And her dartboard.
She’d nailed it to the wall above a rattan chair in the corner. She’d started playing darts shortly after her Miami spring break and first and only fling on the dark and dangerous side. The game relaxed her and helped her process her emotions, even think.
Two weeks ago, something had possessed her—she now couldn’t imagine what—to enlarge a black-and-white photo of Jeremiah and staple it to her dartboard. It was a candid shot from a South Florida magazine piece on Miami’s star reporters. He’d refused to pose for the story, preferring to be the one doing the interviews, not giving them. And he had no patience with celebrity.
“That was just…I was just amusing myself.” She tried to sound as if she wasn’t choking from embarrassment. If he’d changed in any significant way—gained weight, lost some of his intensity, started wearing dopey clothes, anything—she might not have felt so exposed. “I was bored one night, and I saw that picture, and…” She took a breath, summoning the last shreds of her dignity. “I have no animosity toward you.”
“That why most of the darts landed between my eyes?”
She forced a laugh. “I’m a good shot.”
He settled back on his heels, glanced again at the dartboard, having a hell of a good time for himself. “I guess I should consider myself lucky you aimed for my forehead.” He shifted back to her. “At least most of the time.”
“Look, don’t go thinking that just because I threw a few darts at your picture that I’ve been carrying a torch for you or plotting revenge or even thinking about you for the past ten years. I haven’t. I saw your picture, and it amused me, and—”
“And you stuck it up on your dartboard.”
“Yes. Exactly. You shouldn’t feel flattered or insulted.”
“What was on your dartboard before me?”
“Nothing. It was just a regular dartboard.” She licked her lips, feeling somewhat less self-conscious. “No one comes in here but me. I’d never leave your picture up for company to see.”
“Because I’m your deep, dark secret,” he said, taking a step toward her.
Before he could come any closer, she gave up trying to explain and charged back into the kitchen. Why had she agreed to let him make his case? He’d never meant to hire her. She’d known that. He’d just had to see for himself if she’d gone to pieces after he’d admitted he was a heel who’d used her to get a story and then sent her home to Boston. This little visit was an exercise in male ego. Nothing more.
He rejoined her in the kitchen, and she flew around at him. But before she could get a choked word out, he picked up his sunglasses. She noticed the blunt nails, the dark hairs on his forearms, the taut muscles. And the eyes, probing, assessing. “Coming here was a bad idea, Mollie. I’m sorry if I’ve upset you.”
Her anger went out of her even before it had a chance to take firm hold. She brushed back a strand of hair that had come loose in her mad dash from the den. “You haven’t, not really. You never meant to hire me, did you? You just wanted to see what’d become of me?”
“I’m a reporter,” he said dryly, heading for the door. “I have an insatiable curiosity. Good seeing you again, Mollie.”
“You, too.”
He winked. “Maybe I’ll see you around sometime.”
“Maybe.”
The door shut, and he was gone.
Mollie let out a long, slow, cleansing breath and collapsed onto a bar stool. There. She’d survived. The encounter she’d dreaded since agreeing to Leonardo’s proposal had come and gone, and here she was, intact, sane, her own curiosity satisfied. As she’d predicted, Jeremiah hadn’t changed at all. Not in ten years, not in a million.
And he hadn’t figured out the impact he’d had on her life. After their affair, she’d returned home questioning herself, her life, her commitment to music, everything. She could no longer just drift along in currents not of her own making. So she had dropped out of the conservatory and given up her dream of becoming a world-class flutist. She simply didn’t have the drive, the talent, the desire. Her week with her dark and dangerous reporter, for all its drama, had forced her to look inside herself and see what was there.
For that, she thought, she couldn’t hate him.
For betraying her, she could. He had used her shamelessly to get his first big story, sitting next to her on the beach, inviting her out, even going to bed with her because he thought she had something to do with the drug dealers operating practically at her toes.