A man with a serious problem would keep it inside. A woman would talk and talk. And then, just to be sure, she’d talk some more.
“Talk” was what had been going on in his apartment all week. Not his. Carin’s, and Amanda’s. Endless, nonstop, talk.
They talked in the guest suite. In the kitchen. In the living room. They talked on the terrace, if the day wasn’t too cool and then, for good measure, they talked at night in the library. His wife and his sister-in-law never stopped talking, unless he entered the room. Then they clamped their mouths shut and stared at him until he smiled nervously, muttered an apology, and backed out the door.
“What do you and Carin talk about?” he’d whispered to his wife one night, when they were in bed. He had taken to whispering; it seemed safer that way.
Amanda had shrugged. “This and that.”
“Carin’s unhappy?”
“Yes.”
“Is there anything we can do?”
“No.”
“There must be something.”
“She says there isn’t.”
“Then—then what do you talk about? What do you say to each other, if she’s not happy but she doesn’t want us to do anything?”
“I told you,” Amanda whispered back. “We talk about this and that.”
“This and what?” he’d finally asked and Amanda had shushed him, put her lips to his ear and said, actually, there was something they could do. Something he could do, anyway.
Carin had a favor to ask him.
Nick finished his drink, checked Rafe’s, and signaled the waiter to bring two more.
Maybe putting a buzz on wasn’t such a bad idea.
The next morning, Carin told him what she wanted. He’d listened. Then he’d listened again, but the Something she wanted done made no more sense the second time around.
“Let me be sure I’ve got this,” he’d said. “You want me to see if you can have Amy’s named changed?”
“Yes.”
“Just her given name, not her surname?” He’d looked helplessly from his sister-in-law to his wife. “Uh, you decided you don’t like the name Amy? I mean, I think it’s a beautiful…”
Carin had choked back a sob and he’d fallen silent under the lash of his wife’s baleful glare.
“Sure,” he’d said quickly, “I’ll ask around, see what it takes.” And then, like an idiot, he’d repeated that Amy was a fine name and he really didn’t understand this…
Carin had burst into tears. His wife shot him an icy look, wrapped an arm around her sister and led her from the room.
Nick stabbed his fork into his salad.
He’d finally made sense out of the Something his sister-in-law wanted him to do. And it was sad, because it told him she didn’t just want out of her marriage, she wanted out of anything to do with Rafe.
Did she really hate him enough to want to rename their child?
Nick looked at Rafe, who’d shoved his salad aside in favor of his drink. In his view, Rafe’s plan—to get drunk—made a lot more sense. He pushed his salad aside, too, lifted his glass and smiled at his old friend. Rafe didn’t smile back but he raised his glass and touched it to Nick’s.
Both men took long, thirsty drinks. Nick put down his glass, took a deep breath, and dove into the silence.
“Okay, I’ve reached a decision.”
Rafe looked at him.
“You can get plastered, if you want. But you can’t murder the waiter. I don’t think my diplomatic immunity would stretch far enough to cover that.”
Rafe’s brows drew together. “I am not in the mood for humor.”
“Well, it’s a damn good thing you told me that because up until now, I thought we were in for a couple of hours of laughs.”
Rafe’s brows knotted even more tightly. Then his lips moved in what might have been a smile.
“I’m sorry. I know I’m not very good company.”
“Hey, man, why should you be different? Nobody’s good company these days. Amanda slouches around as if I were the enemy just because I wear pants. And Carin behaves as if…” Hell! “Never mind. It must be the weather. This early fall is…”
“What about Carin?” Rafe was out of his chair, leaning across the table. “Is she ill?”
“No.”
“The baby? Is she—”
“No! I mean, yes, Amy is fine. They’re both fine. I just—I didn’t mean to mention Carin, you know?”
Rafe sat down. “She is my wife,” he said stiffly. “It’s impossible not to mention her.”
“Well, I just didn’t want to—”
“If she were ill, I would want to know it.” He picked up his glass, took a drink, put it down and looked at Nick. “Even if we aren’t living together anymore, I would still want to…”
His voice trailed away. “Rafe?” Nick said softly, and this time, when Rafe looked up, Nick almost groaned. The angry scowl, the cold-eyed glower were gone. What he saw etched into his friend’s face was pain.
“Oh, man,” Nick muttered. He looked around for the waiter, made a scribbling gesture in the air. “Let’s get out of here,” he said, but Rafe was way ahead of him. He’d already tossed a bill on the table, shoved back his chair and headed for the door.
* * *
“I don’t know why she left me.”
Rafe and Nick were sitting on a bench in Central Park, with only a couple of pigeons to keep them company. It was an unseasonably cool, windy day. Nick was freezing but Rafe was talking, and Nick figured not even pneumonia was too big a price to pay for that.
“We were getting along well,” Rafe said. “Not at first, perhaps, but that was to be expected.”
“Well, sure. I mean, you’d only known each other a few months…”
“We knew each other one night.” Rafe cleared his throat. “The story about having been together in New York was a lie.”
“Ah.” Interesting, he thought. Did Amanda know about that? “Why? So Marta wouldn’t be too upset by the elopement?”
“It was no elopement,” Rafe said heavily. “I forced Carin into marriage.”
“You forced her?” Nick thought about the Brewster sisters. It was tough to imagine any man being able to force them into anything. “How?”
“I made threats. I said I’d take our daughter from her…Don’t look at me like that, Nicholas! I did what I believed was right.”
“Well, yeah. Making Amy legitimate was right, but if Carin didn’t want to marry you…”
“It worked out.” Rafe got to his feet. Nick followed, and they began walking towards the street. “Eventually, Carin came to see things my way.”
“How’d you manage that?” Nick smiled. “I adore my wife but getting her to see things my way isn’t always easy.”
Rafe thought back to the night of the dinner party, the night he’d slept with his wife in his arms for the very first time, and how they’d made love the next morning.
“Things just did,” he said stiffly. “And after that—after that, I was happy. I thought Carin was happy, too.” His voice softened. “She seemed happy, I swear it. We laughed. We sat by the fire in the evenings. We went riding, and we watched our little girl grow…”
Nick nodded. “Sounds as if things were fine.”
“Yes. I thought so, too. And then—”
“And then?”
Rafe sighed and tucked his hands into his pockets. “And then we had a quarrel.”
“Rafe, look, people do that. Even Amanda and I have had a couple of arguments. Just last month, she was trying to convince me that we should paint the nursery a color she calls Butter Honey but trust me, man, it’s more like Butter Rancid. I mean—”
“We quarreled, Nick.” Rafe’s voice was low. “It was a bad quarrel, and by the time it was over, I knew the truth.”
“The truth?”
“My wife is still in love with the man who jilted her.”
Nick stopped walking. “Frank?” He laughed. “No way.”
&nbs
p; “It’s true. She loves him.”
“Rafe, she doesn’t. That occurred to me, too, so I asked Amanda.” Nick shook his head emphatically. “Carin’s not pining for Frank.”
“She is.” Rafe turned towards Nick. “She told me so.”
Nick sighed. “Rafe, old buddy,” he said, dropping his hands lightly on the other man’s shoulders, “it’s a hard lesson but if there’s one thing married life has taught me, it’s that what a woman says isn’t always what she means.”
Rafe’s eyes darkened. “Are you calling my wife a liar?”
Hell, Nick thought, and tried again. “I’m calling you naive, if you really think women won’t mislead us, if they think the issue calls for it.”
“Perhaps. But this was different. I saw what I never hoped to see, that my wife…” Rafe drew a shuddering breath. “There’s no point talking about it. Take my word for it. She loves him.”