Total pages in book: 146
Estimated words: 141951 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 710(@200wpm)___ 568(@250wpm)___ 473(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 141951 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 710(@200wpm)___ 568(@250wpm)___ 473(@300wpm)
No matter how hard she tried.
He wore the same jacket from his last visit, but the red scarf looped loosely around his neck was new. More interesting was the way his gaze avoided hers to survey the framing around the open doorway while his hand raked over his mouth and down the new scuff on his jaw.
He’d been clean shaved last week.
And every time she saw him before.
Like his hair, his face never looked unkempt. As if the slightest bit of facial hair or more length to his style gave off the impression that he might be lazy.
“I, uh …” He trailed off, his hand dropping to his side as he forced his gaze upwards to meet Delaney’s hurt, wary stare looking back at him. “I’m sorry—this is a stupid fucking time to knock on somebody’s door, isn’t it?”
She blinked, but a nervous bubble of laughter burst out of her chest. Somehow. Even though she tried to stop it. “Yeah, it kind of is.”
Lucas offered a small smile.
It wasn’t true, and it didn’t reach his eyes.
Hell, it fell as soon as it started.
“What’s wrong?” Delaney asked.
She saw it in the dark sadness behind his eyes; not to mention, the dark circles underneath and how it seemed to take him effort to even lift his eyelids. When was the last time this man slept? The invisible heaviness weighing his strong shoulders forward radiated around him in the empty hallway.
He raked a hand through the short crop of his hair, and a visible tremble raced across his fingers before he hid the shaking by shoving both fists into his pockets.
“I called,” she said when he remained silent, her words gaining his pained stare again. “You didn’t call back.”
“Ah, yeah,” he breathed, a choppy, exhausted laugh falling flat between them. “Sorry about that. My phone, it uh … fell into some water. Nola’s been trying to keep up on my voicemail. And I hadn’t exactly mentioned you to her, so she may have passed over a message you left. She just got the new phone for me this morning before I headed out. I haven’t even bothered to turn it on properly yet.”
“Nola?”
He closed his eyes, and his brow pinched. “Sorry, that’s my, ah …” A sigh rattled out of Lucas before he muttered, “She’s my secretary and assistant.”
The way he struggled for his words confirmed Delaney’s suspicions that he had not been sleeping, and something was very wrong.
“Lucas, can I call someone for—”
“No,” he interjected fast.
“Then, why are you here?”
“Maybe I shouldn’t be?” he asked back. “I honestly wasn’t even planning to leave the airport when we stopped to fuel, but …”
He left the sentence hanging, unfinished.
She couldn’t figure the puzzle out.
“I’m paying the taxi by the minute, anyway,” Lucas added. “He won’t care how long I stand in here, right?”
Delaney, unsure of the stormy waters she had waded into by opening the apartment door, couldn’t come up with something appropriate to say. He took her silence as a different kind of answer.
“I’m sorry,” he said for what felt like the millionth time. His left foot moved back a step, and he turned to the side, adding, “I should go. I thought … I had a stupid idea, but really, I’m just tired, and I know you’re working today. Last shift, you said?”
She didn’t know what to deal with first.
That he planned to leave.
His incorrect assumption about her schedule.
“What idea?” she settled on asking.
Lucas hesitated in the hallway, but he didn’t turn to face her completely when he said, “I never really got an answer about your aversion, or not, to flying.”
“I’ve never been on a plane, actually.”
An almost desperate chuckle escaped Lucas, then.
“Shit, I bet a helicopter is way out of the question, huh?”
What?
“Are you sure you’re okay?” she asked, not able to make sense of his rambles.
“No,” he said simply, his gaze shooting upward to zone in on the hallway ceiling. “No, I’m not.”
“Okay, so I should call someone for you.”
And she would, as soon as she got a person, or number, out of him. Worst case, she could take him to a hospital ER, if things turned tricky.
Delaney didn’t want to get ahead of herself, though.
“You weren’t coming back to Freddy until the end of the month, right?” Delaney asked.
That was one of the reasons the two of them had so much trouble trying to come up with a day and time that would work to get together again. Her schedule didn’t help things in that regard, either.
“Plans changed,” Lucas said under his breath, looking back at her with those haunted eyes and his heavy shoulders. “Everything changed.”
“Could—”
“Delaney, is everything okay?” came the question from her cousin, deeper inside the apartment.
Delaney didn’t turn around to acknowledge Bexley. In fact, she hadn’t even heard her cousin leave the bathroom or turn off the shower. The man in the hallway took every ounce of her attention and held on for dear life.