Flipped Out (17 page)

“Mine,” Derek said. “The parking lot behind the hardware store. She was upset about Tony and Nina, and she asked me if I’d come up for a minute.”

The numb feeling his words had caused started to fade, and I was getting hot. And bothered. And not in a good way. My skin prickled and I had to fight to keep my voice steady. “And it didn’t occur to you to say no?”

“She said she wanted to talk.”

That didn’t really answer my question, but now I had another. “Well, of course she wanted to talk. What else did you think she wanted?”

“Nothing,” Derek said quickly. “Of course not. I didn’t think she wanted anything else. She was upset and she wanted someone to talk to, and when she asked if I’d come up for a minute, to talk, I did.”

“And?”

Another flash of blue came my way. “And nothing. We talked.”

“About what?” hung on my lips, but I held it back. It was my turn to take a deep breath and try to settle my nerves before I started yelling and crying and accusing. After a minute, I managed an under-the-circumstances very restrained, “Do I need to worry?”

“What?” He looked over at me. “No! Hell, no!”

“You sure?”

“Yes, of course I’m sure! Avery . . . !”

But then he shook his head and turned his attention back to the road. And instead of continuing in the direction we were going, toward Kate’s B&B and the carriage house, he turned the other way, up the hill toward Bayberry Lane and Aunt Inga’s house. Once there, he squealed to a stop behind my car, close enough to the bumper that, for a second, I worried he might slam right into my beloved VW Beetle and reduce it to scraps of metal. He got out of the truck and closed his door with a slam. I opened mine, but I didn’t have time to do anything but swing my legs out before he was on my side of the car. He grabbed me around the waist and lifted me down, then slammed my door, too, before lifting me again to toss me over his shoulder.

It wasn’t the first time he’d done that. It had actually happened quite a lot over the past year. The first time it had been because I’d twisted my ankle falling down the basement steps in the dark, and I’d been giving him a hard time about carrying me—the usual, proper and respectful way—and instead of putting up with my complaining, he’d tossed me over his shoulder and hauled me into the house like a sack of grain instead. After that, it had become sort of a thing with us. He did it as a joke, playing up the possessive caveman demeanor that some women enjoy and that I usually find endearing.

This time I didn’t. There was nothing funny about this, and it was no joke. He was upset and angry, and so was I.

When he put me down on the porch to unlock the front door, I kicked him in the shin. Not hard, not because I really wanted to hurt him, but hard enough to make my point. “Stop it. I can walk.”

He looked at me from the corner of his eye, focused on digging the key out of his pocket and inserting it in the lock. “I know you can. I just don’t want you to walk the other way.”

“Where am I gonna go?” I wanted to know, annoyed. “I live here!”

“Fine. I didn’t want you to walk into the house and lock the door behind you.” He twisted the key and opened the door.

“That wouldn’t have stopped you,” I said, pushing past him to get inside. “You have your own key.”

“Yeah, but if you slammed the door in my face and told me to get lost, I’m not sure I would have dared use it.”

He dropped the key chain back in his pocket and followed me into the house, closing and locking the front door behind us. From the dark on the stairs, two tiny circles of light regarded him unblinkingly. I flicked the light switch, and they translated themselves into Mischa’s eyes. A second later, the kitten had launched himself through the air to attack the intruder. For once, I did nothing to try to intercept him. I was tempted to scratch Derek myself, and I appreciated Mischa doing it for me. If I could find a way to let him loose on Melissa, I would.

“Damn cat,” Derek growled a second later, hopping on one foot and shaking the other to discourage the kitten, who was digging his claws into Derek’s jeans and hanging on for dear life, growling, too. He sounded like an angry emery board.

I giggled. Derek shot me a dark look. “Get him off me, please.”

“I don’t really want to,” I said. “I’m enjoying this.”

“You would.” He limped over to the stairs and sat down to start the removal himself. In spite of his obvious irritation, his hands were gentle as he unhooked Mischa’s claws from the denim. The kitten kept up a yowling accompaniment of protest the whole time, but when Derek set him down on the floor with a final pat, Mischa did not turn around and attack again, he just wandered down the hallway toward the kitchen with his tail sticking straight up in the air. Clearly, he felt he had come out of the skirmish the champion.

My grin faded as Derek looked up at me, his eyes very blue in the brightly lit hallway. “I love you, Avery.”

“I know you do,” I said.

He shook his head. “I don’t think so. If you knew, you wouldn’t worry about me spending time with someone else.”

Yeah, right. “Melissa’s not just anyone. You used to be married to her.”

“Used to be. Operative word there. We’re not married anymore.”

“I know that,” I said.

“You sure? Because believe me, that’s all the more reason not to want anything to do with her ever again.” He shook his head, and that floppy lock of hair fell over his forehead. “We weren’t happy together, Tink. Even in the beginning, when I was crazy about her, things were strained. You just put up with it because you don’t know any better, and because . . .”

He trailed off. I nodded; I knew exactly what he was talking about. I’d put up with my own share of arguing, friction, and tension over the years, from one boyfriend or another. You do it because you hope things will get better, and because some of the time things are wonderful and you don’t want to lose the part-time good stuff. And then you do it because you’re afraid that if you let the person you’ve got get away, you’ll never find another to love.

“I spent seven years of my life with Melissa,” Derek said, leaning back on his elbows and looking straight ahead, into the past, his eyes unfocused. “Two years dating, and then five years of being married. It was all ups and downs, right from the beginning. I guess I didn’t realize how different we were at first. I fell in love with the way she looked, and the way she seemed to like me so much, and it wasn’t until later that I realized that she liked me because I was going to end up being a doctor, and I was going to give her the things she wanted. She wasn’t born rich, you know.”

“Really?” I’d assumed the expensive and elegant creature I knew had come from a long line of expensive and elegant women down there in Maryland or West Virginia. Old family, lots of money.

Derek shook his head. “When I met her, she was waiting tables to put herself through college.”

“Melissa!”

“Sure. And it wasn’t in a fancy restaurant, either. She was like Candy: ponytail and jeans, serving up coffee and eggs in an IHOP around the corner from the hospital.”

“Wow,” I said.

He smiled. “We started talking, and then we started dating, and then sleeping together, and by the time she started hinting about marriage, I was too far gone to even realize what a mistake that would be. I knew my mom and dad hadn’t taken to her when I brought her up here to meet them, but I figured that was on them, and not because there was anything wrong with Melissa.”

“What about her family?” I’d gotten interested in the conversation in spite of myself. And in spite of the fact that I was still upset with him, and with her. “Did you meet them? Before you got married?”

“Just once. She’d made sure she went to school hours away from them. They lived in a dingy tenement-type apartment in a coal mining town in West Virginia. And they were nice enough, but I felt a little like a show dog on display. I assumed they were just looking out for their daughter and were protective of her in case she’d hooked up with a jerk, but later . . .” He shook his head. “After I realized that Melissa wanted me because she wanted to be a doctor’s wife, I guessed that they were really trying to figure out how much I’d be worth in a few years.”

“That’s crappy.”

“To be fair to Melissa, she didn’t have much contact with them. After we got married, they kept asking for handouts, and although she would help them with things like keeping the power and water on and medical bills and such, she didn’t go overboard. At least not with my money. I don’t know about Ray’s.”

I folded my arms across my chest and leaned my shoulder against the newel post. “Why are you telling me this?”

His eyes were the blue of cornflowers in the bright light from above. “Because I want you to understand why you don’t have to worry about Melissa. When she packed up and moved out, it was like I could finally breathe again. I didn’t have to justify why I didn’t want to stay in medicine, or explain that I just wanted to do something that made me happy. All she saw was that I was ruining her perfect life. She didn’t understand that it didn’t feel perfect to me, and there wasn’t anything I could say to make her understand, and every day was just one fight after the other. When she left, I felt like a weight had been lifted. There’s nothing in the world that would make me go back to her.”

I blinked. “You sure?”

“Positive. C’mere.” He held out his arms. I hesitated for no more than a second before I moved into them. He pulled me down on his lap and buried his face in my hair, his voice muffled. “I love you, Tink. Why would I ever go back to Melissa when I’ve got you?”

“You loved her?” I suggested, a little distracted by his warm breath against my skin and the way his arms tightened around me.

“Past tense. I don’t feel that way about her anymore. Not sure I ever did. Not the way I feel about you.” He braced his legs and stood, still holding me. I held on as he turned and started up the stairs. And nothing more was said—at least not about Melissa and her marriage to Derek—for the rest of the night.

Our first move the next morning, after getting showered and dressed, was to head over to the Waterfield Inn. Wayne might be there, but if he wasn’t, Kate would probably know whether we could go back to work on the house today. If we couldn’t, we had to find something to do to keep the crew occupied if we had any hopes of getting enough footage for an episode of
Flipped Out!
in the can by Friday night. Maybe we could take Adam to the salvage yard while Wilson filmed us picking out a porch swing.

Shannon was sitting at the breakfast table when we got there, nursing a cup of coffee and looking like she’d spent a mostly sleepless night. And then I wondered whether I was imagining things, because she looked up when we came in and managed a very passable smile, as if nothing much was wrong. “Good morning.”

“Hi,” I said, taking a seat while Derek headed for the coffeepot. “Where’s everyone?”

“Mom and Wayne are still at the carriage house, and no one else is down yet. Up, maybe, but not down. You guys are out and about early.”

I glanced over at the lighted display on the stove. 6:58. I guess we were. “We went to bed early.”

Shannon sent Derek a speculative look. “You left Guido’s early, too. I thought I’d find you here when we got back, arguing with Wayne about why he can’t keep Melissa in jail.”

“Shit,” Derek said, and when I turned to look at him, I saw that he had turned pale under the tan. He must have remembered last night and realized that while we’d been busy doing what we’d been doing, Melissa had been languishing in lockup. I wondered if he regretted his priorities.

But no, it didn’t look that way. When he met my eyes, his expression was half sheepish, half rueful, with a grin tugging at the corners of his mouth. “Oops.”

“That’ll teach you not to get distracted.” I was unable to hide my own smile. “I guess we should probably go look for Wayne, huh?”

“I’ll go. You stay here and keep Shannon company.” He headed for the back door.

“What was that all about?” Shannon wanted to know when the door had swung shut behind him.

I turned back to her. And decided that she’d find out anyway, so I might as well tell her. “Derek was with Melissa the night Tony died. I guess he has personal knowledge that she couldn’t have done it.”

Shannon’s eyes widened. She has her father’s eyes, big and dark, surrounded by long, thick lashes. Even without makeup, they’re stunning. “He was with Melissa? Like . . .
with
her?”

I shook my head. “Of course not
with
her. Just with her. Apparently she wanted to talk.”

“And you believe that?”

I blinked. “Of course I do. Why?”

“That’s what Josh said he and Fae did,” Shannon said darkly.

Ah. So her incredulousness had nothing to do with suspecting that Derek and/or Melissa were lying, but everything to do with being jealous of whatever Josh and Fae had been doing last night. I made sure my voice was sympathetic when I leaned my elbows on the table and settled in to talk. “What happened?”