“You don’t like him?”
“I don’t have time to explain the complexity of everything I feel about Hawk right now. I have three hours to do ten hours of work and then I have to be at my parents’ house. They know Ginger’s in trouble and they may have disowned her but she’s their daughter and she’s my sister and they’re going to worry. I know that because, it sucks and I want to wash it away, but I’m worried. I have to gear up for facing that. I’m taking this all one step at a time.”
There was more silence then, “You don’t sound too good.”
I closed my eyes, leaned forward and my head collided with my desk.
Why was no one paying attention to me?
“Was that your head hitting your desk?” Cam asked in my ear.
“Yes,” I whispered into the phone, keeping my eyes closed.
“All right, babe, I’ll leave you alone but we need cosmos, soon. I’ll talk to Leo about a double date. Maybe since you aren’t a major player in this case Mitch’ll be able to do dinner. Or maybe we can just plan a get together at our house and no one will be the wiser.”
I opened my eyes and stared at my lap. “This isn’t letting me go, Cam, this is planning my romantic future with a man I barely know while I’m freaking out about how I’m going to get the man I also barely know but have been sleeping with for months to agree we’re over when his ideas on that subject violently clash with mine.”
Silence then, “Really? You told him it was over?”
I shot up in my chair and cried, “Cam!”
“All right! All right, I’ll let you go.”
“Call Tracy, brief her with the limited intel you have, it’ll save me time,” I ordered.
“Gotcha.”
“No double dates.”
“We’ll just get something in the calendar.”
“Cam!”
“Later, babe.”
Then I was listening to dead air.
I beeped the phone off and put it on its base. Then I got up and went downstairs because I was pretty certain I had frozen Twix bars and I was pretty certain about this because I always had frozen Twix bars but it wasn’t unheard of for me accidentally to eat my way through my stash while, say, watching a movie or just getting the munchies. Through copious experimentation I’d discovered that frozen Twix bars were proven to intensify focus. I needed my focus intensified so I was going to pull out the big guns.
I found I had frozen Twix bars.
Upon offering, I also found that commandos didn’t eat frozen Twix bars.
This was good. More for me.
I grabbed a twin pack, straightened my shoulders, with effort cleared my head and determinedly walked back up the stairs to my office.
Chapter Eight
How We Met
As I headed to Dad and Meredith’s house I was feeling pretty good. I’d managed to make some headway on work and load up my files on my laptop before leaving my house.
I had a plan: eat dinner, explain shit to Dad and Meredith, do both of these things very fast then hole myself in Dad’s Den and work until my vision got blurry.
The only flaw in this plan was that I was tired. I’d only had about four good hours of sleep last night so I was running on empty. In my business attention to detail was key and getting fuzzy was not good. But I figured I had enough mojo left to squeeze in two or three good hours of concentration and, if I got a decent night’s sleep, tomorrow I could hit it fully loaded and kick some book-editing ass.
With my plan of attack all sorted out, and my excuse of having to get work done a good one so Dad would cut his lecture short, I was feeling good, totally psyched up for dinner at my parents’.
That was until their house became visible and I saw a dark, metallic gray kickass Camaro parked out front.
I was beginning to understand why people were moved to acts of extreme violence when I parked behind the Camaro.
Even so, as I turned off my car and set the parking brake, I did take a moment to reflect on the fact that it was too bad Hawk and I were so over. I would love to ride in that Camaro.
I got out, rounded the car and grabbed my bag and laptop. Then I walked to the house.
If I was a different kind of woman, in other words I didn’t have my mother’s blood in my veins, I would have walked to the house slowly, considering my options, calming myself, building a plan of attack.
I did not do this. I stomped up to the house, opened the door, encountered a wave of strong garlic smells and stomped in.
My parents lived in a big house on a slight rise. Stairs dead ahead leading to a landing with a big window. Huge living room to the left that had a small den off of it at the front of the house, another small conservatory-like space behind the den also off the living room. Enormous kitchen to the right with a big area for the dining room table. Half bath and utility to the back of the kitchen that led to a garage. Wall to wall wool carpet throughout except the kitchen which was tiled. Three bedrooms and two baths upstairs, one shared, one off the master suite.