“What?” I slid forward in the chair, anger rising in my stomach. “Melissa? Who beat her?”
I didn’t know her very well, but I knew her well enough. I knew Derek loved her, and I knew she was Elaine’s best friend. If someone had hurt her, I’d gladly help Derek kick the shit out of him and put him away—in whatever order they preferred. But I was confused. Derek didn’t seem ready to act.
“Her husband.” Still quiet, his voice now sounded broken. “I didn’t know. I didn’t even check.”
A flash like white light hit my face. “Melissa’s married? But I thought you two were—”
“I knew her husband from Princeton. He hired me to follow her to Scottsdale. To see if she was having an affair. I told him she wasn’t.”
This revelation had me slowly sliding back in my chair again. I watched Derek as he spoke. He’d never struck me as the homewrecker type, and I knew how he felt about sleeping with clients. Now he was telling me this potentially explosive story of how he’d broken all his rules.
“Did he beat her when he found out?” I asked, unsure how to proceed. Cheating or not, abuse was still unacceptable to me.
“No,” he said. “It was before. Apparently a while back. It’s why she was leaving him. She’d filed for divorce before she went to the desert. He lied to me.”
I was sure the confusion was clear on my face. I didn’t know anything about the case that had taken him to Arizona, and now I was learning he’d been hired by Melissa’s almost-ex-husband to investigate her, and he’d ended up falling in love with her.
“Is this why you blamed me?” I asked, remembering his demeanor at the bar, his incomplete story.
Weary blue eyes lifted to mine, and I decided to drop all comparisons to my screw up or how this pretty much got me off the hook.
“Explain this abuse part,” I said. “What was that about?”
He picked up the small pouch on his desk and opened it, lifting out a gold chain with a small floating heart on it. “She thinks I knew. She thinks I helped him knowing what he’d done to her.” His fist closed around the delicate piece of jewelry, and he lifted it to his lined brow. “I’ve got to fix this.”
Derek stood quickly, heading down the hall to an older storage closet that contained several filing cabinets. In a few moments he was back carrying a file. I sat watching.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“She said he hired prostitutes.” He se
emed recharged. “Abusers usually have a pattern. I need to find another woman he hurt.”
“This guy sounds like a real winner.” I couldn’t keep the sarcasm out of my voice. “You didn’t know about any of this?”
He shook his head, quietly scanning the pages. The folder had the name Reynolds on it, and I remembered it was the name Melissa had said at dinner that night. Her former marketing client. Derek stood and snatched his suit coat off the back of his chair along with his keys and phone.
“I might be out of the office a few days,” he said, going to the door. “Nikki, forward my calls and emails.”
He pushed out the glass doors, and the office was suddenly quiet. Staring after him, I processed all he’d said. It was an awful story. It was what had taken him to the desert. Melissa and Elaine were out there together on a spa vacation—a mental health break, Elaine had said.
If Melissa thought Derek was lying to her, had she told Elaine what happened? I was on my feet and headed to my office in an instant. Shutting my door, I grabbed my phone and touched her number. Elaine had to know I didn’t know shit about any of this.
* * *
Nine hours later, Elaine’s body was back beneath mine, my arms tight around her waist, and I was breathing an enormous, internal sigh of relief. Moments before she’d been crying out in ecstasy, but before all of that, she’d been about to hit me and throw me out of her condo.
Again, an enormous, internal sigh of relief.
After Derek had left to do God knows what about his situation with Melissa, I’d tried calling Elaine. When my third call went to voicemail, I knew something was wrong. Scooping up my things, I went straight to my car headed for Wilmington. Nikki followed me into the hall complaining about Alexander and Knight both disappearing at once, but I wasn’t listening. Whatever my senior partner had done, I’d be damned if he cost me the woman I loved. I drove all eight hours thinking of what I might say, which wasn’t going to be much, considering I’d just found out about the whole thing.
Apparently, Elaine had been in the car while Melissa had been in our offices. She was just getting home after dropping her friend off at her new place when I met her.
“I’m not ready to see you now, Patrick,” she said, attempting to push me out of the house.
I caught her hands, not letting her go. “You can’t shut me out. I didn’t know anything about what Derek was doing.”
She was still trying to push me out, but the more she pushed, the more I held on until she finally stopped struggling. Still, her green eyes flashed with anger.