Emery carried two water bottles and tried very hard not to drop one and bounce it across the family room. It had been that kind of night. She got home from work, paced around. Turned the television on and off again. Changed into lounge clothes then the fumbling really began.
She should have gone down the street to the gym or eaten dinner. Anything to burn off the excess energy zipping around inside of her. But none of that happened. Nope, she jumped in the shower, changed into jeans and called Wren, after searching the Brian Jacobs name a hundred times today. She’d used every database available to both law enforcement officials and to regular people hunting down information on someone. And nothing helpful popped up.
When she started working the keyboard she’d feared she might be playing the grown-up equivalent of scribbling his name in her folder. By the end of the day she was frustrated by the lack of information. It was as if the name existed only in Wren’s head.
But that didn’t explain who the very real man sitting in her family room was.
She handed him a water bottle and sat down on the opposite end of the love seat, as far from him as possible, which amounted to a half-cushion away. “I wasn’t sure you’d come over when I called.”
The bottle made a crinkling noise when he grabbed on to it. “Why not?”
He didn’t mention that she’d used his emergency private number for a nonemergency, so neither did she. “You kind of ran out of here last night.”
Then she’d thought about him all night while Tyler sat there talking about his new job and the new city he loved. Emery had been happy for him, even as a part of her grumbled that it had been so easy for him to move on and never mention Tiffany.
For most of the night she’d been guilty of the same sin. As he talked, her mind switched to Wren. The sound of his voice. The way his muscles felt through his shirt. She certainly wouldn’t have won any Good Friend prize for her mental wanderings.
When Tyler finally did get around to talking about Tiffany again it was to declare her gone and it time to move on. Emery had ushered him out the door right after that. She heard enough of that nonsense from her dad. Another voice wasn’t really welcome.
“You had company. Something and someone else to occupy your time.” Wren didn’t look at her as he set the unopened bottle on the coffee table.
She took in the stiffness of his shoulders and the fact he hadn’t even bothered to take off his suit jacket. He walked in and went to the couch because she told him to have a seat. Very little else had transpired except for her why-am-I-doing-this panicked race to the kitchen for water. “Don’t do that.”
He leaned back on the cushions and faced her. “What?”
Gone was the easy flow of conversation from last night and the touching. Yeah, he didn’t look even a little interested in touching, which was a damn shame. “You sound all haughty and businesslike.”
“You may have just summed up the majority of my personality.” He smiled but the gesture didn’t quite reach his eyes. It looked forced and disappeared right after it happened.
She tugged on the wrapper around her water bottle. Picked at the end until she could rip off a nice long piece. “I don’t buy that. Not anymore.”
His gaze bounced from her hands to her face. “What changed?”
“I don’t even know. Maybe it’s a sense or a hope.” Of course, neither of those explained why the air in the room was all but suffocating her.
“Ah.”
Talk about an unhelpful response. She put the bottle on the table next to his and sat back again, just inches away from him. “Does that mean you get what I’m saying?”
“Not even a little bit.”
She would have laughed at that if the tension strangling her in a bear hug would ease. “Any chance I could get you to take off your jacket? Maybe loosen that tie.”
“You still seem overly concerned with my wardrobe.” But he relaxed a little. Sank back into the cushions and rested his arm across the top.
“It’s like armor.”
His fingers tapped against the love seat. “It’s wool, I believe.”
“Now you’re being a gigantic pain in the ass, just because you can.” The guy could not take a hint. She was dying to get him out of the suit. She could pretend this had to do with wanting to know he was human and to loosen him up. Yeah, there was some of that, but this was really about wanting more from him.