She was torn between wanting to point out that he’d blown it about her, too, and the need to walk over to the sofa, sit next to him and pull him close. Instead she stayed where she was.
“I keep asking myself how she could have tricked me,” he admitted. “At the same time I was recovering from being shot and mentally ending the relationship. Knowing how she’d used me violated everything I thought I knew about myself, her…everyone. It changed my view of the world. I used to think that whole stages of mourning was a lot of crap, but I went through them all. Although I think I stalled in anger for a while.”
“That’s understandable. What happened to Sylvia after the arrest?”
He shrugged. “She entered a plea. They refused bail. The charges against her included lying in wait, which judges frown upon. So she changed her plea. It was a mess. There was a bunch of media attention. When I was well enough, I left it all behind and moved back here.”
She tried to absorb what he’d told her. “If she’d lived, would you have had to go back to New York to testify?”
“Yeah, and I wasn’t looking forward to it. Once I got back to Whitehorn, I just wanted to stay put.” He stared at her. “The point of this isn’t to make you feel sorry for me, but to help you understand why I have a problem trusting women.”
“I do. In a way.” She sighed. “The thing is, I’m not Sylvia.”
“I know. I should have seen that right away. But there were too many similarities. You lived next door. You’re attractive, we got along well.”
Sex. He was talking about sex. “You do seem to have a thing for spontaneous combustion,” she said with a lightness she didn’t feel.
“Actually that’s a new experience for me,” he said. “I’ve never had what we’ve had.”
Darcy didn’t dare analyze the relief she felt at his words. She also had a couple of questions. How would he define what they had? What were they to each other?
His story had done what he’d claimed—she was no longer so angry with him and she could almost forgive him for what he’d done. But she hated that all of this had been because of another woman. A woman he’d wanted to marry. Have children with. Someone he’d wanted for more than just sex.
“No wonder you were devastated when she killed herself,” Darcy said.
“I was surprised,” he told her. “Not devastated.”
“I’m not sure I believe you.”
“You don’t have to. I’m working on closure. Sometimes I think I should forgive her, or maybe just myself. At times I can almost feel sorry for her. When I look back on our relationship, what I think about is how stupid I’d been and how could I have let that happen.” He shifted slightly, then grimaced as his ankle turned. “I have a lot of questions and no answers. The one thing I do know is that I never loved her.”
“If you wanted to marry her, then you did a good job of faking it.”
“I think it was more of a matter of being in the right place at the right time. I had the career I’d always wanted, things were going well. Looking back, I wonder if I was so enamored with her because I was ready to have a family. I wanted to get married and she was there.”
Darcy wished it was that simple, but she knew the truth was far more complex. “You said you’d been out with a lot of different women and none of them clicked with you. Obviously there was something special about Sylvia.”
He looked at her. “The woman killed her husband in cold blood and then expected me to help her cover up the crime. I don’t think ‘special’ quite describes it.”
“You know what I mean. You had strong feelings for her.”
He nodded absently, as if he was thinking about something else. Darcy tried to search her own heart to figure out what was going on inside. Once again Mark had confused her to the point of practically gasping for air. Every time she thought she had him figured out, he stumped her.
Despite what he’d done to her, she couldn’t hate him. Worse, she felt herself softening toward him, as if she were about to start liking him again. What was that old saying?Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me.Was she about to be a fool for this man again?
Mark moved a little, so there was more room next to him on the sofa. He patted the seat cushion. She folded her arms over her chest but otherwise didn’t move.
“We can talk fine with me sitting over here,” she said primly, not daring to move closer. Her heart might not know what was going on, but that didn’t mean her body wasn’t ready to go up in flames at the slightest provocation.
“I agree that we can have a conversation, but I won’t know that we’re okay,” he said. “I want to know that we can still be friends.”
Friends. It was what she’d wanted, so why did his declaration disappoint her?
“We’re friends.”
“You still look pissed off.”
“I’m not.”
