Page 98 of The Love Destroyers

Jeffrey knows where my mother lives. I can think of no earthly reason why he’d come here, unless he knows I was in Ellie’s room…

Fear tries to weave through the adrenaline, but Irefuseto be afraid of that man. So I stalk over to the bushes, canister extended, and as soon as a man’s body emerges from the bushes and I see his head of silver hair, I spray.

“Good gravy!” the man calls out, pressing his hands to his face, which probably just makes his hands hurt. I gasp, because it’sChuck.

“Shit, I thought you were someone else. Let’s get you inside.”

He lets me hustle him in through the same door I used to enter the house on New Year’s Eve. I direct him to lean over the sink and then splash his face with milk from the rarely used and possibly sour carton in the refrigerator. I dip in and out so quickly I barely take notice of all of the covered carafes of crème brûlée. He follows my directions, gasping, and then washes his hands and face and wipes them on a dish towel that is purely decorative.

He staggers over to the kitchen island and sits, his expression miserable and his eyes and the surrounding skin as pink as a teenage girl’s sweet sixteen party. I sit across from him.

“Well, I probably deserved that,” he says with a gusty sigh.

“You deserved to get pepper-sprayed in the face?” I ask, almost smiling. “And I’m pretty sure that milk’s sour.”

“It is,” he says mournfully. “Some of it landed in my mouth. The cream in the fridge might have done the trick, but I don’t suppose you knew where to find it. But a real man doesn’t leave a friend’s house in the middle of the night, so I don’t blame you for thinking the worst. I want you to know that I think very highly of your mother. She’s one fine woman.”

I sit back in the chair. My training tells me to keep my own failures to myself and allow the other person to speak, but I’m exhausted, and this man is neither my client nor the opposing counsel. So I say, “I could hardly judge you for that, given I just did the same thing.”

He cocks his head, his red eyes squinting, but that’s probably just from the pepper spray. “Were you with my boy, by any chance?”

“Seamus?” I ask, nearly laughing. Based on what I know, Seamus and Chuck have only known each other since New Year’s.

He gives a serious nod, and that melted butter feeling slides through me again. It’s sweet that they look after each other—a thought that should make me want to vomit in my own mouth but doesn’t.

Squelching the temptation to give him a vague response, I say, “Yes, but please don’t tell anyone.”

He mimes zipping his lips—an action I have only seen people who are terrible at keeping secrets do.

Fantastic.

“He likes you,” he says, watching me more closely now. Or maybe he’s simply struggling to see. “He’s cagy about that sort of thing, but I see it.”

“I like him too,” I admit. “But neither of us are interested in a relationship.”

He shrugs. “He might have told me something about that, but I get the feeling he made a bad call once, and he’s still blaming himself for it. I told him he doesn’t know what it’s like to love the right woman.”

“Love has nothing to do with it,” I insist, taken aback. “We…like each other, but it would never work. Liking someone is only a small part of a relationship.”

He makes a sound that’s somewhere between a snort and a pained grunt. “Maybe so, but it’s the most important part, don’t you think?”

“That’s not what I’ve seen,” I argue, even though I feel something inside of me resonating with his remark. “The most important thing is for two people to have common goals. Sharedinterests.” I give him one of my patented Emma Rosings Smith closing argument looks. “And wedo not.”

He’s already shaking his head. “My wife loved nothing more than a party, and I’ve spent the last forty years running a party planning business. I wouldn’t say we were compatible in the end. Didn’t have much to talk about either. Surface interests are like oil floating on water. It’s the things that sink deep that matter. Do you share values? Are you willing to accept each other’s baggage?”

“And are you willing to accept my mother’s three marriages’ worth?” I ask, lifting my eyebrows. It’s not that his words haven’t made an impact—they have. But I’m not the kind of person who can be swayed by a summer breeze. I require winter storms. Hurricanes. I’ll need to take what he told me and pore over it. But not now. Now, I want to know why he snuck off in the middle of the night. I’d ask him about his intentions toward my mother if I didn’t worry he’d turn the question around and ask me about mine toward Seamus.

“Goodness. You don’t think that’s why I was leaving, do you?” he asks, worrying at the dishcloth.

“Well, yes… That or your marriage. Seamus said you had some unresolved feelings about that.”

He folds the dishcloth and sets it down before looking at me, his eyes still as red as a toddler with pink eye. It should be impossible to take him seriously, but I’m riveted. “I contacted a few attorneys in the bathroom during dinner,” he finally says.

Laughter spurts from me. “You excused yourself so you could get a divorce?”

His smile is endearing. “Like I said…your mother is a remarkable woman.”

“Who’d you contact?”

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