Back on Blossom Street (Blossom Street #4)(58)

“You’re telling me?” Jeanine laughed lightly, the tension in her voice gone.

“Since it’s a whole new world for both of us, I was hoping you wouldn’t mind if I asked you a few questions.”

“Me?” Jeanine said. “Hey, I’m no expert.”

“What I mean is, can I ask you a few questions about Steve?”

“Oh, I see…” The wariness was back. “Colette, I like you. I’ve always liked you, but I don’t think I’m the right person to talk to about my ex-husband.”

“Who else would know Steve the way you do?” she asked.

Jeanine’s laugh lacked any pretense of humor. “Oh, about fifty other women.”

“What?”

“Colette, I’ll be blunt here. Steve couldn’t keep his fly zipped.”

Colette sank onto the edge of the sofa. “Steve…cheated on you?”

“It was more than that. He screwed anything in a skirt.” She snorted in disgust. “He was indiscriminate. Any woman who was available—and some who weren’t.”

Colette felt like she was going to be sick.

“You know this for a fact?” she finally managed to say.

“Oh, yes. It started even before we were married. I heard from a friend, a good friend, that she’d seen Steve with another woman about a week before our wedding.”

“Did you ask him about it?”

“Of course I did. He made up this completely credible story about this other girl being a cousin of his. When I mentioned this to my friend, she said they were obviously kissing cousins.”

“I’m so sorry.” Colette hated opening old wounds like this.

“The only one to blame is me. I was gullible enough to believe him. The man is a consummate liar. He’ll lie even when it’s more convenient to tell the truth. It’s his nature.”

“But…he’s a detective.”

“Astonishing, isn’t it?”

“But…”

“You can’t say anything I haven’t asked myself a dozen times,” Jeanine told her. “Steve can be the most devoted, wonderful man in the world—when he feels like it. The girls adore him, even now, and yet he practically ignores their existence.”

“They’re his children.” Colette found herself getting angry on Jeanine’s behalf.

“Out of sight, out of mind,” Jeanine muttered.

“But you stuck it out for so many years. Why did you divorce him now?”

Jeanine’s sigh came in a long rush. “My parents asked me the same question and I wish I knew the answer. I think Steve was more shocked than anyone. I didn’t even ask him if he was seeing someone else. He probably was, but I didn’t really care anymore and that frightened me. My emotions had become paralyzed, and that made me realize what I was doing. Over the years, Steve had become blatant in his affairs. I’d turned a blind eye for so long I literally couldn’t see anymore.”

Colette heard the pain in her friend’s voice.

“One morning I woke up,” Jeanine continued, “and I knew that if I didn’t get out of this marriage I’d lose my sanity. Steve left for work and I phoned my parents and asked if I could move in with them until I found an apartment in Yakima. They agreed.”

“You went that day?”

“That same day,” Jeanine said. “I knew with absolute certainty that I wouldn’t change my mind. It wasn’t just my pride at stake, or my children’s future. I know this might sound melodramatic…but my very soul was at risk.”

“Did Steve ask you to reconsider?”

Jeanine snickered softly. “He was convinced I’d come back and God knows he tried to talk me into it. He can be persuasive when he wants. What he didn’t understand was that he’d killed whatever love I’d felt for him. To be fair, I’d threatened to leave him any number of times.”

“Did you ever do it?”

“No, more fool me,” she said. “It took him six months to figure out I wasn’t moving back to Seattle.”

“You never let on, all the times we saw you. I would never have believed Steve was that kind of man.”

“That’s the sad part. I couldn’t believe it even when I had the evidence right in front of me.”

“I’m not going to see him again.” Colette’s mind was made up about that. Christian’s note and her own instinctive reaction to Steve were all she needed to know that Jeanine had told her the truth. Deep down she’d felt something was wrong, but she couldn’t identify it. Because she hadn’t trusted her instincts, it was Christian’s note that had prompted her to contact Steve’s ex-wife. How Christian had learned this about Steve, she had no idea.

“You’re smart,” Jeanine said. “I don’t think many women ever talk to the ex-wife before getting involved with a guy.”

Colette didn’t enlighten her, but she wasn’t nearly as smart as Jeanine thought. Without Christian Dempsey, she probably would’ve let her relationship with Steve drift on, a relationship that could only have brought her heartbreak.

CHAPTER 21

“No matter how much skill, passion and creativity one brings to knitting, you can’t make something better than the quality of the yarn you use.”