Page 19 of The Clover Chapel (Jamison Valley 2)
“Why’d you wait?” Nick asked.
“Wait for what?”
“To get a divorce,” he said.
I pulled in a deep breath. Admitting to Nick why I had held onto our marriage for this long was not going to be easy. “I didn’t want to dissolve the marriage on terms of abandonment. My foolish pride wouldn’t let me. So I hired a private investigator to track you down. Did you know there are 723 Nick Slaters living in Colorado and not one of them is you?”
He didn’t respond. He just tipped his head down to study his fresh beer.
“And I wanted to know why,” I said. “Why you put on such a convincing show. All those dares and sweet words. I’ve never met a man who could let lies roll off his tongue so easily. And that’s saying something, considering my father and all of his associates are world-class deceivers.”
He flinched and his eyes snapped to mine. “I told you earlier today, Emmy. I didn’t lie to you.”
I took a deep breath. Stay strong. This hurt act of his was just that. An act. I was the wronged party here and the last thing I needed was to fall for more of Nick’s lies. To lose my nerve.
“Then why have I spent tens of thousands of dollars on a private investigator to find you? You were not living in Colorado.”
“When we met, I was,” he said. “Shortly after, I wasn’t. I moved here a few months after Vegas.”
More lies. The blood started to boil in my veins. “I started looking for you immediately, Nick. You. Weren’t. There.”
“Calm down,” he said.
“Calm down?” I hissed. “Explain why they couldn’t find you. Now.”
Though I was seething, Nick kept his composure. In fact, the madder I got, the more his face gentled.
“My first name isn’t Nick. It’s Draven. My father is Draven Sr., and I’ve gone by my middle name, Nicholas, my whole life. I’m sure your investigators didn’t look for a Draven Slater living in Colorado. If they had, they would have found me.”
“Then we’re not even married. If you didn’t put your legal name on our marriage certificate, all that time spent looking for you was for nothing.”
“I did put my legal name on the certificate. You just weren’t paying attention. You were too busy looking all over the chapel.”
Shit.
My private investigator had swindled me. There was no way he wouldn’t have been able to find a copy of our marriage license.
Nick had left his ring, maybe so I could sell it, but he’d taken the certificate with him when he’d abandoned me in the hotel. But even without the paper, my investigator should have found him. Draven was too unique a name. A little effort and he would have earned all that money we’d paid him. Instead, he’d been content to sit back and lie to me. Tomorrow I was stopping payment on his last check, not that it would make me feel any better.
My gullibility made this entire situation even more embarrassing.
Because I couldn’t blame the investigator entirely. I’d had the choice to hire someone else. Instead, I’d just chosen to push the whole thing deep down and try to forget it. Another mistake.
When the waitress delivered our steaks, I took the welcome interruption as a chance to calm down. I needed a few minutes to pull myself together and to muster the courage to ask him the question I was dreading.
Why had he left me?
We ate our meals in silence. While Nick cleared his plate, I picked at my food. It was delicious but I’d lost my appetite. With every minute that went by, I told myself to ask but the words wouldn’t come together. Why couldn’t I get them out?
After the waitress removed our dinner plates, Nick reached across the table and captured my hand with his. I tried to jerk it away but as I tensed, his grip firmed and my hand remained trapped.
“I want a chance,” Nick said.
“A chance for what?” I asked.
“A chance to start again.”
My mouth fell open. Was he serious? “What? Why?”
