Page 72 of Vengeful Seduction
I left the chain on. I liked to think the best of people, but I wasn’t an idiot. It was awfully late, and I wasn’t expecting anyone. It could be a robber, or worse. Not that many robbers or murderers knocked on a door before they come in.
I chuckled to myself as I pulled the door open a crack. “Brent?” I asked as I saw his face on the other side of the door and quickly fumbled the chain off. Brent didn’t look so good. His cheeks were very flushed, his eyes were dull, and he couldn’t quite seem to hold himself upright. He had to hold on to the frame of the door to even keep himself from falling over.
“I can’t drive home,” he slurred the words out, and I realized what was going on pretty easily. I’d done a brief stint as a nurse in the ER, so this wasn’t the first time I had seen someone completely drunk out of their mind. “I almost crashed just getting here. Can I stay the night?”
Well, there was really no question about what my answer would be. Of course he could stay. I wasn’t going to send him off to risk his life in a car accident. It wouldn’t be fair or right, not only for him, but for anyone he might run into. Literally. “Of course.” I opened the door and let him in, and when he staggered, I even propped him up with an arm around his waist. He was big and strong, yes, but again, this wasn’t my first rodeo. I knew how to help a drunk man walk.
“Why are you still up?” he asked as I deposited him carefully onto the bigger of the living room couches. I made sure he was settled, then went to sit on the other couch.
I didn’t think he would get any ideas, but I’d been groped by drunk men before, and besides, I couldn’t help but remember what Angela had said to me. The words she spoke echoed in my head, a clear warning.
If Brent was in love with me, or even if he just thought he was, I didn’t want to encourage it at all.
As I got myself settled, Brent looked at me. His eyes were dim with the alcohol, but it didn’t seem to cut down on his powers of perception very much. Either that, or I just looked much more terrible than I would have thought.
With him being as drunk as he was, it was probably the latter. I touched my face discreetly, finding it hot and my eyes swollen. I must be a complete mess.
“Why are your eyes all red? Are you okay?” Brent sounded genuinely concerned, and the tears I’d so valiantly fought back were right back again. I tried to blink them away, annoyed with myself, but they wouldn’t stay back.
Just a tiny bit of kindness from Brent and I was sobbing again. It was pathetic, but I couldn’t help it. I was so confused, so utterly filled with misery, that it came out, regardless of my desires on the subject.
“It’s David,” I whispered. Maybe I was being disloyal by talking about this at all, and of course, this man was my husband’s best friend. David might not want Brent knowing all his personal business.
I could no more hold back the words than I could my tears. “I want a baby,” I kept going, and even just saying the words out loud felt healing to me. I had been trying to hide the desire, even from myself, but I just couldn’t do it. “I want a baby so badly, but David …”
“David doesn’t want a baby?” Brent asked, and I sighed softly and shook my head in denial.
“No. If he just didn’t want a baby, it would be much easier,” I murmured. “He looks at me and I see he wants it. But then he tells me we have to wait for a year. Why? We’re married, right? Forever and ever? I don’t know why we have to wait. I wish I knew …”
“Okay, fuck this shit,” Brent swore, and I jumped, stunned by the crudity. He was drunk, I reminded myself, and focused on the content of what he was saying instead. “I’ve had just about enough of this.”
Enough of what?
“Look, I’ve had too much to drink and I know it, but …maybe I’ll hate myself for this in the morning when I sober up.” He wasn’t making any sense. I looked at him, trying to figure out what all his rambling was about. Something told me not to speak, though. Brent knew something, and I wanted to know what it was.
If it pissed David off, I’d just have to deal with it. “Hate yourself for telling me what, exactly, Brent?”
“He only married you to get your money,” Brent slurred, looking right into my eyes. I saw the sincerity in his. Drunk or not, he wasn’t lying, and it was then that my world started to fall apart around me.
He told me everything—the plan he and David had made and how he was supposed to seduce me. How I was supposed to fall into his arms, sleep with him, and get caught by David.
David had made a plan to destroy me.
The hell of it was, the plan had worked. Oh, maybe the money was safe, if I cared about that at all, but my heart had shattered into little pieces in my chest, with a pain as sharp as if I’d actually been shot there.
Brent may as well have reached into my chest and ripped my heart right out, and from the look of remorse and pain on his face, he knew it.
“Maybe I shouldn’t have told you. You look like you’re about to lose your mind, Kaye. Don’t. Don’t go crazy over this. Don’t let it break you.” His words came fast as he stared into my eyes. “You’re too good to let this destroy you.”
“You’re right. I am too good to let this destroy me. But you were right to tell me. Things make so much more sense now, don’t they?” I tapped my foot anxiously as I looked at Brent. “So it was all an act on your part as well, wasn’t it?”
“At first. But I have grown to care about you. You’re a great person. The best woman I’ve ever met. I respect the shit out of you, Kaye. But all the flirting and the moves I made, those were made up. I actually admire you and your ability to put a man like me in my place. But I don’t want you. Not sexually. Not that you’re not a knockout, but I know where your heart is.”
I was stupefied. I had been duped so completely by two men at the same time. I was beyond naïve. I felt so stupid. So completely fucking stupid it made me think I had brain damage I’d never been aware of.
How could he do this to me?
And what was I going to do about it now?
