Seducing the Old Flame (24 page)

“I’m definitely the one with the most gray hairs and you’ve
given me more than mom this week.”

“Mom?
 
What’s up with
her?”
 
Tabitha took a bite of the rice
and chicken and swallowed without ever tasting it.
 
Best way to avoid the rubber.

“Nothing.
 
She’s as happy
as a clam and taking her meds as prescribed.
 
Good thing, too, because I might not be able to handle it if she went
over the bend while you’re in this foul daze.”

“I’m not in a foul daze.”

“Okay, you’re love sick over Jason Kelly.”

“Am not.”

“Are too.”

“Am not.”

“Are too.”
 
Jenny tilted
her head with more than a little know-it all defiance.

“Puh-leeze.”
 
Tabitha
rolled her eyes and gulped down another bite of rice and chicken.

Jenny watched like a mother hen while Tabitha forced several
more bites down, praying they didn’t come back up.

“So, you never did tell me, did you do it?”

Tabitha’s gaze shot up.
 
“What do you mean did I do it?
 
Of
course I did it.
 
I told you I spent the
whole weekend in bed with him.”

And on the kitchen counter and the living room sofa and…she had
to stop thinking about him this way.
 
She’d done the right thing and walked out of his life before the fights
had started back.
 
Jason could move on
and find the woman of his dreams.

If he hadn’t already found her in Annie.
 
What if they were on their first date
tonight?
 
What if?

No, she had to stop thinking about Jason.

“Sex or making love?”

“God, you’re nosy.”

“I’m your sister,” Jenny scoffed.
 
“It’s my job.”

“Sex.”
 
She wouldn’t tell
her sister about that last time, about how Jason had made her feel loved and
cherished.
 
That had been personal and
not something to be shared over Chinese take-out.

“So, did a weekend of having sex with Jason cure you?” Jenny
asked matter-of-factly before tearing open a carton of food.

Tabitha swore her uterus contracted with grief.
 
“Do I look cured to you?”

Jenny chop-sticked a bite and glanced up at Tabitha.
 
“You look like hell.”

“Gee, thanks.
 
I love you,
too.”

“And Jason, do you love him?”

“I don’t want to talk about Jason anymore.
 
Or think about him.”

Jenny let the words settle a few minutes before saying, “And in
the mean time of you not thinking about Jason or talking about him, you’ve
adopted the world’s ugliest cat.”

“Don’t call her that.
 
That’s what Jason said about She-cat.
 
She’s very sensitive about the issue.”

“Yeah, I can tell by how she’s still curled up asleep on your
sofa.
 
And for the record, you’re talking
about him again.”

Because no matter how much she tried she couldn’t seem to get Jason
out of her head.
 
“How did you know
that’s where she was?” she asked, rather than address the Jason remark.

“That’s where she’s been every time I’ve been here.
 
If I didn’t know better I’d swear the cat was
in mourning with you.”

She-cat did seem subdued since arriving at Tabitha’s condo.
 
She supposed it was possible the cat missed Jason,
too.
 
Or preferred Jason’s no pets
allowed apartment.

Tabitha chewed another bite and stared at her sister.
 
“You think I’m crazy, don’t you?”

“I know you’re crazy, but that’s beside the point.”
 
Jenny waved her chopsticks at Tabitha.
 
“It took you two years and the pretense of
needing sexual healing to search out Jason and you’re just going to walk
away?
 
Ridiculous.”

“Y’all were right.
 
I did
need sexual healing.”

“Whatever.”
 
Jenny
dismissed.
 
“My point is that you care
about Jason.”
 
She picked up her box and
chop-sticked a big bite.
 
“So what
happened this time?
 
For that matter,
what happened last time?”

“He thought I slept with Jeremy Rogers.”

“He thought what?”
 
Jenny’s rice and chicken fell and, hearing the sound of food hitting the
kitchen floor, She-cat magically appeared to clean up the mess.

“You heard me.”
 
Tabitha
stared at She-cat, determined not to let the censure in Jenny’s eyes get to
her.
 
Nice thing about having an animal
in the house.
 
You never had to clean up
spilt food.

If only cleaning up one’s life were as simple.

Cleaning.
 
The image of
she and Jason in his kitchen flooded her, caused heat to rush into her
cheeks.
 
Elsewhere.

“He thought you slept with another man this weekend?”

Pulled from her hot thoughts, Tabitha rolled her eyes.
 
She’d known better than to tell Jenny.
 
For two years she’d kept the bloody truth to
herself, why spill the beans-—or the rice and chicken—-now?
 
First to Jason and now to Jenny.
 
“Not this weekend.
 
On the night Jason and I broke up.”

“What the hell did he think that for?
 
And who the heck is Jeremy Rogers?
 
And please tell me you didn’t really sleep
with him.”

She shrugged and went for flippant.
 
That had to be better than despondent and
broken-hearted.
 
“Jeremy was this guy in
my circle of friends who’d flirted outrageously with me on several
occasions.
 
I knew he wanted me.
 
After mine and Jason’s big roe, I went
out.
 
Jeremy was there, bought me a
drink.”
 
Tabby shrugged again, as if the
words she spoke didn’t drive nails into her heart.
 
“He looked hot in his jeans, smelled good,
and promised me a real good time.”

Jenny gasped.
 
“I didn’t
think it was possible for anything you did to shock me after knowing you my
whole life, but I oughtta slap you.”
 
She
gasped again.
 
“I would slap you if I
believed you.”

“Slap away, because it’s true.”
 
Tabitha sat her container down on the counter and sighed.
 
“Jason and I had fought.
 
Bad.
 
Again.”
 
She shivered at the
memory.
 
“Screamed and yelled at each
other to the point I just wanted to put my hands over my ears and make it all
go away.
 
Like how mom used to get during
one of her tirades.”
 
She took a deep
breath and forced herself onward.
 
“I
went out to a club, probably looking for trouble, truth be told.
 
Jeremy was there, sympathetic to the cause
and he promised to make me feel better, and…” Tabitha shrugged again.

“And you slept with him and told Jason?
 
You idiot.”

“I didn’t tell Jason and I didn’t really have sex with Jeremy.”
 
Tabitha stared at She-Cat.
 
“Jason always came back to my apartment a few
hours after he left in a huff.
 
Nothing
ever changed.
 
We’d fight.
 
He’d leave.
 
He’d come back.
 
We’d make up and
have sex.
 
Happened time and again like a
broken record with nothing really ever changing between us.
 
Nothing ever got resolved.”

Jenny’s eyes rounded.
 
“Tell me he didn’t walk in on you with this Jeremy guy.”

“Okay.”
 
Tabitha looked
down at She-cat licking her paws.
 
“So I
won’t tell you.”

“He did.
 
He walked in on
you screwing around with some guy you picked up in a bar.
 
You argued with Jason and he thought you had
make-up sex with someone else?”
 
Jenny
winced.
 
“I’m surprised Jason didn’t
murder you both.”

“Well, there for a few minutes I thought he might.”
 
More memories of that night came rushing
back.
 
Jason’s face pale, then bright red
as he stood in the bedroom doorway staring at her lying on her sofa with Jeremy
kissing her with icky wet kisses.

Hell, she was pretty sure Jeremy had gotten off on the fact Jason
had caught them.
 
The two men always had
barely restrained themselves from cock fighting.
 
Jeremy hadn’t even been in the same weight
class as Jason.
 
Like a newbie matched up
against a heavy weight champion.
 
But
testosterone flew when Jeremy and Jason occupied the same room.
 
Had she intentionally chosen a man she knew Jason
detested?

“He should have strangled you both.”

“Possibly.”
 
She couldn’t
imagine how she would have felt if the situation were reversed, if she walked
in on Jason with another woman.
 
Strangling would be a mild description of what she’d want to do.
 
“I didn’t actually have sex with him.
 
Jason just thought we did.”

“But you were making out with this guy?”

She couldn’t deny it.
 
She
had let Jeremy kiss her, run his hands over her body.
 
Through her clothes, but she had let
him.
 
All because she’d known Jason would
catch them.

“How could you, Tabitha?
 
I mean, really?
 
That is so
beneath you.”

She sucked in a breath.
 
How
could she make her sister understand something that in retrospect she wasn’t so
sure she even understood?
 
Just at the
time she’d felt claustrophobic, caught in a downward whirlwind that if she
hadn’t gotten out of she’d known was going to destroy her and Jason, too.

“I couldn’t take the fights any more,” she admitted.
 
“Our entire relationship had reached the
point of fighting followed by make-up sex.
 
We were on a constant rollercoaster of highs
and lows.
 
Yet neither Jason nor I could
let the other go.
 
I was to the point I’d
started resenting him, believed he resented his feelings for me.
 
So I ended our relationship the only way I
knew that would truly bring things to a halt before we destroyed each other.”
 
Her hand shook.
 
“I never wanted to hate Jason and I might
have had we gone on that way very much longer.
 
He wanted me to be something I wasn’t and I resented that I wasn’t
enough.”

“Oh.
 
My.
 
God,” Jenny cried.
 
“You let him believe…you wanted him mad…all
this time…you…Tabitha!

Tabitha nodded, fighting the moisture gathering in her
eyes.
 
“Despite the fact that I care
about him, have always cared about him, it was the right thing to do.”
 
It had been, hadn’t it?
 
“I don’t recall actually thinking through
what I did, but I knew he’d come back for me, would find me with Jeremy, and
that he wouldn’t forgive me.
 
We were on
a self-destructive path.
 
One where we
dragged the other down.”

“Don’t you think you should have suggested,” Jenny struggled for
an appropriate response.
 
“Couples
therapy or something?
 
I don’t know.
 
Anything, but making out with someone else.”

Did Jenny really think she’d made the decision she had
lightly?
 
Okay, so she hadn’t thought
about it much prior to making the decision, but she’d thought about it a lot
since.
 
When she’d been sitting in that
bar and Jeremy hit on her, sex seemed the perfect solution.
 
A solution that would jolt she and Jason from
the vicious cycle they’d fallen into.
 
Permanently.
 
And although she
hadn’t been able to actually go through with having sex with Jeremy, Jason
thought she had and it had worked.

“A therapist would have been able to retire on Jason and I’s
problems.
 
We were selfish and both wanted
things our way and neither of us was willing to compromise.
 
Jason wouldn’t have walked away from me any
other way.”