Dennis Lee stared at Jenny, horror making him silent for once. “You’ve been sleeping with that dried-up old stick for fifteen years.”
“Well, yes. Actually, it has been fourteen years. I…shortly after I moved to Finley Creek from Pennsylvania. Carl and I…we met in that first real estate class we took. And he was kind to me. Made me feel worthy of a man’s attention.” Jenny’s shirt was still buttoned wrong. Her lips were swollen and red, and not from the lipstick she favored.
She’d been in Carl’s bed.
He’d seen her kiss that dried-up old stick. And it had been a kiss of passion.
Right there in her condo’s front entryway. Carl Buchanan. Dennis Lee had parked and stormed up to her door, demanding answers.
Jenny—his Jenny—had been unfaithful to him. Dennis Lee honestly didn’t know what to think. “Don’t I mean anything to you?”
He loved this woman. More than he probably had any other. Maybe he hadn’t exactly been too faithful to her himself—he was a man with his own set of limitations, after all—but he’d thought she’d been faithful.
That she hadn’t been, that she had been with Carl Buchanan first—that was a blow that had him reeling.
And unsure what he was supposed to do next.
No woman had ever cheated on him before. That she had done so with Carl was just an even harsher blow.
If Dennis Lee had a nemesis, it was Carl.
“I…I need to go, Jenny. I…just don’t know what to think.” Dennis Lee shot her a look, seeing her with open eyes for the first time.
“Denny, don’t be like this. You know I…love you. I just love Carl, too. What is so wrong in that?”
“Simple. A woman can’t love Carl and me at the same time. It just isn’t possible.”
Dennis Lee turned and walked away before he lashed out at her and hurt her. Like he had his first wife so many years ago.
That was one of his few mistakes, and one he’d vowed never to make again.
Dennis Lee didn’t know what else to do; he headed back to his office. And planned.