brother, to shame and embarrass Gabe the way he’d shamed Nick in front of the man he’d wanted to work for. Nick had left college with Marsha. They had gone to Seattle to meet her father. Nick wanted to marry Marsha and work for Mort.
“You arranged for Gabe to find us,” Laura said.
“Yes. What difference did it make?”
“I was engaged to him. I was going to marry him.”
“Did you honestly think you could still do that after we’d slept together?”
“No. I was guilty of infidelity. I wouldn’t have made Gabe try to live with that.” She huffed out a breath loaded with anger. “I would have softened the blow, though, and found a better way to tell him than to have him walk in on us.”
She pressed a hand against her mouth. “It must have been awful for him.”
“I wanted him to find us.”
“I eventually figured that out. Why?”
“I’d left college and run off with a girl. I wanted to marry her. Gabe caught up to us and dragged me back to college. He shamed me in front of her and her father.” He still remembered how deeply his embarrassment had run, how humiliated he’d felt, and how afraid he’d been that Gabe had ruined his chances with both Marsha and Mort permanently.
“So? He’d worked for five years to save enough money for you to go. You should have been grateful. You should have been down on your knees kissing his feet.” She leaned forward, speaking with a feverish intensity. “You and Tyler would have been the first in the family to attend college. All thanks to Gabe.”
“So? It wasn’t what I wanted. It wasn’t the way I wanted to start my career. The girl’s father was a big deal in development. He had a lot of money. I wanted him for a father-in-law. I knew I could learn more from him firsthand than I would ever learn in school.”
“So, why didn’t you just run away again? Why come back to Accord to seduce me?” He would have objected, but she rushed on. “Yes, you did seduce me, even if you didn’t find it hard to do. I would have let my attraction to you slide. I would have had a good life with Gabe.”
“I saved you from a mediocre future.”
“Not true. Gabe is a good man.”
“You couldn’t have loved him too much if you were tempted by me so easily. Marriage to Gabe would have been too tame for you. I rescued you.”
“Don’t,” she bit out. “It wasn’t a charitable act. What you did had nothing to do with me and everything to do with hurting Gabe as much as you could.”
“Yes.” He’d wanted to hurt Gabe, the meddling bastard, but seducing Laura had been magnificent. Yeah, it had everything to do with hurting his brother, but so much to do with Laura, too. Lovely, breathtaking Laura.
“You were a selfish bastard concerned only with your own revenge.”
“I was only nineteen. I regret it now.”
At his even tone, her eyes narrowed. “What are you? A robot? Don’t you have feelings?”
Too many at the moment. “I don’t see the value in indulging them.”
They stared at each other, apparently at an impasse.
“I have to go,” he said. “My daughter is waiting for her lunch.”
Something changed in Laura, as though a whirlwind fanned a flame higher. A blush flared on her cheeks.
“You have a daughter?” she asked, her voice quiet again, but pulsing with anger.
He cocked his head. “Why does that make you angry?”
“You have no idea what you took from me, do you?” Laura asked. “How unfair it is that you have a child while I don’t? You stole my chance at a family.”
Ah. He understood. “You didn’t want Gabe as much as you wanted children. Gabe was a means to an end.”
“I loved him. He was a good man. He would have made a brilliant father.”
For the briefest moment, he thought she might cry. Over ancient history?
“You owe me so much.”
“Were there no other men in this town who would marry you and give you babies?” Were they blind?
She shook her head, once, quickly. There were things going on here that he didn’t understand, that she didn’t want to share with him. He didn’t blame her. They were strangers.
The longer she stared at him, the more he got the impression of something forming inside of her, something calculating and sly, of that wind fanning a twister.
“You owe me,” she said again, with conviction this time.
Her smile worried him.
“What do you mean?”