Die Job by Lila Dare Read Free Book Online Page B

voice.
    Because I hadn’t made a fuss? Clicking noises filtered to my ear and I realized he was typing on the keyboard. Anger tightened my jaw. “You sound busy,” I said stiffly. “I’ll let you go.”
    “Imiss you,” Marty said.
    But he didn’t try to persuade me to talk longer, didn’t set a new date for my trip to DC. “Me, too,” I whispered.
    I hung up and headed for the shower, feeling low. The thought that Marty and I might be growing apart made me sad. I was “in like” with him, if not in love, and I enjoyed spending time with him. The last weekend I’d spent with him in Atlanta, we’d visited the zoo where he had been a volunteer in the ape house for years, apparently. I’d stared at him in astonishment when he told me and he laughed, saying that hanging out with the apes was an intellectual and ethical step up from politicians. He’d taken me “backstage” to visit with a six-month-old orangutan named Tanga, and I couldn’t remember the last time I’d had such fun. Marty had an intensity about him, especially when he was probing something, trying to get to the truth, which appealed to me. His eyes fixed on me when I was talking like I was the only person in the world and that was a treat after being with Hank, whose gaze tracked every attractive woman who walked by.
    We’d deliberately left things kind of loose when he moved to DC. My divorce was too fresh and his drive to succeed in his new job too powerful for us to push the still-new relationship.
    “DC will be teeming with beautiful, interesting women,” I’d said on our last morning together before he left, rolling over in bed to prop myself on his chest. His skin was pale, slightly freckled, and sprinkled with wiry, sandy hairs. Sunlight streaming through the vertical blinds of his Buckhead condo striped the floor and the navy sateen coverlet.
    “So?” He craned his head up to kiss my chin.
    “So, we’re not . . . you know.”
    “Lawyers and lobbyists? No temptation.” He pulled me down to nibble on my neck.
    “I’m just saying . . .”
    “I know. No strings. We’re both free to date other people.” Threading his hand through my hair, he pulled my face closer and kissed me for a long, long time. “Thing is,” he said with a smile lighting his hazel eyes when we broke apart. “I don’t want to.”
    “Me, either,” I whispered.
    I heard the echo of that conversation now and wondered if he was dating someone else—or a couple of someone elses—or if it was his passion for his job pulling him away from me.
    Marty’s call, plus one I made to the hospital, made me late, and I arrived at the First Baptist Church barely in time to pull my choir robe over my clothes and do a few warm-up “mi-mi-mis” with the group. I sang the anthem mechanically, my mind on Marty. Part of me wanted to drive up to DC that afternoon to talk to him face-to-face, and part of me wanted to bury my head in the sand and pretend everything was hunky-dory. Replaying every word of the conversation, I walked over to Doralynn’s Café and Bakery to meet up with Mom, Althea, and the salon’s manicurist, Stella Michaelson. She goes to St. Joseph’s Catholic Church but frequently joins us for breakfast after Mass. Sometimes Rachel comes, too; I didn’t spot her this morning and figured she was at the hospital. I’d called to check on Braden before church and been handed off to an aunt who told me he was still in a coma caused by his head injury and that he had a compound fracture of his tibia and three broken ribs. The head injury, though, was the big problem. His aunt cried as she said the doctors didn’t know if he’d come out of the coma today, next week, or never.
    I reached Doralynn’s as a party of at least twelve straggled out the door. A St. Elizabeth’s fixture, Doralynn’s was hugely popular with tourists and residents alike. Lots of windows and booths and tablecloths in blue and white and yellow made it cheery even on