Page 40 of Second Act
Pleasure sparkled in Allie’s eyes as she turned them back to her husband. “So am I.”
“Oh dear God,” Hugh said. “Now he looks unbearably smug.” But he was envious of the palpable connection between the two of them.
He’d felt that once...and never again. But he put that down to his well-earned cynicism.
Allie waved good-bye, and Gavin’s gaze didn’t leave her until she was out of sight.
“I can’t believe I almost screwed up your relationship,” Hugh said, referring to the time he’d accused Allie of using Gavin for her own ends. Of course, he’d been fed false information by the scheming Irene Bartram.
“You didn’t screw it up. I did.” Gavin turned somber. “Nothing should have shaken my belief in Allie’s integrity, because I knew her—and I loved her.”
“Trust has never been our strong suit, you and I.” Hugh leaned his hip against the windowsill. “Doesn’t it bother you to have her working so late?”
“It used to, but I’ve learned to handle it.”
“She’s very careful about confidentiality, which I admire,” Hugh said. “Do you know where she is or who the patient is?”
Gavin examined the label on his beer bottle. “We have an understanding. She only takes patients our doctor and friend, Ben Cavill, refers to her, and she must use our driver, Jaros, to go to them.” He lifted his gaze to Hugh. “So, technically, I do not know where she is or who the patient is. However, if need be, I could find out quite swiftly.” He bared his teeth in a shark’s smile. “And I would not hesitate to do so.”
“But why take the chance that you’d need to?”
“You’ve met Allie, so I’m surprised you think I could stop her.” Gavin gave Hugh a sardonic look but then grew serious. “Let’s face it, I’m just an entertainer. I spin stories about a spy who can’t possibly exist. Allie heals people. That’s a lot more important than anything I do. Not only that, but she’s brilliant at her job, so I would be doing humanity a disservice if I tried to convince her to stay home with me.” He gave a short laugh. “God knows what would have happened to me if she hadn’t taken me on as a patient. The real reason, though, is thatshe would come to hate me if I interfered with her calling. Her work is part of who she is and why I fell in love with her. I’d be a fool to attempt to change that.”
Hugh put down his beer on a side table and clapped his hands together a couple of times in mock applause. “That was quite a speech.”
Gavin bent at the waist in an ironic, seated bow.
But the speech had made Hugh squirm inwardly at the memory of how he’d treated Jessica’s work in their past. He winced as he thought of the many times he’d demanded that she change her schedule to accommodate his, as though his meaningless parties were more important than her healing sick animals of all kinds. He’d needed her beside him to shore up his belief in himself, to remind him that an extraordinary person thought he was worthy of her respect and even more, her love. So he had trampled on the qualities that he loved most in her: her compassionate spirit, her boundless love for other creatures, and her skill at healing.
“If your profession is unimportant, what does that make mine?” Hugh said to Gavin with a lift of his eyebrow. “At least you conjure characters into being out of thin air. All I do is mouth the lines you’ve written for me. I’m essentially a puppet.”
“Did I hurt your feelings? I’m so sorry.”
“Ha! You take joy in irritating me.”
Gavin shook his head. “I didn’t say what we do is worthless. The world needs to escape, even to believe that someone like Julian Best is working behind the scenes to battle evil for all of us. I dreamed him up, but you’ve brought him to life as the living, breathing embodiment of my words. Remember, storytellers were revered in ancient times. Too bad those days are over.”
“At least a few of us still get paid well.” Hugh waved his beer bottle around to indicate their elegant surroundings. Gavin owned not one but two town houses side by side in Manhattan, one to live in and one to run his writing empire from.
“But we’ve gotten off topic,” the author said. “We were discussing the woman from your past. I never got the chance to meet her back then. You’d broken up by the time we became friends. You should bring her to dinner.”
“Who do you think you are, my mother?” Hugh repeated the question that had become a dark joke between them, since both had lacked a loving mother figure in their early lives.
“I’d like to meet the woman who you commandeered my helicopter for.”
Hugh knew Gavin didn’t really care about the helicopter. “You’d have done the same thing for Allie.”
“Allie is my wife, not my ex-fiancée,” Gavin said.
“Would you care about her well-being any less if you split up?”
“That would depend on why we parted,” Gavin drawled.
Hugh let his gaze rest on his friend and was rewarded when Gavin shifted on the sofa and said, “Yes, I would still care. I cared even when I thought Allie had used me. Of course, we’ve already established that I was an idiot.”
“Neither one of us is very good at relationships. We didn’t have any sterling examples to learn from.”
“Speak for yourself,” Gavin said. “I am happily married and intend to remain so for the rest of my life.”
