Gerald sighed. Might as well get this out there. Being invited to go out for beer and pool by his former boss had been the cherry on top of a decidedly bizarre day. Revealing personal details about his life wasn’t exactly his style.
And yet.
“We were engaged. Ten years ago.”
Declan was about to take a shot when he paused, pulling the cue off the table, sending it upright with the rubber stopper on the floor. His eyebrows went up. “Engaged?” He blinked. “I take it you ended it.”
“How’d you guess?”
He shrugged. “Pretty clear she’s still in love with you.”
Gerald damn near snapped his cue in half.
“What?”
When Declan McCormick smiled—the genuine grin of someone caught up in their own amusement—one side of his mouth moved up, making a deep dimple appear. Gerald noticed only because he heard Shannon McCormick comment on it often.
“It’s obvious. I’ve met her before. She’s stone-faced.”
“Takes one to know one,” Gerald muttered as Declan resumed his shot, flicking the green six ball into a side pocket like he was dispensing with a piece of lint on his cuff.
“And that,” Declan said, clearly not offended by Gerald’s comment, “is why I am qualified to know that she’s still not over you.” He gave Gerald an appraising look. “You must have something special for a woman like that to carry a torch.”
“Nothing special.” Gerald set up his shot. Three ricochets at perfect angles and he could blast a cluster of balls, sending one into a corner pocket. As he drew back the cue, the white end slipped between the index and middle fingers of his left hand, Declan spoke.
“My brother tried to date her once.”
A long, thick line of blue chalk from the cue’s tip left a ragged line on the brown table-covering, the shape not unlike a tube of lipstick dragged down a chalkboard.
The idea that Declan’s brother Andrew, the current CEO of Anterdec, would even touch Suzanne’s pinky finger filled Gerald with an unbridled rage that he could not quell.
“But she turned him down,” Declan said casually, filling his mouth with the green end of a beer bottle, leaving Gerald a smoking piece of charcoal.
“Why?”
Declan shrugged. “Because she has taste?”
In damn near any other conversation about Andrew McCormick, Gerald would defend him.
Not this one.
“You didn’t hit the ball, so technically it’s your shot again,” Declan pointed out, signaling the cocktail waitress by holding up two fingers, being gracious with the extra shot. Out of the corner of his eye, Gerald saw the waitress nod.
Gerald grunted.
“Try not to turn the table blue,” Declan said with a snort. He leaned back against a table edge, crossed his jeans-covered legs at the ankles, and watched Gerald with a relaxed countenance he’d never seen in the man. Though he’d arrived for the nude sculpting class in a suit, he’d come out of the dressing area in clothes that were pretty damn close to what Gerald wore, except the t-shirt was free of clay.
The waitress brought two beers. Declan told her to start a tab.
“I’ll get the next round,” Gerald announced, pride kicking into full gear.
“You will when you lose,” Declan said in a mocking tone, eyes all steel and challenge.
Gerald laughed, drawing on the same powers of concentration that had served him well as a sniper, and bam!
Cluster shattered.
Ball in the left side pocket.
Ball in the left corner pocket.
Too bad they were Declan’s balls.
“Mmm,” Declan muttered, throat working as he finished his cold beer. “Next one’s going to taste so much better. Beer always does when someone else is buying.”
A hush filled the bar suddenly, heads turning to watch the television. A bombing in Turkey. Another one in Kabul. Both claimed by the same terrorist organization.
Declan looked at the television politely, then returned to the game. “Weren’t you in Kabul?” he asked, having no idea how loaded those words really were.
“Yes.”
“With Suzanne?”
Gerald’s back straightened slowly, like a snake rising up to look at its surroundings before striking.
“How did you know?”
“I didn’t. Put two and two together. She mentioned serving in Afghanistan. Is that where you met?”
“For a guy who hates being asked about his personal life, you sure do ask a lot of questions, Declan.”
He pulled up, dropping the cue to the floor, leaning on it. Assessment filled his eyes, which were shadowed by the strange bar lights.
“I thought this was how it worked.”
“What worked?”
“How you make friends.”
“That’s what we’re doing?”
He shrugged.
“Most of my friends don’t ask me about my past love life.”
“Most of your friends aren’t naked in front of a room full of women when your ex crashes in.”
“True.”
“Look, man. I’m not prying. Just curious. It’s a hell of a coincidence, isn’t it? Of all the people in the world to serve you inheritance papers, it happens to be the woman you were engaged to?”
Coincidence.
The television flashed with a new story, this one about some billionaire who died and how his will was being executed. One of those names Gerald had heard a hundred times since his youth. Declan followed Gerald’s gaze and laughed softly, the sound closer to a snicker.
“Dad hated that guy.”