"That's okay, because you're not the man I married." He turned and left the kitchen. T.J. looked down at the cup of tea in her hand, blinking back tears. Well, it was out in the open now. She should have seen what was going on a long time ago. After all, who knew better than she how Galan acted when he was in love?
Brick wasn't asleep on the sofa the way he usually was when Marci got home, though his old pickup was in the driveway. She went through into the bedroom and found him stuffing clothes in a duffel. "Going somewhere?" she asked.
"Yeah," he said sullenly.
She watched him pack. He was good-looking in a beer- drinking kind of way, with too-long dark hair, an unshaven jaw, slightly heavy features, and his usual costume of tight jeans, tight T-shirt, and scuffed boots. Ten years younger than her, never good at holding down a job, oblivious of anything that didn't involve sports – let's face it, he wasn't the catch of the century. She wasn't in love with him, thank God. She hadn't been in love with anyone in years. All she wanted was company and sex. Brick provided the sex, but he wasn't much company.
He zipped up the duffel, hefted it by the handles, and brushed past her.
"Are you coming back?" she asked. "Or should I forward the rest of your stuff to wherever you're going?" He glared at her. "Why're you asking? Maybe you got somebody else all lined up to take my place, huh? Somebody with a ten-inch dick, just the way you like." She rolled her eyes. "Oh, jeez," she muttered. "Lord save me from injured male egos."
"You wouldn't understand," he said, and to her surprise, she detected a note of hurt in his rough voice. Marci stood blinking as Brick stormed out of the house and slammed into his truck. He slung gravel as he peeled out of the driveway.
She was astounded. Brick, hurt? Whoever would have thought?
Well, either he would be back or he wouldn't. She gave a mental shrug and opened the box containing her new answering machine, deftly hooking it up. As she recorded an outgoing message, she wondered how many calls she had missed because Brick had thrown the other answering machine against the wall. Even if he had bothered to answer the phone, he wouldn't have taken any messages for her, not in the mood he was in.
If there was anything important, she thought, they would call back.
She had barely completed the thought when the phone rang. She lifted the receiver. "Hello."
"Which one are you?" whispered a ghostly voice.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Jaine cracked open one eye and glared at the clock, which was emitting an extremely annoying high-pitched beeping sound. Finally recognizing it as the alarm – after all, she'd never heard it at two A.M. before – she reached over and slapped it. She snuggled down in the renewed silence, wondering why in hell the alarm had gone off at that ungodly hour.
Because she had set it to go off at that ungodly hour, that was why.
"No," she moaned to the dark room. "I can't get up. I've only been in bed four hours!"
She got up anyway. She had had the presence of mind before going to bed to prepare the coffeemaker and set the timer for 1:50. The smell of coffee drew her, stumbling, to the kitchen.
She turned on the overhead light, then had to squint her eyes against the glaring brightness.
"Television people are aliens," she mumbled as she reached for a cup. "Real humans wouldn't do this on a regular basis."
With one cup of coffee in her, she managed to make it into the shower. As the water poured down on top of her head, she remembered that she hadn't intended to wash her hair. Since she hadn't factored in the time to wash and dry her hair when she calculated the time to get up, she was now officially behind schedule. She groaned and leaned against the wall. "I can't do this."
A minute later, she talked herself into trying. She rapidly shampooed and loofahed herself, and three minutes later jumped out of the shower. With another cup of coffee steaming close to hand, she blow-dried her hair, then used a dab of hair gloss to smooth down the flyaway tendrils. When one got up so early makeup was necessary to cover the automatic look of horror and sheer disbelief; she applied it with a fast but lavish hand, going for the glamorous, just-left-a-party look. What she got was closer to a hangover look, but she wasn't wasting any more time on a hopeless cause.
Don't wear white or black, the television lady had said. Jaine put on a long, narrow black skirt, figuring the lady had meant to avoid black on her top half, which was what would be seen. She paired a scoop-neck, three-quarter- length-sleeved red sweater with the black skirt, cinched a black belt around her waist, and slipped her feet into black pumps at the same time as she was fastening classic gold hoops in her ears.
She glanced at the clock. Three A.M. Damn, she was good at this!
She would bite her tongue off before she ever admitted it. Okay, what else? Food and water for BooBoo, who was staying out of sight. Smart kitty, she thought. That little chore taken care of, she let herself out at five after three. The driveway next door was still empty. No brown Pontiac sat there, nor had she heard any other vehicle enter the driveway during the night. Sam hadn't come home.
He probably had a girlfriend, she thought, gritting her teeth. Duh! She felt like an idiot. Of course he had a girlfriend. Men like Sam always had a woman or two, or three, on their strings. He hadn't been able to get anywhere with her, thanks to her lack of birth control, so he had simply buzzed on over to the next flower in line. "Jerk," she growled as she got into the Viper. She should have remembered her past experiences in the relationship wars and not let herself get so excited. Evidently her hormones had overruled her common sense and she had become drunk on ovarian wine, the most potent, sanity- destroying substance in the universe. In short, she had taken one look at his naked body and gone into heat. "Forget about that," she muttered to herself as she drove the dark, quiet residential streets. "Don't think about it." Sure. Like she was going to forget the sight of that joystick of his waving proud and free.