“You split up because she was sleeping around while you were out of town?” Ronnie prompted, remembering what he had told her the day she had met him.
Tom nodded. “Yup.”
“Were you really all that surprised?” It was hard to imagine he hadn’t suspected.
She
had suspected Lewis right from the beginning. No, she had known.
Tom finished one sandwich and started on the other. “Yup. I didn’t have a clue. I came home a day early from a trip, just like I did today, and walked right in on it. In my house, in my bed. It wasn’t pretty.”
Ronnie had the feeling that that was the understatement of the year. “That must have been bad.”
“It was.” He glanced over his shoulder. “Mustard?”
“No, thanks. Just plain, please.”
“No mayo either?”
“No, nothing.”
He walked toward the table carrying two paper plates. As he set hers before her, Ronnie was amused to discover that the sandwiches were each thick enough to feed three people.
“Thank you,” she said.
He sat down opposite her and bit into his sandwich.
“So the divorce was Sandra’s fault?” Ronnie probed, removing about half the ham from her sandwich so that she could eat it.
“Want to know all the gory details, do you?” He smiled wryly at her. “If I was smart, I guess I’d say yes. But the truth is I was working a lot, which means I was gone a lot. I did occasionally meet women in the course of my work and …” His voice trailed off, and he lifted his eyebrows expressively at her to complete the sentence.
“Sleep with them?” Ronnie finished for him politely.
“That about sums it up, yeah.” Tom’s mouth twisted at her tone. “I’d been married since I was twenty-one, and I fell out of love with Sandra about two years later.”
“I see.” Ronnie took a bite of her sandwich. “But you were still surprised to find your wife sleeping with someone else.”
“Surprised isn’t the word.” Tom put his sandwich down and picked up his Coke, then put that down, too, without drinking any. “I went nuts. I beat the crap out of the guy, scared the hell out of Sandra, and took off. The divorce took almost two years to finalize. Sandra wound up with everything: the house, the cars, the retirement fund, Mark. While it was going on, I
couldn’t keep my mind on my business, which went to hell on a greased slide. The firm wound up getting accused of accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of illegal campaign contributions on behalf of one of the clients we were working for at the time. Which we were not guilty of, by the way, not that it mattered in the end. It was all over the papers—I’m surprised you didn’t see it. We had to pay a huge fine, and afterward business went down the tubes. We couldn’t
buy
a client. The firm went bankrupt. Finally Kenny and I started picking up the pieces.” He smiled at her. “
You
were our big break. We’re coming back in a big way now. And I must say, I learned a lot from the experience.”
“Tom,” Ronnie began, and stopped. Her ham sandwich lay forgotten on her plate.
“What?” he asked, taking a bite of his.
“Tell me something: where do I fit into this picture? Do I fall under the category of one of the women you meet in the course of your work that you occasionally sleep with? Or are you still ‘handling’ me for the good of the firm?”
Tom stared at her across the table, and slowly put his sandwich back on his plate. His eyes narrowed. “For the record, the women I slept with while I was married were basically one-night stands. No emotional ties. They didn’t want any, I didn’t want any. And I draw the line at handling clients by sleeping with them.”
“Of course, it helps that most of your other clients are men,” Ronnie said sweetly.
His mouth quirked, and a flare of amusement lit his eyes. “That does help, yes.”
Ronnie stood up, scowling at him. Tom stood up, too, and caught her by her upper arms, pulling her close against him, looking down into her eyes.
“You want to know where you fit into my life? Is that what you’re asking me? The answer is, you don’t fit in. You are one huge complication in a life that was starting to get fairly smooth again. You are professional suicide and a personal scandal on a scale I don’t even like to think about, all wrapped up in one gorgeous, sexy package. I tried my very best not to get involved with you like this. I couldn’t help it. I think about you during the day. I dream about you at night. Whenever I see you, it’s like the sun breaking through the clouds after a cold rain.”
As she listened, the frown faded from Ronnie’s face. She slid her arms up around his neck.
His voice turned husky. “So I guess I’d have to say that at this point where you fit into my life is kind of up to you.”
Ronnie stood on tiptoes to kiss him. No sooner had their mouths touched than the door to the apartment burst open, and then closed again with a tremendous slam.
Chapter
34
“D
AD!” MARK’S BELLOW
broke Tom and Ronnie apart faster than a bucket of cold water being thrown over them. They had only an instant to look at each other in consternation. “Dad, are you in the kitchen? You’ll never believe what she did!”
Ronnie had a sudden wild impulse to hide, which was ridiculous. She was trapped in the kitchen. There was no way out except through the living room, which Mark was already stomping across. And she was too big to fit in a cabinet.
Anyway, it became a moot point in seconds. Mark reached the kitchen door and stopped dead, the wrath draining from his face in the space of a single breath as his gaze moved from his father to Ronnie and back.
Ronnie saw the scene through Mark’s eyes, and winced: There was Tom, clad in nothing but jeans, barefoot and shirtless. She was fully dressed at least, in jeans and a clingy, bright yellow T-shirt with a pink rising sun on it, but she was equally barefoot, her mouth devoid of lipstick, her hair in a deep red tangle around her shoulders. They stood about a yard apart,
having instinctively separated as soon as they’d heard him come in. Tom was in front of the cabinets next to the refrigerator, while Ronnie was frozen beside the table, which held two Cokes in cans, and two plates with the remains of two ham sandwiches.
“Oh, sorry, I didn’t know you had a”—here Mark’s gaze swung back to Ronnie again and widened—“date.”
It was clear from his expression that he remembered her from that afternoon.
“Ronnie, you remember my son.” Tom’s voice was crisp. “Mark, you met Mrs. Honneker earlier today.”
“I remember, yeah. Hi,” Mark managed, still staring at her.
“Hi, Mark,” Ronnie said. Getting those two words out was one of the most difficult things she had ever done in her life. She felt hideously ill at ease. Hooking her fingers through the belt loops of her jeans, she glanced at Tom.
“I take it that you and Loren had a fight?” he said to Mark.
Ronnie had to give Tom credit; he was keeping his cool very well. The look he gave his son was level. The question was clearly intended as a distraction, and it worked.
“She gave me back my ring!” Mark was obviously laboring under a strong sense of having been ill used. He had to be both angry and anguished to blurt that out in front of a stranger, Ronnie thought. He thrust his hands in his front pockets in a way that reminded Ronnie of Tom, and leaned against the doorjamb dispiritedly.
“I didn’t know you’d given her a ring,” Tom said.
“Yeah, I did, at the beginning of the summer. We were going together! But look!” He held up his left hand, and there was a silver friendship ring on his little finger.
“Sit down, Ronnie, and finish your sandwich.” Tom opened the refrigerator door, retrieved a small bottle of orange juice, and tossed it to his son. “You sit down, too, Mark. You want something to eat? A ham sandwich?”
“No.” Mark unscrewed the lid of the orange juice, drained about half its contents in a series of gulps, and sat down at the table.
Ronnie, with another glance at Tom, resumed her seat. It would only compound the awkwardness if she were to leave the minute Mark got home. Perhaps the teen didn’t even understand the significance of the scene he had walked in on, Ronnie thought hopefully.
Then she remembered the way he had looked at her at the airport earlier. Mark wasn’t
that
young.
“So what happened?” Tom was fixing another ham sandwich.
“We were at Pizza Hut, and she told me she wants to start seeing other guys, and gave me back my ring!”
Ronnie gamely tried to take a bite of her sandwich.
“Loren’s a real pretty girl.” Tom put a paper plate with a ham sandwich on it in front of his son and sat down again at the table.
“Isn’t she?” Mark took a huge bite out of the sandwich he hadn’t wanted.
“But you know, there are lots of pretty girls out there. Some of them as pretty as Loren, or prettier.
Maybe you ought to think about checking some of
them
out.”
“Maybe,” Mark said without enthusiasm, taking another big bite of his sandwich.
“Would you mind if I gave you some advice about your girlfriend?” Ronnie asked, pushing her plate aside and leaning her elbows on the table.
“Sure,” Mark said.
“If I were you, I’d act like you don’t care a snap of your fingers that she broke up with you. Start going out with other girls right away. That’ll get her attention faster than anything else you could do.”
“Make her jealous, you mean?” Mark asked. “That’s kind of corny. Do you really think it would work?”
“Imagine how you’d feel if you saw your girlfriend with another guy.”
“I’d want to kill him,” Mark said with conviction.
“A slight tendency toward jealousy is kind of a family failing,” Tom said with a glimmer of a smile, his eyes meeting Ronnie’s. She smiled back at him, remembered their audience, and quickly tried to make the smile impersonal. She wasn’t sure how well she succeeded.
“I guess I could ask Elizabeth Carter to go to the Labor Day dance with me,” Mark said, pondering. “Or Amy Ruebens.”
“That’s a good idea,” Tom said.
“I hate to eat and run, but I’ve got to go.” Ronnie glanced at the big clock on the wall opposite, and stood up. A sudden, horrible thought seized her. She couldn’t go; she was barefoot. Her shoes were right where she had kicked them off: beside Tom’s bed.
How to retrieve them gracefully?
Tom had gotten to his feet when she stood up, and obviously saw the sudden consternation in her expression. His brows drew together, and he gave her a mystified look.
“Sit back down,” she told him with a quick wave toward the chair he had just vacated. “I’m just going to run to the rest room first. I’ll be right back.”
There were two bathrooms in the apartment, one just down the hall from the kitchen and one off Tom’s bedroom. Mark had his own bedroom next to Tom’s, but as far as she knew no bathroom. Ronnie shut the door to the bathroom off the hall without going in and scurried along to Tom’s bedroom, feeling like a thief. Her sneakers were beside the bed, which was thoroughly mussed. Ronnie quickly straightened the covers, then sat on the corner of the bed to pull on her shoes. That done, she sprang up, crept back to the bathroom, and opened and closed the door again, as though she were just coming out.
Even if Mark did guess that she and his father were sleeping together, there was no need to remove all doubt from his mind. And the state of Tom’s bed with her shoes beside it was, to Ronnie’s way of thinking, pretty damning evidence.
Walking at a normal pace now, Ronnie returned to the kitchen doorway. Father and son were in the midst of a low-voiced discussion, which they broke off as she appeared.
“I’ve got to go,” she said. Their eyes were really very similar, she thought as they both looked up at her.
“I’ll walk you out.” Tom stood up. “Let me get my shirt.”
Wearing the white T-shirt he had on earlier and a pair of slip-on boat shoes, he was back so fast that Ronnie and Mark only had time to exchange awkward smiles.
Mark got to his feet then, glancing first at Ronnie, then at his father, who stood just behind her. “Look, I’m sorry about crashing in on your date. When you told me you were staying home tonight, I thought … I thought …” His voice trailed off.
What he didn’t say was obvious: He had thought Tom meant
alone
.
“I’m glad to have had the chance to make your acquaintance, Mark,” Ronnie said, having by this time decided that the only thing to do was pretend there was no awkwardness inherent in the situation. “Your dad talks about you a lot.”
“Does he?” Mark darted an interested glance at Tom.
“Now and then,” Tom said. “I’ll be back in a minute, Mark.”
They didn’t speak until they were outside the building, heading around toward the alley where Ronnie had left her car.
“Do you think he realized?” Ronnie asked anxiously. Tom was walking beside her, but they weren’t touching. It was dark now, and most everyone seemed to have gone inside. Somebody nearby was having a barbecue; the mouthwatering aroma of grilling meat filled the air.
“Oh, yeah.” Tom’s answer was dry. “He thinks you’re a total babe, by the way.”
“You two talked about me?”
“The first thing he said when you left the room was, ‘Now I get the air show bit.’ The conversation went downhill from there.”
“Oh, no!”
Tom shrugged. “There’s nothing to do about it. I imagine we’ll be talking about it some more. I’ll tell him that there’s such a thing as moral ambiguity, for instance, and how some things are not black or white but kind of shades of gray. One of those conversations parents have with their kids when the kid catches the parent doing something wrong.”
“Oh, Tom, I hate for you to be put in that kind of position!”
“Yeah, me too.”
They reached Ronnie’s car and stopped, facing each other.
“Will I see you tomorrow?” Her voice was low.
He shook his head. “Mark’s playing in a baseball tournament in Meridian. We’ll be gone all day tomorrow and most of Sunday.”
“You know we’re moving back to Washington on Friday.”