Page 17 of Trick or Treat
“What about you, Lindsey? How was your first day?” Cami poured more wine in their glasses. “Here, you want the last one?” She motioned toward the stuffed mushroom appetizer they’d been eating before their meals arrived, offering it to Lindsey. They were her favorite.
“Not too bad. No criers so that’s a plus.” She popped the last mushroom into her mouth and chewed quickly. “And no wet pants so far.” She knocked on the wood table for good luck. She didn’t want to jinx herself. “I do have this one boy, though, who seems a little quiet and shy and he’s so adorable.” She turned to Jenna. “He was the one whose mom came to open house dressed like she was going to a party afterward and had booze on her breath? Poor kid was so embarrassed. I felt so bad for him.”
Jenna nodded her head. “Yeah, I remember you telling me about that.” She scooped a bite of rice and speared a piece of chicken, momentarily waiting to take a bite as she said, “Sadly, we don’t get to pick our parents. Have you met his dad? Is he any better?”
“No. They’re divorced as far as I can tell. Whether or not he’s in the picture remains to be seen.”
Cami frowned and wiped her mouth with her napkin. “Hopefully, the boy has at least one good parent.”
“Yeah. Hopefully.” Lindsey took a drink of wine, then changed the subject. “What’s new with you, Cami?”
She shrugged her shoulder. “Not much. I’ve been working on landing an account that could make my company a household name.”
“Really? That’s great!” Jenna exclaimed.
“Yeah. Well, I’m trying not to get my hopes up. I’m going up against the top financial planner in the city. He didn’t get there without really knowing his stuff. So, we’ll see.” She tried to play like it was not big deal, but Lindsey knew how hard Cami worked at building her business. Winning this client sounded like a really great opportunity. Lindsey would keep her fingers crossed for Cami that she got the account.
She wasn’t the least bit surprised that her friend was competing with the top financial planners in Redemption. Cami had always had a way with money. Even when she was a teenager, she’d been completely focused on how much money she needed to save for a certain goal, how she was going to get there and how long it should take. Now she did it on a much grander scale and for a constantly growing clientele. She’d even heard that Cami had several Sons of Redemption brothers as clients, but didn’t know which ones.
“Hey, look at that. Isn’t that Kurtis Black?” Jenna drew their attention to a tall, athletically built man standing at the hostess station at the front of the restaurant. “And didn’t he have a crush on you at one time?”
Lindsey tried to nonchalantly get a good look at the man. “I don’t know. If it is, he’s sure changed a lot.” The man she was looking at was a little over six feet tall, had sun-streaked chestnut hair, wore no glasses and appeared to be sixty pounds heavier than the nerdy boy she once knew. The hostess was leading him in their direction and from the way he carried himself, he oozed confidence and sex appeal. This was a man who was comfortable in his own skin. “And I don’t think he had a crush on me. We were just kind of friends since we had so many classes together.” The lie slipped off her tongue easily. For the longest time she’d been in denial, not wanting to see what was right in front of her. She’d always thought the skinny, nerdy guy who wore glasses was nothing more than a sweet guy that she shared several classes with her senior year and sometimes tutored her in chemistry.
Having Jenna remind her that Kurtis may have had a crush on her in school brought back a couple of memories she’d forgotten until now. She remembered there had been a few instances where she either caught him leaning in close to smell her hair while he tutored her or he’d be staring at her instead of the answers as she worked on her assignments. She had felt sorry for him at the time because his face would turn a bright red whenever she caught him doing it. The guy was awkward enough. Embarrassing him by brining attention to it would have made things even worse, so she kept silent about it. He was harmless after all.
After they graduated, they kept in touch for a while when she ran into him around town. On one occasion she bumped into him at the grocery store and discovered he was working at a local computer repair store to earn extra money for college to pay for what his scholarship didn’t cover.
While Kurtis worked at his summer job, she’d spent her summer dating Doug Roberts. He was three years older than her and worked for his dad’s realty company. He’d told her that after he graduated high school, he’d skipped college and gotten his realtor license instead. Seeing the car he drove and the house he lived in, he appeared to be doing very well for himself. Knowing that he had his act together—or so she thought—was one of the leading factors in her always turning a blind eye to things that should have concerned her before they got married. At the very least, she should have taken Kurtis’s warnings more seriously.
Eventually, it all came out that while she’d been away at college, Doug was still seeing other women. The first time she came home from school on break, she’d run into Kurtis at the gas station. They talked about classes he was taking and she talked about how much she loved living in Denver. It was also the first time he told her Doug was seeing other women while she was away. She blew it off as Kurtis must be confused. He hadn’t seen what he thought he’d seen. She certainly didn’t want to hear it. Especially, since every time she was home for a visit, Kurtis would tell her about Doug being with someone else.
She was embarrassed to say that instead of confronting Doug like a normal person would have done, she’d went off on Kurtis. She’d gone about it all wrong and knew at the time she’d hurt his feelings and she’d felt guilty about it for years.
On one visit home during her senior year of college, she’d run into him one more time. She’d just accepted Doug’s marriage proposal and was excited to share her news with everyone she ran into. She’d bumped into Kurtis as he was coming out of the diner and she was going in. At first he’d been happy to see her, until she told him that Doug proposed and showed him her ring. He didn’t react as she expected. Instead of congratulating her on her engagement, he’d been upset and angry. It was the first time she’d ever seen that side of Kurtis.
“Seriously?” he’d said. “After everything I’ve told you about all the different women he’s cheated on you with, you’re still going to marry him? Are you insane? How can you be so naive?”
She couldn’t believe he’d gone off on her. That was it. She’d reached her limit. She was tired of his constant accusations against Doug. “Kurtis, I know you think the rumors about Doug cheating are real, but they’re not.”
“Let me guess,” he scoffed. “Doug told you the rumors were all lies?”
“Yes. He did.” She crossed her arms angrily over her chest. “He also said you were lying because you wanted to be with me yourself.”
His lips thinned and his nostrils flared. She waited, but Kurtis never denied it.
“Look,” she ran her hand through her hair absently. “I know that you’ve had a thing for me for a long time. I’m sorry, but I’m marrying Doug.” She waited to see if he had anything to say or if he would perhaps deny his feelings toward her. When he didn’t take the opportunity to deny any of it, she continued. “I think it best that we go our separate ways. I’ve always thought of you as a friend but your constant assault on Doug is getting old. I can’t deal with it anymore.”
He shook his head like she was the stupidest woman in the world, then turned and left her standing on the street alone. After that, she heard he moved away to finish his education. As far as she knew, he hadn’t been home in years. Until now.
It hadn’t been until she’d been married to Doug for a few months before she found out the hard way that Kurtis hadn’t been stretching the truth about the number of women he’d cheated on her with. She’d felt like the world’s biggest fool for not believing what Kurtis had been trying to tell her all along and for not leaving Doug’s butt in the dirt the first time rumors started getting back to her. It had taken her walking into her own house and finding him screwing his secretary for it to finally sink in. Could he have been more cliche?
She didn’t know how he managed it, but he’d hidden his affairs from Cami and Jenna as well. Understandably, they didn’t know anything when they were away at college, but after they returned, you’d think someone would have said something around them. It wasn’t until after the divorce she’d heard that once they were married, he’d kept his indiscretions to surrounding towns until he hooked up with his secretary.
“Didn’t he try to stop you from marrying Doug?” Cami asked, rolling her fork between her fingers above her plate, her eyes crinkling at the corners as she tried to remember.
“Yes, he did. I should’ve listened to him,” she snorted. “He tried to warn me that Doug was a cheater, but I just wouldn’t listen.” She bit into her bottom lip. “I really owe him an apology. I got a little mean when he wouldn’t stop pushing me about it.”
“Oh, shoot, he’s coming this way.” Jenna’s gaze dropped to her plate, trying to look like she hadn’t been ogling the man.
