Doublecrossed Part 12

"Really?"

"Yeah. I figured she got seduced by you she-devils." She laughed, almost guffawing. "But now that I know you, I can't even conjure up the evil home-wrecker image I had of you. You're a very kind person."

"I try to be. I told Marina I could only consider it if we would only have s.e.x with people who were single or had the same kind of relations.h.i.+p we did. I never wanted an innocent woman to be involved." She reached over and grasped Regan's arm, squeezing it. "I'm so sorry you got hurt. If I hadn't agreed to it..."

That was a huge relief. At least Callie had tried to protect other women. Knowing she'd tried to keep the damage of being in that kind of relations.h.i.+p to just herself and Marina was admirable. "No way. Marina was a cheater, pure and simple. She was a bigger cheater than Angela, in some ways. She could have had hundreds of other women, but she chose my Angela."

"I don't know if I believe her, but she says she did it to ingratiate herself so she'd get promoted to Angela's level."

Regan stared at her for a very long time. Then she said, in a low, dangerous sounding tone, "If that's true, I'd better never meet her. I think I'd kill her."

Chapter Eleven.

They had a nice belated birthday dinner for Callie at a restaurant not far from their hotel. Even though it was fun, Callie could tell that Regan was still bothered by their talk at the beach.

After dinner they went back down to the water, took off their shoes and walked along the low, quiet surf. "You seem kinda...down," Callie said after they'd walked a long time in silence.

"Yeah. I am." She walked along, not speaking for a while, then she said, "It doesn't seem to bother you much that Marina was trying to screw her way to the top. That bothers me. A lot." Her voice was cold and dangerously low.

Callie reached out and took her hand, slowing her to a stop. "No, no, that's not true. I...I think I have to tell you the whole thing."

"What?" Regan's eyes looked dark and hard in the moonlight.

"We talked a couple of times after I left. I think I got the full story out of her." She paused, took a breath and said, "Do you want to hear it? It's...not good."

"Yeah, I do. I need to know the truth, no matter how bad it is."

They started to walk again, with Callie finding it easier to talk when she wasn't looking into Regan's innocent face.

"They started working together a year before Marina and I met. She said she was attracted to Angela from the beginning but she didn't know she was gay."

"Probably true. Angela isn't out at work, even though I know she could be."

"Neither is Marina. Which irritated the heck out of me. She wouldn't even consider taking me to events at work, even though two of her salesmen are openly gay."

"Same for Angela. It would have had to change for us to get married." She nodded her head slowly when Callie stopped and stared at her. "Yeah, we were thinking of getting married. We wanted to start a family."

Callie put an arm around her and they wound up standing in the warm water, holding each other for a few minutes while each shed some tears for their fractured plans.

"I'm so sorry," Callie said again.

"Me, too." They started to walk again, with Regan holding Callie's hand as a child would an older sister.

"So Marina was attracted to Angela, but they never acknowledged it. Until one night, about a year and a half ago..." Regan gasped and Callie squeezed her hand. "I told you it was bad."

"A f.u.c.king year and a half ago," she muttered. "a.s.shole! b.i.t.c.h! Wh.o.r.e!" Her voice had risen until she shouted the last word. "The G.o.d d.a.m.ned b.i.t.c.h!"

"I know, I know," Callie said, trying to soothe her. "It's bad."

"How could she talk about having children with me? How could she?" She started to cry in earnest, with Callie holding her and rubbing her shaking back.

"I don't know how she could do it, but she's an idiot for losing you. Especially for someone like Marina. She's not one tenth the woman you are."

Sniffling away the last of her tears, Regan stood up tall and took some deep breaths. "I'll try to keep it together. I really do want to hear the rest." A second pa.s.sed and Regan grasped Callie by the shoulders, her grip so intense it could have left bruises. "A year and a half? That's how long you were together!"

"I know." She put her head down and took in a breath. "They started up just when I moved to Dallas. I didn't get to have her to myself for even a week."

Regan threw her head back and screamed. "Filthy b.i.t.c.h!" Shaking, she wrapped Callie in a hug so fierce her feet left the ground. "I'll strangle her if I ever meet her. For both of us."

They stood there crying for a few minutes, the sound of their tears drowned out by the gentle lapping of the waves. Finally, they started walking again, arms interlocked as though each was trying to hold the other up against a hurricane-force wind. "Do you want to hear the rest?" Callie asked.

"Yeah. Give it to me."

"They were at a conference in Las Vegas and they came out to each other. I guess there had been some kind of veiled flirtation because they hooked up right then."

"A year and a half ago."

"Yeah."

"Marina didn't have an explanation for why it happened?"

"She's just a s.l.u.t." Regan didn't ever need to learn the truth. Angela's excuse was so d.a.m.n cold. How could she tell Marina that Regan was lousy in bed? That was such a betrayal of someone she'd claimed to love. Regan was precious. Even more precious than she'd seemed when they'd talked on the phone. No matter what, she was going to take Angela's insult to the grave. Torture couldn't have gotten it out of her.

"So how did this help Marina's career?"

"Well, if she's being honest, she said Angela wanted the affair to continue, even though she didn't."

"Great."

"Marina claims she knew she'd made a mistake by doing it that first time, but she thought it was harmless. She knew she was in trouble when Angela wanted her to arrange to travel to Boston more often. That's when she started to worry Angela would veto her promotion if she turned her down."

"So it was all Angela's fault, huh?" She sounded bitter and sarcastic, but that wasn't who Regan really was. Callie could only hope that Regan didn't allow herself to let this sour her and make her jaded. She was too nice a woman for that.

"No, she didn't claim that. She admitted Angela would never have been on the list of people I'd approve, but since she'd been attracted to her since before we got together, she saw her as kinda grandfathered in."

"What do you think?" Regan's voice carried over the warm, moist wind.

She sounded so hopeful, like she was depending on Callie to rea.s.sure her. Unable to resist the unspoken request, Callie stopped and pulled Regan close, trying to let the moon illuminate her face. "I think she's a user."

"At least."

"And I think she's a person without a real conscience. Even though she claimed to be so contrite about sleeping with Angela, she admitted that they didn't click at all. And, to be honest, I think that's the main reason she didn't want to continue to have s.e.x with her." She took a deep breath. "I'm an idiot for letting her into my life, much less my heart."

Regan nodded slowly. "Okay. Then we can be friends."

They walked back to the hotel in silence. But Callie's brain wouldn't slow down a bit. If Marina had screwed up the friends.h.i.+p she was starting to rely on, she would have killed her. Regan was the kind of person she needed in her life. Someone with morals that didn't change with the weather They were both quiet on the long walk back to the hotel. They weren't holding hands or touching any longer, and Regan still felt like punching someone. How could Callie have stayed? How could she have given Marina a second chance? There had to be some sick secrets behind that sweet facade. Where were they hiding?

After they got ready for bed, they turned out the lights and each lay in her respective bed, neither one ready for sleep.

"I don't think Marina told me the whole truth," Callie said quietly.

"About what?"

"About how easy it was to convince Angela to sleep with her."

"Why?" d.a.m.n. That had sounded way too sharp. But Callie would get a fist in the face if she had any more bad news to deliver piece by piece. Enough was enough.

"I know Marina. When she wants something, she figures out how to get it. I think she wanted Angela, and the fact that she was off limits in many ways made her more fixated on her."

"What do you mean, amany ways'?" Regan asked, unable to keep the rancor from her voice.

"Well, she was in a relations.h.i.+p, she wasn't pre-approved, and she was a colleague. I never would have approved someone like Angela."

"And what does that mean?"

"She was someone on a higher level who had a vote about Marina's future. What else?"

"Sorry. I'm just a little sensitive about her. I always suspect a racial angle, even where there isn't one. Angela always said I had too much oppressor's guilt."

"Angela is...what? Black? Latina?"

"Black." Regan turned on the light and blinked towards Callie. "You didn't know that?"

"No. How would I? I've never seen her."

How could she not know? A computer geek who didn't search the internet for a picture of the other woman? Maybe there were so many other women that the details didn't matter anymore. This was so screwed up. Regan got up and rooted around in her purse, finally finding what she was looking for. She handed Callie her keychain which had a heart-shaped locket on it. Callie opened it and studied the tiny picture. "She's beautiful."

"Yeah, she is." Regan flopped back into her bed and drew the sheet over herself. "You really didn't know?"

"No idea. But, knowing Marina, that was part of her allure. Being black would make Angela just a little bit more..."

"What?" It was impossible to keep from snapping at her.

"Marina wanted whatever she wasn't supposed to have, and being partnered, being in a position of authority, and being black would be a trifecta for her." With a quick look at Regan, she added, "Her parents are socially and politically prominent conservatives. They had a very hard time with her being gay. Her having a black lover would truly freak them out."

"Typical racists?"

"No," Callie said, after a few seconds. "It would be more that it's outside the norm in their social circle. Once her parents got comfortable with her being gay, she started sleeping with guys for the first time in her life. She just wants to tweak them any way she can."

"She sounds like a teenager."

"Yeah, in a way. But she still does just what they want her to in most things. She's seriously screwed up. I wish to G.o.d I could have seen how screwed up she was long before now."

"I don't mean to be rude, but it's hard to believe you didn't see it." Blind people could have seen it from a hundred yards. Callie didn't seem that oblivious.

She looked down, seemingly chagrined. "I guess love is blind. In her defense, she's smart and fun and sometimes playful. She's really good at her job, and she has a lot of long-term friends. So she has her good points. I should have paid more attention to how she treated her parents. That's a sure sign of character."

"But you can have idiots for parents and still be a good person."

"True. But Marina's too tied up with them, and that's voluntary. They're really, really involved in her life, and they try to control her with money."

"They bail her out a lot?"

"A whole lot. And for their generosity Marina loves to surrept.i.tiously screw with them. Never to their faces... except for being gay. But even then they caught her in the act. I don't think she would have ever voluntarily come out to them." She put the keychain on the bedside table. "What a miserable person she is."

"Then why did you give her another chance? Why did you try to convince me to give Angela another chance?" Listen to yourself! You knew she was evil, and you stayed with her. For what?

"Stupidity. Blindness. I don't know." Callie turned off the lights and lay down again. "I really regret that. I hope you can forgive me one day."

"Don't worry about that. I'm interested in why you did it. Not because of me, but because of you. Why did you think you had to settle for someone like her?"

"I don't know," she murmured. "My friend Terri has been asking me that for over a year and I've been telling her that I wasn't settling. I'm gonna have to spend some time thinking about that."

Regan was sure she could truncate the thought process. Callie had not only been settling, she'd been partic.i.p.ating in a dangerous game that had blown shrapnel all the way across the country. But she was obviously blind to that. Maybe hopelessly blind. "I hope you can. Before you get into another relations.h.i.+p."

"I think I might choose to be like my mom. Bitter and lonely. At least I'll only hurt myself that way."

Regan didn't respond, and eventually Callie fell asleep, her rhythmic breathing filling the quiet room.

The next morning Callie opened her eyes to the bright sun streaming in through the open window. The air held the scent of the jasmine plants that ringed their balcony and just a touch of the sea. She opened her eyes and turned to see Regan lying on her side, her head propped up on her hand, looking at her.

"That's not true, you know."

"What's not true?"

"If you become bitter it affects a lot more people than you. You can't tell me it doesn't hurt you to see how your mom is."

"Of course it does. I think I was just grousing. I'm not the bitter type."

"I hope not, because I want you as a friend and bitter people don't appeal to me."

"Okay, I'll be cheerful just for you." She got up and patted Regan's dark head.

Regan called after her as she went into bathroom, "Good enough. Reality doesn't have to intrude on my fantasy world. As long as you seem happy, I'm happy." That wasn't true. Not a word of it. But it was nice to dream.

Their flights for home left around noon, and Callie was up early, putting on her running clothes when Regan woke. "Hey, where are you going?"

"To run on the beach. I've been slacking."

"Slacking? You've been working nonstop on my site."

"But I haven't been running. I've got to make up for that today. I'm gonna do ten miles."