The Liar Next Door by Nicola Marsh
Thirty-One
Saylor
I wait until Lloyd’s out for his run before heading across the park to knock on Ruston’s door. I know he’s home because I’ve been watching out the window like some bored housewife from the sixties, spying on the neighbors. I don’t like the woman I’m becoming since moving here but I need to be on the lookout.
Being blackmailed does that to a person.
I remember the day I received the first phone call. I’d just announced my pregnancy at thirteen weeks and had been high on hormones and congratulations. Once my folks absorbed the news, they threw us a celebratory dinner and invited all the church elders, who bestowed copious blessings on us. While their religious fervor made me uncomfortable, it had nothing on my reaction when my cell rang the next morning and I heard that sinister, distorted voice extorting me for money.
Pay up or my secret will be revealed.
I could’ve dismissed it as a crank, but the blackmailer knew details and I realized then what I had to do.
Move to Hambridge Heights and set my own blackmail plan into action.
I don’t worry about the neighborhood gossips this time because I have a legitimate excuse to visit Ruston: issuing my dinner party invitation. I have no idea if he’ll accept. I’m half-hoping he won’t. But it had been Lloyd’s idea to invite him and it’ll look weird if I don’t.
While I felt relieved after talking to Ruston at the share-plate supper—having our first confrontation after the last time I’d seen him five months ago hadn’t been as bad as I’d imagined—it didn’t last, and in some perverse method of self-torture, I looked him up online. Since we broke up, his photography and modeling careers have escalated and he’s done several big shoots. I’m happy for him. I’m less happy with the photos of him draped over that campaign manager, the one whose house he’s living in, his “friend.”
It’s silly, as I have no right to be jealous, and I felt petty when critically appraising her shoulder-length mousy brown hair, snub nose, murky gray eyes and tiny teeth that vaguely resembled a rat. I’m not this person, bitchy and judgmental, so I’d been grateful when Lloyd had come home and I’d quickly closed the browser, ashamed of my online reconnaissance.
I’m about to knock again when the door opens and he’s there, sexy as hell in low-slung denim and a fitted white T-shirt that clearly delineates every muscle I’ve had the pleasure of running my hands and lips over. Damn memories.
“Hey, Say. Can’t keep away from me, huh?”
He’s a conceited ass and I wish he didn’t have the power to still make my heart beat faster. But I need to relax, to issue my invitation in the name of fostering neighborly harmony and proving to my husband Ruston means nothing to me anymore.
“We’re having a dinner party and you’re invited.” My tone is friendly but I’m faking it hard.
“Really?”
His grin is smug, like he knows exactly how uncomfortable I am around him.
“I thought it might be nice, getting to know some of the neighbors in a more intimate setting.”
“Intimate, huh?”
I scrub a hand over my face, wishing I could eradicate his smug image. Was he always this much of a jerk?
“Look, Ruston, can we leave the past in the past and just hang out as friends?”
“That depends.”
“On?”
“Whether you still have a thing for me.”
Damn him. He hasn’t changed a bit. Too cocky for his own good. The problem with Ruston—that my parents had seen way before I had—is his complete self-absorption that means he can never commit to any woman because he’s too in love with himself. He gets off on attention and that makes him bad partner material. Inherently selfish, he’d been late for our dates more times than I can count and preferred partying with equally beautiful model types than a quiet dinner with me.
I need to focus on his bad qualities and forget he can also be sweet and attentive and generous. “I know this is your thing, flirting with any woman over the legal age. But I’m over it.”
He quirks an eyebrow, as if he knows that’s BS. “I’m just messing with you. Sure, I’ll come. When’s this dinner party?”
“Friday night.”
He flashes me a smile and damn if I don’t feel it in the one place I don’t want to: my heart. “I’ll be there. Want me to bring anything?”
“No, all good.”
I stand there way longer than I should, wanting to say so much to this man—why did you hurt me, why wasn’t I enough for you, why are you here, now, disrupting my life when it’s bad enough—but I don’t. His answers to my questions won’t change anything, and I have enough drama in my life without adding to it.
“Everything okay?” He’s looking at me with concern. Too little too late.
“Yeah.”
But as I turn away, tears sting my eyes, because nothing is okay—my life as I know it is in danger of imploding.