"Not deliberately. It was basically a massive cock-up on the part of their chief financial officer and his staff." He sighed and dropped his chin onto her hair. "Did you see the paper today?"
"No, I didn't have time." Warned by his tone, she walked over to the side table where she'd put the paper after it had been delivered and carried it back to him.
Caleb took it from her and waited until she was sitting with him again before opening it to the front page of the business section. What he saw still made his stomach churn. "Respected Law Firm Fumbles Billion-Dollar Buyout," he read out, feeling his dreams collapse.
A gentle hand touched his shoulder. "You know you didn't fumble it. Is the deal still alive? Have you got something to work with?"
He dropped the paper onto a cushion. "Barely. If we can't get Horrocks to agree to give Maxwell time to clear up this issue, it really will gurgle down the drain."
"The fault was Maxwell's, not yours."
"No. It was ours. Maxwell is our client and we should've picked up this problem." He refused to go easy on himself.
Victoria slapped his shoulder, making him look down at her scowling face. "You're a lawyer, not an accountant. These are financial problems."
"Callaghan & Associates was in charge of the overall deal from the Maxwell side. We were paid to ensure everything went smoothly." Taking her hand from his shoulder, he kissed the tips of her fingers. "If we don't rescue this deal, the firm will begin to hemorrhage clients. The end."
Her eyes flared. "If it comes to that, we start over, even if that means I have to be your secretary." She smiled. "No regrets."
A weight lifted off his chest. A small part of him had worried that she'd welcome the closure of a firm she saw as a rival for his attention. "No regrets?"
"Never."
He thanked God for her. One of his associates was already feeling the pressure from his socialite wife—she wanted assurance that she'd be kept in the style to which she'd become accustomed.
Vicki stroked the line of his jaw. "I have every faith in you. You'll succeed. Can I do anything to help?"
"Thanks, honey, but unless you can convince my clients not to cut and run before we fix this, it's up to me and the team."
"Hmm." Vicki tapped her mouth with one finger. "I have an idea."
"Should I be worried? The last time you had an idea, I spent two months living in a hotel."
The words were out of Vicki's mouth almost before she'd thought them. "Yes well, I had a little help in that from you." She knew it was the worst possible time to bring this up but it was out of her control—some switch in her had inadvertently been thrown by his flip comment.
"I wasn't exactly a prize husband, huh?" He grimaced. "But we're doing okay."
"Are we really?" Why was she doing this now? she thought, horrified at the destruction she was about to instigate. She'd thought she'd put this issue in the past where it belonged but that had obviously been a huge lie, a final remnant of the self-protective shell she was so used to living in. "We promised no more secrets and yet…"
"You think there's something else we need to clear up?" There was nothing but concern in his voice.
"We've never talked about Miranda." The words fell like grenades between them. At the same time, a sweeping sense of relief washed over her. Until she'd spoken, she hadn't realized the pressure that had built up inside of her.
"Miranda? What the hell does she have to do with anything?"
The complete lack of understanding on his face made a sick feeling crawl through her stomach, curdling the relief. Either Caleb was flat-out lying to her, or she'd made a terrible mistake. And Caleb wasn't a man for subtleties—there was no way he could have counterfeited his confusion.
Suddenly, comprehension swept across his expression. "Goddamn it, Vicki!" He thrust his hands through his hair. "I can't believe what I'm seeing on your face. Say the damn words."
It was too late to back away. Far too late. "I knew our marriage was in trouble for a long time," she said, "but the reason I decided to ask for a divorce was because I thought you were having an affair with Miranda." It had been the proverbial straw that had broken the camel's back … broken her. Infidelity was the one thing she couldn't take, perhaps because of the guilt she'd always carried on her mother's behalf.
His eyes grew hard with anger. "Why?"
She knew he deserved answers. "You were always at the office late and when I called, she'd answer and say you couldn't come to the phone."
"That was enough to convict me?" His tone was clipped and he didn't touch her.
She wondered if, after everything they'd done to repair their marriage, she was going to lose him because of her own stupidity. The idea of never being able to hear his laughter felt like a knife to the soul.
Pushing back the fear, she looked straight into his eyes. She had to confront this head-on. She was no longer that woman who'd tried to bury her pain and keep going with a marriage she'd believed had been betrayed … without once asking Caleb if he'd done what she'd judged him guilty of.
"No. I mean it made me suspicious—we both know I wasn't the most confident of women then."
"Vicki," Caleb began, a frown on his face.
"Let me finish," she begged. "I can't do this twice."
"Talk." When he raised his arm and slid it along the back of the sofa, his fingers touching her nape, the relief she felt was almost crushing. Caleb's touch was her anchor when everything else spun out of control.
"Then you went on that trip to Wellington four months ago and she went with you. Remember?"
"Yes." Of course Caleb remembered. In nearly five years of marriage, it had been the first time he'd left his wife for more than a week and he'd ached for her every moment. But she hadn't cared enough about their relationship to make the first move for once and call him. Hurt more than he would have thought possible, believing that their marriage had come to the worst place it possibly could be, he hadn't contacted her, either.
"I missed you so." Vicki's eyes were bright blue with emotion. "I couldn't sleep without you there beside me."
All his conclusions about the past came to a screeching halt.
"That first night you were gone, I waited and waited for you to call like you always did. When you didn't, I finally picked up the phone at around 3:00 a.m. I tried your cell phone first but you must've turned it off, so I called your hotel room instead." Her hands fisted against him. "She answered!"
Those fists hit his shoulders, as if the emotion inside her had become too much to bear. "She said you were out on the balcony but she could get you if I wanted. The way she spoke … how was I supposed to think anything else? We'd had that fight and you'd been so angry—angry enough to do something hurtful."
Before he could say anything in his defense, she took a jerky breath and hit him with words of such raw emotion, he could hardly believe it was his restrained, elegant Victoria in his arms.
"Then you came back and you wouldn't touch me! You didn't want me at all and I thought she'd given you what I couldn't. What was she doing in your room, Caleb? Why was she answering your phone in the middle of the night?" Her hands pushed against his chest, distancing her body from his.
He'd never seen her this way—pure fury, pure rage. "We swapped rooms," he said, wondering if she'd believe him.
"What?" Her face was a study in confusion. "Why?"
"The hotel made a mistake with the booking. I was given the smoking room and Miranda the non-smoking one." He paused, remembering the events of that week. "Unless they didn't make a mistake… She couldn't have planned it?" After his fight with Vicki, he'd been in one hell of a mood during the flight to Wellington. Miranda hadn't said a word about his temper, had instead been full of concern.
Now that he thought about it, he could see what he'd missed at the time—the woman had been offering much more than sympathy. It must have burned her when he hadn't responded to her overtures. He could well imagine her pursuing him by attempting to wreck his marriage.
Vicki took another shuddering breath. "Didn't the desk staff know? They're the ones who transferred my call."
"We checked in very late at night. Remember, we took the last flight. When we discovered the mistake, we just swapped rooms and Miranda said she'd deal with the desk in the morning." His whole body thrummed with tension.
"Oh, God." Vicki swallowed and shoved her hands in her hair, face pale and drawn. "But you didn't want me. You didn't touch me for a week! And you always touched me before. No matter what, you always touched me!"