Chosen by Desire (26 page)

“Okay,” her friend said, pouring tea for her, “you’ve got tea. My sympathy is a given. Now tell me what happened.”

Carrie couldn’t help smiling, which was a gift in itself. “I’m not sure there’s much to tell. I was a fool who fell for a pretty face.”

“Hmm.” Eyeing her skeptically, Gabe added a generous spoonful of sugar to her tea and pushed the bowl over. “I think there’s more at play than that. Actually, I
know
there’s more at play.”

“What do you mean?” She stared at the sugar, sighed, and pushed it away. For the sake of her butt, she could take her sympathy bitter.

Gabe shook her head. “You first. I don’t want your story colored by what I have to tell you.”

“Uh-oh.” Carrie cupped her hands around the tea and absorbed the warmth. “That sounds ominous.”

“You don’t even know.”

There was only one thing it could be about. “It has to do with Max, doesn’t it?”

Gabe hesitated, then she nodded. “He’s not who he appears to be.”

Her laugh contained no mirth whatsoever. “That’s an understatement if I’ve ever heard one.”

“Okay.” She set her cup down with a clatter. “I gave Rhys Max’s name so he could do a background check on him—”

Carrie groaned.

“I couldn’t help it. I was worried about you.” She shrugged. “I didn’t count on Rhys knowing who he was.”

She stilled. “Rhys knows Max?”

Gabe nodded. “They have history. Bad, World War II kind of history. They studied, um, kung fu at a monastery together. They became like brothers and stayed close even after they left. Until there was this girl.”

Jealousy slithered up her spine. “A girl?”

“Woman. Whatever.” Waving her hand dismissively, she picked up a sandwich. “Rhys didn’t give me details, but apparently she was seeing Max but came on to Rhys. Max caught them, thought Rhys had betrayed him, and went berserk.”

“How awful.” But it all clicked into place—the thick wall around him, his isolation, all his distrust. And by stealing, she’d played into that. No wonder he’d done what he’d done. It didn’t make it right—he should have been straight with her—but she could understand. A little.

“Rhys thinks Max is using you to get to him.” Gabe watched her carefully.

“You can tell Rhys his fears are unfounded.”

“But—” Gabe frowned. “When you called sounding so upset I thought you’d found out he’d used you or something.”

“He did, just not for the reasons you think.”

“Tell me. Start at the beginning.”

The beginning was standing outside Gabe’s place, listening in on her conversation with Rhys. She couldn’t tell her—not unless she wanted to chance losing Gabe’s friendship.

So she just said, “He lost something and thought I’d taken it.”

“He accused you of stealing from him?” Gabe gawked at her. “What an ignorant bastard. You’re the most honest person I know.”

She bit her lip, trying to control her blush.

“The bastard,” Gabe said again, shaking her head.

Carrie slumped. “That’s just it. He’s not really a bastard.”

“Yeah, he is.” She crossed her arms. “You aren’t going to become one of those codependent women who keeps going back to a man who’s absolute crap for her, are you?”

Carrie frowned, thinking of her mom. “I don’t think so.”

“Good, because otherwise I’d have to kick your ass.” Gabe picked up another sandwich. “So tell me what you mean.”

“I’m not excusing him for using me, that was awful.” She remembered walking in on him going through her stuff and shuddered. She never wanted to feel like that—like the bottom fell out of her world—ever again.

Was it just that morning? It seemed like so much had happened since. She felt so different somehow.

“But?” Gabe prompted.

She sighed and poured herself some more tea. “But hearing about his past makes me understand why he went about it the way he did.”

Her friend watched her thoughtfully as she chewed. When she finished, she asked, “If he came back, would you forgive him?”

“He’s not coming back,” Carrie said grimly. It was finished. “He found what he wanted. He’s probably on a plane back to China by now. I doubt he’ll even remember who I am in a few weeks.”

“I think you underestimate yourself.”

“Yeah, because a corn-fed Iowa girl is so in the same league as a billionaire.” Her smile tasted bitter, and she hated feeling that way. She’d give herself today to be sour, and then she was going back to being perky if it killed her.

Gabe watched with her implacable gaze. Then she shrugged and snatched another sandwich off their tower of food. “If he ever shows up, I reserve the right to make my displeasure of how he treated you known. With my fists.”

She chuckled. “You’re so violent.”

“I tell Rhys it’s one of my charming traits.”

“Does he buy it?”

“Hell, no.” She shrugged. “He likes trying to tame me.”

“This is like my mom telling me about the vibrator model she enjoys.”

Gabe grinned. “Seriously? Which model?”

“Don’t know. I tuned out when she mentioned a rotating probe.” She made a face. “I don’t need details like that. I mean, great that she’s dating, but some things I’d rather be blissfully ignorant of.”

“What does she say about Max?”

“She doesn’t know. I need to call her to let her know I’m back.” She sighed, imagining how that conversation would go.

Better than the conversation with Leonora. She groaned and rubbed her eyes. Her advisor was going to be less than thrilled when she found out Carrie lost the source of her findings.

“Come on. You look tired.” Gabe tossed her napkin on the table. “Let’s get you home.”

Gabe insisted on paying and then raced her through the city to the Tenderloin. She pulled over in front of Carrie’s apartment building and popped the trunk. “In case you didn’t figure it out, I’m not coming up. If I left my car here, it’d be stripped in two seconds flat.”

“That’s okay.” Carrie gave her a hug across the seat. “Thanks for being so great today.”

“It’s the tea.” She patted her shoulder. “Go out there and get your bag before someone nabs it out of the trunk.”

“Tell Rhys he has good taste in cars.”

Gabe rolled her eyes. “And make his head more swelled than it is? I don’t think so.”

Laughing, she got out and hauled her bag onto its wheels. Gabe waited until she was in the building, then zipped away. Probably to make sure she wasn’t mugged in the five feet from the car to the lobby. The Tenderloin was exciting that way.

By the time she trudged up to the fourth floor, she’d resolved that the next time she traveled she was taking fewer books. She fished her keys out of her bag and reached to unlock the deadbolt.

Except she didn’t have to. Her door hung splintered on its hinges, propped open, with crime-scene tape crisscrossed over the doorway.

Carrie stared at the trashed door. Fear chilled her even though she knew whoever had done this had to be long gone. The police had obviously been there and checked everything out.

Frowning, she dragged her bag inside and looked around, her mouth dropping open as she noticed the gutted futon, the ripped-apart books, and torn-up papers. She leaned down to pick up her copy of
Taxation and Governmental Finance in Sixteenth-Century Ming China.
Tears filled her eyes as she stupidly stood there and stared at it.

“Buck up,” she told herself. There was nothing that couldn’t be fixed or replaced. At least she hadn’t been here when it happened.

Taking a deep breath, she called Ross, the building manager, to ask about her door. After a gruff apology for not fixing it sooner, he told her he had a replacement and would be right up to fix it.

As she waited for Ross, all she could do was sit there and stare at the violent chaos around her. She didn’t know who’d done this, but they’d done a complete job of it. Nothing had been left unmolested. Even her mugs had been broken. The only saving grace was that her clothes didn’t appear ripped up—only thrown around the room.

She’d have to wash everything. Damn it. She hated doing laundry.

C
arrie had barely closed (and triple locked) her new front door after Ross left when her cell phone rang. She froze, her breath catching. She pulled out her phone and looked at the caller ID.

Her mom.

Right. She exhaled. Because no one had any reason to terrorize her. Ross told her the break-in had happened a couple weeks ago, right after she left, when she still had the scrolls and journal.

Her relief lasted only a second. If she talked now, her mom would know something was up. If she didn’t answer the phone, her mom would worry. And she was just putting off the inevitable.

So she flipped the phone open. “Hey, Mom.”

“Honey, are you okay?”

Leave it to her mom to cut to the chase. She swore her mom had some sort of Spidey sense when it came to her. “Why do you bother to ask when you obviously know I’m not?”

“I’m giving you the opportunity to own your issues.”

Yeah, but how much of her issues was she willing to own up to right at this moment? She looked around her apartment and decided that not telling her mom about the vandalism was a prudent course of action. No reason to alarm her over something that was a moot point.

Which left her drama with Max. “Well, I got let go from my fellowship and I’m home again.”

“What does
let go
mean?” It was clear from her voice that it did not compute. “Max decided he didn’t need the work?”

“No, he and I had a disagreement.” Sitting on the wooden frame of her futon, she hugged a half-gutted pillow to her chest. “I decided it was best for everyone if I left.”

There was a long pause. Finally her mom said, “Honey, did you have sex with him?”

“
Mom.
” She hid her burning face in the pillow for a second.

“After almost thirty years being my daughter, you’d think you’d be used to talking about sex. It’s natural, honey. Everyone does it.”

“I’m only twenty-eight. And just because everyone does it doesn’t meant that I want to think about that. Especially if the
everyone
is my mom.”

“We aren’t talking about me right now. We’re talking about you.”

Unfortunately.

“You have to get over this thing you have about intimacy.”

“Mom, I don’t have any issues regarding intimacy.” She thought back to last night and blushed at some of the things she said and did. “None at all.”

“Then why did you run?”

Because he’d used her—he’d lied and seduced her to get the documents. Of course, she understood his motivation better now, and she couldn’t deny that she’d lied for them, too. But she hadn’t set out to purposefully deceive him. And she hadn’t ruined him for all other women.

“Carrie? Why did you run?”

She gripped the phone. “I told you, we had a major disagreement about work stuff and it was best for everyone to call it quits.”

“You had sex, connected closer than you expected to, got spooked, and ran away before he could hurt you worse,” her mom said with all the confidence of Oprah. “Honey, not all men are your father.”

That stopped her cold. She hated it when her mom brought him up. “This has nothing to do with him.”

“Yes, it does. I know how much you loved your father and how it hurt you when he left.”

Carrie clutched the pillow. Of course it hurt—she’d been five. A five-year-old didn’t know better.

“I’m not judging him,” her mom said. “He obviously wasn’t cut out for the responsibility of a wife and child. But you can’t judge all men by him. Not all men are going to abandon you like he did.”

“Come on, Mom. I don’t believe that.”

“Don’t you?”

“No,” she said more hesitantly than she would have liked.

“You didn’t run away because you realized you cared too much about your Max?”

Okay, maybe—but she had just cause. “He was never my Max.”