Pretty Little Wife(43)
She was not good with men.
Despite how important he thought he was, she needed him to let her lead now. There were things he didn’t know. Things that could get them in trouble if he shared because he thought they were innocent instead of her calculated attempt to remove Aaron from her life.
She poured every ounce of concern and anxiety into her voice, silently begging for him to get it. “Please listen to me.”
“Where’s Aaron?”
“I have no idea. Honestly. None.” That pissed her off, but it was true.
“Did he find out about us and take off?”
“No.” There was no way Aaron could have hidden his fury at being replaced in the bedroom, even temporarily. “I mean, not the ‘us’ part. Could he have left for some other reason? I guess, but I can’t imagine.”
“You can’t know he didn’t figure it out.”
“He would have mentioned stumbling over my adultery. Trust me.” He’d choked her for finding the videos. The punishment for embarrassing him would have been a campaign of destruction that burned through every part of her life.
“Did you talk about being unhappy in the marriage, maybe give a hint that you might leave him?”
Interesting how he assumed she’d messed up, as if she were lost in some sort of romantic stupor and let the incriminating information slip. “Never.”
“Wait.” Ryan’s head shot back as if he’d been slapped. “Never?”
Not this. Not now. “That wasn’t the plan. You know that. We agreed on no commitment.”
He moved back, putting a few more inches of space between them. “Seven months, Lila. That’s a long time to have sex and meals together and meet and not have some feelings for more develop.”
Not for her. Not ever for her. “Stop talking like that.”
With him, at the beginning, for these amazingly bright flashes, she hoped it would be different. Better. That she could be normal and seek what other people sought. The sex was exciting, not just a set of moves she’d done for years.
Then their differences, once faded in the background, pulsed to life. He liked people and going out. He bought tickets to events and dragged her to see live music. Being trapped in swaying rooms that reeked of liquor and dripped with the sweat of a heated audience ignited her anxiety. Even if she weren’t married and in a frenzy of panic about being seen, his constant need to be fed by a sea of people would have drained her.
At least with Aaron she had hiking and a mutual respect for quiet. Ryan tried to coax her “out of her shell.” She was married and dating and dreaded both. It was the ultimate nightmare.
Ryan’s arm dropped to the bench. Without moving, the chasm between them expanded. “You’re unbelievable.”
Did he really not get it? This was not the time to talk about seeing each other more or bigger feelings. “I’m trying to save both of us.”
He stood up. “Try harder.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
BEING IGNORED PISSED GINNY OFF. SHE’D TRIED CALLING LILA, but she didn’t answer. With a squad waiting around the block and the forensic team ready to go, she stood on Lila’s front porch and verbally wrangled with her attorney and friend. Probably her only friend.
“Where is she?” Ginny asked in a tone that suggested this was not the time to play.
Tobias closed the door behind him and stepped out into the cold, wearing black pants and a sweater but no shoes. “She had errands.”
Ginny nodded in the direction of the driveway. “Her car is here.”
“She has mine.”
This guy had an answer for everything. He was smooth, but Lila hid her constant assessing better than this guy did.
“So she made sure to take the car that’s not being followed by my office. That suggests she has something to hide.” Ginny made a mental note to pull more records.
“Or that she needed a minute of peace.”
“You’re in a rental. We’ll track the GPS on it.” They’d find out where she went. Check cameras in the area. See if she had the suspected check-in with her supposed not-boyfriend.
Tobias crossed his arms across his chest and leaned back against the front door. “It sounds like you’re convinced Lila has done something wrong.”
“She’s not exactly an open book.”
“She’s not that hard to figure out either.”
From what Ginny could tell, no one in town agreed. Literally, no one. They all described Lila as pretty but pointed out how she didn’t seem to support Aaron’s career. That was her big sin in many people’s eyes. “You’re alone in that assessment.”
“When we were in practice together and would have a case involving a felony, like drugs or murder or whatever, Lila would give this speech. She’d talk to clients and their families and sometimes their friends about how she didn’t have any ethical responsibility to tell law enforcement where to go find evidence, but if someone moved the evidence and gave it to her so that the police couldn’t find it, then there was a problem.”
“Sounds like a criminal defense attorney way of rationalizing the law.” And she didn’t mean that as a compliment. “I’d argue she’d have a moral responsibility to do the right thing in either case, but okay.”