COUNTERPOINT
An original romantic serial

From Alina Adams the author of "When a Man Loves a Woman" (DELL 4/00), "Annie's Wild Ride" (AVON 8/98), "Inside Figure Skating" (METROBOOKS 11/00 & 9/99), "Thieves at Heart" (AVON 12/95) and "The Fictitious Marquis" (AVON 6/95)

Available weekly by e-mail from http://www.AlinaAdams.com

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CHAPTER 59

      Nicole practiced self-restraint. She waited a whole week after finding out that Robin hadn't returned to Victoria before she went to see him. Of course, she told Robin that she was only there to find out whether or not their divorce had actually gone through. Was she a free woman now, or what?
      He told her, "I rushed it through. Consider yourself a gay divorcee."
      "Oh."
      "Second thoughts?"
      He was baiting her. After all these years, Nicole certainly knew when her darling husband - ex-husband - was baiting her. The only thing she didn't know, was how to rise above it.
      And so Nicole went with what she did know. Baiting him back, trying to be the first to draw blood.
      "Not as bad as yours."
      "And what's that supposed to mean?"
      "Robin. Darling. How many years did I spend listening to your sad song about all the marvelous things you were going to do as soon as Big, Bad Nicole got her rotten, filthy claws out of your precious hide?"
      "I'm pacing myself. Don't want to be too happy all at once."
      "The last time you sang me your soliloquy, you swore my shackles were the only things keeping you from the love of your life, one Miss Victoria Morgan."
      "I really wouldn't go there if I were you, Nicole."
      She recognized the familiar menace in his voice. And she recognized her own familiar response to it - her conviction that, if she was making him angry, she was getting to him. She was making him feel something - anything - towards her. And anything was always better than nothing.
      She pressed her advantage. "And yet, here you sit, all alone. No Nicole, no Victoria. Me thinks perhaps your ardor wasn't quite as passionate as you once claimed."
      "How do you do it, Nicole? How do you manage to make badly paraphrased Shakespeare sound both cheap and obscene?"
      "Could it be, perchance, that it was the chase you were passionate about, not the woman?"
      Robin indicated the door. "Just leave, Nicole, all right? Now that we're not married, I don't think it's legal for me to hit you, anymore."
      "Oh, please, you've never hit me, Robin and you never will. You don't have the balls."
      Robin sat back down at his desk and, rather politely, asked, "Are you aware that you're insane, Miss Simonge?"
      "It takes one to know one, Mr. Cooper."
      "This is true. And you know what else it takes one to do? It only takes one to sever a dysfunctional relationship. Which I have done. So, you know what? Be gone, witch, before someone drops a house on you, too."
      "You'll come back to me," Nicole said.
      Robin burst out laughing. He'd meant to offer a dramatic, theatrical boom, but what came out was much lighter and purely genuine. The thought of him reuniting with Nicole gave him his first honest-to-goodness laugh in what felt like an eternity.
      "You will," she repeated confidently. "What do you think this rejection of Victoria is all about? I'm the only woman who has ever been able to handle you. You'll realize it soon enough, and then you'll come back to me."
      "Oh, please, Nicole," Robin didn't even bother looking up from his desk as he aimed his next barb. Which was why he missed seeing how, for the very first time in their entire self-described dysfunctional relationship, his arrow actually succeeded in dealing Nicole a mortal blow. "Please, what sober man in his right mind would ever want you?"
     
      She stumbled out of his office in a blind rage, Robin's words echoing in her ears and digging their blades deeper and deeper into her heart until Nicole actually feared that something Robin said to her would finally be enough to make her cry.
      But, she refused to give him the satisfaction. She refused to let him hurt her this way. She refused to let him get to her. She had to show him. She had to make him eat his words. While she stood by and gloated.
      And, by the by, if her plan did some damage to his precious Victoria, well, that would simply be a bonus.
      To that end, Nicole didn't stop to think. As soon as she exited the Cooper Shipping building, she headed straight for Gabriel's clinic. She blew in with the force of The Plague, ignoring the sickly indigent waiting on line and barging right in on Gabriel in the middle of examining patient.
      "Gabriel?" It wasn't a question. It was a statement.
      He looked up from the shot he was trying to administer to a screaming toddler and yelled to be heard over the din, "I'm a little busy, here, Nicole."
      "Gabriel."
      "What?"
      "Will you marry me?"
      Gabriel turned back to the boy, carefully inserting the needle into his arm. Once he was done, Gabriel shrugged. "Sure."