Kitabı oku: «I Found You», sayfa 2
“It could need stitches.”
“I’m not going to a hospital. I can’t stand those places. I’ll be fine.”
I took my hand from his and he looked up, his gaze caught on my breasts then lifted.
See, a man, he couldn’t help but look.
He met my gaze, and I knew he knew I’d seen him look. There was color in his cheeks. It made me want to laugh. He didn’t look like he’d had that many women when he blushed, but he was gorgeous, surely he must have had a few.
His brown gaze held mine. “Okay, no hospital.”
I gave him my hand again.
His touch was really gentle for a man. I bent up my knees in the tub and wrapped my other arm about them, watching him. He had some antiseptic in a cup and dunked cotton-wool pads into it, then wiped the blood from my hand, while he rested the back of it on his knee.
I couldn’t remember anyone ever paying so much attention to one of my hurts. “Did your mom do this for you when you were a boy; is that how you learned to treat wounds?”
His brown eyes looked up and said he didn’t appreciate the comment.
“Have you got a big family then, back in the hills?”
“The hills?” His eyebrows lifted, and then he answered in a dry tone. “Very funny… I didn’t grow up in the middle of nowhere, you know. It’s a small town, not a shack.”
“With a small town society and small town views––”
“And moms who teach you how to clean a wound if you get injured… What’s so bad about that?”
“Nothing…”
His brown eyes looked hard at me for a moment. But those eyes were easy to look at, and he had long dark, almost feminine, eyelashes.
“Right. So just let me get on with it, Rachel…” His gaze fell to my hand again, then after a moment he glanced back up. “Do you have a family somewhere?”
Yes, but not that I cared to speak of. I felt my lips compress.
His eyes hovered on mine for a moment, asking unspoken questions, before they dropped to look at my hand once more.
His touch was caring, as well as gentle.
He looked up and saw me watching, then smiled, suddenly. He had a nice smile too, a really open-hearted smile.
This was a genuine guy. Someone like Declan would eat him alive. “So you don’t like your job?”
“I don’t know. There’s so much frigging office politics, I can’t keep up with it. I think I need to be a bit more cutthroat, but I’m not that type. I can’t be bothered with all the backstabbing, and I have an asshole for a boss. So I spent three years in college, and now I’m the office nobody.”
Yeah, Declan would definitely eat him alive.
“Talk to me about it. I can teach you backstabbing…” I shouldn’t have said that, the image and sound of the mirror splintering pierced my mind, and I felt the shard gripped in my hand as it sank into Declan’s flesh.
I felt sick. I let my forehead drop onto my knees, while my hand still rested in Jason Macinlay’s secure grip, and my arm hung outstretched to him. My other hugged my knees.
“Where do you come from, Rachel…?” he prodded a moment later, as though he was sweeping the previous topic under a rug and moving on.
His hesitation asked my last name, I’d give him that, but nothing more. “Shears. My name is Rachel Shears.” I looked up again, as my lips compressed.
His brown eyes looked hard into mine, but he didn’t push for more.
He looked down at my hand. “It’s clean. I’ll bandage it up.”
When he let it go, I left my hand lying on his knee. His legs were parted and his sweatpants were loose, but his top was tight, it hugged his abs and the pectoral muscles of his chest as he leaned to the side and picked up a bandage from the first-aid box.
He was beautiful, but unlike Declan there seemed to be beauty inside him too, it wasn’t just a surface thing. He was helping me.
I wanted to turn my hand and grip his thigh. But that would be the wrong thing to do. I knew that. But I was really good at doing wrong things.
Voices inside me encouraged me to do it. I didn’t. The cocaine was still clouding my view.
He straightened and his fingers gripped the back of my hand more firmly. It sent tremors running up the nerves in my arm.
His other hand laid the bandage over my palm and his thumb pressed down on the dressing he’d used to cover my cut, securing it, then he began winding the bandage round my hand.
I shut my eyes.
His touch was doing stuff in my belly, making it clasp with need. I wanted sex. I hadn’t wanted it with Declan anymore, but I wanted it with Jason Macinlay. Sex was the best escape from the things going on in my head. It had never even really mattered who I did it with. I just liked it, and I’d always found a guy who’d give me a place to stay in return for it. They just generally weren’t the right guys.
I’d never even liked Declan. And the feeling had been mutual. But we’d connected in bed. He liked things wild, and wild played to my crazy. God, had I really done that stuff with him? I needed something better now.
I opened my eyes and watched Jason Macinlay concentrating. He wound the bandage round and round, pulling it tight to stop the blood; watching what he was doing, not watching me.
I felt hot, and the tingle in my tummy slid to the point between my legs. I was sitting naked in a tub beside this guy. When had I decided to undress? I didn’t know him. Really, my head was stupid.
Yes I did, he was Jason Macinlay, from Oregon, and he’d already given me more respect than Declan had done in the last year.
“How old are you?” I asked.
His brown eyes lifted and met my gaze again.
He was feeling more relaxed, I could tell, his breathing seemed more normal and his muscles less tense.
“Twenty-two. You?”
“Twenty-one.”
“That’s too young to want to end your life, Rachel Shears.”
I shrugged, my lips compressing.
Of course he wanted to know why I’d been there, but I didn’t want to talk and I couldn’t remember half of it anyway. His eyes said, ‘what happened?’ I didn’t answer.
He smiled, not his stunning smile of a few moments ago, but a closed lip smile that said, okay, so you don’t wanna talk, I understand.
No one understood me. I’d learned that the hard way.
Mom would’ve said she did, when I was a kid. She didn’t, and I hadn’t even seen her in years. I didn’t even know why I was thinking of her today. I hadn’t thought of her in months. I hadn’t spoken to her since I was fifteen.
Maybe I was thinking of her because I wished she’d been a proper mom and had taught me how to clean a wound like Jason Macinlay.
“Drink your coffee, and don’t get that in the water.” He stood up, letting my hand go.
I reached for the mug of coffee with my good hand. It was already lukewarm, like the water. I started to feel cold again, and shivered.
“Run some more hot water. I’ll leave you to it.”
He walked out then, and left me, shutting the door behind him.
I used my bandaged hand to turn the water on.
The bandage was neat and tight.
I lay back in the water, and let the heat seep into me. But it wasn’t just the warmth of the water which was penetrating my body. I could fall for this guy, Jason Macinlay. That was another thing I was good at, jumping from one guy to another. It was what I did best.
~
“Hey,”
“Yeah, I know it’s late. I’m sorry, I…”
I woke in bed, hearing Jason Macinlay whispering in the room next door.
He’d changed the covers on the mattress while I’d bathed. The sheet and duvet cover smelt fresh and felt crisp.
I’d rather he’d left the old sheets on, it would have felt more comforting. I’d missed his scent from his sweatshirt. He’d thrown that in the washer, too, like I’d marked it and he needed to wash me off it.
Declan must have washed all the blood off by now, mine and his. I was gone from his life. That poisonous relationship was over.
“Something happened, Lindy. I couldn’t call earlier. But I’m calling now.”
The door was shut between the bedroom and the living space.
“Yeah, I know.”
I rolled over and listened more intently, I could even hear him breathing between the words.
He sounded defensive.
“Look…” The pitch of his voice dropped. “I found a girl on Manhattan Bridge, Lind. She was trying to jump. I couldn’t just leave her.”
There was silence for a moment as he breathed. I imagined this Lindy speaking at the other end.
“I brought her home.”
Silence.
“Yeah, well, I didn’t know what else to do.”
“Lindy, leave it, she’s no risk.”
“I’ll be fine.”
“Yeah, honest, I’ll take care. I can look out for myself.”
“I know this is New York.”
“Yeah, right.”
“Look, I’m going to go. I don’t want to wake her.”
“She’s sleeping in my bed. I’m sleeping on the floor.”
“She won’t.”
“I won’t.”
“Look Lindy, I’ll call you tomorrow, normal time. I’m going to go now, and don’t worry.”
“Yeah, I love you, too.”
“Yeah, tomorrow.” He sighed, like he had the weight of the world on his shoulders.
I needed a drink. I threw the covers back and got up, then knocked on the door leading back into the living space.
He didn’t answer; he couldn’t have heard, but I didn’t like to just walk in. I knocked more loudly.
“Yeah?”
“You decent?”
He laughed. It was low and heavy. “Yeah.”
I opened the door.
He was sitting on the floor, gilded by the moonlight streaming through a floor to ceiling window which lit his living room. His arms were about his knees as one hand still gripped his cell and his head was bent a little forward.
He looked defeated.
“Sorry.” I didn’t even know why I apologized, I just felt as if I was intruding.
“It’s alright. Did I wake you? Sorry.”
“I want some water.” I moved to the kitchen counter and watched him as I ran it, waiting for it to run cool. He was wearing a loose t-shirt now, with boxers. His forearms and his shins were dusted with dark hair. I could see it even in the blue-black light in the room.
The clock on the TV flashed eleven-thirty. I didn’t feel as though I’d get back to sleep, and my hand was hurting like hell now; it was throbbing with the beat of my heart.
“Is she your girlfriend?”
“Lindy? Yeah.”
“She’s back in Oregon?”
“Yeah.”
“Bet she feels small town, now you’ve gone all big city.”
“Ha. Ha.” His pitch was dismissive. Life clearly wasn’t all roses between them.
“I suppose you’ve been with her forever. What was she, the head of the cheerleaders while you captained the football team?”
“You think you know me so well, don’t you…”
He had been captain of the football team.
I bet they were best looking girl and best looking boy in their year, and they’d gotten together because it was what everyone expected.
“I was the kid who sat in the corner and never had friends…” I didn’t know why I told him that, I just thought it might make him feel better.
“And now?”
My lips compressed.
Turning away, I opened a cupboard and found a glass. “Do you want a drink?”
“No thanks.”
I filled the glass and drank, as again the images of the mirror breaking disturbed my thoughts.
I pushed the memory away. I was starting over and forgetting that.
I moved about the counter, and leaned back against it, facing him. “So what’s wrong between you?”
“Tonight? You. She thinks you’re going to either jump me in my sleep, or steal all my stuff, like I have anything worth stealing.” His hand lifted and swept forward indicating the virtually empty room.
“She might be right, though?” I did feel like jumping him in his sleep. It would be a great way to escape the blackness which kept threatening to swamp me.
His gaze focused up at me as he scanned my face. “She could be right, yes…”
Well, he didn’t know me, and I’d said nothing about myself, bar my name and my age. “She isn’t. You’re safe.”
“Phew, thank fuck for that.”
I laughed. He was a nice guy. There weren’t many of those in the world. I wasn’t used to them.
My eyes shifted to the white pillow on the hard floor behind him. Then I looked at him again.
“So anyway, seeing as I’ve promised not to jump you in your sleep, why don’t you share the mattress? If you’re safe, it seems silly you trying to sleep out here.” I’d be good. He deserved for me to be good. He’d been kind to me.
He looked at me for a long moment. I didn’t move, holding out against his assessment.
I wasn’t blind. I knew he liked what he saw. I was wearing his t-shirt, my legs were bare, and I’d nothing on underneath. It would be so easy to be bad. His gaze ran up my legs and my body then came to my face. But he wasn’t that sort of guy.
All men looked. It didn’t mean all men let themselves touch.
“Yeah, okay, I won’t get any sleep here anyway.”
He picked up his pillow and stood, then lifted the pillow indicating for me to walk ahead.
I went into the bathroom, while he lay down on the mattress, under the covers.
When I came back in, he was watching me, one arm behind his head.
I said nothing, walked to the other side and got in.
He probably wouldn’t mind if I jumped him, but he’d have a hell of a conscience the next day when he spoke to his Lindy.
I turned my back to him and felt him roll onto his stomach. My body was intensely aware of his, and all I could hear was his breathing as he drifted into sleep, while all I could smell was his shampoo, because he’d showered after I’d bathed.
This had been a weird day, I’d finally left Declan and within hours I’d acquired a stranger. My brain wasn’t on the same page as where my life had gotten to. I’d walked out on the life of rich egotistical playboys, and into an opposite extreme.
An ex had once called me a parasite––maybe I was. But maybe I didn’t want to be anymore.
Chapter Two
When I woke, Jason Macinlay was standing by the door of the bedroom, fully clothed, and looking down at me. He had on pants and a shirt and tie.
I had to think what day it was. Wednesday. It must be Wednesday.
Was he going to work? Did he want me to leave?
“I’m going now. Sorry to wake you, but I didn’t like to just leave…”
My eyes opened wider, and I met that brown gaze. It was even more distracting in daylight.
“Will you be okay if I go to work?”
“Yeah.” No. I didn’t know. I’d just woken up. I didn’t know how I felt. It always took a few minutes to gauge my mood.
He hesitated. He was a sexy guy with a tender heart. Where the hell had he come from? Oregon, I remembered.
“Are you sure? I could––” His voice was deep, and rugged with uncertainty.
“Stay home? Are you afraid I’ll steal your TV or your Xbox, after all?”
His hands slid into his pants' pockets as he smiled.
He’d looked good last night in sweatpants and a tight top, elemental. In his work gear, he looked sophisticated––but like he needed some girl to ruffle his hair and pull his tie loose.
I was tempted to be that girl and urge him back into bed with me. I’d feel better, but I didn’t doubt he’d be drowning in guilt after, if I got him to do it. He was too nice.
“You can go. I’ll be okay, and I won’t take your Xbox.”
“Right.” He laughed but still looked hesitant.
“Just fuck off, and go, if you’re going, I wanna go back to sleep…” My voice was dry, but I’d given him a half-hearted smile as I said it.
He smiled, too, though it showed no more enthusiasm than mine, and said, “Okay.” Then he turned, and went.
A few moments later, the front door shut.
Dammit. I couldn’t go out. There was blood all over my clothes. And I hadn’t any underwear. I couldn’t believe I’d forgotten to wear a bra and knickers. But then last night was now only a clutter of confused images in my mind. I couldn’t even remember getting dressed and getting out of Declan’s anymore, only him having sex with me, and me pushing him off, and then the breaking mirror, and the feel of it in my hand.
I rolled over onto the side of the mattress Jason Macinlay slept in and smelt his shampoo, and him. It was still a little warm with his body heat. It was comforting. I didn’t want to think about Declan, or about any moment of my life before now––before this good guy had come to my rescue on Manhattan Bridge.
I’d never been with a nice guy in my life. I’d always preferred the risks a bad guy brought. Or maybe I was just so down on myself, I needed the bad guys to mess me up. Declan had messed me up. But when I’d got with him it had been exciting, he’d made my heart race with adrenaline. I’d been flattered and thrilled by his domineering, debauched ways. By the end, he’d just made me feel sick. Declan was shallow, cruel and arrogant like the rest. Jason Macinlay had hidden depths, like the shifting water I’d looked down at last night. There was so much I didn’t know.
Perhaps I really ought to try a nice guy.
But not this one; this one had a perfect girl, Lindy, to go with his perfect self.
Maybe he had a nice guy friend he could hook me up with.
But then I’d feel guilty when it reached the point it all went horribly wrong, and I’d lose Jason Macinlay’s respect.
All my relationships went horribly wrong at some point. There wasn’t really any reason in trying to make them work. They all crumbled in the end.
I felt tears on my cheeks. I wiped them away, forgetting my bad hand. A sharp pain caught in my palm where the wound was healing beneath the bandage.
All I wished to do was curl up in a ball and shut the world out today. I was too deep in a dark tunnel; the room was only a pinprick at the end of it, but it was there to remind me there was something outside to reach for.
This was the sort of day which made me avoid nice guys, when I was in a black melancholy mood. They’d just piss me off, trying to cheer me up. At least bad guys wouldn’t annoy me with any misdirected kindness when I felt like this.
I rolled onto my stomach and lay as he’d lain in this space, smelling his scent and crying, like a child. I was so tired of life.
I’d been nervous about coming home all day. I was nervous about opening the door. My key seemed heavier, as it turned the lock.
A part of me wondered if she’d still be here.
I’d told the only person I’d call anything near a friend at work, about the woman I’d found on Manhattan Bridge. Justin’s response had been to tell half the office, and start them laying odds on whether or not, when I got back, my Xbox, my TV, and Rachel, would be gone. Someone else had implied she might’ve simply changed all the locks and shut me out.
I didn’t think she’d do either, but now I was opening the door, the air stuck in my lungs.
The noise hit me first. She was playing my Need for Speed game. There was a screech of wheels as she turned the car. She didn’t look up.
I’d forgotten just how stunning her figure was though, her long pale legs were stretched out in front her, bent up a little, and she was wearing a pair of my socks, with one of my shirts covering her upper body to the top of her thighs.
I remembered seeing her naked in the bath last night, lying in the water like some sultry model striking a pose. She hadn’t even seemed to care that I looked.
Lindy hated me looking. She always covered herself up whenever she could.
But I shouldn’t have been looking. I had a girl. And Rachel needed me to help her, not lust after her.
She still hadn’t looked up from the game. She was concentrating over-hard. Her knuckles were white as they gripped the controller.
I wondered if she even knew I was there, she seemed to have screened my presence out as she’d done last night on the bridge.
“Hey,” I said quietly.
“Hey.”
She did know I was there then, just hadn’t been willing to speak.
“Did you have a good day?”
She glanced up. The car crashed. “Shit.”
“Have you been playing that all day?” I walked over to the counter and put my keys down then went to the fridge and took out a bottle of beer. “Do you want one?” I held it up as she looked at me.
Her eyes were bloodshot, swollen and red. She’d been crying, probably most of the day. She’d not cried last night.
She shook her head.
I popped the top off my beer then left it on the counter as I took off my scarf and coat and went to hang them on the hook beside the door.
She hadn’t got up, or restarted the game.
I walked back over to the counter to collect my beer, and loosened off my tie. “I’ll take you out for dinner, where’d you like to eat?”
“I can’t go out. I’ve got nothing to wear.”
Right, duh, of course she hadn’t. I knew what she’d been wearing. I’d put her stuff in the washer-drier before I’d gone to work. There had been one thing lacking though. There had been no underwear among the clothes she’d stripped off. But I didn’t want to think of that right now, not when she was sitting there wearing one of my shirts, which barely covered anything.
I’d been physically aware of her in bed, all last night. I didn’t need my mind heading in that direction again. “The mall will still be open. Let’s go and get you something then.”
“I haven’t any money either.”
“No, but I have. So we’ll get you some stuff and something to eat. No point sitting here moping about what you can’t fix, let’s fix what you can.”
“You don’t know I can’t fix things?”
She was strange. I’d never met anyone quite so guarded before.
Her lips compressed in a thin line, like they’d kept doing every time she’d clammed up last night.
City folk. That’s what Mom had said when I’d called her on the way to work. Like no one had ever got into trouble and needed help back home. And our town wasn’t even that far from the city in Oregon. Portland was only a short drive away.
Mom hadn’t liked the idea of Rachel Shears being in my apartment any more than Lindy. But she was the one who’d taught me to help people and look for the best in them. I didn’t know Rachel, but I did know she’d got herself in a mess, somehow, and she needed help. I was going to give her the chance to prove Mom, Lindy, and everyone at work, wrong.
“You going to get dressed then, and let me help you out? Whether you can fix whatever led you to Manhattan Bridge or not, you need some clothes to do it.”
“And what am I gonna wear to the shops?”
“What you wore last night. I put your stuff in the washer-drier. Did you not think to check?”
“God, you’re so domesticated,” she mocked as she stood.
I held her gaze for a moment, that oddly deceptive green, and then turned to collect her stuff from the machine. “We can walk down to Fulton Street.”
When I turned back, she was behind me.
I held her clothes out.
Her blonde hair hung thin and straight. It was the definition of her cheekbones, her large eyes and broad lips that made her beautiful. Lindy was pretty too, but Rachel Shears’ beauty was haunting. Her image had hung in my head all day, in a way Lindy’s never did.
I wanted to kiss her. I wanted to reach out and grip her nape and bring her mouth to mine. I didn’t. I shouldn’t even be thinking about doing it. Maybe it was a good thing Lindy was coming for Christmas. Maybe I’d just missed her, and things would be okay when she came.
“Go get ready. Borrow a sweater from the shelf in my cupboard, in fact take two, I’d layer. It’s freezing out there still.”
Rachel took her clothes from my hand and her lips twisted sideways in a mocking smile, then she said, “You sound so like a mom,” just before she disappeared.
I could be hurt by her teasing, but I wasn’t. I had thick skin.
My conscience pricking, I crossed the room, pulled my cell phone out of my coat, and then brought up my contacts. Lindy. I pressed my thumb on her number and called. “Hi.”
“You’re calling early.”
“I’m not going to run tonight, but I’m going out, I thought I’d call before I left.”
“Going out where, Jason? You haven’t still got that girl there have you?”
“Yep.”
“Jason! And I suppose you can’t talk ‘cause she’s listening.”
“Yeah.” I didn’t doubt Rachel could hear me in the other room; she’d heard last night.
“Where are you going?”
“Taking her to buy something to wear. She’s only got the clothes I found her in, and––”
“And you’re paying. She’s ripping you off. I told you last night. You’re too gullible. You shouldn’t let people take advantage.”
“I’m just helping her out.”
“Yeah right, like she’d help you back if you needed. She’s a stranger you picked up on the street. You––”
“Look Lindy, you weren’t there last night, and you aren’t here now. You can’t judge. You don’t know her.” But I didn’t know her either.
At that moment Rachel came back into the room, pulling on a sweater. She made a face at me. I made a face back. She actually laughed. That shocked me.
“Is that her? Just watch out, Jason. I wish I was there. If I was, I’d stop her taking you for a ride.”
“That isn’t what’s happening, Lindy.”
“Yeah, right.” Lindy’s voice had turned caustic. She could be catty as hell when she wished. A bitch at times. I’d only recently discovered the truth in that. Now I wasn’t certain if it was me Lindy loved or the life she’d thought I could give her. She’d always had a competitive, aggressive edge, but since I’d told her I was moving to New York, her aggressive edge had turned on me.
She hadn’t liked me leaving Oregon. She didn’t want to live in New York. Yet we were meant to be getting married next year. I think she still hoped I’d grow out of my big city ideas.
Perhaps I would, New York hadn’t been what I’d imagined yet, but the thought of going back home and admitting I’d been wrong, and other people were right, well, that would be tough. I didn’t want to fit in the box everyone had labeled for me.
“I’ll call you again later, when I get back. Okay? Bye.”
“Alright… I love you.” The response was terse.
“And me you.”
We said it every night but I wasn’t sure it was true anymore, for her or me. I was getting the impression that unless I fitted in my box back home, she didn’t want me. And if she didn’t want me for who I was, I didn’t want her.
When she came to visit, in a few weeks, I had a feeling we’d exchange some strong words. They’d either make or break us. But the idea of not having Lindy was a little scary. Lindy was all I’d known.
My gaze caught on Rachel’s again and I realized she’d been busy analyzing my expression.
“Did she accuse me of wanting to jump you again?”
“No, just ripping me off.”
“You don’t have to take me shopping.”
“I do, you’ve got nothing but the clothes you’re standing in, and they don’t even include underwear.”
“You noticed…” She laughed, again, and her voice seemed lighter, and her eyes were definitely more expressive, they seemed bright, burning with as many unasked questions as my mind longed to ask her. She didn’t speak though. And surely her laugh should have sounded awkward and nervous, but it didn’t.
She shut up who she was as tight as tight and yet lacked any inhibition over what she did. She was an odd girl. I didn’t get her, she wasn’t like anyone I knew back home. “You needn’t worry, I’m not asking why.”
“I never thought you would, it would be an ungentlemanly question. And you’re far too much the gentleman for that.”
“Yeah, right. You’re mocking again.”
“Actually, no, I’m counting my blessings. You ready?”
“Yep. You?”
“Yep.”
“Right then.” I reached for my scarf, but instead of wrapping it about my neck, I wrapped it about hers, then grabbed my coat as I offered, “You can have my gloves and hat, too, if you like. I’ll manage without.”
I got them out my coat pocket and held them out to her.
“See, such a gentleman.” She mocked me again as she took them from my hand, flashing me another rare smile. The first smile had seemed merely muscles moving in her face but now there was a glimpse of it in her eyes, showing genuine appreciation. I knew the difference. Lindy had used to smile tons when we were at school, she’d laughed all the time, but in the last year any smile she’d given me was forced.
I cast all the trash in my head aside and lifted a hand. “Come on then Rachel Shears, let’s get you fitted out.”
His fingers touched my shoulder as I went out the door. It made me jump. They fell away. But I hadn’t jumped because I didn’t like it. I just wasn’t used to being touched in anything beyond a sexual way.
He was silent in the elevator, watching the closed doors. I sensed a lot going on in his head. But I felt a lot going on in mine too; my mood was shifting, I could feel it like pressure trapped inside a capped bottle of fizzy drink, waiting for a point to explode.
“What did you do at work today?” I asked him, to secure the other one hundred irrelevant questions my brain was suddenly bursting to ask.
His brown eyes looked at me and into me all at once, asking his own unspoken questions. But he answered, hesitantly. “It was all a little manic.”
“Did the office politics piss you off?”
“The office politics always piss me off, but they weren’t so bad today. People were too busy betting on whether or not the girl I’d found would’ve left with all my stuff when I got home.”
“You told them about me?” I didn’t know what to think. I’d spent over a year with Declan who’d hidden me away most of the time; unless it suited him to play some trick and show me off, for business meetings, or to flaunt before his wife.
I hated admitting it, but what I’d disliked most were the periods he left me alone. I could never take being ignored and here was a stranger telling everyone I existed.
“You don’t mind me talking about you? I just thought if everyone knew. If you needed to call me…”
The elevator doors opened.
I glanced at him as we walked out. “I couldn’t have called, you never gave me your number and I don’t have a cell phone.”
“Foolish of me, right? Sorry, I’m just so used to Lindy always calling if she needs anything.”
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