Claire paced in front of the large window in her apartment’s living room. Outside, the sun was just coming up, spreading a warm amber glow over the velvety smooth waters of Lake Michigan. Inside, her emotions were choppy and churning. This wasn’t going as she had hoped. She’d rehearsed what she’d planned to say, knew the words by heart. The problem was that Ethan was refusing to go along with her script and she was just no good at ad-libbing.
“Well?” he prompted as she continued to grope for the right words.
Claire studied the simple gold band she held between her index finger and thumb. “I…I regret the way things turned out between us. I never meant to hurt you.”
“You didn’t hurt me.” Ethan’s harsh laughter scraped against her ear. “Hell, you get right down to it, Claire, we hardly knew one another.”
Hardly knew one another? There were times when she’d thought he could see into her soul. In a few short weeks, she’d sworn he’d understood her better than anyone else ever had.
“You ticked me off, sure,” he continued conversationally. “I have wondered, though.”
She swallowed. “About what?”
“Why me? What made you pick me? I mean, there had to have been other guys who were, shall we say, more in your league?” He made a humming noise. “Hell, maybe that was my appeal. Blue-collar background, dirt under the nails so to speak, a little rough around the edges socially. I suppose I provided what you would call shock value.”
“No.” Though he couldn’t see her, Claire shook her head vehemently. “I…I liked you, Ethan. Really. I liked you a lot.”
He snorted. “You liked me. I hope you haven’t made it a habit to marry every man you like.” His voice lowered. “But then you didn’t marry me because you liked me, did you, Claire?”
“No.” One small word, and yet she all but choked on it. “You used me.”
She squeezed her eyes shut, ashamed. He’d known. Of course he’d known. “I’m sorry, Ethan. Truly, I am. I acted badly, selfishly. I put you in a very awkward position because I was immature.”
In response to her heartfelt mea culpa, all he offered was a bland, “Yes.”
She tamped down the beginnings of temper. It wasn’t as if Ethan hadn’t gotten something for his trouble. She remembered the check. He’d had it in his hand, hadn’t even tried to hide it as he’d let her walk away.
Claire studied the gold band in her own hand. This was about her behavior, not his.
“I am sorry,” she managed again.
“Why?”
Claire frowned. “I think I just explained why.”
“I guess I mean, why apologize now? It’s been, what, ten years? Excuse me for suspecting an ulterior motive here, but it seems strange that, after all this time, you are suddenly calling me to say you’re sorry.”
Claire caught her reflection in the window’s glass. A woman with short, sassy hair and an angled-up chin that bespoke confidence stared back.
“I’ve changed.”
He was quiet for a long moment. “Me, too, Claire. I’ve changed, too. Don’t contact me again. Unless, of course, it’s to discuss business. In that case, I’ll be more than happy to give your father a quote for a new security system, either for Mayfield’s Chicago headquarters or any of its other sites in the United States or abroad.”
“It wouldn’t bother you to take his money?” she asked quietly, though she already knew the answer.
“Not in the least. Goodbye.”
“Ethan—”
But he’d already hung up. The dial tone had switched to an agitated beep before Claire finally placed the cordless receiver back on its charger.
Disappointed, that was how she felt. She’d expected to experience a vastly different emotion once she’d contacted him, confronted her past. Instead of moving forward, though, she was stuck in Neutral.
“I said I was sorry,” she murmured. It dawned on her that he’d never accepted her apology. “But he would accept a check.”
She prowled her apartment, too restless to sit still. Not that she had much of anything to sit on. She had no furniture, although she had picked out a couch, chairs and an ottoman for the living room, as well as a cherry bedroom suite. It would be several weeks yet before any of it would be delivered. The bare walls and floors didn’t lend any hominess to the place. Indeed, they added to her sense of isolation. She paced to the bedroom, where a queen-sized mattress and box spring were pushed against one wall. At least she wasn’t sleeping on the floor any longer.
But she was sleeping alone.
For the first time in years she allowed herself to recall the way it had felt to slumber next to Ethan and to wake with his heavy arm draped across her torso. The gesture had seemed protective rather than possessive, just as the caresses had been patient and instructive as well as seductive.
She shivered now. She’d trembled then.
I promise I’ll make you happy, Claire.
Caught up in the moment, caught up in the magic, she’d promised him the same. Another vow that both of them had broken.
Angry with Ethan, but more angry with herself, Claire tossed her workout clothes into a duffel bag and tugged a baseball cap low over her brow, leaving her short locks to sprout out the sides. She didn’t bother with makeup. She left for the gym she belonged to across town, determined to exorcise old demons and sweat away her frustration and self-directed irritation on a stationary bike.
An hour later, as she pedaled furiously, perspiration slicking her brow and sliding down her spine to soak the waist of her cotton workout shorts, Claire didn’t miss the irony that, just as with her ex-husband, she was getting absolutely nowhere.
Ethan thought he had come so far since his short-lived and foolishly impulsive marriage to Claire, but merely hearing her voice that morning had yanked him backward and left him dangling from the same high precipice he’d fallen off a decade earlier.
It had been nearly two hours since her telephone call and he still couldn’t get his mind to settle or his memory to shut off. Recollections from their past haunted him. Snippets from their conversation nagged.
“I’m sorry.”
He had to admit, the apology had come as a complete surprise. Even more shocking, though, had been the fact that Claire hadn’t denied using him. Nor had she tried to foist the blame for the fiasco that had been their marriage onto anyone else. No. She’d accepted full responsibility for behavior she’d readily conceded was selfish and immature.
Why didn’t that make him feel any better? Why was he still sitting at his desk two hours later poking at her every word with the same morbid fascination of a gawker slowing down at the site of a car wreck?
Why hadn’t he just said, Apology accepted, nice knowing
