The Wife Upstairs(34)
Jesus, Emily worked even faster than I thought.
“Thank you,” I say. “We’re very happy. Anyway, it was nice to see you—”
I move to scoot past him, but he’s still standing there in the middle of the aisle, and even though it would be deeply satisfying to clip Tripp Ingraham with my cart, I stop, raising my eyebrows at him.
“So, when exactly did all this happen?” he asks, waving his free hand. “You and Eddie? Because I gotta say, I never saw that one coming.”
“Neither did we,” I say, still smiling, remembering that I need to be the girl Tripp thinks I am, the innocent barely-out-of-college dog-walker who made good. I wonder when I’ll feel like I can drop that act, when it will feel normal to just … be me.
“You know, I never got the whole Eddie ‘thing.’”
He actually raises his hands to make air quotes, the basket dangling heavily from the crook of his elbow.
I don’t bother asking him what he means because for one, he clearly wants me to ask him that, and for another, I just want to leave, but a little thing like lack of interest has clearly never stopped Tripp Ingraham where a woman is concerned.
“I mean, he’s good-looking, I guess, and he’s charming in that used-car-salesman way, but Jesus, from the way the women in this neighborhood acted, you would’ve thought the dude had a twelve-inch cock.”
Okay, maybe I misjudged how not-drunk Tripp actually is.
But this is good—now he’s given me every reason to push my cart past him, head held high, like I’m mortally offended and embarrassed instead of just kind of irritated.
He steps aside right before my cart actually hits him, and as I reach the end of the aisle, he calls after me, “Just hope you don’t like boats.”
When I glance back at him, his expression is curdled and nasty. “Women have bad luck around Eddie Rochester and boats,” he adds, before turning and trudging away.
I get all the way back to the produce before I abandon my semi-full cart and head for the doors.
The drive home isn’t long enough for me to shake the unease, the sudden fear that Tripp Ingraham—fucking Tripp Ingraham, of all people—has instilled in me, and again, I see Bea pale and greenish under the water. My stomach lurches as I pull into the driveway.
“Stop it, stop it, stop it,” I mutter, my hands over my face. Eddie’s wife drowned in an accident with her best friend. Eddie wasn’t even there, and the women were drunk and possibly had some unresolved drama. Shit happens.
I try to think about the bridal store again, the way Huntley smiled at me and treated me like I had just joined an exclusive club, how good that had felt. Emily’s hug and bright smile as she’d looked at the ring.
That’s what matters now.
When I walk in the house, Eddie is already home, changed into shorts and another one of his button-down shirts. Now that I’ve seen inside his closet, I know he has dozens of them in a variety of colors. Men can do that—find one thing that looks good, then wear it for the rest of their lives, pretty much.
“There’s my girl,” he says brightly as I walk in. I smile as I greet him, but it’s clear I’m upset because he immediately frowns.
“Everything okay?”
I step easily into his arms, sighing as they come around me, my head fitting just there underneath his chin.
“Long day of wedding dress shopping,” I say, and he chuckles at that, his hands making soothing strokes up and down my back.
“Sounds exhausting,” he says. “Beer?”
I nod even though I already have a slight headache from those two glasses of champagne earlier, plus it’s barely even three in the afternoon.
Pressing a kiss to my forehead, Eddie lets me go and walks to the fridge while I set my purse down and go into the kitchen, grabbing a couple of limes from the silver bowl on the counter.
“You’re sure you’re alright?” Eddie rubs a hand down my back, and I make myself smile at him as I chop limes into wedges for our beers.
“Yeah, fine,” I say, then shake my head, using the back of my hand to push back a lock of hair from my forehead. “I just ran into Tripp Ingraham today, and he was weird.”
Eddie stills, looking down at me. “Weird how?”
I’m not actually sure how much of this I want to get into with him. My nerves are still jangled, and I’m afraid Eddie will get the wrong idea if I tell him the truth. That he might think what Tripp said about Eddie and boats got to me, scared me.
I tell myself that it didn’t.
So, I smile up at Eddie, letting the knife fall to the counter. “Oh, you know. The kind of thing you’d expect from a guy like him.”
I twine my arms around Eddie’s neck, pressing my body close to his. “He thinks I’m marrying you for your money.”
Some of the wariness leaves Eddie’s face, and he puts both arms around my waist, hands resting on my hips. “Hope you told him that you were actually in it for the sex.”
“Obviously,” I say, and when he lowers his head to kiss me, I nip at his lower lip, Tripp Ingraham and his bullshit forgotten.
17
Later, we sit outside in the big wooden Adirondack chairs in the yard, a fire crackling away in the big stone ring in front of us. Nearby, the grill smokes, and the scent of cooking meat reminds me of those summer nights in Phoenix, when the air was so still and so dry it felt like a loose spark could send everything up in flames.