Page 128 of Fire for Effect

“I think you and I need to talk,” she said, and I laughed.

God bless her, she didn’t flinch, though I could tell she wanted to. She was made of plastic.

“So talk,” I said, after I caught my breath.

“The end of our marriage wasn’t just my fault.”

I laughed even harder.

Too hard for the quiet society we had gathered around us. I was being downright rude, as people around us looked at the spectacle I made.

“I didn’t know that you knew him,” Kristin said, stoically trying to fight the blush that crawled up her cheeks.

“That’s your takeaway? You think it would have all been fine if I didn’t know who you hooked up with?” I laughed again, downing my drink in one gulp.

“No! But you can’t tell me that you were faithful either.”

“Bullshit! I never cheated on you,” I said, putting a finger in her face.

She stared at it, and almost rolled her eyes. It was more expression than she normally had.

“If you hadn’t before, you would have,” she said, her eyes the color of fucking steel.

“Bullshit!” I said, loud enough that heads turned again.

She looked around, glaring at anyone who dared eavesdrop until one by one, the conversations around us resumed.

“You and I were always supposed to be a team,” she said through her teeth, reminding me of a snake, its tongue slithering out.

“We were,” I insisted, though my delivery did not match my lack of conviction.

“No, we weren’t,” she said shaking her head.

She looked… sad. I didn’t know Stepford Wives were capable of that emotion.

“Tell me you weren’t already in love with that… Guerro.” She spat out Trinity’s name as if it replaced a different word. One that started with a b and rhymed with glitch. “You talked about her all the time. Far more than you ever spoke about me. Tell me that you weren’t in love with her, and I will take full responsibility for everything that happened between us… even to your mother.”

I froze. I wanted to say it. I wanted the words to spill out, so that I could march her over to Kamilla Griffith and have her say that the failure of a marriage lay all on her shoulders.

But I just… wasn’t sure.

I hadn’t touched Taz before that one night. I hadn’t even thought of her that way. I had forced my mind to compartmentalize her into “teammate” and “friend” only.

But being “in love” was different that being a “lover”.

Even if everything had been innocent, I couldn’t disavow my firefly. Even in the past.

“That’s what I thought,” Kirstin said, in that perfectly clipped, eastern seaboard private school voice. “I’m sorry I cheated. But you can’t say that you were faithful either.”

I heard the rattle of a knob as the double doors on top of the golden, Titanic-like staircase opened and in sauntered my bedazzled partner in crime – Agent Sierra. The one-sleeve dress hugged her every curve and pushed up her generous bosom. She knew it. Everyone knew it.

But my eyes trailed to the bemused, silver and white angel that came behind her.

Taz’s hair was down, pushed over her shoulders, the curls landing right at her small breasts. She wasn’t slim, or leggy - but she had the wide shoulders, and slim waist of an athlete, along with the rounded hips of a woman who was used to physical labor. She came to the banister, and lay her hand on it, her eyes scanning the crowd. She didn’t find me right away in the sea of monkey suits, and I took the time to marvel at her perfection.

The dress was… vaguely bridal. Probably Sierra’s idea.

She frowned as she scanned the crowd, and I stood, waiting, until those rich colorful eyes landed on me.

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