Page 14 of Chill Factor

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“Has he heard anything from Clemson yet?” Dutch asked.

“We can talk about that later. Let’s talk about your wife.”

“Ex-wife. Emphasis on the ex, which she made perfectly clear this afternoon.”

“I thought you were going to talk to her.”

“I did.”

“No go?”

“No go. She’s got her divorce and she’s happy about it. She wants nothing to do with me. It’s over.” He rubbed his brow with his gloved hand.

“Are you gonna cry, or what? Jesus, Dutch, don’t make me ashamed to call you my best friend.”

Dutch turned and looked at him. “Fuck you.”

Unfazed, Wes continued. “The way you’re mewling around.” He shook his head over Dutch’s pathetic behavior. “Lilly didn’t know a good thing when she had it. So screw her. My opinion of her has always been—”

“I don’t want to hear your opinion of her.”

“She thinks her shit don’t stink.”

“I said I didn’t want to hear it, all right?”

Wes held up both hands as though in surrender. “All right. But it isn’t like she holds me in high esteem.”

“She thinks you’re an asshole.”

“Like I’m gonna lose sleep over what Ms. Lilly Martin Burton thinks of me.” Smiling crookedly, he clapped his hand on Dutch’s shoulder. “You’re taking this breakup way too hard. You lost your wife, not your manhood. Look around,” he said, gesturing expansively. “There are women everywhere.”

“I’ve had women,” Dutch muttered.

Wes tilted his head. “Yeah? All along or lately?”

Both, Dutch thought. He’d lined up plenty of justifications for his first affair. He was under continual pressure at work. Lilly was preoccupied establishing her career. Their lovemaking had become predictable and uninspired. Blah, blah, blah.

Lilly had shot down his excuses like ducks in a shooting gallery. He had acknowledged his weaknesses and pledged never to stray again.

But the first affair was followed by a second. And then another, and soon he’d run out of even lame excuses. Now he realized that it wasn’t his last affair that had spelled the beginning of the end of his marriage. It had been the first. He should have known that a woman like Lilly wouldn’t tolerate unfaithfulness.

Wes was looking at him expectantly, waiting for an answer. “There for a time, you know, after Amy, when I was in a bad way, I looked for relief anywhere I could find it, with any woman who would say yes, and there were plenty of them. None of them could replace Lilly, though.”

r /> “Bullshit. You just haven’t shopped long enough. Are you getting laid now on a regular basis?”

“Wes—”

“Okay, okay, don’t ask, don’t tell. But what woman would look twice at you these days? If you don’t mind my saying so, you look like crap.”

“That’s what I feel like.”

“Right, and it shows. In your face, the way you walk. Your butt’s dragging, my friend. You look about as much fun as a case of recurring herpes. That approach isn’t going to attract the kind of woman you need right now.”

“What kind is that?”

“The anti-Lilly. Stay away from brunettes with brown eyes.”

“Hazel. Her eyes are really green with brown flecks.”


Tags: Sandra Brown Mystery