OBSESSED WITH TAYLOR JAMES (25 page)

Mario’s facial expression hardened.  Letting her hands
fall from his, he shook his head. “I don’t get you, and I’m done trying to figure
out the unorthodox relationship you have with Dillon.  From now on, this is
your fight and I’m out of it.”

Taylor swallowed, “Mario, please work with me.”

“No—I’m done,” he said sternly going to the door.  “I’ll
see you at home.”

                                                                                                                                                      
Chapter 25
           
 

Taylor rubbed her hand down her face turning to face
Detective Diego’s amazed expression. She shrugged her shoulders. “I-I didn’t
handle that well.”

Detective Diego stayed seated on the edge of his desk.
“Ms. James, I have been doing this a long time.  Truly, I understand you have
the best interest of your friend at heart, but what are you hiding?”

Her skin prickled with tiny bumps from his accusing
penetrating stare. “I’m not hiding anything.  I had no idea Kelly was capable
of doing anything illegal.  She won’t even step on ants.”

He shook his head. “I’m not talking about her.  You are
protecting her boyfriend; why?”

“He was my friend long before they became engaged; we
just lost touch for a few years.”

“I see.  And, now that the friendship has been rekindled,
is he more important to you than Mr. Infante?”

“Detective, there is no romance between Dillon and I.  My
family has been friends with the Stevenson’s for over twenty years.  Letting
Kelly go is the honorable thing for me to do.”

“You aren’t answering my question completely.  Is the man
worth losing your relationship with Mr. Infante?  What does Kelly know that you
don’t want revealed?”

Taylor chewed the inside of her jaw remembering one thing
Kelly might have learned from Dillon.  “Nothing that I can think of,” she said.

Detective Diego slid off the desk walking over to her.
“Okay, Ms. James, I can’t make you tell me.  But, I want you to know that Mr.
Infante was willing to front money as a reward for your safe return.  I think
he deserves the truth on why you’re dumping him for someone else to be happy.”

She closed her eyes; the anger and pain on his face
appeared.  She opened her eyes slowly.  “Detective, I don’t want to hurt
Mario.  He means the world to me, but I have done something he doesn’t know
about.  If I tell him, it will make him lose all respect for me.”

“You don’t know that.  I’ve spent time with him, and he
seems very laid-back and not the type to fly off the handle or pass judgment.”

“He is a wonderful person, and I am lucky to have in my
life, but trusting women has been a huge hurdle for him to get over.  He
believed he’d beaten his disease with me.  I will destroy his trust in women
forever if he leans what I’ve done.”

Diego removed his suit coat hanging on the back of the
closed door. “Let me buy you a cup of decent coffee and we’ll discuss what
you’ve done.  As a third-party and a man, I might be able to measure how well
Mr. Infante will take the news.”

“You will agree I deserved to lose him,” she said walking
towards the door.

*****

Taylor closed the front door leaning against it. 
Detective Diego dropped her off over an hour ago and she’d been sitting outside
on the porch dreading what she had to do.  She fingered the two house keys
before putting them in a glass dish on the table.

Now that Kelly was behind bars, she had no need to stay
with Mario.  She sighed looking around the richly decorated home of leather and
tan furniture.  Every square foot of the home had his personal stamp of
approval on it.  She took in a long look to remember as much as she could. 
Even if she wasn’t ready to go home, he was going to ask her to leave to avoid
prolonging the agony of looking at her after she revealed everything to him.

Shuddering, she walked slowly up the steps to the
bedroom.  She knew he was home because his BMW was in the driveway.  He’d been
driving that car since the accident.

Walking to his bedroom Taylor’s fingers rested on the
doorknob, she stopped to take another breath before opening the door. She heard
voices coming from inside; he was on the telephone.  She put her ear to the
door knowing it was wrong to eavesdrop on a private conversation.  However, it
didn’t matter she was listening; she couldn’t understand what he was saying
since he was speaking in Spanish.  His words were flying rapidly and she could
not determine if he was angry or using his normal tone.  She could kick herself
for not learning any Spanish from him.  They had been together for months and
he was unable to teach her his language.

Backing away from the door, Taylor opted against
confronting him with the truth.  He had already ended their relationship so why
throw salt on an open wound.  She would go home, and the belongings she had
there, he could dispose of, or pack and send to her.

Mario opened the door before she made it to the
stairwell. “Were you looking for me?” he asked flipping the light on in the
hallway.

Taylor did a slow rotation until she faced him.  She kept
her eyes downward to the floor not wanting to see the look of disgust on his
face.  “Um, I-I was going to pack my suitcase but you were on the phone; I
didn’t want to….”

“Where are you going?”

“I’m going home.  I’ve imposed on you long enough.”

He walked around her in studying her. “Really?  Are you
ready to stay alone?”

Her eyes followed his walk around her.  Had Mario sensed
something about her? He had a habit of taking normal situations, and applying
legal strategies to reach a conclusion.  Had he applied an algorithm to her
situation and summed her up?  And, was the phone call pertaining to what he’d
learned?

Unnerved with his looking at her the way he was, she
finally asked. “What are you doing, Mario?  Should I get the spotlight and
chair so you can interrogate me correctly?”

He shook his head. “No.  I’m curious why you want to
leave?”

She raised her shoulders. “For the obvious reasons.  You
did break up with me at the police station.”

“We had a disagreement, Taylor,” he said not raising his
voice.

His calm voice was unusual for a person who’d made a
scene by storming out on her. “I disagree.  Look, just curse me out and get it
over with—my life is totally in the crapper, and you might as well finish me
off by hitting the hand to flush me down the sewer.

“That is not my style.  I would not do anything to add to
the pain you’re experiencing.”

Her voice raised an octave. “Then what is it?  Why are
you acting so strange?”

“I’m not acting strange. But, since you heard me on the
telephone, you should know I was talking to Detective Diego; he told me
everything.”

She frowned. “Damn, did he think I wasn’t going to tell
you? How dare he undermine me!”

“He wasn’t doing that, Taylor; he was doing the exact
opposite.  He wanted to make sure I listened to you with an open mind.”

She walked into the bedroom and sat down on the end of
the king-sized bed planting her feet close together and keeping her spine
straight as a razor. She cleared her throat and tossed a question to him to see
exactly what he knew.  “May I ask what Detective Diego told you about our
little chat?” He wasn’t the only one with the ability to use legal strategies;
she would interrogate him for a change.

Mario held his breath as she crossed the threshold into
his bedroom.  Sliding his hands in the pockets of his fitted jeans, he
answered, “I’ll make it easy for you.  What happened between you and Dillon
when you returned to Cleveland?”

Smoothing her palms over the narrow indent of her waist,
she bit down the lower edge of her lip wishing she could become invisible in
the room.  “That was a mistake; I swear it meant nothing.”

“I asked you about the relationship you shared with him. 
You could have told me the truth.”

“I did tell you the truth!”

“Hmm, I must have missed the part where you slept with
him!”

“It’s not what you think! Let me explain how it
happened.  It was Christmas, and I had broken it off with my boyfriend. I was
in a bad place because we had been dating since I returned to Cleveland. 
Dillon heard what happened and came to my apartment to check on me.”

“Taylor, forget it.  I don’t want to know,” he said
running his hands down the front of jeans.

Her eyes bucked. “You wanted to hear it, so let me tell
it to you.”

Agitated, he leaned his buttocks against the large oak
dresser crossing his legs at the ankle. “Pardon me for interrupting; continue.”

“All right…where was I.  Oh yeah, I was beyond comforting. 
It is not a secret I like to drink and sometimes too much. So, liquor was
plentiful in my house.  Dillon figured a little nip would take my mind off
Miguel.  Well, one sip led to our drinking half the bottle.”  She caressed her
forehead to ward off the headache knocking on her temples.  “When he started to
kiss me, I didn’t stop him.”

“If you were drunk, how could you?”

Taylor shook her head.  “I wasn’t that drunk.  I liked
what he was doing, and I wanted to forget Miguel; it didn’t matter Dillon was
my best friend seducing me.”

“The fact he was your best friend and engaged to another
woman didn’t make it weird?”

Before she could think to shape an answer, Mario pinned a
look directly on her. He had eyes the color of burned coffee grounds, so dark
she couldn't tell where the black ended and the black of his pupil began. The
way he assessed her felt like a shredding of her character, her morals, her
soul. He cocked his chin a fraction and arched a brow.

“Taylor?”

“Of course it made it weird.  I was hurting, Mario. I
wanted the pain to go away, and thinking Dillon making love to me would do
that, was wrong.  All it did was make matters worse.  He wanted more and I
couldn’t give it to him.”

He shook his head retaining strict eye contact with her.
“I can imagine.  Damn, Taylor, you let a man already in love with you, comfort
you with sex.  You used him, baby.”

She lay back on the bed emptying her emotions. “Don’t you
think I know that? I made a mess of everything, Mario.  I had to put distance
between Dillon and me but I didn’t know how without it being obvious.”

“You were able to have sex with him; you should have been
able to tell him you didn’t want it to happen again without it being an issue.”

“I’m not good at hurting people’s feelings so sue me.”

Mario finally moved after standing in the same position
for most of her story.  Lying next to her, he propped his elbow under his head
and rubbed her stomach with his free hand. “You can stop.  What happened
between you and Dillon was before me.  My concern is what you feel for him
now?”

“Nothing has happened between us since.  I started dating
but nothing ever came of those dates until I met you; I swear.  I feel guilty
for what I’ve done to Dillon.  I may not be the cause of his health problems,
but I am the cause of his heartache.  Because of me, Kelly has somehow learned
about Dillon and me.  I am the reason she became obsessed with getting rid of
me.”

“You aren’t responsible for everything, Taylor.  I’m
baffled why Dillon would tell Kelly about sleeping with you.  He had to know
that would piss her off.”

“Dillon swore he would never reveal our secret.”

“So why would he tell her?  He could have hoped the
information would run her away.”

Taylor untucked her hair from under her head. “I remember
he kept a journal; he was the only man I knew that kept a diary.   If he wrote
about it, Kelly probably found it.”

He blew a breath from deep in his belly still massaging
hers. “That explains her actions.  I had a feeling she was holding something
over Dillon’s head, but it could have backfired.”

“How? She would have ruined my relationship with you. 
They both knew I had problems with holding onto relationships and Kelly would
have won.  I would have lost you forever.”

“No she would have lost Dillon and threw you two together
for good.”

Taylor removed his hand and got off the bed to go to the
closet and remove her suitcase.  “Well it’s all out in the open now.  My
actions ruined four lives and with any luck, Dillon won’t remember any of it
when he wakes up,” she said unzipping the luggage.

“So you’re still leaving?”

Taylor removed her clothes, a hanger-full at a time,
stuffing them in the suitcase without folding them.  Her object was to get out
of his house and home without jumping his bones.  He was addictive to her.  Even
in a depressed mood, he was able to stir an arousal. “Yes, I’m going home.”

“I’m not asking you to leave; you know that right?”

The tears dangled on the lower lids of her eyelashes. 
She lifted her shoulder to clean away the tears that had fallen down her cheek.
“And you won’t because you’re a gentleman and would not ask me to leave.  I’m
leaving because I’ve caused enough problems for everyone, including you.  God,
you must hate me.  You were honest about your distrust for women, and I have
been nothing but deceitful.”

When she went to the dresser to get more of her stuff,
Mario took the clothes from the suitcase and hung them back in the closet. She
caught him from the corner of her eye. “What are you doing?”

“What does it look like?  I’m hanging clothes.”

“Why? I’m going home.”

“No, you aren’t.”  He took the bottles from her hands
throwing them on the bed.  “Look, Taylor, there are some secrets that should be
stored away forever.  You have not done anything for me to mistrust you since
we’ve been together.  I was thrown why you didn’t want Kelly in jail, but I
understand it now.  Baby, I love you, and you need me whether you believe it or
not.”

The lump in her throat fell to her stomach with a splash.
“I love you too and I do need your help.  I can’t hold the weight I’m carrying
alone anymore.  I had a hand in taking a man’s life and it doesn’t matter he
was the scum of the earth.  Sebastian is hanging on by a thread because of me. 
Even what Kelly is going through is my fault.  She would never hurt a fly….I
drove her to act irrationally”