Scandal in Seattle (Great Exploitations #2)(5)
Author: Nicole Williams

Once I’d shoved aside my one-sided love affair with the car, I pulled out of my parking space and headed north. The Callahans’ oceanfront mansion was about five miles up the coast in a part of town that looked like the sidewalks might have been paved with gold. If G ever wanted to land the Eves another Ten, all she had to do was patrol that stretch of Northern California coastline. I doubted anyone around there made less than Ten.

After cruising by the Callahans’ and the rest of the football stadium-sized mansions, I cruised a couple of miles north until I came to a public park. The parking lot was quiet except for several cars and one hippy Volkswagen van with a couple of surfboards on the roof.

The air was cool on my legs, making me glad I’d tossed on a tunic sweater. After marching a few hundred yards down the beach, I spread out my blanket and plopped down to enjoy the morning. Or to pretend to enjoy the morning. I wasn’t there for the morning sun—I was there to lure an ex-flame into my web.

How did I know Henry would make the first leg of his run north? Because he’d always started his beach runs heading north. He’d run a few miles north before turning around and heading back. He said going south always felt a bit more uphill, and he liked saving the hard part for last.

Saving the hard part for last was a novel concept to me. Life—and all its bits and pieces—had always seemed like the hard part to me. Except for that part. The revenge part.

That was just plain fun.

The waves had almost lulled me into a trance when a familiar figure jogging up the beach caught my attention. His mop of hair bounced with every other step, and while his gait was familiar, his pace had slowed. Even from a distance, I could see he’d grown slimmer. Henry had never been a muscled-out beefcake, but he’d been a far cry from lanky thin. So time hadn’t been kind to the young runner’s body of his I remembered. That should have made me overjoyed, but the first emotion I felt was something that tipped the sad scale.

The moment that registered, I gave myself a hard pinch on the arm and twisted. I should have followed it up with a slap to the face. I couldn’t believe I felt any kind of remorse for Henry Callahan.

I hoped that face that used to make me sigh and gasp—depending on its expression—had seen the same wear and tear his body had. The closer he got, however, revealed that his face was just as sigh-gasp-worthy as it had been when we’d first met.

Well, shit.

But I knew what was behind that face, what that person was capable of, and I wouldn’t fall for the easy-on-the-eyes facade again.

Just as I was about to rise and “casually” meander down the beach to stage our totally coincidental meeting, I noticed the equally familiar four-legged figure jogging by Henry’s side.

But not before the giant dog noticed me. With one low, thunderous bark, the Great Dane switched directions and tore toward me, kicking up clumps of sand. I heard Henry call her a few times before loping after the dog. I’d been anticipating our meeting since the night I wound up with his file, but as Henry Callahan jogged in my direction, everything I’d planned—my entire game plan—flew off with the sea breeze. I felt like the same tongue-tied, stupefied girl I’d been when we first met.

Yeah, that wouldn’t do.

The giant dog skidded to a stop in front of me, panting in my face and whipping its tail around. The combination of the dog and Henry was doing a job on me. Biting into the side of my cheek, I forced myself to conjure up the image of Henry in bed with another woman. I concentrated on that picture until I felt pain trickle into my veins. After a couple seconds, all traces of dumbstruck were gone. Long gone.

Just in time, too.

Henry’s jog slowed as he approached. I kept my eyes narrowed at the sand and continued to pet the dog’s head, hoping it would calm me.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

It had been years, but I still didn’t like hearing those two words come out of his mouth. It almost gave me PTSD.

“Molly, stop that,” Henry ordered as the dog licked me with its huge tongue. “Come here.” He patted his legs emphatically. The dog only licked me faster.

“She still doesn’t listen to you,” I said, shifting my head out of the dog’s shadow so Henry could see it.

The phrase you look like you’ve just seen a ghost played out before me. His relaxed smile froze along with the rest of his body. His tanned face blanched a few shades, and he studied me like I wasn’t real. I was careful not to look him in the eyes. I didn’t trust myself to look into those brown eyes. That smile and those eyes had torn right through my defenses when we’d first met, and I didn’t want to chance a repeat. So I focused on the bridge of his nose, or his eyebrows, or the dark hollows beneath his eyes. Anything was preferable to looking into Henry Callahan’s eyes again.

“Eve?” he said at last, sounding as dumbstruck as he looked. “Evie?”

I internally cringed. No one had called me by my given name in years—at least not as a name and not a profession—and it hit me with the impact of a wrecking ball. No, the irony that my name matched my career field wasn’t lost on me. I was swimming in a sea of irony.

“Henry,” I said slowly, working up a smile that fell flat. Letting the Errand get personal was making me weak, but it was also what would keep my strong. When the Errand got long and arduous—as G and I both knew it would—the knife of revenge would keep me going strong. It was a first, but I’d have to strike a balance between the personal and the impersonal. That was the only way it would work. I tried on another smile. That one stayed in place and didn’t feel so artificial. “Long time no see.”

Then he did something I didn’t expect. He kneeled beside me, shouldering his way past Molly, and wrapped both arms around me. He pulled me close. It was painful at first, like his touch was radioactive, and then I started to melt. In fact, I felt a sob threatening to choke out of my mouth.

What the hell? Who was I, and where was the best Eve in the business?

Ahh, that’s right. Melting under the embrace of an ex who’d nailed another woman in the bed we used to share. If it wasn’t already apparent, I really was a lost cause.

“What are you doing?” I whispered after making sure no sobs would escape. I might have unfrozen beneath his arms, but I certainly wasn’t idiot enough to return his embrace.

He squeezed me just a bit harder before tilting his head toward my ear. “What you didn’t give me a chance to do the last time I saw you.” His voice was that same mixture of soft and strong. “To apologize.”

I flinched and tried to weave out of his embrace. “I seem to remember a long string of I’m sorrys as you chased after me with a sheet wrapped around your waist and another girl’s lipstick on your neck.”

Dammit. Leading with the whole “bitter bitch” act would certainly not work me into his better graces.

Henry let go, gave me a sad smile, and plopped down next to me as he let out a long breath. “You ran away that day, and I never saw you again. You never gave me a chance to explain.”

I exhaled sharply. “Trust me, what I walked in on was all the explanation I needed.”

And strike two. One more, and I would be out of the game. Since I seemed incapable of saying anything without a bitter bite to it, I just had to stay quiet or practice that whole think-before-you-speak thing.

“Evie—”

“Eve,” I interrupted, flashing him a look. “You don’t get to call me Evie anymore.”

He sighed, then shook his head. “I’m sorry, Eve. I know it’s all probably just a bunch of shallow words to you now, but if you’d ever be willing to give me the opportunity to explain, I’d love the chance to.”

I bit my tongue and took a moment before replying. “In all fairness, Henry, your explanation could include your body being invaded by an alien and you having no control of it, and that wouldn’t change anything.”

That was the truth. The why behind his actions wouldn’t change where we ended up. It didn’t change the person I was or the person he was. Explanations, in my opinion, were always too little, too late. Men who kept it in their pants in the first place didn’t need explanations.

“You’re right. Maybe it wouldn’t change anything.” His gaze shifted from the brightening ocean to me. I didn’t need to look into his eyes to feel their intensity. “But maybe it would change everything.”

He’d always been good with words. However, that wasn’t my first rodeo with Henry Callahan, and I knew all of his tricks. Neither his words nor the way he said them would make my breath catch ever again.

Since that topic of conversation was like trying to weave through a field of land mines, I diverted the conversation. Patting the dog’s head—she was now resting beside me—I smiled at her. That smile I didn’t have to fake. “How’s Molly girl doing?”

After a few moments, Henry followed me down the topic-shifting path. “Getting old.” He scratched her barrel-sized belly, making her back legs flap in the air. “I’m not sure which one of you recognized the other first.”

“It was probably me. It’s hard to forget the mug of a dog who chewed through every pair of shoes in your closet when she was a puppy.”

True story. Although to ensure we knew she loved us both equally, she chewed through every one of Henry’s, too.

“She still has one of your old sneakers tucked in her bed. It’s so ratty and holey, I keep waiting for it to disintegrate, but I don’t doubt Molly’d take my hand off if I tried to take it away.”

She still had a piece of me. A piece of me—old, ratty, and about-to-disintegrate as it was—was still in Henry’s life. I couldn’t decide how I felt about that, so I stayed quiet and let Henry pick up the slack in the awkward silence.

“Are you going to bite my head off if I ask you a question?” he asked.

I stared at the horizon and lifted a shoulder. “That depends on the question.”

“What are you doing here?”

That was a loaded question. I had so many answers to that question, all of them true, that I had to sort through a few responses before I decided on an appropriate one. “Here at the beach at an unholy hour or here in Northern California?” I casually scooted a bit farther away from him. I didn’t know if he’d done it deliberately or not, but he’d sat a little too close.

“Both heres.”

Of course both heres.

“I’m here this morning because I couldn’t sleep and thought a walk along the beach would be nice, and I’m here in Northern California for work.” Both answers were true, although I might have omitted some of the details.

“Work? Where? How long now?”

He was just as curious and unabashed as I remembered. It was endearing. It was also enraging.

Keep things vague, I reminded myself. “I’m contracting for a software development company. It’s about a six-month contract that I just started.”

“I probably know every little start-up and giant software empire in the state. Who are you working for?”