“Maybe I could have seen the drunk driver coming. Maybe I could have warned my mom.”
“And maybe you’d be dead, too.” I touched her face, pulling her close to me. “It sucks. You shouldn’t have lost your sister and your mom. I shouldn’t have lost my dad. He was only thirty-seven, you know? None of it should have happened. But we have no control over these things.”
“Do we have control over anything?”
“Yeah.” I ran my thumb over her bottom lip. “We have control over what we’re going to do right now. We have control over whether or not we’re going to go to sleep now, or if we’re going to find other, more interesting things to do.”
She laughed, the sound more melancholy than joyful. “Is that all you think about?”
“I’m a man lying in bed with a beautiful, naked woman. What do you think?”
She chuckled, amusement coming into her eyes. “If you don’t stop saying things like that, I might start believing you.”
“Then I’ll be very sure not to stop saying them.”
I kissed her and sighed when she returned my kiss. She moved closer, her body slipping underneath mine. I had to reach down and adjust my pump, but then I tugged at her hip and encouraged her to slide her leg up over my hip. I liked getting tangled with her, liked the feel of her warm body against mine. I don’t know when we finally moved apart, when she tucked her head into my chest and fell asleep. It felt like one thing just naturally flowed into the other.
But when she was gone, I became aware of her absence. I reached for her without opening my eyes, but my hands came away empty. I rolled onto my back, resting my hand over my eyes to shade them from the light streaming in through the windows.
“Adrienne?”
There was no answer.
I sat up and ran my fingers through my hair, groaning as every muscle in my body protested against movement. I stumbled to the easy chair in the corner and grabbed a pair of sweats, shoving my pump in the pocket as I headed for the door.
I found her downstairs, working on a computer at the breakfast bar. Jacob’s computer.
“What are you doing?”
“I couldn’t sleep.”
“I mean, what are you doing with Jacob’s computer?”
She sat back on the high stool and crossed her legs, looking like a wet dream in my button-down shirt.
“We traced those emails back to Jacob’s IP address. I wanted to see if there was any possibility that they actually came from his computer, or if I could find evidence of a hacker in there somewhere.”
“And have you?”
“No on both counts.”
“Good. Go put it back where you found it.”
“He texted me this morning,” she said, pushing her phone toward me. “Wanted to know if you were okay.”
“What’d you say?”
“I said you were fine. Then he asked if we’d gotten your low home safely.”
I padded over to the refrigerator and took out a carafe of orange juice, pouring us both a glass.
“What did you say to that?”
“Nothing. I thought that was something you should probably respond to.”
“Go put the computer away,” I said, setting the glass of juice in front of her. “I’ll call him and deal with that.”
She closed the lid on the computer and stood, kissing my cheek before heading off through my house. I watched her go, thinking how good she looked here. Natural. Like she belonged in this place, walking these hallways.
I left my phone upstairs, so I grabbed the landline and dialed Jacob. He answered almost on the first ring.
“How’d you know?”
“Her car was parked out in front of the restaurant.”
I hadn’t thought about that. Obviously she’d have to have gotten there somehow.
“She was intoxicated, Jacob. I couldn’t take her to the table like that. Karl would have blown a gasket.”
“Why was she there?”
“I don’t know.”
“How did she know we were there?”
And that was another question I didn’t know the answer to. I felt like a CD with a scratch, a broken record repeating itself over and over again.
“I don’t know.”
Jacob was quiet for a minute. “Well, next time, tell me the truth. Don’t have your girlfriend text me and lie to me.”
“What’d you tell Mom and Karl?”
“What Adrienne said. That you weren’t feeling well and wanted to go home. But I think they kind of assumed it was more about you and Adrienne wanting some privacy.”
“That’s not completely untrue.”
“Yeah, well, I’m headed your way in an hour or so, so you might want to get it out of your system before then. Or move it upstairs.”
“Yes, Daddy, sir.”
Jacob just groaned and hung up on me.
Adrienne came back into the room and curled up on the stool again. She had this way of sitting that reminded me of a cat making itself comfortable in a sunbeam. She tucked her legs under her and stretched her back, then rested her arms across her knees as gracefully as a ballet dancer doing a pirouette. It was fascinating to watch.
“Everything okay?”