Then and Always by Dani Atkins Read Free Book Online Page B

and cupped my elbow briefly as I lowered myself onto cream-colored leather as soft as butter. I waited until he had joined me in the car before commenting:
    “Well, this is certainly far more luxurious than a taxi. A new toy?”
    He gave a little shrug. “It’s a company car.”
    “But you own the company.”
    He shrugged again. “And your point?” He shifted toward me, and although the engine had not been turned on, there was still plenty of light illuminating the car from the restaurant’s security lighting. Looking into his face, aware of the intimate proximity within the confines of the car’s sumptuous interior, I forgot the point I was trying to make. Hell, if he looked at me that way for a moment or two more, I was likely to forget my own name. I changed the topic.
    “Cathy didn’t look too pleased that you’d offered me this lift.”
    “Cathy’ll get over it.” Okay, that was clearly another conversational no-no. But he didn’t drop the theme entirely.
    “Cathy and I … you knew about that, didn’t you … I mean before tonight?”
    I gave a shrug that I hoped looked nonchalant.
    “Sure, Sarah mentioned it … in passing … ages ago.”
    His voice suddenly dropped in tone, sounding less self-assured than he had all evening. There was an echo of the boy I had known so well.
    “And you were okay with that, were you?”
    I may have hesitated for a second longer than I should have, before replying in a tone that was striving for breezy.
    “Well, of course. Why wouldn’t I be?”
    He straightened suddenly in his seat, flicked on the ignition and headlamps, and with a briefly instructed “Fasten your seatbelt,” reversed, at speed, out of the parking space. Clearly not the answer he had been hoping for.
    As we left the car park, he pointed the car in the direction of my hotel.
    “I’m staying at the—”
    “I know where you’re staying,” he interrupted.
    Oh, this was terrific. Now I had made him mad. At that moment I’d have given anything to have swapped this ride for the tattiest, smelliest cab that could be imagined. I sought for an innocuous topic, but came up empty. There were too many landmines in our history to make chitchat possible. In addition, the painkillers I’d taken for my headache had yet to kick in, so if we had to conduct the fifteen-minute journey in total silence, then so much the better.
    I wasn’t going to be that lucky.
    At the first set of traffic lights, Matt caught me rubbing my fingers against the bridge of my nose to try to ease the pain.
    “You really
do
have a headache? It wasn’t just an excuse?” I heard the doubt behind the question. It made me snappier than I should have been.
    “Yes,
I really do
.”
    “There’s a twenty-four-hour place up ahead, would you like to stop there and pick up something for it?” The unexpected kindness took me by surprise.
    “No, it’s fine. I’ve got some pills.”
Not that they appear to be working anymore
, I silently added.
    Several more minutes passed and I was hoping we’d avoided the awkwardness, then he tossed a live conversational grenade.
    “Cathy and I … it’s not that serious, you know. More of a convenience thing … I just wanted you to know that.”
    I was too stunned for a moment to know how to respond. Eventually I replied: “I very much doubt that Cathy views it that way. Not from the look on her face as we left the table together. And why would you possibly imagine I needed this information?”
    He sighed, and I could see he was struggling to find the right words.
    “It’s been hard tonight, seeing you again. All of us together again.”
    With one notable exception
, I thought, but I let that pass. He gave a laugh that had no humor in it.
    “It’s just that all night I couldn’t get rid of the feeling that I was sitting next to the wrong person.”
    I didn’t know how to respond. Should I feel flattered by the compliment, or offended that he was declaring such feelings when he was