20
I’m so shockedto see them that I simply stand frozen in the doorway for a moment, staring.
The weirdest thing? Neither one turns to look at me.
I made plenty of noise opening the door, but I might as well be invisible for the lack of attention I get. James and Chris don’t break eye contact as they face off in silence on either side of the coffee table.
Chris is in a gorgeous bespoke gray suit, white dress shirt open at the collar, no tie. James is casual in head-to-toe black: a fitted crew neck T-shirt that showcases the astounding architecture of his upper body and a pair of jeans with combat boots. He’s wearing the leather cuff around his left wrist again, the one he had on the first time I saw him at the café, and an expression I can only describe as eerie.
Where Chris is all crackling tension and red-faced fury, his hands fisted and the muscles in his jaw twitching like mad, James appears relaxed. All the lines of his body are loose. His breathing is even. He seems quite calm…until you look at his eyes.
They’re as flat and unblinking as a cobra’s.
I’ve never seen a man look so lethal.
A scene from my dream flashes into my mind’s eye, the part where James is calmly smiling right before he pulls the trigger on his gun and shoots me. All the little hairs on the back of my neck stand on end.
I say loudly, “What’s going on here?”
James remains motionless and completely focused on Chris when he speaks. His voice is a cool monotone. “Your husband didn’t appreciate it when I knocked on your door.”
“Ex-husband.” I step into the foyer but leave the door open behind me. My nerves are so frazzled, I’m shaking all over. My voice shakes, too, when I say, “Who wasn’t invited and so is about to leave.”
Chris slashes his furious gaze to mine. “Are you fucking him?”
I can tell James doesn’t like Chris’s disrespectful way of speaking to me by the way his hands flex slowly open, as if itching to curl around Chris’s neck. But otherwise he retains his strange stillness and unblinking intensity, gazing at Chris with the cold, calculated confidence of a predator who knows his next meal is only one lightning-fast strike away.
I drop my handbag on the floor and edge closer to them, feeling my pulse in every part of my body. I decide to sidestep Chris’s question because a) it’s none of his business and b) if I say yes, I have the distinct feeling that later I’ll be scrubbing a pool of blood off the carpet.
Instead, I ask a question of my own. “Why are you here?”
“I told you on the phone,” Chris snaps, eyes blazing. “I needed to know you were safe.” He turns his blistering gaze back to James. “And now I have my answer.”
James looks Chris up and down. The faintest hint of a smile plays at the corners of his mouth. “I think we both know she’s safer with me than with you.”
He says the words with something that sounds suspiciously like satisfaction, as if there’s a back story here I’m unaware of. An old bet that has been won.
Suddenly, I’m convinced of the impossible:
Chris and James have met before.
Looking back and forth between them with a growing sense of unreality, I demand, “One of you better tell me what the hell is going on. And I mean right now.”
Still with his faint, smug smile, James says to Chris, “Go ahead. Tell her.”
Chris is practically vibrating with rage. That he wants to kill James is patently obvious, but so much about this situation is a mystery that I’m having a hard time making sense of it at all.
Finally, Chris whirls away and starts to pace the length of the living room floor. One hand on his hip, scowling at the carpet, like I’ve seen him do a million times before.
“I didn’t like the way our call ended,” he says, not looking at James or me. “I wanted to talk to you in person, so I booked the next available flight out of Oman.”
He booked the next available flight. The man who hasn’t felt the need to speak to me in more than a year, who didn’t feel the need to speak to me during a good portion of our marriage, booked the next available flight from Western Asia to Paris because he didn’t like the way our call ended.
The out-of-the-blue, yet-to-be-explained phone call.
I watch him continue to pace, my sense of unreality taking a hard right turn toward fear.
I know James is now looking at me, because I can feel it. I feel his hot stare on my skin exactly as if it were a touch.
Screw this. Screw this entire weird scenario. I’m calling these assholes out.
I demand, “How do you two know each other?” and instantly feel James’s gaze intensify.
Chris pulls up short. Swallowing, he looks at James, then back at me. “We don’t.”
I glance at James. His expression is as inscrutable as a cat’s. His voice is tranquil. “We’ve never met.”
My intuition tells me both of them are lying.