earlier he’d shredded her credit cards and stolen the pearls he’d given her. Tanylee touched her necklace—these were Viv’s pearls. She’d been borrowing them ever since.
Wim now pointed to the phone handset, and picked it up on his side. Tanyalee held up one finger to him, reaching into her bag to retrieve a bottle of Hawaiian Delite hand sanitizer, a scent that reminded her of Aunt Viv’s award-winning ambrosia salad. After thoroughly purifying the counter, the phone, and her hands, Tanyalee could no longer delay speaking to Wim. She held the handset to her ear and breathed in the sickly-sweet scent of pineapple and coconut.
“Hello, Wim.”
“Damn, Tanyalee. You look like a cold Creamsicle on a hot day.” Wim’s gaze was hungry, almost leering.
She clutched her bag protectively in her lap. “I have come to make amends, Wim.” She swallowed. Tanyalee had practiced her lines on the drive, talking to herself while bobbing her head to nonexistent music so that passing drivers would think she was singing along to the radio.
“I never loved you,” she recited. “I lied to get you to buy me things and manipulated you into proposing to me. I acknowledge that this was unfair to you because you believed I truly cared for you and that I would make you a good and loyal wife. I came to ask you for forgiveness for using you in such a dishonest fashion.”
With her shame laid out as naked as a newborn possum—and there was nothing uglier in the world than a newborn possum!—she waited for Wim’s response.
He leaned back and lifted his gaze to the ceiling. “Tanyalee Marie Newberry, Center of the Universe.” His laugh was a short, sarcastic bark.
She stiffened. As Dr. Leslie said, making amends did not give the injured party the right to abuse her. So Tanyalee prepared to make a quick but ladylike exit.
Then Wim looked right at her. She was surprised by the wry warmth in his eyes.
“Tanyalee, you’ve got nothing to be sorry for. You didn’t use me any more than I used you. We’re two of a kind, you and me. We know how the world really works. You wanted my money and standing. I wanted your looks and your body. It wasn’t love, it was a transaction. And sugar pie, I was just fine buyin’ what you were sellin’.”
She supposed that was an accurate, albeit harsh, assessment of their relationship, one Tanyalee had entered with both eyes open. Now, she cringed at the thought of being “two of a kind” with Wim Wimbley.
She was not that woman anymore.
“Well, all right then.” She lifted her chin. “I appreciate you listening, Wim. I wish you the best.” She gathered her bag and prepared to hang up the phone.
“Wait!” Wim leaned forward, his expression gone all crafty and sly, like it used to when he was about to close a big land deal. That look used to mean diamonds, and an all-nighter of Wim’s tongue in her ear, and faked orgasms. She barely controlled a distasteful flinch at the memory. Wim must have seen a smidgen of it in her expression, for his gaze turned flinty.
“You’ve gotten cold and hard, Tanyalee. Maybe you’re frigid now.”
She gaped at him.
A memory flashed across her mind, of Dante’s big, hot hands on her body during the Wild Night in Washington, and of the powerful, effortless climaxes that he had given her. Why, she’d had shaky knees for absolute days!
Frigid? Not hardly.
“I think I should go.”
“No, wait. I want to ask you something.” He gave her one of those bad-little-boy smiles that had always revolted her. Tanyalee waited, the phone held two inches from her ear.
“You don’t really want to testify against me in the trial, do you, sugar? After all, the lawyers might want to ask you lots of things about our relationship, and that could get real personal … and real public. It might make you look like a woman of loose morals.”
Tanyalee waited for the rush of horror and panic his threat ought to bring her … but nothing happened.
She heard Dr. Leslie’s voice in her head. “The other purpose of the ninth step, aside from making amends to those you’ve harmed, is to dissipate the power of secrets.”
A month ago, those had just been words. But in that moment, Tanyalee finally understood their meaning. All her life she’d struggled for safety by trying to manipulate others into taking care of her. Instead, she’d manipulated herself right into a tangle of lies and trickery and