Page 35 of First Date: Divorce
CHAPTER TWELVE
K.D.woke with a question so insistent that she pulled on a robe and went downstairs in search of the answer.She couldn’t believe they hadn’t covered this.Talk about a gap.
“Eric?”she called.
“He’s out running,” came Pauline’s voice from the office.
K.D.knew from his questionnaire that Eric ran.So did she.
Missing her run these past few days was starting to make her edgy or she’d never have this weird twinge that he’d gone for a run while she stayed here.Couldn’t be anything else, because she ran alone.
“Need something, K.D.?”Pauline added.
She went into the office.“You’re here early.”
“Got behind on my work with prepping you two.Will get even farther behind with the wedding tomorrow.”
K.D.’s heart stuttered before she told it to stop being silly.She wasn’t really getting married.
“Our prep’s what I wanted to ask Eric about — what kind of law he’s practiced.”
“Sit down,” Pauline ordered.
“Just a quick answer and I’ll leave you alone to—”
“Sit down.”
K.D.sat on one of the visitor’s chairs.
“That’s not what you should be asking first,” Pauline said.“But I’ll go ahead and tell you how Eric met Hilary anyhow.”
“I didn’t ask— I don’t want to—”
Unimpeded by K.D.’s objections, Pauline kept talking.“He’d tell you they happened to get into the same elevator and struck up a conversation.The truth is, she spotted him at the courthouse and went after him.Found out everything she could about him and had that meeting totally planned out, then waited for the perfect time for the supposed coincidence of themhappening to getin the same elevator.
“He was ripe for the picking by one like her.”She directed a fierce glare at K.D.“And not because he’s stupid or naïve or weak or anything else you might be thinking.”
“I didn’t think—”
“You better not.Because it’s nothing of the kind.It’s sort of a blindness with him.But only partial blindness, like someone who can’t see out of the corners of their eyes or don’t pick up on colors.Because there’s no denying he’s onto the tricks of criminals and other lawyers and even crooked cops.It’s that he comes from a family where the people who love each other say so and tell each other the truth.My Chuck and I were like that, too, and I saw it in Eric first time I walked in for that job interview.
“Also saw that when someone gets in under his guard and he accepts them, he doesn’t bother with defenses or skepticism anymore.It’s all-out loyalty, which can make him blind like I said.Sometimes it turns out okay.Like with Cully and Grif.”
“And you.”
K.D.would have regretted the impulsive words — since when did she speak impulsively?— but she saw how much they pleased the woman and that couldn’t hurt, extrapolating from Cully Grainger saying not to get on Pauline’s bad side.
“And me,” Pauline agreed with would-be no-nonsense dismissal of the fact.“But not Hilary.If he’d met her in other circumstances … But her mode of attack slid right past his defenses and into his Achilles’ heel.Once he accepted her, it was the Trojan Horse all over again.”
K.D.blinked at the references, but made no comment.
“And I wasn’t stupid enough to try to tell him otherwise.I’d have been out if I had, which was exactly what Hilary wanted.Oh, I see your surprise.But, yes, she tried to maneuver me out from the start.Not stupid, that one.She sensed I saw right through her and didn’t like that one bit.
“From that first elevator ride, she perpetuated the classic ruse of making him think things were his idea that were hers.Maneuvered him into marriage, into that penthouse he hated, into a job at the soul-sucking corporation.But she couldn’t get rid of me.Got to be sort of enjoyable, watching her fail at that.
“First, she said she felt uncomfortable around me, because she thought I didn’t approve of her — going all doe-eyed and vulnerable so he’d want to protect her anyway she said to.Except Eric’s logic saved him.He said, Pauline’s never said a single word against you.Even told her I suggested he send her orchids for her birthday, which she’d been over the moon about because they cost the earth.I see your surprise, K.D., that I’d suggest them when I never liked her, but better I thought of a present for her than he did.That would have tied him closer to her.She sure didn’t care, as long as it cost a lot.
“Later on, she told Eric I didn’t present the right image for his corporate job.He laughed.… Only toward the end when she brought it up again did he get a little angry and say if clients thought that way, he didn’t want them as clients.I still say that’s the moment she knew she didn’t have as firm a hold on him as she’d thought.That’s when she went after a partner in the firm.
