“I’ll just…” Tucker got up and took off after him. If I didn’t know better, I’d think that it was Tucker and Mr. Hall who were married.
“Why?” squealed Julie. “Why must you do this? Now Daddy will be all upset, and on the night when I’m getting my award!”
Bella gave her sister a laser stare. “Your award was bought and paid for, Julie. The ceremony doesn’t matter, does it?”
“That is a wicked thing to say,” her sister argued, pointing her salad fork at Bella like a spear. “Couldn’t you just give Tucker the benefit of the doubt? For just a couple of hours?”
Bella rolled her eyes. “I keep telling you. He got plenty of benefits from me.”
Their mother put her face in her hands. “Why? Why must we always end up here?”
“Because he is still here,” Bella said. She threw her napkin on the table and stood. “And that means I can’t be.” Bella picked her wrap up off the back of her chair and tucked her little handbag under one arm.
“Bella!” her mother called.
Stunned, it took me a second to react. But Bella wasn’t coming back. “Excuse me,” I said. Then I left the table too, jogging to catch up with the sexy red streak who was aiming for the exit.
Note to self: Bella is a darned good runner, whether she knows it or not.
Twenty
Bella
Fuck!
Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuckity fuck.
I hightailed it out of Cipriani, making poor Rafe chase after me.
By the time we hit the sidewalk on 42nd Street, I was breathing hard and trying not to cry.
Rafe steered me down the block, across the street, and down into the subway entrance. He swiped a Metrocard through the turnstile then pointed at me to go through. When he joined me on the other side, I had the presence of mind to ask, “Where are we going?”
“Uptown,” he said, steering me toward the shuttle track.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I thought I could get through tonight without wigging out.”
“What’s the deal with that guy?”
I really didn’t want to tell him the story. On the other hand, I’d dragged him to a dinner he did not get to eat. And then dragged him out again. Meanwhile, he got a glimpse of both me and my family at its worst. “He works for my father.”
“So I gathered.”
“Three years ago, I spent the summer before my freshman year at Harkness in South Hampton. We have a beach house there. My father was staying out there, too.”
“Okay.”
“Well, Dad never comes out of his office. And I was working at a kids’ camp, but mostly just goofing off.”
“Okay.” He chuckled.
“Tucker Fanning — who I shall henceforth only refer to as Fucker Tanning — used to take the train out during the week to meet with my father. And he stayed in our guest house.”
“Sounds pretty grand.”
“Oh, it was. He and I had a fling. And by ‘fling’ I mean we had lots and lots of sex. I was eighteen, and he was twenty-six.”
Rafe flinched. “Whoa. Was he married to your sister then?”
“Oh, God no.” What a question! Even at eighteen I’d never screw a married man. And I’d never do that to my sister. Because I’d assumed she had my back.
I was wrong.
“In fact,” I told Rafe, “he’d just broken up with the Norwegian model he’d been dating. I was flattered. And quite obviously an idiot.”
The train came then, the doors opening right in front of us. We stepped inside and sat down on the bench. “He shouldn’t have taken advantage of you like that,” Rafe said, his face stony.
I touched his elbow. “That’s not really the problem. I had it bad for him. I thought the sun shone out of his ass. Really, I did.” Rafe gave me a sad little smile, and it gave me the courage to plunge ahead. “I served myself up to him on a silver platter, Rafe. It’s not like I was some innocent virgin before him, either.”
Rafe flinched. “But he broke it off?”
With a groan, I shook my head. “He didn’t break it off. That’s the weird thing. He made all these crazy promises to stupid eighteen-year-old me. We were going to meet up in Europe during one of my school vacations. We were going to keep our affair secret, because it was too big to tell the world.” I rolled my eyes for emphasis. “I don’t know what came over me, honestly. But the sex was really good. It wasn’t like fumbling around with the teenagers at my high school, you know?”