“That was Annie,” he said. “Before Annie was Petra, and she was a lot like you—really nice and really cute. She ended up moving out to California. Then Annie got hired to take her place. And Annie . . . you never met Annie, but one look at her, whoa nelly! No way I could’ve hired a girl who dressed like that and had her work for me. She and Ian definitely had a . . . thing.”
My heart stopped for a beat. I tried to keep my face neutral. “A thing?” I said. “What do you mean?”
“You know, they were . . . involved. It wasn’t public knowledge or anything, they weren’t a couple, but I’m pretty good at sensing these things. They were pretty hot and heavy for a while there.”
I let what he was saying sink in. Ian had been sleeping with his last secretary? Was this like some sort of pattern for him? Was it like some sort of game he played, where every time he hired someone new, he slept with them, but told them to play it off like nothing was happening?
But . . . maybe Billy was wrong. I doubted he and Ian had actually talked about it, so he was just going on what he thought he sensed, and since he hadn’t sensed anything about Ian and me, well then, maybe he wasn’t as psychic as he thought.
He was laughing, slapping his knee. “I’ll never forget walking in on the two of them, right there in the office. It was technically after hours, but the door was still open and I was in the area, and I go in, and I heard these sounds, and I thought for a second maybe he was watching porn, but why would Ruby watch porn when he could have the real thing? And he’s got her bent over his desk, his pants around his ankles . . .” He stopped and gave me an apologetic look. “I’m sorry. This isn’t an appropriate topic of conversation. I’m sure you have very little interest in hearing anything about this.”
“It’s okay,” I said, hoping my voice didn’t sound too shrill. I tried to force a smile. “That’s really something—to have walked in on him like that.”
Billy laughed. “Yeah, it really was. That’s Ian, though. He’s a good guy; don’t get me wrong, but he’s certainly got his own way to go about doing things. That’s one of the reasons my dad likes him, though.”
“I see,” I said faintly.
“I’m not sure what happened with Annie; one day she was there, then the next time I went in, there you were. And I’m not complaining. I’m a pretty nice guy, contrary to what you might have heard before. Real pleasure to get to run into you here and all, but if you wouldn’t mind, I’d like to take you out sometime. There’s a lot of great places around here that you might not even know about . . .”
He continued to talk. The chatter around me thrummed on, people laughing, someone cheered, Billy’s mouth was moving, and I could hear him, but it sounded like he was speaking to me underwater. There wasn’t even an accurate title to put what Ian had done to me—he hadn’t cheated on me, hadn’t lied to me—I supposed the most accurate thing would be to say he used me (just like Annie), but that didn’t seem quite right, either. We hadn’t really discussed anything; I had just assumed that it was going to go somewhere that it wasn’t. And if Ian hadn’t been running late and Billy hadn’t ended up coming here and telling me all this, who knows when I would have found out.
Billy was still talking.
“I’m sorry,” I said, grabbing my purse and standing up. “I . . . I’ve got to go; I just remembered something I have to do. I’m really sorry.”
“Oh, sure,” he said, looking unbothered by my sudden departure. “I’ll see you around, I hope.”
It was only as I was walking away from the table, the exit suddenly a long way’s off, that I realized Ian could come breezing through the door at any second, and if he did before I made it out, what would I say? There was no way I’d be able to pretend that nothing was wrong, but I didn’t want to have some sort of confrontation right here at Failte.
I didn’t need to worry about that, though. I made it to the door, pushed through, and was then out on the sidewalk, the evening air still warm. I looked both ways before I hurried off, not breathing a sigh of relief, though, until I was around the block and in my car. I thought about texting him that I wasn’t going to be there, but I decided against it. He’d want to know why I’d left, and I just wasn’t going to get into that with him right now.
I didn’t want to go home though. Just the thought of having to be on the lookout for Noah made me feel like my head was going to explode. I started to drive, just so in case Ian was nearby, but I felt through my purse for my phone and called Caroline.
“Can we meet up?” I said when she answered.
“Sure. Where are you? Failte?”
“No, I want to meet somewhere else.” Somewhere that he wouldn’t be likely to show up, if he ever showed up from whatever it was he was doing.
“
Okay,” she said, “I’m dying for some pad Thai. Want to go to Orchid House?”
“Sounds good. I’ll meet you there.”
I tossed the phone down and took a deep breath, trying to loosen my grip on the steering wheel. I could tell that tears were trying to force their way out of my eyes, but I refused to let them materialize. I blinked really fast, and at a stoplight, I rubbed both my eyes really hard, like I had a bad case of hay fever.
The light turned green and I started to go again. I might be able to keep the tears at bay, but I couldn’t keep the onslaught of thoughts. I hadn’t necessarily thought that I’d lose my virginity to the guy I would end up marrying, or that it would be this totally magical moment that I would always cherish, but I had hoped it would at least be a little special. But apparently, it was just what Ian did with the secretaries he hired.
I never wanted to see him again.
The problem was, though, I couldn’t just quit. Well, I could, but I knew what the job market was like out there, and I’d barely gotten any call backs after I’d been fired from the salon. Quitting with no backup plan wasn’t a smart idea.
I was at least able to find a parking spot right on the same block as Orchid House, and Caroline was there, waiting at a table for me. She looked a little worried when I slid into the seat across from her.
“Is everything okay?” she asked. “You sounded a little frazzled on the phone.”
“No, everything is not okay. I was just at Failte—”