“Is that what you want?” he asked, measuring the width. And, yup, four feet exactly.
“No.” She stood, and even though she had that chin-up, shoulders-back thing going on, she still only came to his chest. “The last thing I want to be is Richard Moretti’s widow. And I sure as hell don’t want to go down as the woman stupid enough to stay married to a man who slept with half the town. But I want to move on . . . need to move on, and before I can, the town has to.”
“You think a legal battle will bring it all back up again?”
“No, but if I get the divorce, I don’t get Richard’s estate, which is still quite large, according to his lawyer, and the courts will divide it. If I’m his widow, I get the estate, and it would be enough to cover a lot of what was stolen from outside investors. Including you.”
Last year, Abby had freaked out when she’d discovered Tanner had lost a million dollars in Richard’s scam.
“Abby, if there is money to get, the investors will get theirs.” This he knew for a fact. His voice mail was filled with several messages from different investors, already asking him to help create a united front. “The minute that statue showed up, people got their lawyers working.”
“Did you?”
“No.” He stepped closer. “I’m a big boy, Abs. I understood the risks that came with investing in a start-up. This one didn’t work out. Most of them don’t. It’s not your fault.” When she looked up to argue, he cocked a brow. “They’ll get the money regardless of what you decide to do.”
“That could take years and they’ve already waited a long time. I don’t want them to wait any longer.”
Such a textbook Abby move. She was going to stay married to appease a group of people who’d turned on her during one of the hardest moments of her life. Not that it would matter. A good half of the people in town still believed Abby had covered for Richard, giving him enough of a lead to disappear. The other half just thought she was too stupid to notice that her husband spent more time training interns than he did getting the vineyard up and running.
Tanner knew the truth. Abby was loyal and smart, and when it came to love she went all-in. She wasn’t stupid and she wasn’t gullible, Richard was just a master of deception. He’d fooled the entire town and several surrounding communities. How Tanner saw it, Abby had been played the same as everyone else—except her loss was staggering in comparison.
“I want my life back, want to make my firm a success, and I can’t do that if I’m always wondering how Richard factors into things. I need to make this right so we can all move on, have a clean slate.”
“You know the slate was always clean with me, right?” He prayed to God she did. They had enough history to wade through without her husband wedging his way back between them.
“Does that mean I don’t owe you a lifetime of piano lessons?” After discovering Tanner’s investment, Abby had vowed to pay him back in monthly installments.
“No way. A deal is a deal.”
He didn’t want her money, let alone another reason for Abby to avoid him. He wanted time with her—a safe place for her to come to terms with the chemistry that was between them. So they struck a deal: payment in piano lessons. Which meant that every Tuesday and Thursday evening, Tanner got to be bossed around by the one woman who drove him absolutely crazy.
“Plus, you made me do that embarrassing as shit recital at Vintner’s Hall with all those eight-year-olds. Well, guess what? I’m in the next grade, which means I get to do right by my ten-year-old self at the next stupid as shit recital and play the theme to Star Wars.”
“Star Wars?” She laughed, and it sounded a hell of a lot better than her in near tears. So Tanner dropped the topic of Richard and everything that that must have brought up for her and went with light. He was good at light.
“Yeah, the Imperial March. I already bought the sheet music.” Actually, he’d bought it when he was a kid. Only he’d never actually learned how to play it.
“I see.” She crossed her arms in an attempt to appear intimidating, but on her it just looked cute. “Well, I don’t allow students to play that piece until they are grade four or five. You’re a grade three, which is more of The Sugar Plum Fairies or The Entertainer.”
Hell, no. The guys on the crew were already giving him a hard time over cramming his body onto the same bench as most of their kids. “What do I have to do to get to a grade four before the next recital?”
“Besides practice at home, and not just when you’re at my house?”