Page 95 of Trying Sophie

Relaxing the muscles in my neck and shoulders, I continued, “I told you I was sorry for what happened. Had I known I was legitimately hurting you I would have stopped teasing you.” I paused to calm the timbre of voice. “And you told me you forgave me.”

It wasn’t exactly an accusation, but she needed to understand her forgiveness mattered, that I didn’t take it lightly.

“Forgive, not forget,” she muttered, looking across the room, her gaze resting anywhere but on me.

Since there was no point in arguing, I let the comment go. I didn’t expect her to forget about her childhood, but I wouldn’t let her punish me for it either.

“Anyhow, as I was saying,” she remarked as she settled back down on the sofa and curled her legs under her. “Stephen and I were together for almost a year, give or take.”

I shook my head, still not believing Sophie had been naïve enough to fall in love with an asshole who made no room for her in his life. Checking my reaction, I set my face into a mask of polite, non-judgmental interest. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure the guy probably had multiple girlfriends he fed the same tired lines to as he juggled them all.

It takes one to know one, I thought with a hint of disgust. ButI’ve never let anyone think there was more to us beyond a quick fuck, I reminded myself. I’d certainly never lead anyone on the way I was thinking Stephen had lead Sophie on.

“So what happened?”

I didn’t want to know, and yet I was also dying to find out.

“It was October and we were in Napa, staying at a cottage that belonged to a guy he knew who owned a small, elite vineyard. We were there to study what went into making wine, from harvest to bottling and then write a few articles about it.

“I had contracts lined up with three different magazines and a national daily newspaper to document the experience. Professionally, things had never been better, and personally I thought Stephen and I were building up to something more permanent.”

She looked up from her clenched hands and captured my gaze. Holding it, she said, “I thought he was going to ask me to marry him. I would have said yes.”

The confession hung heavy between us. As much as I might want to, I couldn’t ignore the fact that Sophie had very real, very powerful feelings for Stephen. She’d been prepared to spend the rest of her life with the bastard! The knowledge of her commitment to him made my chest pinch. I rubbed at the ache in my sternum, not understanding why it hurt so much to know Sophie might not be willing to give her heart away again.

“Obviously that didn’t happen though.”

She laughed mirthlessly. “Obviously not,” she answered, wrapping her arms protectively over her middle, almost like she was trying to hold something bad inside her body. “It would have been hard to marry me when he already had a beautiful wife and a baby girl at home in Seattle.”

What the fuck?!

I had not seen that one coming. Nothing she’d said so far had prepared me for that particular bomb. I’d known something bad had happened, but this was … too much. As much of a prick as I could be, even I knew there were certain things you just didn’t do to a woman, and that was one of them. I wanted to cut off Stephen’s balls and feed them to him for breakfast. Not only for what he’d done to Sophie, but also for how he’d treated his wife and daughter.

“Sarabeth was three months old when I found out about her and Hannah. That’s his wife, by the way.”

“But that means …”

I didn’t need to say what it meant. Sophie had lived through it.

Her shoulders slumped and tear streaked down her face. “Yes. I had an affair with a married man. I helped him commit adultery.”

“Stop that,” I admonished, crossing the room to stand in front of her. Dropping to my knees, I took her ice cold hands in mine. “It wasn’t your fault.”

“No?” She asked. “I should have known better.”

“How were you to know Sophie? The bastard lied to you from the beginning.”

“You said it yourself, Declan. He avoided having a life with me. We only saw each other while on assignment, but I ignored what was right there in front of my face.”

“Yer man lied to you.”

“He did,” she acknowledged with a rueful shake of her head. “And yet I still wanted him. That’s the truly horrible thing.” Her confession came out as a pained whisper.

“Did you want him, or did you need to cling to what you thought you had together?”

I had to ask, because if after everything he’d done to her, Sophie had still wanted to be with him—even knowing he had a family at home—I wasn’t sure I could look at her the same way. I couldn’t speak from experience, but pining after someone who’d fucked you over that way, being willing to take them back after such a huge, humiliating betrayal … it didn’t speak very well of a person, did it? And I’d grown to think of Sophie as the very best sort of person.

But if she’d simply missed their relationship, that was okay because that meant it didn’t need to be Stephen. I reasoned one could mourn what had been without wanting it still.

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