She didn’t need verbal confirmation from him. She could see it in the way the woman returned his intimately guarded stare, shifting her worried eyes over to Fallon. The woman looked surprised and nervous in the same hesitant expression.
Pushing off his chest, Fallon made a move to stand up and give Rafe the space she assumed he needed, when his hand clamped down on her thigh. She knew he would inevitably have to speak to the woman across from them who’d managed to suck the color from his face in the matter of seconds since she’d arrived. But relief coursed through her muscles when Rafe prevented her from getting up from his lap. Had she had a moment to process the unexpected reaction of her emotions, she’d have peeled herself from his hold and separated her body from his piercing touch. But she looked at him, his eyes once again capturing her in their depths, almost pleading with her.
This was the woman Rafe wanted to forget, the woman who broke his heart. And when their moment of reckoning came, Fallon would be there to distract his heart from her. As terrifying as it was, she was up to the task. She wanted to be there for him.
The ambience around them morphed and twisted. Everyone around the fire was now shifting their eyes, looking for the cause of the evident tension.
“Rafe,” Fallon whispered so only he could hear. His eyes left the other woman and returned to hers. “You okay?”
“I don’t know.”
Fallon sucked in a breath at the way his voice had taken on a menacing volume and a broken rasp. His honesty tore at her even more. She wasn’t supposed to care. Until now she’d been successful at keeping herself protected from caring . . . feeling.
She didn’t want to care. But she did. And feeling his vulnerability, feeling the way his hands rubbed soothing circles on the inside of her thigh—trying to comfort her as he was falling apart—only chipped away another section of the emotional wall she’d built. And anger seeped out.
Fallon’s eyes were drawn away from Rafe when the clank of the gate shutting echoed through the yard again.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Fallon muttered. The second the words left her mouth Rafe’s entire demeanor shifted.
“What?”
She nodded toward the man who’d just walked through the gate carrying a case of beer in his hands and a bottle of white wine in the other. “God, I didn’t even put it together.”
“All right, you’re going to have to stop talking in shorthand and fill me in.”
“Your friend from earlier today—Graham—he’s friends with George and he knew Jade and you know Graham. I didn’t even connect the dots.”
“Again, not following, sweetheart.”
“Dexter,” she said spitting venom from her mouth as she narrowed her sights on the asshole. “That’s Dexter.”
He looked the same as she remembered him. Tall, lean, sculpted body—pretty. Dressed in dark-wash jeans and an ivory sweater that clung to his arms and fell just below his waist. His ash blond hair was styled short, but the front swirled up in a faux-hawk. He was good-looking and had that air about him that told her he knew just how good-looking he truly was. He looked like the type of man a woman would brag to her parents about—but not the type of man that made your heart beat a little wildly. Point-blank, he looked like a well-groomed prick. And he was.
“And Jade is his . . . ?” Rafe asked as he started piecing the puzzle together himself.
“Yep.”
Around that same time, bottle blond Claire bound from her chair and greeted “the woman” with a schoolgirl squeal and one of those rocking-back-and-forth hugs. If Fallon needed further motive not to like this woman, the fact that she was a squealer sealed the deal.
“Bridgette, I told you to call me when you got here!” Claire squealed again.
The big picture opened up and Fallon started to see the players in the game. No one else here knew about Bridgette, but Claire did—which meant they were friends. Fallon didn’t know the why or the how, but it all made sense. Claire didn’t like Fallon because she knew the secret about Bridgette and Rafe, and Fallon was walking on her territory.
“Sorry. I got in town a little early and met your boyfriend at your house—he was getting ready to head this way. We thought it’d be fun to surprise you.”
“Okay, but did you think this was the best way to let Rafe know you were here? You were supposed to wait,” Claire whispered. It just so happened one of the perks of working in a loud burlesque club was that Fallon had become an expert at reading lips.
“I wanted to surprise him too. Why didn’t you tell me he was here with someone?”