I’d been on our shared laptop, searching for recipes I’d stored there. Seeing a file I didn’t recognize, I’d clicked. And the graphic, sexual images of a naked and sweaty Lance along with my beautiful neighbor, who’d dared to call herself my friend, had flashed on the screen. Nausea had risen at the visual proof of what I’d only suspected before.
I shivered at the memory of those images, proud of how I’d walked out without a word—or a suitcase. My body was frozen, my heart encased in ice. Although I could turn on the heated seats, the reminder of what it felt like to be numb with betrayal would keep me safe in the future.
I turned on the ignition, but surprisingly, no water works mixed with the dampness from the rain. Instead, adrenaline raced through my veins faster than even my beloved car could take a highway. I ought to be afraid. Panicked. Yearning to turn around and go back to the security I’d known.
My foot pressed the accelerator, and I backed out of the driveway without looking back. I might not know where I’d go or what I’d do, but I was moving forward. At last.
On the satellite radio, the 1980s Bugles song proclaimed that video killed the radio star. Untrue, I thought, as I drove into the dark night. Radio had thrived anyway. And tonight, though video killed my dream of living happily ever after in a life I thought I’d carefully crafted to prevent loneliness, those graphic sexual images of betrayal wouldn’t destroy me. Instead, they’d set me free.
* * *
Isabelle: Out of the Frying Pan
I was arrested a mile outside of Manhattan. Grand theft auto, the cop said. Bullshit, I replied. The baby Benz belonged to me.
Still, he cuffed me and hauled me to the nearest police station. He said his name was Officer Dare, and he was a dark-haired man, tall, taller than Lance, who prided himself on his height, and broader beneath his uniform, from what I could tell. His intense expression never wavered. All seriousness, all the time, but I sensed he’d be handsome if he smiled. So far, he hadn’t.
Once inside the typical-looking police station—not that I’d seen the inside of one before, but what I’d thought one would look like from watching Law and Order—he sat me beside his wooden desk and cuffed me to the desk.
I ought to be scared, but some stupid part of me had already decided this new part of my life was some grand adventure. At least it was until Officer Dare asked me to empty my pockets and divested me of my last five hundred dollars, cash I’d taken from the extra stash I kept in my nightstand.
He thumbed through the bulging stack of twenties in never-ending silence.
The money represented my lifeline. “I’ll need to eat when I get out of here,” I told my jailer.
He didn’t look up. “You’ll get it back.”
“All of it?” I asked as if I seriously believed a member of the police force would take a down-on-her-luck woman’s chance at food.
He set his jaw in annoyance. “We log it and count it. In front of you. I was just about to do that … ma’am.”
For some inane reason, I burst out laughing. I’d gone from living in denial to homeless and arrested in a ridiculously short time. This whole turn in my life really was absurd.
I rubbed my free hand up and down over one arm. “Don’t I get one phone call?”
He nodded and reached for the telephone on the desk.
I frowned, suddenly realizing I had no one to call. Lance was out of the question, and our friends were really his friends. As for my parents, they didn’t remember my birthday, so something told me a late-night call to pick up their daughter from jail would not be their number-one priority.
“Never mind,” I said softly.
The officer stared at me, confused. “Now you don’t want to use the phone?”
“No thank you.” Because I was totally, utterly alone.
Nausea rose like bile in my throat, and I dug my nails into my palms. When I forced myself to breathe deeply, the familiar burning in my chest returned, and I realized I’d walked away without the one thing I never left home without, and it wasn’t my license.
“Any chance you’ve got some Tums?” I asked.
He ground his teeth together, and I swear I heard his molars scraping. “Okay, yeah. I’ll get right on that,” he muttered and strode off.
“I’ll just wait here,” I called back. I lifted my arm the short distance the cuffs would allow and groaned.
What felt like an endless stretch of time passed, during which I reviewed my options, of which, once again, I had none.
Now what, I wondered, utter and complete despair threatening for the first time. Eventually I forced back the lump in my throat and forced myself to make the best of the situation.
I kicked my feet against the linoleum floor. Leaned back in the chair and studied the cracked ceiling. Hummed along to the tune crackling on the radio in the background. And yeah, I tried not to cry.
“You know, I thought it would take me longer to get you in cuffs.” A familiar masculine voice that oozed pure sin sounded beside me.
It couldn’t be, I thought, but from the tingling in my body, I already knew it was. “Gabriel Dare, what brings you into this part of Mayberry?”
He chuckled, a deeply erotic sound that matched his mention of the handcuffs, but he didn’t answer my question.
Left with no choice, I tipped my head and looked into his self-possessed, dark blue eyes. Eyes too similar to my cop, and suddenly the last name registered. In an unfamiliar place and time, my mind on my arrest and nothing more, I hadn’t made the connection before.
I knew Gabriel Dare from the country club Lance belonged to, but despite the upper-crust connection, there was nothing similar about the two men. Where Lance was sandy-haired and a touch Waspish in looks, Gabe, as his friends called him, possessed thick, dark sable hair and roguish good looks.
Gabe’s very posture and demeanor set him apart from any other man I’d met. His white teeth, tanned skin, and chiseled features were put together in a way that made him extraordinarily handsome. That he owned the space and air around him merely added to his appeal. An appeal that had never been lost on me, not even now, shackled as I was to a desk in a police station.
His stare never wavered, those navy eyes locked on me, and if I hadn’t been sitting, I’d be in a puddle at his feet.
“You look good cuffed,” he said in a deliciously low voice.
Immediate thoughts of me bound and at his mercy assaulted me. My body, which hadn’t been worshiped well in far too long, if ever, had been taken over by the notion of Gabe, his strong touch playing me with an expert hand.