She had been acting a little weird the night before. She had been tired, or so he had thought. Maybe it had been her worry over this. He stood up and walked out the office. Chris followed.
“Now don’t get pissed at her for not telling you.”
Kia stopped and turned to face him. He had always admired Chris, for what he was, for the way he treated Cynthia.
“What would you do if Cynthia did the same thing?” he asked.
Understanding moved over his features. “Okay, yeah, I would be pissed.”
He turned around and started toward the front door again. “I’ll have her call you after I yell at her.”
“Dammit.”
“Problem?” Cynthia asked.
Jocelyn shook her head and took off the decorative edge for the second time. “No. Just can’t seem to get this right.”
“You seem out of sorts.”
Jocelyn jerked a shoulder, trying to hide the panic that was clawing at her stomach. She had been so close to taking her pills last night before Kai had gotten home. Once he’d arrived, she had felt his calming presence down to her toes. And he didn’t even know it. She wasn’t sure what scared her more. The fact that she might have needed her meds last night, or that Kai seemed to be her substitute.
“Hey, are you there?” Cynthia asked.
“Yeah. Just a little off today.”
Cynthia frowned. “I knew I shouldn’t have taken that order. This is your seventh day in a row working. You need to take tomorrow off.”
Jocelyn shook her head. “No.”
“Yes. No arguments. You’re tired. I can see it. Of course, if I didn’t know what was keeping you up at night, I’d worry.”
Jocelyn felt her shoulders slump.
“What?”
“I had a bad night last night.”
And now she had wished she had told Kai. She would have slept better if she had talked it over with him.
“No matter—”
“I need to talk with you, Jocelyn.” Kai’s quietly angry voice cut Cynthia’s comment. She turned and found him glowering at her. Cynthia looked from one to the other and opened her mouth but Chris stepped in behind Kai.
“Let them have a moment.”
He grabbed Cynthia and led her out of the room. When they were alone, Jocelyn waited. The silence grew, the only noise coming from the front of the shop.
“What did you want?” she asked.
“Did they let the bastard off?”
Dammit, he knows. “Yeah. Or they will. I’m not sure.”
“When did you find out?”
“Yesterday.”
She couldn’t tell what he was thinking by looking at his face. It unnerved her.
“That’s why you were so upset last night.”
“I wasn’t upset last night.”
“Yes, you were. There was something a little off, but then, how would I know. I apparently don’t know you at all.”
Agitation filled her. “What the hell does that mean?”
“The woman I thought I knew would have told me if something like this happened. Or I thought she would.”
He said nothing else, but now she finally saw what he was feeling. Anger bled out of his eyes as he watched her as if waiting for her to lie.
“I’m used to dealing with things on my own.”
He shook his head. “That’s not going to fly. I thought we had something here. I thought we were building.”
“I told you I was a mess. You apparently ignored that part of the conversation.”
His upper lip curled in disgust. “Don’t even try that shit with me. You kept it from me on purpose.”
He thought she’d done it to hurt him. The accusation went unsaid. And, God help her, maybe she had. She had kept it from him on purpose, but she still wasn’t sure why.
“Funny coming from a man who isn’t ready to open up.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“Want to tell me what went on with Keisha?”
His expression blanked and his eyes turned colder. “That’s in the past.”
“Oh, Jesus, do you hear yourself?” Resentment she didn’t know she had boiled up and spilled over into her panic. It made her voice harsher than she expected. “You, who wanted me to open up, tell you everything, doesn’t want to tell me a thing about the one woman who broke his heart.”
“That’s bullshit.”
“Really? Oh, that is rich.” She barked out a laugh that sounded desperate and painful even to her own ears.
He clenched his jaw. “I said it was in the past. It has no effect on me now.”
“If it didn’t, you would have told me about it. At least I have been honest with you. You hold things back from me. Don’t you think I know that Keisha stomped on your heart, used you and tossed you away? But for some reason, my pain is okay to go over, to share. Maybe this has more to do with the fact that you can’t deal being with a woman who doesn’t need you to save her.”