The Opportunist (Love Me with Lies, #1)(61)

We win the case.

Leah is found not guilty of falsifying documents, not guilty of clinical trial fraud, and guilty of ethical misconduct of responsibilities. She pays a fine of one million dollars for the latter and is sentenced to two hundred hours of community service. I am not celebratory. I could have put that bitch in prison and stolen her husband.

The victory dinner is held at a posh restaurant in South Beach. I am extricating myself from a handful of well-wishers when I spot her sashaying over to me. I eye her sexy black dress with distaste. She is so polished and coiffed, she looks like a magazine cutout. I am wearing a simple, cream sheath dress. She is the Devil tonight and I am the Angel.

“Olivia,” she purrs, sauntering up with a glass of wine in her hand, “cheers to our win. It was all very well done.” She clinks her glass with mine and I smile tightly.

“Thank you?”

“I don’t suppose I’ll ever understand why you did it. You saved me. Unless, it’s because he asked you to.”

As if on cue, we both look over at Caleb, who is laughing and chatting with a group of friends.

“It must have been very hard for you to be around him.” She is watching him, possessively. I am struck by how much I miss hearing his laughter. It rips me to my core, that he belongs in her life and not mine.

“He’s not the kind of man a woman can easily forget,” she continues sweetly, and if I wasn’t the type of girl that played her game, I would have thought her sincere.

“No, he’s not,” I admit freely.



“You watch him all the time—I see you do it, Olivia.”



I look at her bored. She is playing games with someone who knows how to play them better.



“Does he look at you, the way I look at him?” I ask casually. Ahh, there it is—the ill-disguised anger.



And, by the look on her face, I know I’ve struck a nerve. She opens her mouth to say something but I hold up a hand.



“Leah, go be with your husband,” I say, “before he realizes that he’s still in love with me.”



And as if right on cue, Caleb turns to look at me, not at his wife—at me. Our eyes lock for the briefest of seconds, Caleb’s and mine, amber and blue. Leah witnesses our exchange and though she remains the epitome of decorum and class, I see a whiteness appear around her lips. Her anger rolls toward me, though what I feel coming from him pushes it away. He is longing, as am I. I garner what remains of my self-control and tell myself the truth: Not mine, not ever.

I set my wine down on the nearest table and walk quickly out of their lives. Some things were better left alone.

The following morning I turn on the TV only to see a familiar mug shot. I squint at the picture and groan when I hear the name.

“Dobson Scott Orchard was detained by police at the Miami airport last night trying to board a plane to Toronto. Police have taken him into custody where accused rapist is being questioned. Among his victims are seven women whose ages range from seventeen to thirty. Five of them have come forward and positively identified him as the man who kidnapped and sexually assaulted them. Police are urging anyone else victimized to step forward at this time…”

The camera then shifts to a picture of Laura Hidleson, naming her as Dobson’s first victim. I wave at her picture and shut off the TV. Life is all about choices, I decide—good ones, bad ones, selfish ones. But, it seems the safest one I ever made was not walking underneath his umbrella, the day I ran into Caleb.





Chapter Seventeen





Turner decided to move to Florida after I won the case. He sold his house in Grapevine, bought a new wardrobe of pastel oxfords, and traded his Lexus for a shiny, yellow corvette. I feel invaded when I come home one day and find my living room filled with his neatly labeled boxes. Downstairs Closet, Game Room, Office, they proclaim in handwriting that I know must be his mother’s. I wander through the maze of Turner’s belongings and hope that he doesn’t plan on unpacking them here. I have no room for dartboards and autographed pictures of Diego Maradona. We argue about it for a week and eventually he agrees to put his belongings in storage. With the boxes gone, I work on adjusting to my new ‘live in’ who patrols the hallways of my condo in white jockeys, singing show tunes in a Texan drawl. My fridge is filled with beer and salsa, and for some wild reason this annoys me more than the piles of dirty laundry that I find tossed around the house.

One morning I wake up to find the words ‘You’re Hot’ scrawled on my bathroom mirror in lipstick. I grit my teeth throwing away the destroyed fifty dollar tube of Wine Gum and then spend ten next minutes scrubbing away the residue with vinegar. When it happens a second time, I hide my lipstick. Between the months of March and May, I find seventeen curious stains on my ivory sofa, twelve shoe scuffs on my wall and thirty seven bottles of beer left haphazardly around the house. He takes me out to dinner on our anniversary and wears a teal button down, with white pants and white crocodile loafers. I remember Caleb’s tasteful choice in clothes and I feel embarrassed by Turner’s flamboyance. This is not a game of comparisons, I remind myself. He tells me he loves me a whole lot and each time I inwardly cringe.

Oh, what do you know about love? I silently complain. You’ve never cheated to have it.

Handsome Turner, who adores me and treats me like an expensive accessory, I even hate the way his pillow smells.