A sad statement on a dead marriage.
“What’s that got to do with me?” He winced at the tone in his own voice and knew that he’d sounded crueler than he’d intended when her head came up and her eyes narrowed.
“You don’t have to be mean.”
He sighed and glanced at his watch. He wanted to take a shower, get dressed and pick up Katie. Leslie was his past and his present was looking a lot more promising. So rather than prolonging this conversation, he got to the point. “Leslie, you’re my ex-wife married to my ex-friend. Just how much sympathy do you expect?”
“I knew you wouldn’t understand.”
“You’re right,” he agreed, heading for the wet bar along the wall. He suddenly wanted a beer. “I don’t.”
She walked over to join him and asked for a glass of wine. Once he’d poured it and handed it to her, Leslie took a sip and said, “I need money.”
Rafe almost smiled, even as he felt a brand-new sheen of ice coat his heart. He should have known. When it came right down to it, what people wanted from the Kings was money. Never failed. “Does John know you’re here?”
“Of course not. He’d be humiliated.”
That much Rafe believed. The man Rafe remembered would have been horrified to know that Leslie was here asking for help. He leaned one arm on the bar top. “Just out of curiosity, say I give you the cash you need, how do you explain that to John?”
“I’ll find a way,” she said, lifting her chin slightly to prove her point. “I can be pretty persuasive.”
“I remember.” He remembered a lot, Rafe thought. Leslie had always been able to find a way to get whatever it was she wanted. That much, it seemed, hadn’t changed. As he looked at his ex-wife now, he mentally compared her to Katie Charles. Katie with her soft hair and faded jeans. With the laugh that seemed to bubble up from her soul. With green eyes that flashed from humor to fury and back again in a heartbeat.
Leslie was coolly elegant.
Katie was heat and passion and—he shut his brain off before it went on an even wilder tangent.
“Rafe, I wouldn’t have come to you if I’d had anywhere else to turn,” she said, and for the first time, her voice held an edge of regret.
“Yeah, I know that, too.” Rafe thought about Katie again and wondered what she would do if she was in Leslie’s position. He didn’t like to think about Katie being in trouble. Didn’t want to acknowledge that it bothered him more than a little to know that she wouldn’t turn to him.
Then he thought about how hard Katie worked at building her business. How she scrambled for a living. How she worked and fought for a future doing something she loved. She would do whatever she had to do to take care of herself. And he realized that Leslie was only doing the same thing now. She never would have come to him for help if she hadn’t been desperate. Hell, he could read that much in her tear-sheened blue eyes. Because of Katie, Rafe felt a surge of sympathy for Leslie he might not have experienced just a few weeks ago. What was that about?
However it had ended between them, Rafe knew he couldn’t ignore Leslie’s request for help. Maybe he was finally letting the past go—along with the regrets and the stinging sense of failure memories of his marriage inevitably dredged up.
“Call my assistant Janice tomorrow,” he told her. “She’ll give you however much you need.”
She let out a relieved breath and gave him a grateful smile. “Thanks. To tell the truth, I didn’t really think you’d help.”
“But you asked anyway.”
“Had to,” she said, her gaze steady and honest. “I can’t stand seeing John worried and upset.”
Rafe studied her. “You really love him.”
“I really do,” she said simply.
That should at least sting, he thought, but it didn’t. Not anymore. And, if he was honest with himself, Rafe could admit that when Leslie had walked out, it had been his pride, more than his heart, that had been affected. What did that say about him? Was Leslie right when she told him that he simply wasn’t capable of love?
“Les, when we were married,” he asked quietly, studying the label on his beer bottle as if looking for the right words, “did you feel that way about me? Would you have protected me if I needed it?”
“You didn’t need me, Rafe,” she said softly. “You never really did.”
“I loved you.”
She smiled and shook her head. “No, you didn’t.”
Irritation spiked. “I guess I know what I felt.”
“Don’t be so insulted,” she said, giving him a patient smile. “I know you cared, but you didn’t love me, Rafe. I finally got tired of trying to get through to you.”
He straightened up, set his beer down and stuffed both hands into his jeans pockets. “I seem to recall you telling me I was incapable of love.”
She blinked at him, stunned. “No, I didn’t.”
“Yeah, you did,” he argued.
“For heaven’s sake, Rafe,” she countered, “why would I say that?”
“Funny, I asked myself that a few times.”
“Honestly, Rafe, this is one of the reasons we didn’t work out,” she told him with a shake of her head. “You never listened to me. I never said you were incapable of love. I said you were incapable of loving me.”
He shifted his gaze from Leslie to the view beyond his windows. The sun was sliding into the ocean, dazzling the waves in a brilliant crimson light. A cool breeze danced in through the open balcony doors and he turned his face into it. “Either way, you were right.”
“No,” Leslie said. “I wasn’t.”
She reached out and laid one hand on his arm. “Rafe, don’t you get it? You didn’t love me and that hurt. So I wanted to hurt you back.”
She hadn’t hurt him, he realized now. She had just driven home the point he’d learned long before her. That love was something you had to be taught when you were growing up. And that was one course Rafe had never gotten.
Leslie tipped her head to one side and looked up at him. “Who is she?”
“What?” He stiffened, instantly retreating into privacy mode, shuttering his eyes, closing down his expression. He took a long, metaphorical step back and distanced himself as much as possible from the curiosity in Leslie’s eyes.
“Wow,” she murmured, staring at him as if he’d just performed a magic trick, “you still do that so easily.”