Perfect Fit - Brenda Jackson [27]
With tears blinding her, Sage managed to make it back to her room with the realization that in the same day, the two men she had trusted most had let her down.
She had sat downstairs in the lobby on the sofa for three, close to four, solid hours, refusing to move. She had to be there when her father came down on the elevator; she had all intentions of confronting him. But when he did come down, and the woman was with him, Sage couldn’t do anything but sit there and stare, her body numb and glued to the spot, as she watched them leave the hotel together, smiling at each other and holding hands, not even noticing her presence.
And that was when the tears she had fought so hard to hold back had come flooding down. How could he do this to her mother? Was he willing to throw away thirty years for a pretty face and a young body?
Moving in slow motion, a grief-stricken Sage put on her pajamas. She then sat on the edge of the bed and checked the calls she had missed on her cell phone, not surprised to see that all of them but one had been from Erol. She automatically deleted Erol’s messages, not wanting to hear his voice, and retrieved her mother’s message. The call had been made nearly two hours ago, during the same time Sage had been sitting in the lobby downstairs.
“Sage, I didn’t know you had returned to town until Erol called earlier looking for you. He sounded worried. Is everything all right, sweetheart? Your father is working late again tonight, so I’ll be visiting Mrs. Myers at the hospital. I’ll have my mobile phone on if you need to reach me.”
Sage swallowed the lump in her throat, thinking that no, everything was not all right with her, and she doubted things would ever be again. Not wanting to watch anything on television, she removed the remote from the bed and placed it on the nightstand. Something about her felt different, detached, lost.
The first thought that came to her mind was that her mother—her trusting and loving mother—had a right to know that her husband was not always working late as he claimed. She deserved to know that on some of those nights—this one in particular—he’d been laid up in a hotel room with a woman.
Sage blinked back more tears. Whoever said that when it rained it poured knew exactly what they were talking about. And for the first time her heart was beating so heavy in her chest she thought she would die. Betrayal from people you loved was nothing short of a deep, crushing blow, and tonight she was feeling the full effect. Erol and her father had definitely opened her eyes to things she had been blinded to for so long. Rose was right. A man could not be trusted, and Sage had learned that hard lesson all in one day.
CHAPTER SIX
The next morning when Sage stepped out of the elevator into the ornate lobby of the hotel, she felt that she had a somewhat better grip on things. She paused briefly, inhaling deeply, determined to face whatever problems she had head-on and deal with them as best she could.
There was nothing more she had to say to Erol, and since there was no way she could live with him any longer, she planned to move out. The big question was, where would she go? Under normal circumstances, to move back in with her parents for a while would be the most logical choice. But after what she had seen last night involving her father, being logical didn’t play into anything anymore. The way she presently felt, the less time she spent around him, the better. She was too confused and hurt to think otherwise.
One thing was for certain, though: she intended to confront him about last night. There was no way she could not. She wanted him to tell her what he planned to do about her mother. She felt her mother had a right to know her husband was being unfaithful, and a sense of mother-daughter loyalty dictated that she be the one to tell her if her father did not. What woman wouldn’t want to know that she was being made