Mirror of My Soul by Joey Hill (book club recommendations .TXT) 📕

Violet looked surprised that Marguerite herself had initiated the confrontation, but she quickly recovered. “A good idea. Go play over there.” Violet nodded across the pool, to a grouping of lounge chairs. “Read one of your tedious industry magazines.

Marguerite and I want time for girl talk without your busy nose in the middle of it.”

Tyler raised a brow. “Last time I checked, this was my home.”

“Last time I checked, I could probably kick your ass.”

He snorted, straightened as Violet regarded him with dancing eyes, but there was a firm determination to her mouth that made his eyes narrow in return.

“Do you promise to play nice?”

“Tyler, there’s nothing here I can’t handle.” Marguerite interjected it before she could respond. She locked gazes with Violet in direct challenge. Violet dipped her head, a grudging smile tugging at her lips.

Tyler at length nodded, passed a caressing knuckle over Marguerite’s cheek. He did in fact circle to the other side of the pool, but once he was there, he apparently decided he preferred a more active use of his time than Violet had suggested. Stripping off his shirts and slacks, he revealed that he wore a pair of thin swimming shorts underneath them. The movements of his body lithe and male, he dove cleanly in the pool to begin a series of laps.

Violet cleared her throat. Marguerite pulled her gaze back to her, saw a flash of humor in the woman’s eyes. “Men shouldn’t be that beautiful, should they?” She tilted her head toward her husband, not looking directly at him, but from the gleam in the Caribbean blue eyes, Marguerite was certain Violet had perfected the art of perusing him at her leisure while driving him mad with the feigned indifference. An indifference she was sure Mac knew was illusion, driving up the sexual tension between them. His attention was riveted on her every movement. Even as his head rested back on the lounger, his fingers gripped the straps holding him with tension. Marguerite noted his cock was rising again, noted that Violet had not completely cleaned him. Apparently she preferred to leave the stain of his semen dampening the trimmed thatch of dark pubic hair beneath the stiffening shaft, the thin point of dark hair running down his hard lower abdomen.

She was right. Men should not be that beautiful. Marguerite forced herself not to look back at the pool, at the sight of Tyler completing a turn, his lean body swift and powerful, the water gleaming on the length of his arms and breadth of shoulders as he stroked across it. She took a seat in a chair, crossed one leg over the other, folded her 146

Mirror of My Soul

hands in her lap as if she were in her tearoom. “We have our privacy. Cut to the chase, Mistress Violet. Say what you’ve been wanting to say since the night at The Zone.”

Violet sized her up with that measuring gaze, a cop’s eyes. “All right then, I will.

You know how his wife died.”

With those few words, she’d effectively narrowed the room to just the two of them.

Violet kept her voice low, obviously not intending Tyler to catch a snippet of the conversation, which Marguerite was certain would have ended it abruptly.

“I do. She should have been there for him, as much as he was there for her.”

Violet inclined her head. “Amen to that. I know it, you know it, but guys like Tyler and Mac, they don’t believe in therapy sessions and psychoses. They come from this medieval age bullshit that says if they aren’t a hundred percent together for their women, they aren’t men. So if I hadn’t known him as well as I do, I’d have said he went to Europe to prove something, not because he loved her and truly wanted her back. But he did love her.”

She paused. “He was going to surprise her. He bought a ticket to her performance, but was too late to get the good seat he wanted. He hoped to let her see him, let her know he was there.”

Marguerite’s hands tightened together as she realized what she was hearing was firsthand, what Violet had learned from Tyler himself and now interpreted with the love and outrage of a close friend. She leaned forward so Violet would not have to raise her voice further, wanting to hear all of it.

“He bought her flowers, planned to go to her hotel that night. He walked in about ten minutes after they found her. That, like nothing else, nearly killed him.” Violet’s eyes were vibrant. “Because he genuinely believes if she had seen him there that night, known he was there, she wouldn’t have done it. And the bitch of it is, he’s probably right. She couldn’t handle being without him, but she also couldn’t handle being with him when he had to break down and be fucking human.”

“And you think I’m like her?”

“No.” Violet surprised her with the immediate answer. “You’re like Tyler.

Whatever happened to you, you pulled it together on your own, kept on going. That’s a point in your favor and why I’m telling you this. When he came back from Europe, he stopped writing, producing, stopped going to The Zone. Got drunk a lot. I was the officer who arrested him after he went looking for a bar fight and fortunately was too blind drunk to kill anyone.” A grim smile touched her lips. “It’s funny how friendships get started. But then he pulled it together one more time. I don’t know how often a person can do that before he’s got nothing left.”

You’d be surprised, Marguerite thought.

“He loves you, Marguerite. With all of him. It’s so plain that it hurts me to see it, to worry that it might not be enough for you, because he has so much to give.”

Marguerite held Violet’s penetrating gaze. “I never wanted to hurt him. I’ve tried to say no in every way I could.”

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