place meant runner-up. Nobody ever remembered who came in second in anything. Second place was an insult. And lately, it was a position she was becoming all too familiar with. A position she had been forced to occupy much too often in the last few weeks. Maybe even the last few months if she was being honest with herself.
It was time for Robert to make up his damn mind.
“I don’t need this kind of grief,” she shouted into the telephone receiver, which she held in a death grip. She was squeezing so hard, if the receiver had had a pulse, it would have been erased by now. “Just who the hell do you think you are, canceling on me at the last minute this way? You think I have nothing better to do than sit around, waiting for you to show up on my door?”
The fact that she didn’t have anything better to do didn’t change her indignation. It was the principle of the whole thing. Robert was taking her for granted, something she had sworn would never happen to her. And if by some chance it did happen to her, she’d promised herself to take drastic measures. Like castrating the bastard who was guilty of the crime.
“I’ll make it up to you, baby, honest I will.”
Stacy fumed. He was whispering. Keeping his voice low so that she wouldn’t hear him. That harpy of a wife he supposedly hated. If she listened very closely, Stacy could almost hear Robert sweating. He had to be fidgeting, the way he did when he was caught in a lie.
Good. She hoped his damn blood pressure went through the roof, killing him. He deserved it. Nobody treated her like day-old trash and got away with it. For two cents, she’d pay a call to his precious Emily, tell her what her husband had been up to all those nights he’d told her he was working to provide a better future for them.
As she toyed with the thought, her full, freshly made-up lips peeled back into a smile. It would serve him right if she did just that.
“I am through rearranging my life for you, Robert.” And she meant it. She was through serving up her heart only to have it carved into small, bite-size pieces. “Now you’re obviously not going to leave that frozen Popsicle of a wife—”
On the other end of the line, Robert Pullman drew in a shallow breath. She could hear it. God, but he was a mouse. “I told you, the kids—”
“The kids. The kids. The kids!” Stacy shouted into the receiver, her face turning red, a stark contrast to her ash-blond hair and her all but alabaster skin. It was an effort for her to keep her temper from really breaking free. Her nerves were frayed and strained. These days, she reached the boiling point at lightning speed. But if she finally let go, she knew that she ran the imminent danger of falling completely apart.
If that was going to happen, it would be because of someone who was a hell of a better catch than Robert Pullman.
But her dwindling opinion of him didn’t stop her from verbally assaulting her lover for his transgression. “Don’t you think that I want kids of my own?”
Frustration throbbed in his voice. “Stacy, I know. Look, I don’t have much time to talk. Emily thinks I’m in the garage, working on a project.”
Emily. She’d have thought by now that Emily Pullman, along with her bratty kids, would have been a thing of the past. Hadn’t Robert promised her as much? When he couldn’t make Christmas last year because he had to take his family on a trip to Lake Tahoe, he’d promised her that this year, they would be ringing in the New Year together. Well, it didn’t look as if he was capable of ringing in a Sunday night, much less the New Year.
And she was sick of it.
“I hope to hell that it’s a noose to hang yourself with!”
“Honey,” Robert pleaded as loudly as a whisper would allow. “I know you’re mad—”
“Mad?” Stacy scoffed. “Mad? I am way past mad, Robert. I rounded the corner at ‘furious’ a long time ago. But you know what? I just don’t care anymore.”
“You don’t mean that.”
“The hell I don’t. You’ve stood me up for the last time. I’m having a cleansing bonfire tonight. I’m going to burn all the things you gave me—and the clothes you left here,” she added as the idea took on breadth and form. She knew how particular Robert was about his clothing, how everything had to be hung up just so. Well, she was going to take extra pleasure in stomping on all of it before she sent the articles to their final resting place. “As far as I’m concerned, you are just an unfortunate chapter of my life and I’m closing that chapter, Robert—”
“Stacy, please,” he begged, “don’t you think I’d rather be there with you?”
“If you wanted to be here, you would be here,” she retorted flatly. “I’m not the sharpest knife in the drawer, Robert, but even a dull knife can cut once in a while. This is my once in a while, Robert. This is my time to cut bait and run. So I’m cutting you off at the knees. Go back to your ice queen—”
“Stacy—” Robert began, only to stop as another voice echoed in the background, calling him. A female voice. “In a minute,” he responded irritably.
Stacy’s fingers tightened so hard around the receiver, it was in danger of snapping. She’d been such a jerk, such a hopeless, stupid, stupid jerk. But that was all going to be behind her very soon.
“Go, Robert. Your wife’s calling,” she ordered him coldly.
“No, Stacy, I want—”
She cut him off before he could get any further. “It’s not about what you want, Robert. It’s about what I want for a change.”
With that, Stacy slammed the receiver back into its cradle.
Her tears began immediately. Tears of anger, of remorse and, most plentifully, of regret. Barrels of regret. Not for coming in between a husband and his wife, or even a father and his children. Regret that she had spent the past three years of her life, three of the most youthful-looking years at her disposal, sneaking around with a married man. In the beginning, she had been incredibly naive. Thrilled at the fleeting moments of attention he could spare her. Thrilled to have caught his eye to begin with. And he had been generous. Incredibly generous. Before Robert, there had only been costume jewelry. Now there were diamond earrings and gold bracelets.
Diamonds and gold. How the hell could she have sold herself so short? What was wrong with her, anyway?
Stacy stopped to look at herself in the oval hall mirror. What she saw was a still-gorgeous blonde in a filmy negligee. But for how much longer? God, she deserved better than to stand there, waiting for crumbs while Robert’s wife got to eat at the banquet table, devouring whole portions.
“Okay,” she addressed the woman in the mirror. “Okay, so we start over. We stay strong and we start over.” She said it over and over again, until she felt as if she meant it.
What would help, she thought, would be getting rid of every single shred of evidence that Robert had ever been in her life. She took a deep breath. It would be like a caterpillar shedding its cocoon.
“There’s still a butterfly in there,” she promised herself. “A butterfly that’s going to do hell of a lot better than Robert Pullman when she’s through.” It amounted to a declaration of independence. She was through with that lying cheat. That she was the one who had made him such didn’t trouble her in the least.
Crossing back to the bedroom, she went straight to the closet and began to pull Robert’s garments off their hangers. Stacy made a point of stomping on each item she took out, grinding her heel into the fabric.
She’d just yanked off his sweater, the black one she loved so much on him, when she heard the doorbell ringing. Her revelry froze.
Robert.
He didn’t live that far away from here. Only a few blocks. But there was always traffic to reckon with. Still. He must have gone through all the red lights to get here this fast.
A