“You’re damn right I am.” She came out of her chair, pushed it aside, and began pacing the area between the dresser and the foot of the bed. “I’m not jealous. Not even hurt. I’m livid.”
“She doesn’t deserve the energy that requires.”
“I’m more angry at myself than at her.”
“For what?”
“For being so naive.”
“Trusting.”
“Blind.”
“Can I throw out another adjective?”
She stopped pacing and looked at him. “What?”
/> “Indifferent. You made it easy for her. You didn’t care enough about Jeff’s diddling to find out who was on the receiving end.”
She thought about that, then said, “Stop being right and let me rant.”
He motioned for her to continue.
“What really makes me angry is that I told her about my night with you. It was the most treasured secret I had, and I wanted to keep it all to myself. But I had to share the most personal aspects of it with her.” She explained why, then looked at him uneasily.
He met her gaze and said solemnly, “I hope you did me justice.”
It was such an unexpected reaction from him that she laughed. “Connell was wrong. You can joke.”
“Wasn’t joking.”
But he was, and she ate up the sight of his rare grin. He was right, Alice didn’t deserve the energy it took to be angry. Besides, her heart was too full of another emotion. Softly she said, “I think your friend Jack is onto us.”
“He’s not my friend, but he is onto us. When he came back with breakfast, he knew he’d interrupted either a fight or foreplay.”
“Was it a fight?”
“Sure as hell wasn’t foreplay.”
Knowing she was venturing into the deep end, she said, “We left that conversation unfinished, Hayes.”
Just like that, his mood shifted. He stood up and turned his back to her. “Better that way.”
“I don’t think so.”
“We’ll only go round and round on this issue, Doc. It’s pointless.”
She went to him and forced him to face her. “During one of our first conversations, I said, ‘There’s always a choice.’ And you corrected me. ‘Not always,’ you said. Remember?”
“Yeah.”
“You were right. You did what you had to do in Westboro because you had no choice.”
“What you’re saying then is that there are dirty jobs, but somebody has to do them.”
“Not exactly the phrasing I would use,” she said.
“But that’s basically where you’re coming from.”