Solitaire, Minesweep, Pinball before he switched to surfing the Net, ostensibly to research, but really wound up extending his time-wasting tactics. He popped in and out of game sites, and idly chatted on several listserves to which he belonged, anything to stay away from his work-in-progress. Anything to avoid the fact that he just didn’t have it this morning. He didn’t want to admit how much that confrontation with Jade had shaken him, had shown him a side of her he’d never wanted to see, a side he’d wrought with his cavalier style. How could he have been so blind? He’d hurt not only Tabitha, but Jade with his no strings, you-go-your-way-andI’ll-go-mine philosophy, had had no idea of the depth of feelings she harbored for him, no idea of how long she’d felt the way she did for him. EJ had tried to comfort himself in the knowledge that Jade was a sharp grown woman who knew the deal, that no one had forced her to do anything, but when he got right down to it, he knew that he had manipulated her as surely as she had tried to manipulate him last night, had strung her along for his own benefit—or more accurately for the benefit of his little friend.
