They’d left a speechless Logan and Rachel behind at the reception. And Rachel was never speechless. Lisa couldn’t imagine the kinds of questions her reporter friend would have for her.
“To talk,” he said flatly.
She tried to stop, but it was impossible in her four-inch heels. “I don’t want to talk to you.”
“Tough. You owe me at least a five-minute conversation. After all, you are still my wife.”
Semantics.
They’d been separated for four years. Not a legal separation, but one caused by her packing a single suitcase in the middle of the day when he was at work and leaving him without a trace.
It was one of the worst days of her life, one that she didn’t like to think about because the pain of it still caused her to fall to pieces. She hadn’t wanted to leave him. But she’d had no choice.
If she hadn’t left, he would be dead. And she would rather live her life miserably alone knowing he was safe than live with the knowledge she’d caused his death.
“How did you find me?” she said, stumbling into the den of the home. “Or is it just a coincidence that we’ve run into each other tonight?”
“Did you think I wouldn’t recognize my own wife in a photograph? You should have been more careful if you didn’t want to be found.” He tugged her into a library of sorts, with books lining the walls, and he slammed the door, closing them in together. “Perhaps that’s it. Perhaps you wanted me to find you.”
His eyes were blank, like nothing she’d ever seen on him before. He didn’t look at her as though he hated her, either. His eyes were empty. And she knew then she’d caused that. All those years ago, she’d helped heal the sorrow and emptiness that filled his life after his parents’ deaths and had replaced them with love and hope. Now, none of those emotions reflected in his dark brown irises. Gone was the light that had shone through his copper eyes.
Without even knowing it, he’d taught her that she was worth more than being a puppet for her parents. She could be more. Do more. She didn’t need to con people to make a living. He’d broken the walls around her heart and freed it. But he didn’t know any of it. Because she could never tell him who she really was or why she’d left him without a good-bye.
“So you found me.” She shrugged, not looking at him, but instead keeping her gaze on the books behind him, her hands clenched at her sides.
Looking at him was painful. He was the most beautiful man in the world to her, inside and out. To see him and not be able to touch him . . . to not be able to seal her lips over his and taste him, stung like a thousand wasp bites to her heart.
She missed the nights when, after they’d made love, they’d stayed up and talked for hours about everything and nothing. Her past had remained a secret, lies filling the void where the truth would ruin everything they’d forged between them. But with him, she’d created hopes and dreams of a future she’d never thought possible.
“Yeah, I found you. Fucking knocked me off my ass when Logan and Rachel told me they knew you. I mean, what were the odds that you’d be in Detroit and end up helping to defend my best friend against murder charges.”
“I hardly defended him. That was Kate’s job. I just wrangled together the press conference.” Because of her past, she’d avoided having her picture taken, but she’d slipped up when her photo recently appeared in newspapers across the country. At that time, her only thought had been of her friends. Working in public relations wasn’t the best job for a woman trying to stay out of the way of a camera, but something about the career had called to her. It was what she’d imagined doing with her life when she’d been with Sawyer.
Unfortunately, after she left him, she’d had to lie low for a while, which was why she took the job as a secretary at a law firm and kept herself looking as nondescript as possible. Mousy is how she’d overheard a couple of female co-workers describing her in the bathroom when they hadn’t known she was already in one of the stalls.
Settling in Detroit hadn’t been random. She had remembered him talking about an Army buddy who had gone to law school after they’d left the military. Sawyer had been envious that Logan was able to follow his dreams, while he was responsible for thousands of employees and stockholders. He hadn’t wanted to become CEO of Hayes Industries. He’d wanted to go into computer programming and create educational video games that children would enjoy so much that they wouldn’t care they were also learning.
She hadn’t remembered Logan’s name, but a piece of her felt closer to Sawyer by living in the same city as his best friend. Who knows? Maybe a part of her had hoped she’d run into him again. But at what price?