Page 105 of Always

“I’ll be back,” she says.

“Give Tessa and her folks my best.”

“I will. Thanks for being there with me last night.”

“Skye, where else on earth would I be other than with the woman I love?”

She smiles at me and turns to leave my office.

Once she’s out of the penthouse, I call Donald Banks, my jeweler here in Boston.

“Mr. Black,” he says into the phone. “How may I help you today?”

“I’d like a private showing in fifteen minutes, if you can manage it.”

“Of course. For you, anything. May I ask what you’d like to see?”

“Engagement rings.” I clear my throat. “Diamond engagement rings.”

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Later, on the plane, Skye turns to me. “I think I had a breakthrough today.”

I lift my eyebrows. “Another one?”

She nods. “When I was at Tessa’s.”

“I’m glad she’s doing well.”

“Me too. She remembers everything—no retrograde amnesia—and she’s adamant that she didn’t take any drugs. She asked me if I truly thought Garrett had drugged her.”

I grit my teeth. So much I want to say, but I can’t. Not yet. Not without concrete evidence.

“And what did you say?”

“I told her I didn’t know. But then I got to thinking. The night I went clubbing with them, and it was Betsy’s first date with Peter, she seemed to get friendly with him really quickly. I mean, more quickly than I’d have thought she would.”

“How well do you know Betsy?”

“Not well, I guess. But I thought I had a pretty good feel for who she is.”

“And she doesn’t seem the clingy type?”

“No. At least not with someone she just met. And then there’s Tessa. She was so distraught over Garrett leaving last night. That’s not her. She’s usually a ‘whatever’ kind of girl, you know?”

I nod and take a sip of the Wild Turkey in front of me.

“So then Tess admitted that she wasn’t herself the last couple times with Garrett. When he started calling her after she caughthim with that other woman, she told him to fuck off. It wasn’t until he showed up at our yoga class that she considered giving him another chance. I think somewhere in her subconscious she knew something wasn’t right. That’s why she wanted me to go to dinner with the two of them. She said she didn’t trust herself not to sleep with him. That’s so not Tessa. She has no problem saying no to a guy, and she also has no problem saying yes when she wants to. So something wasn’t right.”

“But still she—”

“I know,” Skye interrupts me. “She apologized to me for laying a guilt trip on me about not going to dinner with them. She admitted that sleeping with him was her choice. And I told her that maybe it wasn’t her choice. Maybe it was the drugs. But she said it felt like her choice.”

I’m not sure what to say. That’s what date rape drugs do. They make the woman think it’s her choice.

“So then I asked her where she got the ecstasy that she took before. She said Peter gave it to her.”

“What?” I clench my hands into fists.

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