She looked at him across the table, and he could see her steeling herself to answer.
“It laughed at me,” she told him.
“What?” He wasn’t sure what he’d expected, but it certainly hadn’t been that.
She jerked her hand back at last. “I knew I shouldn’t have said anything. I knew you would just laugh at me and think that I must have been drunk or that I’m crazy, or I am just taking myself too seriously. Look, I’ve told you my history, Jenny’s history, and I’ve even answered your ridiculous questions about Vinnie. What more do you want from me?”
“I wasn’t laughing at you,” he said.
“May we please leave?” she asked.
“I swear, I wasn’t laughing at you. I just don’t understand.”
“No, and I don’t think you’re going to, so I want to go.”
All right, maybe he did think she had just been seeing things. But even so, her reaction to Jenny Trent’s picture had been real. Whatever was really going on, she clearly believed something strange had happened that day.
And didn’t everything he himself was doing now come from something unexplained? A hunch?
“Kendall, I promise I wasn’t laughing at you, and I’m sorry if you thought I was,” he told her soberly. He glanced at his watch. He did want to get to the club, but he didn’t want to end the evening with her feeling like this.
“May we leave?” she asked again, her voice cold. Clearly she wasn’t buying his apology.
“Of course.”
He motioned the waitress for the check. Kendall didn’t speak, wouldn’t even look at him, while he waited for the return of his credit card.
As they rose, she spoke as if by rote. “Thank you for the lovely dinner.”
“It was my pleasure,” he told her, knowing he sounded equally wooden.
They drove in silence the whole way back.
He went around her block twice without being able to find on-street parking.
“You can let me out anywhere along here,” she told him.
“No, I can’t,” he said.
“Then just double park and see me to the door.”
“No.”
Stubbornly, he drove around the block again and finally found parking. She waited impatiently while he put coins in the meter. She was clearly anxious to shake him, but even so, she was going to be polite and not take off without him.
She didn’t protest when he took her arm to escort her down the street, but he could feel the tension in her. He walked her to the door of her building, and then to the door of her apartment.
When she turned to say good-night, he was ready.
“Kendall, you’re fighting with yourself right now, not me. I didn’t say a word to you. No, I don’t understand. But I know that something happened, and that it upset you. I saw the way you reacted to Jenny Trent’s picture. I know you’re sincere, and that you’re telling me the truth.”
She stared at him blankly. Then she took a breath. “I hope you find her. But…you have to lay off Vinnie. He’s a good guy. And I know it.”
“Sure.”
“Liar.”
“If he’s a good guy, I’ll know it.”
“But you won’t take my word for it?”
“I wouldn’t take my own mother’s word for it. That’s not the business I’m in.”
She seemed agitated, and not just about Vinnie.
“Are you all right?” he asked her.
“Of course.”
“No, you’re not.”
“I can’t explain.”
They just stood there for a moment, and it was very strange. It was as if he could feel waves of expectation emanating from them both. If they’d been on a date…
Hell, he could hardly remember dating, and it wasn’t the same anymore, anyway. People seemed to meet one another casually—in a bar, mostly—size each other up and head for the bedroom, sometimes even before they made it to a first-name basis. He’d done it himself. He’d woken up once or twice not even knowing the name of the woman with whom he’d slept the night before.
And it hadn’t mattered. They wouldn’t meet again.
But Kendall…Kendall was different. He knew her name well. It often haunted his thoughts. He knew her eyes, and he was coming to know her moods, her smile, even her laughter. Her resentment, her sense of justice, her pride. He knew all those things, knew he was being charmed by them. And he knew, as well, that he was equally seduced by the softness of her skin, the curves of her body, the silken brush of her hair.
So what the hell was the matter? Yeah, he knew her name, and she knew his. But screw it. Why couldn’t it be what it had been for him before, and a fast and casual physical fling for her? The attraction was there: chemical, carnal, whatever. Get it over with. Leave.
He had never been more tempted to simply step forward and take a woman in his arms. Explore every part of her in a mindless need to explore, and spend the night in a tangle of sheets and naked flesh.
No. He knew her name too well. And that changed everything.
He stepped back. “Good night. And thank you.”
“Thank you.”
She looked at him for a moment.
And in that moment, he thought that she was thinking the same thing he was.