"They are. The best." Mandy stifled a yawn, ready for a nap. She was getting addicted to the midday naps she’d been taking on this trip. "I met Jamie in my shop when she was looking for a gift for her niece. She needed another roommate, and we hit it off. That was three years ago. Jamie and Allison went to NYU together, and Allison went to high school in Connecticut with Caroline, so they’ve all known each other awhile. I was the latecomer to the group and yet I feel like we’ve been friends forever."
"You’ll like them," she said without thinking, sleepy.
"I doubt I’ll ever meet Jamie and Allison, Mandy."
That jerked her out of her semislumberous state. His words were a harsh reminder of what the rules for their relationship were. Rule number one – there was no relationship.
"You’re right." She gave a forced laugh. "I don’t know what I was thinking. I’m just tired."
She could feel the force of his stare on her, but she refused to look up at him. She didn’t want him to see the neediness she knew would be reflected in her eyes. They couldn’t get involved, she knew that. And if he changed his mind, she might not be able to resist changing hers.
But she had to resist. This was not the time for her to embroil herself in another relationship with a man when she had a baby to think about.
She knew that. She did. But knowing it and liking it were two different things.
"If we could…" Damien kissed the top of her head. "I want you, Mandy, I do. Very much. But I can’t… and I want more for you than I can give you."
He sounded so anguished, she couldn’t bear it. She turned and looked up at him, taking his chin with her hand.
"Hey, hey, it’s all right, Damien. I understand. This is what we agreed on, and this is the right thing to do. But I’m so very glad we had this time together, and the only thing I regret is that it has to end."
If he said it didn’t have to end, Mandy seriously doubted she could say no to him at that moment. He was looking at her so intensely, as though he wanted to see inside her soul, his grip on her tightening.
But he just said, "No regrets. Just good memories, and that’s more than I expected."
Somehow that didn’t seem like enough.
Chapter 16
Damien set his suitcase down inside the front door of his apartment and let the quiet settle over him. No ocean. No Caribbean music. No Mandy.
He lived on the twenty-seventh floor to avoid some of the usual noises of the city, so the only things he could hear were the hum of his refrigerator and taxi horns honking down below on Eighty-fifth Street.
He wanted to throw something. He wanted to lift his suitcase and toss it right out the window of his living room.
Everything had been fine. He had been living his life, in a narrow, stilted kind of way, that was true, but he had been coping. He hadn’t felt anything.
Now he wanted what he couldn’t have.
Damien picked up the cordless phone by his kitchen table and hit the "on" button. No voice mail messages waited for him. He had been gone five days and he didn’t have a single fucking phone message. This was what had happened to him. No one knew where he was, no one cared.
He had nothing.
Hurtling his keys on the counter, he dug in his pocket for his wallet. He flipped it open and pulled out the picture he kept in the back. The one of Jess leaning over his shoulder, her long hair tumbling down his chest. Her eyes were laughing at the camera as she posed, looking perfectly pretty the way she always had. The expression on his face was different than hers. He looked graspingly happy, like he was in ecstasy, and terrified it would disappear.
Well, it had, but not the way he’d always expected. In the back of his head, he had always assumed Jessica would leave him someday. He couldn’t keep her happy, and they had always swung from blissful calm to outbursts of discontent – weeks where she would mope around and he would do everything short of kissing her ass to get her to smile again. But never had he expected that night when Jess had gotten angry with him and run off with her friends, as she did on a regular basis, that she would wind up dead.
The picture was fading now that it was five years old.
But the guilt he always felt was just as fresh as it had been years ago when he’d realized that he wasn’t strong enough, man enough, smart enough, to love Jessica the way she needed to be loved.
Yet for the first time ever, Jessica’s voice, her smell, her touch, was drowned out by another woman.
And he knew that was the ultimate betrayal of his dead wife.
Mandy was grateful Jamie had been walking into the apartment building at the same time as she’d been getting out of the cab she’d shared with Damien from LaGuardia. It had given her the option to wave away Damien’s offer to carry her suitcase up and avoid more awkward goodbyes.
Jamie, bless her, had been oblivious, giving Mandy a big hug and grabbing her suitcase straightaway, chattering about the spring storm they were expecting as she waved Damien off with a smile. Mandy had managed her own tepid smile before letting Jamie lead her into the building. Damien hadn’t smiled at all.
"You look so awesome, Mandy! The weather must have agreed with you."
The weather or the sex. One of the two. "I do feel much better."
"Good. Hey, let’s order some takeout and you can tell us all about it."
"Super." This was the downside to having roommates. When you wanted to be alone and just have a good crying jag, they were there. Not that she had any right to be crying. There had been no surprises from Damien, and she hadn’t wanted any.
Maybe she was just tired.
Maybe it was hormones.
Mandy opened their apartment door and stepped inside, shivering a little. Sixty degrees and sunny was okay, but she had adjusted pretty quickly to running about in a bathing suit.
Caroline was on the couch, her glasses on her nose as she studied some papers in her hand. "Mandy! You look great. How was the trip?" Caroline looked behind her at Jamie and curled her lip. "But first I have to warn you, Ben was here."
Oh, God. Mandy wrapped her arms around herself and groaned. "When?" She was looking forward to putting her feet up, eating herself sick, and sleeping straight through to tomorrow. She did not want to think about Ben.
Caroline tossed down what she was holding and lifted her glasses off. "Just ten minutes ago." Her disapproval was obvious. "I told him you were just getting back from the Caribbean and would call him tomorrow, but he said he’d wait. He went across the street to the deli. He probably saw you come in and he’ll be here any minute."