The problem was, in my snit I had temporarily forgotten that when Gray wasn’t being rational, logical and easygoing and he got pissed, he got pissed.

“Say again?” he whispered and he was across the car from me but I heard the menace in his whisper.

“She had a hand in the play Buddy made to get me out of Mustang,” I repeated a little less heatedly, studying him and wondering if I should have kept my mouth shut.

“She tell you that?”

I shook my head but said, “I know.”

“How do you know?”

“A girl knows.”

“Think, you say something as explosive as that, Ivey, you need more than ‘a girl knows’,” Gray replied and it was then I realized the hole I’d dug with my fit of temper.

Because I didn’t want to go there but now that I’d mentioned it, I had no other direction available to me.

I sucked in breath, walked to the car and put my hand on my door then said, “Remember when she came up to us at the VFW our first date?”

“Ivey, I think you know I remember everything about you, specifically everything about you when you were with me. Outside of our kiss and watchin’ you bendin’ over a pool table for an hour, that was the best part of the date.”

He wasn’t happily reminiscing, unfortunately. He was telling me to move it along.

Still, Gray impatient or not, I liked what he said.

I didn’t share that.

“Well, our, um… conversation in the chiller cabinet aisle at Plack’s was along the same vein.”

“Again…” Gray started, clearly seeking patience, “say again?”

Damn.

Here we go.

“She walked right up to me and told me, essentially, that while I was gone, you’d been with other women.”

At that point I learned something new about Gray and how to deal with him.

Because he had been pissed, alert and impatient.

Now he was enraged.

So I learned, belatedly, that I should tread cautiously even when I was justifiably in full rant.

“That bitch,” Gray whispered.

“Gray, honey, it’s not like I didn’t know.”

“That… fuckin’… bitch!” Gray clipped, this time loudly.

“Gray,” I said softly, “it’s okay.”

“Right, I know, Ivey, fuck, I know,” he returned, uncrossing his arms and throwing one out. “You aren’t stupid and you know me, you knew about the girls before you. I know you know but that doesn’t fucking mean,” he leaned in, planted his hands on his hips and thundered, “she had to tell you!”

“Honey.” I was still whispering.

“I was not gonna go there with you. Not ever. I knew you knew and I didn’t need to make myself feel better and you feel like shit by goin’ over it with you. I knew what I felt when I called you in Vegas and Lash answered the phone at twenty past seven, knowin’ he was in bed with you, thinkin’ what I thought he was to you. It burned through me but I was in my own fuckin’ kitchen on my cell phone. That bitch threw that shit in your face while you were in fuckin’ Plack’s fuckin’ grocery shoppin’ and knowin’ she gleefully set about makin’ you feel that burn when you were not in a safe place or fuckin’ doin’ it ever pisses me right the fuck off.”

“I can see that,” I said soothingly.

Gray glared at me then bit out, “That fuckin’ bitch.”

“Gray, that isn’t the part you need to know. What I mean is –”

“That fuckin’ bitch.”

I fell silent.

Gray deep breathed.

I waited.

Gray kept glaring at me and deep breathing.

Then he asked, “Anything frozen in the car?”

“Ice cream,” I answered quietly.

“Right, toss me your key. Let’s get this shit in.”

I tossed him my keys; he nabbed them and bleeped the trunk open.

I headed to the kitchen. He brought in a load and I started putting it away. Then he brought in the second and last load, dumped it on the counter and I continued putting it away while he rested a hip to the counter, crossed his arms on his chest watched me and ordered, “Right, now, give it to me.”

I kept putting food away while I told him, “She has a thing for you.”

“No shit,” Gray replied.

Right. Gray wasn’t stupid.

Moving on.

“She doesn’t have a happy marriage with Buddy.”

“Again, no shit.”

I finished with all the stuff that needed fridge or freezer and turned to Gray.

“She was with a girlfriend who wouldn’t look at me. Cecily bore down on me just like the last time, without hesitation, wanting to get a dig at you and crush me. She’s Buddy’s wife, she was seeing him then and still, she went after both of us. The girlfriend knew, Gray, and being around me especially with Cecily made her uncomfortable. I alluded very vaguely to the fact she knew my pain at losing you and how she knew that and both of them reacted. She either knows what Buddy did, which, if he did it and now I feel certain he did, she would as his wife or she was involved. She wanted you then, she wants you now and she’s one of those women who won’t move on and if she feels pain. She lets it turn bitter, so much, she can’t help herself from spreading that around.”

“What’d this friend look like?” Gray asked immediately.

“What?” I asked back, confused.

“Cecily’s friend. What’d she look like?”

“Uh, dark hair, a bit plump but it looked good on her. Shorter than me. She didn’t give me her eyes so I can’t say the color. Cecily’s age, I’d guess.”

Gray’s face grew ominously darker when he stated, “Prisc.”

“Sorry?”

“Prisc. Priscilla. Tight with Cecily. Tight for a long time. All the way back to school. Her, Courtney and Cecily, cheerleaders, the mean girls. That said, you got Prisc away from Courtney and Cecily, she could be sweet. Those other two, born pure bitch.”

“And?” I prompted when he didn’t explain why he was sharing this information.

“And, Prisc and Courtney were the ones who told everyone they saw you takin’ off with Casey.”

I closed my eyes and rested my hand in the counter.

“Like I said,” Gray kept speaking and I opened my eyes, “remember everything about you including everything that happened after I lost you. Remember that shit. Remember giving time to chewin’ on those two bein’ the two who happened to see you stealin’ away in the dead of night. It was a long time ago but when you took off with Casey, can you remember if you saw anyone?”

I shook my head. “It was a long time ago but I remember because he was freaked, saying he was being followed so I looked and I did it hard. I can feel eyes, see a tail. It had to be three, four in the morning. The square was deserted, the bar closed. No one saw us.”

“So they made that shit up.”

“Probably,” I replied

“Definitely,” Gray returned. “You felt it, life taught you to read people, situations and, dollface, like everything, you’re good at it. What I know is, from what you told me, Prisc is a decent person who found herself with shitty friends and she’s weak. It’s gone on so long, she’d rather stick with what she has than dip her toe in the pond. She couldn’t look you in the eye, there was a reason and not just that she knows Buddy’s a dick ‘cause everyone knows Buddy’s a dick. She couldn’t look you in the eye because she was in on it.”

“So she knows what they did,” I whispered.

“Likely.” Gray didn’t whisper.

“So we should go talk to her.” Now I wasn’t whispering.

He shook his head.

“No?” I asked.

“No, darlin’. First, weak or not, that shit’s whacked. That isn’t about bein’ a mean girl. She fucked with people’s lives, their happiness. If she knew they were doin’ that to us, she shouldn’t have participated or sometime in the last seven years she shoulda opened her goddamned mouth and said something to me. I’ve known her since high school. She came clean, she knew I’d be pissed but, at least with her, I’d get over it. So, I talk to her, I might lose it and she’s not worth the emotion. Second, you talk to her, you might lose it and ditto the emotion. Third, we’ll find out what happened but that shit is not gonna get Buddy Sharp’s ass hanging out there. Nobody likes him already. They know he did that to us, they’ll just like him less and that’s no skin off his nose. Trespassing, breaking and entering, destroying property and poisoning horses will get his ass hanging out there. I doubt any of that will carry a huge jail sentence but it’s unlawful and that bank isn’t gonna keep a VP with a rap sheet in a corner office. That’s worth our energy, not Prisc.”

He was back to rational and logical if not, from the burn in his eyes, easygoing.

“People suck” I declared, Gray stared at me a second then grinned.

There it was. The easygoing. Back quick as a flash.

So Gray.

“Yeah, they do,” he agreed.

“Well, I didn’t tell you the good news and that is that your hard as nails, ex-Vegas showgirl kicked her ass verbally.”

His grin became a smile.

“Too bad I missed that.”

“I was awesome,” I bragged.

His smile became a chuckle through which he ordered, “Come here, Ivey.”

I went there and he folded his arms around me as I curled mine around him.

Then he tipped his chin down and caught my eyes.

“Know somethin’?” he asked.

“I know a lot of things, Gray, though one of them is not what you’re going to say.”

Gray grinned again then his eyes got tender (he’d dispensed with the “near to” part of that about a week and a half ago, after I mourned for the loss of the Grandma Miriam I knew and now he just always went straight to tender).