and that’s it. I must really love him to let him talk me into this.”
“Maybe you should tell us what it is?”
Sarah slapped her forehead with her open hand. A modest diamond twinkled on her ring finger. “I’m a serious person. Hardworking. A divorce lawyer. I have a certain reputation around town for toughness and smarts.” She put down her hand and stared at Karen. “If news of this gets around, I’ll be a laughingstock.” She glared.
But Karen was pretty tough, too, and also had a reputation to upkeep. She adopted Sarah’s drilling gaze. “Where did you have your first date?”
“I must have been insane,” she said, more to herself, Karen thought, than to anyone else in the room. “I must still be insane.”
From imagining feats of derring-do, her mind moved to seedier possibilities. If they’d done something sexually kinky or engaged in some illegal activity on their first date then she really didn’t want any part of it.
She was a little firmer this time when she asked, “There are some weddings I won’t plan. Where did he take you on your first date?”
As though admitting a terrible secret the woman said, “The zoo.”
Once again, Karen had to struggle not to laugh at her newest potential client. “The zoo? Here in Philadelphia?”
“Yes,” came the sulky reply. “Mike is this weird alternative guy. He adopted a zoo animal as part of their conservation program and he took me to the zoo on our first date to meet little Mikey.”
“I’m guessing this is an opposites-attract kind of relationship.”
“Oh, you’ve got that right. I’m a classic Type A.” Like Karen might not have figured that out yet. “Mike’s all Zen about everything. Doesn’t own a microwave, only has one clock in his house. He’s a high-school counselor and he teaches yoga.”
There was a beat of silence. “I’m guessing he’s great in bed,” Karen said before she could censor herself.
To her relief Sarah laughed, a husky, earthy laugh. “Oh, he is. It’s the only reason I put up with him.”
“Huh,” her old friend said. “What she means is, he’s the only guy who’s ever put up with her.”
That laugh came again. “True.”
“Well, I can tell you that a wedding at the zoo is easy to arrange, it’s a popular spot for weddings and if it means something to the two of you then you should do it.”
She took a shaky breath that Karen suspected was more about the idea of getting married at all than about the venue. “All right, then. Let’s do it.”
Karen began to take notes. “And I’m sure you know that Chelsea is the best caterer in town.”
“Totally.”
“And Laurel will do you an amazing cake.”
“I’m not having a cake with zoo animals on it,” she protested. “It’s bad enough getting married at the zoo without having a wedding cake that should be at a kids’ birthday party.”
“Laurel would never be so boring as to put a zoo animal on a cake. You can meet with her to discuss your needs.”
“No, no. You do it. Honestly, I want to leave everything in your hands.”
After that it was easy. Sarah was businesslike, knew how many people were coming, had chosen several possible dates in the summer and very clearly liked to delegate. To Karen, that made her close to a dream client.
“I am so excited,” Chelsea said at one point, her eyes shining with emotion.
The usually tough Sarah softened immediately. She leaned over to grip Chelsea’s hand. “Me, too. And when you and David get married, we won’t only be best friends. We’ll be sisters.”
Would they? Karen couldn’t help but wonder.
Chelsea seemed genuinely excited about seeing her best friend get married before she could drag the woman’s older brother to the altar.
Not for the first time, Karen wondered what was wrong with David to keep an amazing woman like Chelsea waiting.
He’d almost lost her once through his own stupidity. Karen was worried he was about to repeat his mistake.
Mistakes. There seemed to be a lot of those in the air.
Chelsea’s cell phone rang and, after checking the call display, she backed out of the room. “It’s Anton. I’d better get back. Come visit me when you’re done with Karen,” she said to Sarah, and with a wave she was gone.
It didn’t take long for Karen to extract all the information she needed for now. Then, on a hunch, she said, “Can I ask your professional opinion about something?”
“Sure. I can’t give free legal advice, but I can give you information if I’ve got it.”
The second Sarah had mentioned being a divorce lawyer, she’d felt the urge to ask her a couple of questions. But now she had the woman’s attention, she wasn’t sure how to begin. Finally, she plunged in.
“In your experience, how many men who cheat on their wives claim to be innocent?”
Sudden sympathy clouded the clear eyes. “Ninety-five percent. You can catch them with a naked woman in bed and their pants around their ankles and they’ll still say—” here she shook her index finger in Karen’s direction and lowered her voice “—I did not have sexual relations with that woman.”
Karen nodded, sadly. “That’s what I thought.”
OKAY, KAREN DECIDED, at the end of the day, when, no matter how busy she’d been, she’d always found time to relive the things she and Dexter had done on her desktop.
Enough was enough. Dexter was a player, a Casanova, a Lothario. Of course he was great in bed, he’d had plenty of experience. Some of it, she had to remind herself, while they were married. She’d begun to feel a spark of hope that maybe she’d been wrong about him, but Sarah the divorce lawyer had pretty much killed that notion.
Just because she felt a connection didn’t mean there was one.
She was so angry with herself for falling like a ton of bricks the minute he came onto her. She’d assumed that once he’d had her again he’d disappear, but he’d shown up at Sophie’s planning meeting, teasing her about that desk. He seemed still to be sniffing around her.
If she didn’t care about him even after all this time maybe she could go along with it, have a fling with her ex. She wouldn’t be the first woman ever to do so. But she’d worked long and hard to rebuild her self-esteem after it had been shattered by the man she’d loved and she wasn’t about to compromise her hard-won peace again. Not for some cheap sex and a few orgasms, intense though they might be.
Gritting
