Her Christmas Surprise. Kristin Hardy
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fingers of her left hand, struggling to pull off the engagement ring that now burned there. She didn’t want anything of his touching her. She just wanted away.
“Keely, wait.”
It was Bradley, wrapping his robe on.
“What, so you can finish?”
“It’s not what you think. I can explain.”
“You can explain?” She whirled to face him. “Explain what? Is this that special project you’ve been working on lately?”
“Keely, don’t do this. I love you.”
“I can tell,” she said bitterly, glancing up at the woman who now stood in the doorway, wrapped in the emerald-green silk robe Bradley had brought Keely from Singapore. Don’t let it bother you. Don’t let yourself care.
“Look, I made a mistake.”
“No, I’m pretty sure I’m the one who’s made the mistake.” It was like having battery acid running through her veins, burning, burning everywhere. The metal band of the ring slid off her finger, finally, and she slapped it down on the hall table. “I was feeling bad about doing this tonight but you’ve saved me the trouble.”
“You’re breaking up with me?” Bradley stared incredulously. “We’re getting married in a month.”
“No, Bradley, we’re not getting married ever.”
“Keely, don’t be like this.” He reached for her.
“Don’t you touch me,” she hissed. She wasn’t sure what expression he saw on her face but he backed away.
“Keely, come on. Think about it for a minute. You’ll be sorry if you walk out now.”
“I’m already sorry, Bradley. Marrying you would only compound it.”
Feeling light-headed, like she was in a dream—or a nightmare—she turned and walked out the door. She couldn’t feel her feet touching the ground. There was a ringing in her ears, even as she descended in the elevator and walked out into the gray December day.
The midmorning street looked normal, cars passing, bits of snow still left from the recent storm, only a handful of pedestrians out. Most people were at work, where she should have been. Where she’d been sure Bradley would be. Keely strode down the sidewalk, not toward the subway that would take her to work but back toward her home and sanctuary.
Back where she could weep and let it all out.
So she’d been planning to break up with him. That did nothing to diminish the betrayal and hurt and humiliation of knowing he’d been cheating on her. Of seeing him with another woman. Keely’s eyelids prickled and she sucked in a breath. She wouldn’t cry, not here on the street. Home. She just had to get home and she’d be all right.
Sometimes what you thought you knew wasn’t what you really knew at all. After all, she’d been certain when Bradley had walked into her mother’s florist shop the summer before her senior year in college that she was falling in love. They’d stayed together nearly every weekend that summer, every time he drove up from Manhattan to Connecticut, every time she’d taken the train into town. It had been so perfect she’d been sure she was dreaming. Nothing could feel so good as being twined together with the golden, laughing Bradley.
She’d insisted on finding herself an apartment once she’d graduated and taken an accounting job with Briarson Financial in the city. She loved him, she was sure of it, but somehow, she hadn’t wanted to live with him then, even though they’d spent all their time together. She’d wanted something of her own.
And then he’d proposed. “Why should we keep wasting money on cabs all over town?” he’d asked, sliding the ring on her finger. “I want you to be mine.”
Keely had been so sure that they’d be deliriously happy the rest of their lives. And even though, nearly a year and a half later, she’d become increasingly certain that marrying him was the wrong thing to do, that did nothing to diminish the trauma of walking in to see him, to see him cheating with another woman.
Especially since they’d never had wall-banging, screaming wild sex like that. Their sex had always been quiet and, well, routine. Bradley had always seemed to enjoy himself and she’d enjoyed it, too. More or less. So it wasn’t transcendent. Maybe she wasn’t cut out for wall-banging sex. It hadn’t seemed nearly as important as the other time they spent together.
But now, still seeing the scene every time she closed her eyes, she felt suddenly uncertain. Maybe what was missing between them wasn’t something with Bradley. Maybe it was her. Did she not turn him on? Was she not woman enough?
Keely blinked hard and walked faster. Home. She just wanted to get home, call in to work and then have a good cry.
But when she mounted the steps of the tidy brownstone where she had a second-floor apartment, she found a crowd of uniformed police and other official-looking people milling about the lobby. That was the last thing she needed, news of a break-in or something in the building. Digging in her purse for her keys, she got into the elevator and stepped out a moment later onto her floor.
Only to see her front door wide-open.
It dizzied her. Her chest tightened so that she couldn’t quite get a breath. She half ran the few steps down the hall. “What’s going on?” she demanded. “What’s happ— Oh, my God!”
Her apartment was completely ransacked, books, DVDs and CDs strewn about the living room, plants knocked over, the television taken off its stand and upended. From her vantage point, she could just glimpse the kitchen, cupboards yawning open and canisters spilling flour and sugar on the counter. “Did someone break in?” She moved to step inside.
The man at the door raised his arm to block her. “You can’t come in here, ma’am.”
“What do you mean I can’t? I live here,” she snapped.
“Ah.” He eyed her speculatively. “If you’ll just wait here…”
She wished she were the sort who wouldn’t wait but would stomp into her apartment. That wasn’t her, though, any more than throwing her engagement ring at Bradley would have been her, however much she’d ached to do it. Mind whirling, staring at the mess with sick horror, she waited.
A fortysomething man wearing a navy jacket and khakis appeared. “Are you Keely Stafford?” he asked.
“Yes, I am.”
“Can I see some I.D.?”
With an increasing sense of unreality, she obeyed, getting out her wallet to show him the drivers’ license she seldom had use for. “Is anybody going to tell me what this is all about?”
“Come in and have a seat,” he said instead, inviting her into her own home.
Inside, the mess looked even worse. “My God, who did this? When did it happen? Everything was fine when I left here two hours ago.” Numbly, she moved toward the hall that led to her bedroom, where the contents of the linen closet lay in a pile on the floor. Thieves? She didn’t have much of value to steal, just her computer and her television, both of which were there. Vandals? But why?
“Miss, sit down. Please.”
“Sit down?” Her voice rose. “This my home.” She stalked over to the man on the couch, locking eyes with him. “If you or someone like you doesn’t tell me what’s going on in the next two seconds, I am going to pitch a fit the likes of which you’ve never seen before.” And she realized as she said it, that it was true. “What’s happened? Who broke in here?”
“We did.”
And her legs gave out and she sat. “‘We’? Who is we?”
“Federal agents. We’re investigating a Bradley Alexander and we have reason to believe that he may have left items here germane to our case.”