I force a smile. “Nothing’s happened yet.”
He grins. “I have faith in you.”
I glance back at Caleb. He’s no longer smiling.
He’s glaring at that arm around my shoulders like it’s everything he hates in the entire world.
ONE HOUR LATER, Caleb appears at my desk. His eyes land on the bouquet—I set it by my trash can last night and the cleaning people placed it back on my desk instead of throwing it away.
“Do you have time to run a quick errand with me over lunch?” he asks. His eyes revert to the bouquet.
“Sure,” I reply, grabbing my purse. “What kind of errand?”
He turns stiffly. “You’ll see.”
“Based on how cranky you are, I assume someone else has nominated us worst employer in the state?”
His gaze flickers to the roses as he rubs the back of his neck. “Sorry, if I was abrupt. I just thought you, uh, might have plans.”
He almost seems…jealous.
“Nope, no plans,” I reply, following him down the hall. He frowns, dissatisfied by my answer.
We get into his car, and he heads toward the other side of the lake, away from his cabin and mine and closer to the suburb where Jeremy and I once lived.
“So are you going to tell me what this secret mission is?” I ask. “Have you also consulted with Jeremy’s lawyer and decided I should move?”
He gives a short laugh. “No. We’re getting your car back.”
I stiffen. He clearly believes my ex is far more reasonable than he actually is. If I take the car, Jeremy will call the cops and have me arrested. Knowing Jeremy, he’s hoping I do it.
“Caleb, no. I can’t. It’ll make everything worse.”
He shakes his head. “Your ex is a ruthless asshole, Lucie—do you really think he’s just going to stop without forcing you to give up things that matter?”
No, probably not. I’ve been hoping he’d tire of this whole thing, that he’d fall madly in love with Whitney and forget about us, but I’m not sure Jeremy is capable of loving anything more than he loves winning. He isn’t going to be happy until I’ve begged him to take me back or am destroyed completely.
“I appreciate what you’re doing, but fighting with Jeremy always makes things worse. I’ll lose something much bigger than my car in the end.”
“I’m not suggesting we steal the car. My friend Harrison is an attorney. Hear him out. I promise he won’t steer you wrong.”
He pulls up to Beck’s Bar and Grill, which I’ve passed a hundred times without entering—something that can be said of most bars, as I was married and pregnant shortly after my twenty-first birthday.
The hostess puts us out on the deck, leaning over Caleb unnecessarily to suggest that if he needs anything, he should come find her.
I frown as she departs. “I didn’t know women actually batted their eyelashes outside of bad movies about the south.”
“That’s because you don’t have to resort to batting your lashes. You just flash a smile and men do anything you ask.”
I feel a flush climbing up my neck. “I thought men cared about other things a lot more than smiles.”
“I’m pretty sure they care about lots of things.” His gaze drops to my chest and he scrubs a hand over his face. “You’re not lacking any of them.”
The chair next to Caleb’s slides out and a handsome guy in a suit drops into it and extends a hand to me. “I’m Harrison,” he says. “If Caleb’s told you about his friends, I’m the good-looking one.”
“If I told her about my friends,” Caleb replies, “you’d be the arrogant one. Or the argumentative one.”
“I have many good qualities,” Harrison agrees, settling into the seat next to Caleb’s. “What I don’t have is time, so let’s get to it. Lucie, your ex is a dick.”
I laugh. “Yes, I’ve been piecing that together.”
“Caleb says he was cheating?”
I sink a bit in my seat. “Yeah. He was on a work trip to Hawaii and took our nineteen-year-old babysitter with him. I had him followed.”
Harrison raises a brow. “You must have already suspected he was cheating then?”
“Yeah, but it took me a while to act. I knew he’d make things hard if I left and that it might go poorly…and it has. I hired Darryl Fessman, this big-shot lawyer and he pawned me off on someone named Sharon, who’s letting Jeremy dictate her legal strategy.”