Slow Hands

but Tabitha had not. She’d screamed at her fiancé, shrieking that he was partially responsible for what had happened. She’d refused to ride with him, climbing in beside a tearful Deborah and a white-lipped Maddy instead.
    “He’ll be all right, won’t he? Please say he’ll be all right,” Deborah said from the backseat. She’d been repeating those words in some variation since the moment Jake had pulled into traffic, driving fast, ignoring the speed limit as much as he safely could.
    “I’m sure he will,” he replied, again. “He had constant CPR from almost the second his heart stopped. The EMTs were able to immediately defibrillate him back into a rhythm and he had a decent pulse by the time they pulled out.”
    A thready one…not that he told them that. Because any pulse was better than if Jason Turner hadn’t responded to defib at all and had to undergo CPR all the way to the hospital.
    “Thank God,” Deborah whispered.
    “Yeah. But no thanks to you ,” Tabby snapped.
    Jake sucked in a slow breath. He’d been expecting this—waiting for the moment when it would start. Maddy had been silent, her lips moving as if she were saying quiet prayers for her father. Tabby’s shock had worn off—now she was looking for someone to blame. Make that someone else to blame, considering she’d already told off Oliver and yelled at her husband-to-be.
    Man, was the woman unlike her sister.
    “Tabitha, please don’t,” Maddy murmured from the front seat. Jake reached over and took her hand, squeezing it. He didn’t want her going through any more stress right now.
    He seconded her plea. “It’s not the time.”
    “When is the time? After she buries him under the ground and puts on widow’s black to go out and do her whoring around?”
    “Shut up,” Deborah said wearily. “I don’t have to explain myself to you. You have no idea what you’re talking about.”
    “Oh, you mean, my father didn’t grab his chest and have a heart attack because he found out his loving wife of one year was screwing around on him?”
    “It’s not her fault,” Maddy mumbled. “Dad can’t stand the sight of Oliver. He was working himself up into a frenzy without a single word about Deborah.”
    Knowing Maddy, too, had to resent her stepmother, Jake found himself surprised by the defense. Then again, Maddy knew her sister better than anyone. Probably the only way to calm Tabitha down was to try to deflate her righteous anger.
    “Bullshit. He didn’t keel over until after Oliver announced to the entire room that Deborah was a cheat.”
    “He knows,” Deborah murmured, still sounding tired—and not interested in fighting.
    “What?” Maddy turned in her seat.
    “Not that I’m a cheat. I’m not.” With indescribable pain in her voice she added, “But he told me to feel free to become one.” She met Jake’s stare in the rearview mirror. “I’m sorry, I understand there was a mistake about your identity.” Then she dropped her gaze. “Besides, it’s not like I would have gone through with it. I saw the way you looked at him, Maddy.”
    “You told him where to find me,” she murmured from the passenger seat.
    The woman shrugged. “What can I say? Hopeless romantic, that’s me.” Then she spoiled it, adding, “I know your father’s been worried about you. You’re all he ever talks about. Madeline this, and Madeline that.”
    There was a hard note in her voice, though why she’d display more anger toward the quiet, crying stepdaughter than to the bitchy, screeching one, Jake couldn’t possibly say.
    “I hoped that if you found someone, got busy with some kind of personal life, maybe it would be one less thing he’d have to stress over. I was hoping he’d stop the incessant worrying about you.”
    So her goal hadn’t been exactly selfless.
    “You are so full of it,” Tabby snapped. “Don’t believe a word of it, Mad, this is all a pack of lies.”
    “I’m not a liar. I am a forty-four-year-old woman who hasn’t had sex in months, whose husband encouraged her to go out and get it somewhere else because he’s no longer interested.”
    Whoa, this conversation he did not want to be party to. Not that he had any way to escape from it.
    Judging by Maddy’s wide eyes and pale complexion, he didn’t think she wanted to hear it, either. Now that the words had started, though, Deborah didn’t seem in any hurry to shut her mouth. “Do you know what it’s like to try to keep up the happy