The Fidelity Files (Jennifer Hunter #1)(128)

I grabbed his hand and kissed it. "I understand."

I sat up and slid off the bed. "I guess I'm going to get ready for bed, then." I walked through the large expanse of the suite into the bathroom and closed the door behind me. For a minute I stood in the darkness, afraid to turn on the light. Afraid of what it might reveal to me. And what that revelation would mean.

I slowly reached out and flipped the switch. I took a long, hard look at myself in the mirror. My reflection said it all.

I was beaming.

I know most girls would be confused. Hurt. Rejected. But not me. Jamie's rejection was the best gift he could have ever given me. Because I knew exactly where it came from. The reasons behind it. And they were good reasons.

But then a thought came to me. He said, "I'm just not sure we should... yet."

What exactly did "yet" mean?

Did it mean tomorrow we should? Or the next day we should? When did it end? When should we? And would this assignment have to go on for the next week? Month? Year? Until he finally felt ready to cheat on his wife?

At first I thought the rejection was a good thing. But on second thought, could it be just a prolonging of this god-awful assignment?

Could it possibly just mean that my work here was "yet" to be complete?

"Hey, Jen," Jamie's voice called through the door.

"Yeah?" I replied, my eyes still glued to my befuddled reflection.

"I think I left my Amex at the front desk. I'm just going to run down to the lobby and check. Do you need anything while I'm down there?"

"No, thanks. I'm fine!"

I ran the hot water and kept my finger under the faucet, waiting for the flow to get warm. I quickly splashed my face, squeezed out a dollop of face wash, and saturated my skin in it.

"Hey, I can't find my key," I heard Jamie's voice through the door again. "Do you have yours?"

"Sure," I called back, my eyes closed and my face covered in white cream. "It's in my purse."

"Okay, thanks!"

I rinsed my face off, patted it dry with the soft, fluffy white Ritz Paris towel, and then rummaged through my toiletries bag to find my toothbrush. I did an abbreviated version of my usual three-minute brushing routine, and then with a heavy sigh I shut off the light and opened the door.

The first thing I saw when I came back into the bedroom was the gold-trimmed, white satin bed frame and the rumpled sheets from our almost French love affair. The thought of his words of refusal, once again, filled me with confusion. Confusion that I desperately wished to resolve but, quite frankly, didn't know how.

The second thing I saw was Jamie. Standing motionless in the middle of the suite. In one hand, he held his cell phone up to his ear, listening intently, his eyes strangely filled with what could only be described as painful disappointment. Whatever he was listening to on the other end of that call was bad news. Very bad news.

And that's when I saw what he was holding in his other hand.

My failed fidelity inspection card. The one I had tucked ever-so-safely into the inside pocket of my purse. The one he was only supposed to see if and when he actually did fail.

From where I stood, at least twenty feet away, I could just make out the red letter A on the black surface, shining fiercely from across the room, illuminating the shadowy, moonlit suite like a red spotlight.

The sight of it burned a hole in my irises. The same effect, I imagine, that the letter was intended to have when sewed into the fabric of Hester Prynne's clothing.

I stopped in my tracks. Our eyes met and locked. He looked at me with such sadness and betrayal that my heart shattered into a million tiny pieces.

Without moving his eye line even an inch, he pulled the phone away from his ear and closed it with a snap that reverberated in the empty room like a gunshot.

We stood still for what seemed like an eternity, staring into each other's eyes, silent questions and accusations bouncing back and forth between us like invisible sound waves.

Jamie was the first to speak.

"It's a setup?" he asked quietly, with, thankfully, no trace of anger in his voice. Just pain. Deep, confused pain. "It's all been a setup?"

I closed my eyes and struggled to come up with the right words. Until I realized that they didn't exist. They don't write speeches for moments like this. "Jamie, I—"

"From the beginning!" he said, his tone raised, the anger finally creeping in. "From the f*cking beginning!?"

"No!" I cried desperately. "Not from the beginning. Not until a few days ago!"

"And this is what you do? You set people up? To fail?"

I shook my head, the tears stinging my eyes. "Not with you! It didn't start out that way. I wanted to tell you about it. I had decided to tell you about it, and then—"

"That man in the sushi restaurant. He was trying to warn me about you. And I, like a f*cking fool, stood up for you!" He dropped both items from his hands. The phone fell with a loud thud while the card danced and twirled gracefully to the ground, landing, most appropriately, A-side up. "You lied to me!"

"Me?" I shouted, feeling the passion rise up inside me. "You're the liar here! Do I have to remind you that you have a f*cking wife? I guess I do, because you seemed to have forgotten. It seemed to have slipped your mind. Because you 'conveniently' forgot to mention her this whole time!"