You Dropped a Blonde on Me Read online

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Note from Maxine Cambridge to all ex-trophy wives: Relationship advice. Jealousy. Such an ugly beast, no? If you’re looking for excuses to run and hide from another relationship, the green-eyed monster is a perfect scapegoat. But remember this: In allowing fear to rule your life, happiness will always be an elusive butterfly. So do yourself a skinny. Hunt that bitch down, net in hand, and catch it before it owns you.

  Max literally flew from her mother’s car into the pool house where Campbell was supposed to be fixing the Jacuzzi. The entire drive back over to the village, all she could think about was telling him what she’d discovered about Fin and all his stalling.

  Her joy at finding out Finley’s game plan, even if it was still to her and Connor’s disadvantage, couldn’t be denied its due. She wanted to shout her independence, scream her victory. And in this moment, she wanted to share it with Campbell. To prove to him she wasn’t going to be steamrolled.

  She stopped short at the sauna, peeking inside to find Campbell wasn’t there. Max poked her head into the ladies’ locker room to see if someone knew where he was. Hearing Mrs. Riley’s nasally voice, Max sighed. Poor Irene probably couldn’t hear how loud she was without her hearing aids.

  But her next words brought Max to a dead stop.

  “You heard me right, Esther. And all this time we thought Campbell was a nice boy. I can’t believe he’s Garner’s son.”

  A snort filtered to Max’s ears. “Well, he’s a nice-lookin’ boy, that’s for sure.”

  “Not nice-lookin’ enough to put up with his kind of crap. The way that poor Maxine’s going, he’ll just do to her what’s already been done.”

  Max’s face flushed over her eavesdropping. What kind of crap?

  “Are you sure you heard right, Irene? Just doesn’t sit well with me. I see the way he looks at Maxine, and I really like Maxine. She’s been so good for the village.”

  “I know what I heard, Esther!” Irene said with vehemence. “He said he was going to dump Maxine for Linda, clear as the day is long. Someone has to tell her, Esther. She’s had some time of it.”

  Everything else drifted away, their voices became muted and muffled by the sound of her crashing heart.

  Linda.

  Campbell’s ex-wife.

  Max had to grip the edge of the door to keep her knees from caving.

  Breathe.

  You’ve been here before, Max. Breathe.

  Breathe and think. But don’t think too much before you talk to Campbell.

  Coaxing herself to stop and give this rational thought before the snowflakes in her mind became one giant snowball of accusations and unproven innuendo.

  Yes, it sounded bad, she reminded herself, but she couldn’t get a feel for how bad until she talked to Campbell.

  Hookay. She felt the blood rush back into her limbs and her breathing steady.

  No more running away. No more pretending bad things didn’t happen if you burrowed deep enough under your blankets.

  Head-on. That’s what she’d do. She’d attack this head-on and give Campbell the chance to explain before she flipped a nut.

  She would not fall apart. Her superglue tube was empty.

  Good.

  Shoving her purse under her arm, she let the door go and headed off with determination to find Campbell.

  All mature-like.

  “Mom?”

  “Yeah, kiddo?” she replied, distracted by her inability to locate Campbell after two phone calls and a scan of the village in her mother’s car.

  “Check out what I found,” Connor said, plunking down in the kitchen chair beside her and placing his laptop on the table.

  Max didn’t look up, but muttered, “What did you find?”

  “Look. It’s Campbell.” He held up the screen of his laptop in front of her.

  She read the headline on the Yahoo! front page almost with disinterest, skimming the words. That is until she reread it and gazed at the face she was so close to falling in love with. Her response was slow, stilted by the words swimming in front of her eyes. “Yeah. It sure is.”

  Connor’s eyes searched hers. “Mom, what’s wrong? This is a good thing, right?”

  Max couldn’t tear her eyes from the picture of Campbell, excruciatingly handsome, in a tuxedo with some beautiful, more to the point young, brunette on his arm.

  Jet-setting, according to the article in the top searches on Yahoo!.

  “I can’t believe Campbell owns Chirped,” Connor exclaimed. “That’s pretty tight.”

  Max fought a pent-up scream and tried to focus on not letting her imagination get the best of her. “What is Chirped?”

  Connor’s fingers flitted over the keyboard, taking her to the official homepage of Chirped. The one owned by Campbell Barker who pretended he was just a humble plumber. “It’s a social site, Mom. You know, like Facebook and MySpace? You socialize with other people, and you chirp whatever you want to say in a hundred and fifty words or less. You can network with other people who like the stuff you do. Like if you’re into knitting like Grandma, you can search for other people who like to knit, too. Then you follow them so you can keep up with their chirps.”

  “Do you have an account on Chirped, Connor?”

  He shook his head, picking up the laptop. “Nah. Still just the Facebook you said okay to. And yes, it’s still locked,” he said before she could question him.

  So Campbell Barker was rich. Probably richer than Finley.

  And he liked younger women, according to the Yahoo! article, toned, tanned, buff younger women who were daughters of rich moguls.

  And here he was dating a jacked-up, sagging ex-trophy wife in a senior citizens’ village. A poor, old, outdated reproduction of what he dated when he was in Morocco. Or had the article said Saint Moritz?

  All that talk about how beautiful she was—Spanx and sagging ass be damned—was nothing but a lie. Every second they’d shared, every moment she’d come to treasure, was about as meaningful as her twenty-year marriage to a man who was just an older replica of Campbell.

  Max rested her forehead in her hand, using the heel of it to massage the building tension. What she’d heard today in the locker room might have been relayed inaccurately, but pictures didn’t lie.

  Idiot, idiot, idiot. You’re no different than the fool you were twenty years ago, Max. Still bowled over by a little attention from a man.

  “Max?” Campbell startled her when he pushed her mother’s door open. He came up behind her, squeezing her shoulders and nuzzling her neck. “Hey, honey. Heard you were looking for me.”

  Her nostrils caught his once welcome scent, her eyes stung with tears of a disappointment so deep, she had trouble breathing. She stiffened on contact, fighting the impulse to haul off and head butt him. “I sure was. All day, as a matter of fact.”

  Pulling her from the chair, Campbell spun her around to face him, greeting her with his smile. The same smile that was plastered on his face while he escorted some nubile brunette onto some yacht. “I’m sorry. I was tied up at Mr. Morris’s. I forgot I never turned on my phone. I came as soon as I heard you were looking for me.”

  Her heart ached, but she kept her expression stiff, her body unyielding. “Did you forget you’re rich, too?” she asked quietly.

  Campbell’s eyes never wavered when they held hers. They were still just as blue, still just as sincere as always. He glanced around, and nodded his head toward the door. “You want to talk outside?”

  In light of the fact that Connor was there, that’d probably be a good idea. Max dragged her coat from the back of the chair, her hands trembling and already cold. “Yep.”

  He held the door for her, taking her limp hand in his and leading her to the small patio tables and chairs her mother had on her front lawn. “So you know,” he said, plunking down in a padded chair like it was no big deal that he was ungodly rich.

  Max didn’t sit. Instead, she fisted her hands and put them in the pockets of her jacket
to fight off a violent shiver. “I know. What I want to know is why you didn’t tell me.” Did she really, really want to know? Yes, she decided. She was all about the truth, good, bad, and ugly, and though she found she was mentally bracing herself, she also found, she could take it.

  Yay.

  His smile never wavered. “That part of my life seemed pretty distant here in the village. It’s just a number in some bank accounts.”

  “Was the number on your arm in the picture on Yahoo! just a number in a bank account? You might want to rethink that statement. She was pretty hot.”

  Campbell ignored her jibe. “The picture on Yahoo!?”

  Shades of Finley, playing stupid, slapped Max square in the face. “Yeah. You should be proud. You were number three on Yahoo!’s top searches.”

  Realization spread across his face. “Must be because of the sale of Chirped.”

  Max nodded sharply. “Yeah, funny that,” she responded, purposely allowing her words to be tinged with sarcasm. “So I guess the joke about the Ferrari being your other car really wasn’t such a joke, was it?”

  The weary lines around Campbell’s eyes had begun to show impatience. “I didn’t realize my owning Chirped was that big of a deal, Max.”

  Her mouth fell open. She held up a hand in disbelief. “Hold on. You didn’t think being a multimillionaire was a big deal?” How could he even say such a thing to her?

  “It’s just money.”

  “Oh, it’s more than money. It’s an assload of money. So much money you’re probably richer than Finley, and it never occurred to you to tell me. Why is that? Were you afraid I might get a little taste of what I was accustomed to and decide to set my sights on you?”

  The smile Campbell wore left his face, replaced with a hard look she’d only seen him give Finley. “Why don’t you tell me what you’re getting at?”

  “You obviously didn’t want me to know.”

  “Shouldn’t you be glad I’m rich, Max, and not some poor plumber?”

  No! she wanted to scream. When Campbell was a plumber, they were on equal footing. They bagged their lunches together so she could save money. He helped her clip coupons. Campbell Barker didn’t have to clip coupons.

  This was no different than Fin. Campbell could buy and sell her—he could have anything or anyone he wanted, and eventually, when his money exposed him to something he couldn’t resist, if he hadn’t already, he’d trash her. Not this time. Money made people angry, and greedy, and spiteful. “You know what’s funny about you being rich?”

  “Whatever it is, it isn’t making you laugh,” was his flat reply.

  “The funny thing is, you’re right, I should be happy. I mean, what girl wouldn’t be thrilled to find out her sort-of boyfriend’s rich? But not me, Campbell. Not me. I know what having that kind of money means. It not only means you lied to me, but it means I’m something you can trade off at whim. It means when the next shiny thing comes along, you know, when you’re no longer stuck here in the village with the only woman even close to your age to pass the time with, sleep with, you’ll be off sailing on yachts with bikini-clad twenty-year-olds. Oh, wait! You’ve already done that, right? I must pale in comparison to whatshisface’s daughter!”

  In a second he was off the chair and gathering her by her upper arms, glaring down at her with disgust he didn’t bother to hide. “Do you really think I’d do that, Max? What do you suppose my big ulterior motive for not telling you is?”

  “I don’t know, Campbell. Maybe it’s Linda,” she taunted up into his face.

  “Linda?” he pretended not to know who she meant.

  Yeah. Like she was the crazy one here. “Yeah—there’s another funny thing. Irene Riley heard you talking on your cell today. The one that was turned off. Remember that?”

  “I did turn it off, Max. Jesus Christ, this is ridiculous,” he snapped, letting her go to shove a hand through his hair.

  “Really? I don’t know, but Irene said she heard you telling someone you were, and I quote, ‘Going to dump Max for Linda’! Isn’t your ex-wife’s name Linda? So who’s ridiculous now?”

  Looming over her, he stared her down. “That is exactly what I said—almost.”

  Max paled. She’d expected denial, a good tall tale, but never the truth.

  “What I said was I can’t just dump Max for Linda today because Max and I have a date. Linda’s my lawyer, Max. I wasn’t talking to my ex-wife. Her secretary called and said she wanted to meet to go over the sale of Chirped, but I told her I couldn’t because I had a dinner date with you. Here,” he pulled out his cell phone with a harsh yank from his pocket, flipping through pages until he reached Linda’s number. “We’ll call her up and you can see for yourself. Will that ease your mind, Max? Is that what it’ll take to show you I’m nothing like that prick of a husband you can’t seem to rid yourself of?”

  “You’re just like him. Just like him!” she yelled into the cold wind. “You may look better. You might be nicer to little old ladies and has-been beauty queens, but you’re just like him. I saw those pictures of you cavorting with plenty of young women, but how ironic there were no pictures of you cavorting on some white sandy beach with middle-aged, sagging, faded prom queens!”

  Campbell was quiet for a moment—so calm and eerily still, she wanted to grab him and shake him to make him say something.

  The wind blew, frosty and sharp against her heated cheeks.

  Wind chimes sounded from all around the cul-de-sac with mournful tones.

  Garden gnomes mocked her with painted eyes and cheerful smiles.

  When Campbell finally spoke, his voice was almost hoarse and so low, Max had to strain to hear his defense. “You know why there are no pictures of me with women like you? Because there was no you until a few months ago.”

  Her heart shuddered in her chest.

  “Know what else, Max? You’re right. I should have told you about my money and explained the pictures on the Internet. I’m not a big celebrity. Just a guy who came up with a concept that hit the big time and got lucky. I’m sure the only reason I’m anywhere on the Internet is because of the sale of Chirped. I’ve kept a pretty low profile until the press got wind of the sale just recently. If you’d given me the chance, I would have told you that. I also would have told you those women, all of two, are daughters of good friends of mine whose fathers would hack off my head if I ever considered dating them. I’m betting the brunette you saw online was my friend Hal’s daughter. She’s seventeen, FYI, and the picture they took of us was from her sweet-sixteen party. But why believe me when you can believe some lowlife journalist who’d love nothing more than to depict some sleazy May-December romance with the teenage daughter of a computer guru?”

  Oh.

  Oh. Oh. Oh.

  She figured he put his index finger to his mouth to keep her from speaking without actually telling her to shut the hell up. “You see, Max, there’s this thing called communication, and you blow big chunks at it. You don’t ask. You run with some crazy story in your head, and I think tonight I’ve come to the conclusion you always will.”

  Cold stabs of fear jabbed her from the inside out. Her feet, frozen in place, ached, her hands numb from clenching them into tight fists. The air seeped from her lungs as she waited to hear what she knew he’d say next.

  Campbell’s head dropped when he said, “I’ve been patient, Max. I’ve let you accuse me of things I’d never even think of doing. And all the time I kept telling myself, ‘Campbell, you’re getting involved with a woman who’s been tragically hurt and brainwashed to believe she’s useless aside from her good looks and hot rack. Campbell, you’ll have to take it slow. Campbell, don’t be too hard on her. She’s afraid to trust you. Campbell, you’re falling in love with a woman who will always think the worst before she thinks the best.’ I’ve reassured you even when you don’t ask me to. I’ve kept every promise I ever made to you. Hell, I panic if my Bat-watch isn’t totally in sync with yours and I call you two minutes past t
he hour I said I’d call. I don’t want to own you, Max. I want to share my life with you. I want you to share your life with as many people as you please. I want you to be happy. I want you to find the kind of peace that lets you live out loud. I wanted you!” he hollered, clearly unfazed by the porch lights that flipped on in response to his roar.

  Max wanted to reach for him, beg him to let her make it right. Len’s words came back to haunt her. There was only so much indulgence in her insecurities a person could give, and Campbell had reached his limit.

  “So tonight, I’m raising the white flag, because you keep doing the same Goddamned thing, Max, and I’ve done nothing to warrant the kind of shit you feed me. Tonight, I realized something. You know what that is?”

  Her lower lip trembled, yet Max stuck her chest out so she could take it like a man. Because she fucking deserved this. “What?”

  “I realized you just can’t trust me. You won’t trust me, and I realized something else, too. Something almost as important as your issues with trust. You’re looking for any excuse you can find to get out of this so you don’t even have to try. It’s much easier to allow fear to control you than it is to fight for control of your life. I expected some doubt on your part, and I was ready to deal with it, but I didn’t expect a constant barrage of it. I fully expected you’d get the big picture after spending so much time with me. After I’ve proven time and again I can be trusted. But this?” He flung his hand up in the space between them. “This kind of suspicion is no way to live. So maybe you were right when you said we were at different places in our lives. I just don’t think I believe you’ll ever leave that place and migrate to mine.”

  Campbell reached out a hand, cupping the back of her head. He pulled her to him and planted a quick kiss on her forehead.

  She savored the smell of him, the strong feel of his hand when she laid hers against it, only to have him pull away.

  “Take care, Max,” he said, before taking quick strides to his truck.

  The engine roared to life.

  And Campbell Barker drove out of her life.