“Why is it so important to you to give him such a hard time, anyway?” she asked.
He wouldn’t meet her gaze.
Something in his expression knocked a puzzle piece into place for her, and all at once, she knew. “You were in love with Lyn before she started sleeping with Mark.”
“That’s bullshit.” He pushed his chair away from the table and stood up, his jaw hard and his shoulders high. “Fuck this. Forget it. I don’t need to make a deal with you or anyone else. I don’t need Mark Webster’s crap, or yours.”
She had almost blown it. She’d slipped, lost track. Seeing that Pete had been hurt by what happened between him and Mark had made her soften toward him and play the hand badly.
But Pete wasn’t anywhere near ready to admit to her that he’d lost something in the scuffle over Lyn, and she couldn’t afford to have him walk out on her now. Mark couldn’t afford it.
“Wait!”
Pete hesitated.
“Come back. Forget I said that. Look. What do we need to do to convince you?”
He stood there, arms crossed, expression dark. Then a slight smile turned up the corners of his mouth, and that was way scarier than the darkness. “I heard Mark’s speaking at the Noteworthy fund-raiser.”
Uh-oh.
“I want to give that speech.”
“Do you really care about kids and music lessons?” she asked.
“Nope, but neither does Mark.”
“He does,” she said, but she knew it was futile to try to argue this with Pete.
“The point of that speech isn’t that I give a crap about kids’ music lessons. It’s that it’ll be good publicity and it’ll make me look good. It’ll be good for my image, right?” His tone mocked her.
Haven sighed. “I can’t give you that,” she said. “The programs are printed, the PR firm has already gotten the word out.”
“Are you gonna be there?”
“Yes.”
“With Mark?”
“Mark’s going to be there with Cindy Sheldon.” Cindy was a classically trained singer with widespread popular appeal, the type who had her own Christmas and children’s lullaby albums. Cindy had the perfect image to help rehab Mark’s—she was beautiful, refined, heavily involved in charitable work and musical in a clean, unblemished way. And Cindy, by being seen with Mark, would reach out to a wider audience of pop lovers, increase her pop-music street cred.
“Go with me,” Pete said.
For a moment she didn’t understand.
“Be my date,” he clarified.
Oh, God.
Of all the—
And yet she wasn’t really surprised, because she’d known this was Pete’s endgame. He wanted to stick it to Mark in a way that would hurt, the way it had hurt Pete—still hurt Pete, apparently—that Mark had slept with Lyn.