She opened her mouth and felt, to her horror, tears clog her throat.
“You sick?” Luis asked. “That why you came home early?”
“Yes.” Shame flushed her face like a fever. But what else could she say? Oh, God, what would she tell her family? “Yes, I had to…leave work.”
“I’ll get the elevator for you,” Luis said.
She was too exhausted to argue. She followed him down the hall to the elevators.
The third-floor, two-bedroom apartment she shared with Derek didn’t provide the Central Park view he had wanted. But the space had still cost more than Meg could comfortably afford. Despite Derek’s larger salary, she had insisted on their splitting expenses right down the middle.
Her parents had not approved of the condo or, she sometimes thought, of Derek. They could not understand why, after six years together, she and Derek didn’t simply get married.
Meg had dismissed her family’s concerns. She didn’t need a ring to establish her worth or validate her relationship. The joint investment in the condo was another step, another sign that her life and career were proceeding according to plan.
She swallowed hard. Or they had been until an hour ago.
She let herself into the empty apartment. Leaning back against the closed door, she closed her eyes. The living room had the chilled hush of a funeral parlor. The surrounding units were quiet, everyone at work. No scraping furniture penetrated into the apartment, no footsteps, no chattering TVs, only the muted sounds of traffic drifting from the street.
What was she supposed to do with herself in the middle of the day? What was she going to do?
She took off her shoes, her jacket, her earrings, divesting herself of her corporate armor piece by piece. Without it she felt naked. Vulnerable.
She wandered through the apartment like a sleepwalker, her limbs weighted by lethargy, her body infected by an odd, internal restlessness.
She couldn’t eat. Couldn’t text or call or go online. They’d never bothered to pay for a landline or personal computer. Why should they? The company provided everything. Now, even if she’d had her BlackBerry, her phone and email contacts, her personal network, were all wiped out when IS had disabled her account.
No wonder her password had failed that morning.
She stopped at the window, staring down at people flowing by like twigs pushed along by a current: envoys from office buildings moving purposefully along the sidewalks, mothers pushing strollers on their way to the park, tourists wandering arm-in-arm, stopping to point or to kiss. Everyone had somewhere to go, someone to be with, while she stood alone, apart, removed from all of them.
Where was Derek?
He didn’t come at lunchtime. She was relieved. As long as he was at the office, he still had a job.
But he wasn’t home at five o’clock.
Or at six.
Or at seven.
She understood why he didn’t call. She didn’t have a phone. She didn’t want to leave the apartment to buy one. What if Derek showed up while she was out? She didn’t know any of their neighbors well enough to go knocking on doors. What could she say? “Hi, I’ve lost my job and I can’t reach my boyfriend, may I use your phone?” She shuddered. That would be a hell of an introduction.
She paced the thick, mushroom-colored carpet. Her inactivity, her isolation, her helplessness drove her crazy. How could Derek do this to her? He must know she was waiting. He must have heard that she’d been…Her mind recoiled from the word fired. She’d been let go.
She didn’t get it.
She’d worked hard to make herself indispensable. Admired. She was everybody’s pick for classroom games, college study groups, task forces at work. Even Derek had asked her out. Everybody wanted her.
Her mind flashed back eighteen years. Almost everybody.
She bit her lip. She didn’t think about that anymore. She didn’t care about that anymore. About him.
But it was discouraging to realize how quickly she’d tumbled to the needy, weepy teen she had once been. She flung herself onto the couch.
By eight o’clock, she was shaking with fear and a hot, defensive anger. Derek still wasn’t home. What if something had happened to him? Her mother, after all, had recently been the victim of a drunk driver. Didn’t he care about her feelings at all?
At nine o’clock, a key scraped in the lock.
She jumped to her feet, bubbling over with worry, relief, and resentment. “Where have you been?”
Derek stopped inside the door, his blond hair shining in the yellow light of the hall, his face shadowed. “Putting out fires.”
He sounded tired.
She crossed her arms against her chest. “With what? Scotch?”
“I had to go out with the team after work. You know how it is.” He stretched his neck, rolled his shoulders. “Christ, what a day.”
She did know. He was under stress, too, she reminded herself. “Are you all right?”
He slid out of his jacket. Shot her a look. “What do you think?”
She didn’t know what to think. He hadn’t told her anything yet. “I was worried about you.”
He nodded as he crossed to the dry bar, accepting her concern as his due.
She waited for him to reciprocate with questions. Sympathy. She didn’t expect him to coddle her. That wasn’t their way. But surely he would say something. When he didn’t, she prompted him. “I suppose you heard about my day.”
He poured himself two fingers of Laphroaig. A calculated amount, suggesting restraint and appreciation at the same time. He would have had the same at the bar. Derek never did anything—even drink—without calculating its effect. “Hell, yes. That’s all anybody wanted to talk about. I had a bitch of a time getting them to focus on the significant aspects of the acquisition.”
Ice trickled down her spine. Frosted her voice. “You don’t consider my firing significant?”
The bottle cracked against the rim of his glass. “Of course it’s significant. I just meant I had a lot on my plate this afternoon.” He set the bottle down and crossed the room, cupping her jaw in his capable, familiar hands. “It was hell for me, not being able to talk to you.”
His breath was warm against her face. Meg closed her eyes. It was hell for her, too.
Derek’s scent enveloped her, his wilted shirt, the smokiness of Scotch, the cool, expensive tang of his cologne. “I wish you had come home,” she said, hating the admission, detesting the needy, uncertain tone of her voice.
“I wanted to,” he said. “I thought you’d appreciate some time to yourself.”
She opened her eyes. “Twelve hours?”
He released her face. “It wasn’t that long.”
She wasn’t going to argue over minutes. “You said we were partners, Derek. We’re a team. I needed you to have my back today, and you weren’t here.”
His brows twitched together in annoyance. “I have your back.”
“I just got fired!” With an effort, she modulated her voice. She was going to be reasonable if it killed her. “You’re on the transition team. You could have fought for me. You at least could have warned me.”
“You know I couldn’t do that. I can’t show any favoritism. I have to act in the best interests of the company.”
“What about my interests? Or don’t they matter anymore?”
“Of course you matter. Have you considered that this could be the best thing that could happen to you? To us.”
Meg gritted her teeth. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“Look, there was always going to be a certain awkwardness as long as we were with the same company. Now there’s nothing holding us back. Personally or professionally.” He smiled at her, charming for a finance guy, and unease moved in her bones.
“Nothing except I’m out of a job.”
His lips tightened. “There’s no need to raise your voice, Meg. People are losing their jobs all over. It’s this economy.”
“The economy didn’t fire me.�
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“My point is, you can find another job. This could be the opportunity we need to figure out what we really want. Where we’re going.”
“We know where we’re going. Or I thought I did.” One rung, one step at a time. Never look down, never look back. “I thought we were getting there together.”
“We are together. All the time. All we ever talk about is work. This is our chance to expand our horizons. Examine our priorities.”
Easy for him to say. He had a job.
“Forgive me if I don’t feel very high on your list of priorities at the moment.” She sounded bitter. Well, she felt bitter. Twelve hours.
He examined her face. Set down his drink. “I know this is hard for you. This transition has been a strain on both of us. But I’m up to my ears right now. I can’t afford to get caught up in some personal drama. I have to keep my head in the game.”
She drew back, stung. “I’m not asking you to stay home and hold my hand all day. I’m just saying I could use a little emotional support.”
He drew in his breath, the way he did when she was being difficult. “Maybe you should think about getting away for a while. Going home.”
She stared at him in disbelief. She was home. “I just got back. I need to stay.” I need to fight. “I need to look for another job.”
“Sure,” Derek said. “But it wouldn’t hurt for you to step back and get a little perspective first.”
She had to work to keep her voice even. “Are you saying you don’t want me around?”
“Of course not.” His breath escaped in a long-suffering sigh. “My job’s on the line, too, you know. You can’t get upset because I don’t have the luxury of giving you the attention you deserve right now.”
Her jaw ached. Probably because she was clenching it so hard.
“Fine.” She would not cling. She refused to whine. Even at sixteen, she’d had too much pride to beg. She took a deep breath and said, “My mother’s in rehab.” Relearning to walk and stand and dress herself. “Maybe I’ll go back down for a couple of weeks to help out. That would certainly provide us with perspective,” Meg added, unable to keep the bitterness from creeping back into her voice.
She waited, her blood drumming in her ears, for Derek to ask her to reconsider. To plead with her to stay.
He smiled, clearly relieved. “That’s a great idea. I know how close you are to your family.”
It went against her nature to bite her tongue. But she was no longer the heartbroken, weepy, deluded adolescent she’d been in high school. She didn’t need Derek to fix her problems. She didn’t want his pity. She wanted him to…What?
Hold her. Want her, she supposed.
Which was ridiculous. Of course he wanted her. They’d just bought a condo together.
So she forced herself to nod and listen as he told her about his day. As if a recitation of his schedule could somehow fill the void inside her chest.
First thing in the morning she was buying a computer to check airfares to North Carolina.
THE BAGGAGE CAROUSEL clacked in time to the headache pulsing behind Meg’s eyeballs.
Her flight from LaGuardia had been delayed forty-seven minutes, making her miss her connection, stranding her in Charlotte for almost two hours.
She stood in the Jacksonville baggage claim, watching the same six damn suitcases sidle through the rubber curtain and circle the conveyor belt. Clack, clack, clack.
None of them was hers.
She adjusted her stance, arches aching in her three-inch heels, and dug for her new phone. With one eye on the moving belt, she checked the display screen.
Nothing.
Her stomach dropped. Maybe Matt was on his way. Or maybe her brother hadn’t gotten her text explaining she was late. But then wouldn’t he be here, waiting for her? Wouldn’t he have called?
Unless he hadn’t noticed the change in her phone number. She hadn’t confided in him about her firing over the phone. It was still too recent. Too raw. Maybe her brother was leaving messages on her defunct office voice mail.
She winced. If Matt didn’t turn up, if he didn’t call back soon, she’d have to rent a car to drive the hour and a half from the airport to Dare Island.
The carousel wheezed. Bags and machinery thumped. The passengers around her pressed forward as the first bags from her flight rattled into sight and toppled onto the belt. A young mother in jeans and flip-flops retrieved an infant seat. A Marine hoisted his duffel bag. A sleek red Tumi suitcase slid through the curtain, looking as out of place in this one-runway town as Meg felt.
At last.
Meg stooped for her bag, only to be easily shouldered aside by a large, warm, male someone at her back.
A long arm reached around her. A strong hand—tanned, long fingered—grasped the handle of her suitcase.
She recognized his hand before she saw his face.
Knew his voice in the pit of her stomach, in the telltale leap of her stupid heart, before she registered his words.
“I’ve got this,” Sam Grady said, and plucked her bag from the belt.
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