Page 7 of His Best Mistake

“Of course I went,” she countered. “I wasn’t seeing anyone at the time and we’d got on well. I didn’t know he had a fiancée. In fact, when I asked – and I did ask – he told me quite categorically that he was single too and I took his word for it.”

“Right.”

“Why wouldn’t I have believed him?” she asked, determined to rise above his sarcasm. “I’m not naturally a suspicious person.” She paused, then added darkly, “Well, at least, I wasn’t. Now, of course, I’m going to see lies and deceit wherever I look.”

“Join the club,” he said, staring straight at her.

“What a nice, open mind you have.”

“Are you really saying you suspected nothing?”

Stella gritted her teeth and clung on to calm. “Brad gave me no reason to question our relationship,” she said. “I wasn’t looking for evidence of his lies. When he cancelled on me his excuses seemed perfectly plausible. I liked him, I thought I was in love with him, and I trusted him, more fool me. I didn’t know he used a separate phone to contact just me. I didn’t know he’d given me a false name. When I asked if he was on Facebook, he told me he didn’t do social media. He was a pro and I was an easy target.”

“Very easy, by the sounds of things.”

Easy? Easy? Oh, how little did he know. She wasn’t easy. In any context. Far from it. When it came to intimate personal relationships she was impossible, and it hadn’t taken Brad thoughtfully pointing it out to alert her to the fact. For years she’d struggled with desperately wanting a relationship while not having the first clue how to keep one going. Six months of therapy at the age of eighteen had given her an understanding of the root causes and the likely cure, but theory and practice were unfortunately very different beasts.

“You have no idea,” she said, really not wanting to revisit her emotionally deprived childhood in the middle of all this. “And neither did I. The first I knew of Cora was when I answered her call on New Year’s Eve. That wasn’t pleasant, I can tell you.” Which had to be the understatement of the century. “I ended things with Brad immediately. My calls went straight to his voice mail so I sent him a text. He didn’t respond. Some would say I was just as much Brad’s victim as Cora was. I was just as hurt. I am not a callous, fiancé-thieving bitch. I’ve been something far, far worse – a stupid, naïve, blind idiot.”

Something flickered for a second in the depths of Jack’s eyes but it was gone before she could identify it. “His version of events is somewhat different,” he said coldly.

“Well, of course it is.”

“He blamed the whole thing on you.”

“I am extremely aware of that,” she said grimly. “Not only is he a liar, he’s a wimp and a coward too, and God, if I ever get my hands on him he’ll wish he was in hell. He’ll wish Hades was relentlessly flicking spoons at his forehead and Cerberus was barking at him incessantly because what I have in mind for him is ten times worse.”

“You’d have to wait,” said Jack darkly. “There’s quite a queue.”

“I can imagine.”

He didn’t seem to have anything to add to that. He just looked at her steadily as if assessing what she’d said, and she had to fight the urge to squirm beneath his scrutiny since the last thing she wanted to reveal was how on edge he made her feel.

“So what do you know about the ring?” he said so sharply it made Stella jump.

“What ring?” she said, a bit thrown by the change in topic yet oddly thankful for it.

“The signet ring.”

“I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about.”

“It’s a family heirloom. Russian. Early twentieth century. Gold. Enamel. Diamonds. Very valuable.”

“I see,” she said dryly. “And has that gone missing too?”

“Yes.”

“Now there’s a coincidence.”

“Not necessarily.”

She glared at him. “Well, I don’t have it.”

Up went his eyebrows. “No?”

“No! Anyway, why would you think I do?” She stopped, and then it hit her. “Oh, wait,” she said. “Let me guess. Brad again. Well, he was lying about that as well because I’ve neither seen nor heard of any ring, Russian or otherwise. He gave me nothing but a temporarily broken heart, but rest assured if I had it I’d return it to you, because I never want to have anything to do with him ever again. Search the house if you want. Search me too, if you really don’t believe me.”

The moment the heated words left her mouth Stella wished she could reach out and stuff them back in because as they hung there, hovering in the space between her and Jack, there was an abrupt shift in atmosphere. The room seemed to close in on them. The silence suddenly throbbed, the air around them thickened, and she was instantly, alarmingly aware of every inch of her body in a way that had never happened before. She went all hot and prickly and, very oddly, her skin felt too tight.

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