded, gazing into his eyes. “I do.”
They were both getting wet. Fat raindrops were spilling onto her cheeks. He wanted to brush them away.
“I...was supposed to get married,” he said. “Instead, on our wedding day...she arrived late and made this little speech to everyone as if she were doing me a favor to have shown up to the altar at all.”
“You were left at the altar?” she asked.
He focused on the raindrops running down her cheeks. One on her nose. Her top lip.
“Were people there?” she asked gently. Her tone was the musical Scottish voice he’d heard in the coffee shop. Her true accent. The voice she’d shown for Alex, and he hadn’t cared about it.
“Jacob?”
“All of my friends were sitting in the church. My colleagues from the NYPD, their wives and girlfriends. My mother. My stepfather. My half siblings. My stepgrandmother and stepaunts.”
She put her hand to her mouth. “How did you ever face them all afterward?”
He let out a breath, remembering. “For a long time, I didn’t. I focused on getting into the Secret Service. I worked long hours so I could stay away.”
Which probably wasn’t helping him much now, but he didn’t want to go into that.
“Bottom line, Isabel, don’t let the bastards get you down. Don’t give Alex the satisfaction of having the power to damage you. Because you’re not damaged. You’re strong and you’re independent and you’re doing the right thing with your life. Things don’t happen by accident—he put himself into that situation where he was open, just as Rach—just as my ex did. And then blamed it on fate. On me. On whomever. On everybody but her...”
He caught himself. Whoa. Where was this coming from?
But Isabel’s eyes were bright. And now her hand was on his arm. Just lightly. Not the way she’d hooked him back in her residence hall, but as though she were giving him comfort.
What was happening?
“I’m fine,” he said. It seemed he was saying that so much lately, what with the psychologist at work and the—
“When did she leave you?” Isabel asked.
Because she was sincere, quiet and respectful, he let out a breath and answered her. “Five years ago.”
“Have you been alone since then?”
Fix-ups didn’t count, not really. He nodded. “I have goals. You have your goals, well, so do I.”
She nodded, too, her eyes even brighter. “The thing that hurts most is that Alex knew what my goals were. We’d made an agreement. He was going to wait for me to come home.” She fell silent.
“How long were you and Alex together?”
“He...was the boy next door,” she said simply. “He knew me since...before everything. Before our family business took off, I mean. Before my father died...”
“It hit you out of left field, didn’t it?”
“If that means it flummoxed me, then yes—yes, it did.” She blinked rapidly.
“You don’t have to put on a brave face for me,” he said. “If you want to scream, go ahead.”
“I never scream.” She smiled brightly. “I don’t believe in drama.”
He did. Sometimes it was necessary.
“What did you do at that church with everyone looking at you?” she asked.
“Another story for another time.”
“Did you vomit all over the floor in public?” Her lips twitched. She was going to laugh, and that was a good sign.
He smiled, too, sort of. “Let’s just say that like you, I was in no good shape.”
“What did you do to get in good shape?”
What she really was asking was, how could she get in good shape?
For purposes of getting her on the road to Vermont, he told her a partial truth. “I stopped by a liquor store, got a whole bunch of empty boxes and then drove back to our—to my apartment, and packed up everything she had. Clothes, makeup, cooking stuff—whatever, and I left it out in the hall. Then I had the locks changed.”
Her eyes widened. “Did you ever hear from her again?”
In Jacob’s experience, when people left him, they really left him. He felt cold for a moment, but shook it off. “Nope.”
“She didn’t come back to you? Tell you she’d made a mistake?”
“No.” He looked at her. “Is that what you’re hoping for?”
“Me?” She shook her head fiercely. “I have very few real friends, Jacob. Few people I can trust.” She sighed. “You were right. He showed me his true colors.”
She folded into herself. But Jacob knew that her heart was broken.
Jacob’s heart had been broken, too. Worse than the embarrassment. Worse than the jealousy or the anger or the betrayal—it was the secret inner sadness, the empty pit of abandonment that nobody ever talked about. It was the stark reality at the end of the day, when you came back to your apartment and you were alone. Because the only people you’d trusted had taken your heart and tossed it away.
“Don’t feel sad for me,” Isabel said. “I’ve just decided I am going to this wedding. I’m going to show Malcolm that he still has a competitor for this job. He’s not the shoe-in that everybody thinks he is.”
She leaned over and kissed Jacob on the cheek. “Let’s get back in the car and drive to Vermont, please.” She smiled. “But I’m not sitting