"What's happened?" She walked over to help him with his coat.
He let her hang it up before collapsing on the couch. She sat down next to him, worried. "Caleb, honey?"
"I'm just tired." He stared at the wall opposite the sofa but she knew he wasn't seeing the painting hanging there.
"No," she said, cupping his jaw with one hand and turning him to face her. "You don't get to do that anymore."
"Do what?" He raised his hand to hers but didn't pull her away.
"Keep secrets that cause you pain." She shook her head in reproval.
"You don't need to be stressed right now. I don't want anything to hurt you."
His tenderness broke her heart. How could she not keep sinking deeper in her feelings for him? "You know what hurts me the most? Being shut out of your life. Don't do that to me, Caleb. Not again." Her voice trembled with the intensity of her emotions.
Looking at her with eyes clouded by unknown demons, he opened his arms. She tucked her body against his and held him. Would he speak to her? Would he take the next step in this new relationship they were building? A relationship of equals, where she took as much responsibility for him as he'd always taken for her.
"Two days ago," he began to explain, "a huge deal we've been working on for almost a year started to come apart at the seams."
"What happened?"
"Maxwell is our client. Horrocks the buyer. We were almost to the signing stage when Horrocks discovered a major discrepancy in the financial reports provided by Maxwell during due diligence."
She'd read enough business journals to appreciate the scale of the problem. "Horrocks is refusing to sign?"
"More than that, they're accusing Maxwell of deliberate subterfuge."
Vicki knew that Caleb was an absolute perfectionist in his work. He would never do anything underhanded. "Did someone on the Maxwell side let you down?"
"Not deliberately. It was basically a massive cock-up on the part of their chief financial officer and his staff." He sighed and dropped his chin onto her hair. "Did you see the paper today?"
"No, I didn't have time." Warned by his tone, she walked over to the side table where she'd put the paper after it had been delivered and carried it back to him.
Caleb took it from her and waited until she was sitting with him again before opening it to the front page of the business section. What he saw still made his stomach churn. "Respected Law Firm Fumbles Billion-Dollar Buyout," he read out, feeling his dreams collapse.
A gentle hand touched his shoulder. "You know you didn't fumble it. Is the deal still alive? Have you got something to work with?"
He dropped the paper onto a cushion. "Barely. If we can't get Horrocks to agree to give Maxwell time to clear up this issue, it really will gurgle down the drain."
"The fault was Maxwell's, not yours."
"No. It was ours. Maxwell is our client and we should've picked up this problem." He refused to go easy on himself.
Victoria slapped his shoulder, making him look down at her scowling face. "You're a lawyer, not an accountant. These are financial problems."
"Callaghan & Associates was in charge of the overall deal from the Maxwell side. We were paid to ensure everything went smoothly." Taking her hand from his shoulder, he kissed the tips of her fingers. "If we don't rescue this deal, the firm will begin to hemorrhage clients. The end."
Her eyes flared. "If it comes to that, we start over, even if that means I have to be your secretary." She smiled. "No regrets."
A weight lifted off his chest. A small part of him had worried that she'd welcome the closure of a firm she saw as a rival for his attention. "No regrets?"
"Never."
He thanked God for her. One of his associates was already feeling the pressure from his socialite wife-she wanted assurance that she'd be kept in the style to which she'd become accustomed.
Vicki stroked the line of his jaw. "I have every faith in you. You'll succeed. Can I do anything to help?"
"Thanks, honey, but unless you can convince my clients not to cut and run before we fix this, it's up to me and the team."
"Hmm." Vicki tapped her mouth with one finger. "I have an idea."
"Should I be worried? The last time you had an idea, I spent two months living in a hotel."
The words were out of Vicki's mouth almost before she'd thought them. "Yes well, I had a little help in that from you." She knew it was the worst possible time to bring this up but it was out of her control-some switch in her had inadvertently been thrown by his flip comment.
"I wasn't exactly a prize husband, huh?" He grimaced. "But we're doing okay."
"Are we really?" Why was she doing this now? she thought, horrified at the destruction she was about to instigate. She'd thought she'd put this issue in the past where it belonged but that had obviously been a huge lie, a final remnant of the self-protective shell she was so used to living in. "We promised no more secrets and yet … "
"You think there's something else we need to clear up?" There was nothing but concern in his voice.
"We've never talked about Miranda." The words fell like grenades between them. At the same time, a sweeping sense of relief washed over her. Until she'd spoken, she hadn't realized the pressure that had built up inside of her.
"Miranda? What the hell does she have to do with anything?"
The complete lack of understanding on his face made a sick feeling crawl through her stomach, curdling the relief. Either Caleb was flat-out lying to her, or she'd made a terrible mistake. And Caleb wasn't a man for subtleties-there was no way he could have counterfeited his confusion.
Suddenly, comprehension swept across his expression. "Goddamn it, Vicki!" He thrust his hands through his hair. "I can't believe what I'm seeing on your face. Say the damn words."
It was too late to back away. Far too late. "I knew our marriage was in trouble for a long time," she said, "but the reason I decided to ask for a divorce was because I thought you were having an affair with Miranda." It had been the proverbial straw that had broken the camel's back … broken her. Infidelity was the one thing she couldn't take, perhaps because of the guilt she'd always carried on her mother's behalf.
His eyes grew hard with anger. "Why?"
She knew he deserved answers. "You were always at the office late and when I called, she'd answer and say you couldn't come to the phone."
"That was enough to convict me?" His tone was clipped and he didn't touch her.
She wondered if, after everything they'd done to repair their marriage, she was going to lose him because of her own stupidity. The idea of never being able to hear his laughter felt like a knife to the soul.
Pushing back the fear, she looked straight into his eyes. She had to confront this head-on. She was no longer that woman who'd tried to bury her pain and keep going with a marriage she'd believed had been betrayed … without once asking Caleb if he'd done what she'd judged him guilty of.
"No. I mean it made me suspicious-we both know I wasn't the most confident of women then."
"Vicki," Caleb began, a frown on his face.
"Let me finish," she begged. "I can't do this twice."
"Talk." When he raised his arm and slid it along the back of the sofa, his fingers touching her nape, the relief she felt was almost crushing. Caleb's touch was her anchor when everything else spun out of control.
"Then you went on that trip to Wellington four months ago and she went with you. Remember?"
"Yes." Of course Caleb remembered. In nearly five years of marriage, it had been the first time he'd left his wife for more than a week and he'd ached for her every moment. But she hadn't cared enough about their relationship to make the first move for once and call him. Hurt more than he would have thought possible, believing that their marriage had come to the worst place it possibly could be, he hadn't contacted her, either.
"I missed you so." Vicki's eyes were bright blue with emotion. "I couldn't sleep without you there beside me."
All his conclusions about the past came to a screeching halt.
"That first night you were gone, I waited and waited for you to call like you always did. When you didn't, I finally picked up the phone at around 3:00 a.m. I tried your cell phone first but you must've turned it off, so I called your hotel room instead." Her hands fisted against him. "She answered!"