Tiger and Ellison followed her in, Tiger in his usual silence, Ellison carrying the box of stuff Carly had brought with her. Ellison observed his surroundings with interest, but Tiger behaved as though he couldn’t care less where they were. Didn’t seem to mind that he was revisiting a place where he’d been shot yesterday either. Trauma like that was supposed to linger in the psyche, but Tiger walked into the house with complete indifference.
Ellison whistled. “Shit, what a spread. I could go for this.”
At one time, Carly could have too. She’d loved imagining herself living in this splendor. Now the decor seemed overdone and cold.
They went through the palatial front hall with its graceful spiral staircase and on through the massive living room, toward the kitchen. The pristine furniture in the living room had been overturned, and the door to Ethan’s study hung off its hinges, the doorframe splintered.
“Did you do that?” Carly asked Tiger.
Tiger nodded without speaking, but he had a satisfied glint in his eye.
“Good,” Carly said.
As they strode into the huge kitchen, Ethan, phone in hand, rose from a table that held his laptop and a mess of papers. “Carly? What the hell . . . ? I need to call you back,” Ethan said into the phone before he clicked it off and dropped it to the table. “Carly, what the f**k are you doing bringing that back in here?” He pointed an unsteady finger at Tiger. “He attacked me. He nearly killed me.”
“And you shot him in the stomach,” Carly returned. “Seven times.” She motioned for Ellison to put the box on the table, which he did, letting it thump down. Carly started going through it, trying to ignore Ethan.
Why had she ever thought Ethan handsome, fun, charming? He had a rather small face, which went with the compact body he kept honed by working out with a trainer. His dark hair was perfectly cut and combed, his nails manicured. He was the epitome of the young man who’d made it.
Ethan had picked out a wife who knew how to smile at people and throw parties. Of course he had—Carly had met Ethan at the gallery when he’d come in to look at some art for his office. He’d wanted to pick out the art himself, he said, because he was the one who had to look at it all day. Carly, for some reason, had thought this showed depth of character.
She understood better now. Ethan was just fussy and didn’t trust anyone. He’d wanted to marry Carly, she realized, because he’d been looking for someone who knew how to give dinner parties and impress clients. In other words, he’d wanted his own personal caterer and receptionist. In return, Carly would get to live in a big house on the river with a pool and a view and money to do whatever she wanted. She would quit her job, of course, because any job in the art world was dead-end.
All that might have been fine if Ethan had loved and cherished her, if he’d had any compassion in him, any respect. Looking back, Carly had to wonder if Ethan even liked her.
“He looks fine to me,” Ethan snapped, glaring at Tiger. “Obviously I missed him or just grazed him.”
“Show him, Tiger.”
All this time, Carly had been hearing Tiger’s low growls, which strengthened whenever she drew closer to Ethan, lessened when she moved away. She liked it—like a Geiger counter indicating when she was getting too near Ethan’s tainted presence.
Tiger inched up his T-shirt to expose a stomach of a tightness Ethan tried desperately to achieve. The pink scars of the healed bullet holes pockmarked Tiger’s abdomen.
“See?” Ethan said, though he sounded less certain. “They must have glanced off.”
“No,” Ellison said from right next to Ethan. “They didn’t. Went straight inside and had to be dug out. But Shifters heal fast.”
Ethan jumped. Ellison had been wandering around the room but had moved with Shifter stealth to Ethan’s side while Ethan’s attention had been fixed on Tiger.
“The bullets went in deep, Ethan,” Carly said. “You almost killed him. You’re lucky he has a hell of a metabolism.”
“Well, you’d know about that,” Ethan said. “Are you sleeping with both these guys now? Maybe at the same time? I didn’t realize you had a thing for Shifters. How long have you been a Shifter whore?”
Tiger’s growl increased, and Ellison leaned close to Ethan. “Now, that’s just not nice.”
Carly slammed what she’d taken out of the box to the table. “No, let him talk. He’s trying to make this my fault. I never cheated on you, Ethan. Never. I caught you, and you can’t change that, but you think that if you can make out that I’m the slut, you’re not in the wrong. But you are. I was loyal to you and did everything you wanted, but that didn’t count for shit with you, did it? Not when you got horny on your coffee break.”
Ethan looked slightly shocked, as though he hadn’t believed Carly would have the guts to say such things to him. She’d had the guts all right, but she’d been raised to keep the peace, not spread venom. That didn’t mean Carly was weak; it meant she was polite.
“She’s not important to me, Carly,” Ethan tried. God, she’d had no idea he could sound so whiny. “We can talk about this.”
“Oh, it’s way too late for that, honey,” Carly said. “You shouldn’t have had your lawyer friend call me and threaten me. You want everything back you ever gave me? Fine. Here it is. Including the ring you wasted sixty-thousand dollars on.”
Carly took it out of its box and threw it at him, laughing as Ethan scrambled to catch it. “And the necklace from Tiffany’s, and the sound system I never liked.” She threw these at him too, Ethan flailing after each one.
Ellison, next to him, folded his arms over his broad chest and grinned. Tiger didn’t move, as though he understood that Carly needed to do this, as though he enjoyed watching her kick at Ethan the only way she knew how.
Carly threw trinkets, souvenirs, and the digital photo frame full of happy pictures of herself and Ethan at him. Finally she picked up the box itself and threw the whole thing.
“That’s everything you’ve ever given me. Except the heartburn from your fancy restaurants, and the worry that I wasn’t good enough for your snotty friends. I’d love to throw those at you too.”
Ethan caught the box and slammed it back to the table. “You’re right. I gave you everything, Carly. You were just a stupid receptionist with no future until you met me. I even gave you that dress. You only look so good because I took you to the best stores.”