Page 88 of Four Dates and A Forever
Dating Tips from Elsie Dodd
You will never have to chase
what wants to stay with you.
“Let me explain,” Rhett said, the words barely escaping his throat.
“I need to know if it’s true,” Elsie said, her voice so fragile and so full of hurt, the punch to Rhett’s gut was so hard nausea roiled inside.
He opened his mouth to say it wasn’t true, but he knew that would be a lie. He hadn’t even though about that conversation with Axel since the day it happened, but it had happened. He wanted to say that he hadn’t meant to hurt her, but nothing came out. His chest was too large for air to escape, let alone speak.
“It’s a simple question. Did. You. Help. Axel. Torpedo me. In court?”
“It wasn’t like that. He asked for legal advice. I was in the middle of my divorce, and I passed along my attorney’s info.”
Axel’s gaze darted between Elsie and Rhett, and a smug smile slid across his face and Rhett wanted to punch him. A light of understanding flickered, and Axel laughed, loud enough to capture the attention of the people behind them. Rhett’s brothers were still forming a wall with their bodies, trying to give Elsie some privacy, but people were peeking over their heads and around their bodies.
“I guess you finally got the girl?”
Axel might as well have just high-fived him and asked to rate Elsie on theHow Good a Lay Is She?scale.
“Shut up,” Rhett said to Axel, who put up a hand in surrender but didn’t abandon his front-seat view to the action.
Elsie was devastatingly horrified; he could see it on her face. This was exactly what she wanted to avoid—people knowing their business—and now it was on display for everyone with a cell phone to capture.
“You also passed along theGuidebook to Screwing Over your Wife,” she said as cold as Igloo Frost.
“You’ve got to believe me. It wasn’t like that with me and Steph. The lawyers were more of arbitrators if anything.”
“Well, good for you. My experience wasn’t so peachy.” Her eyes were filled with unspilled anguish. “After all our talks about how bad it was, how my divorce destroyed me, it never once popped into your mind to even mention you shared the same law firm?”
“Same attorney as well,” Axel added.
“What part ofShut the hell updid you miss.” Rhett took a step forward to punch the guy’s lights out and Owen held him back.
“Not here,” Owen said. “If you want to move this to my office, I’ll hold the guy down for you. But you’ve got about a hundred cameras on you.”
Elsie looked around the bar as if just remembering that there was a room full of people watching and recording the most humiliating moment of her life. “I forgot about this part.”
He didn’t need to ask which part, he knew. It was the spotlight, the lack of privacy, the fear that every fight or conversation wasn’t sacred. It was the part of his world that he’d promised to protect her from and yet there they were, her heart served on a platter for the world to watch.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I didn’t think there was anything to tell.”
A collective gasp circling around him told himthatwas the wrong answer. But the tears swimming in her pretty eyes really hammered it home. The moment he’d given Axel support, he’d taken sides. Something he’d promised her that first night that he hadn’t done.
“I never thought he’d go after you like that.” Even to him it sounded like a hollow excuse.
“You knew Axel. You knew the lawyer. What did you think would happen?”
“I used them with my divorce, and it wasn’t anything like what you went through.”
“Because you’re you!” she yelled. “Axel’s not you. He’s childish and selfish and mean. He’s mean, Rhett. And you gave him the ammo to destroy me.”
“Els.” Once again he tried to hold her and she put out her hands.
“Don’t touch me,” she said, and he was stricken. “Do you have any idea what I went through? How I was questioned and probed and humiliated and taken advantage of just because I couldn’t afford a cutthroat lawyer revered for going for the jugular.”
