A Little Secret between Friends. C.J. Carmichael
And healthy, too.”
“Is that what you were doing tonight when you had your…fall?”
“Yes.” Why had he hesitated that way? Sally angled her head for a closer look at him. Two minutes ago Colin had seemed ready to spend the night in that chair. Now he was poised on the edge of the seat cushion, watching her closely.
Did he suspect that there was nothing at all accidental in what had happened to her? For a moment she considered confiding in him. But could she really trust Colin with this when she, herself, didn’t know how to react?
Besides, she had to remember that to Colin, Neil was a respected colleague. And a friend, too. After all, they’d gone to school together. And when Sally and Neil had been married, they’d gone out with Colin and Beth occasionally.
Sally’s instincts were to keep silent. She had to figure out what had happened and why. She needed to step carefully, because if she made any mistakes, Neil would make her pay, for sure.
And even though they were having a nice conversation tonight, Colin wasn’t someone she wanted to take into her confidence. Ever since she’d found out Beth was in love with him, she’d walked on eggshells around the man.
“Is Lara at Neil’s?”
“She’s at a sleepover party.”
“What time are you supposed to pick her up in the morning?”
“She’s getting a ride. She’ll be home around eleven.”
“Right. That’s taken care of, then. Where would you like me to sleep?”
Right where you are. Of course, Sally didn’t dare say that, even though it was so comforting having him close. “The spare room is down the hall to the left. There are clean towels in the bathroom closet.”
“Okay.” Colin stood and stretched out his tall, large-boned frame. He cut an imposing figure in the broad-shouldered suits he wore to work, but to Sally’s mind he looked even better in the jeans and plain blue T-shirt he wore tonight.
He left the room, and moments later Sally heard him moving around in the kitchen. Was he cleaning up the mess from her aborted stir-fry?
He was back ten minutes later. “Still awake?”
“So far,” she agreed.
“You had a lot of food prepared,” he commented.
Neil had said the same thing.
“A lot of food for just one person.”
Where was he going with that? She made a noise of disgruntlement. “I was alone, okay? I burned myself and I fell. I’ve always been kind of clumsy.”
Colin folded his arms over his chest. In the low light, she couldn’t see his eyes at all. “I’ve always thought of you as graceful, actually.”
Really? She felt something lurch inside her, a pleased yet shy reaction that reminded her of her younger self. It had been a long time since a man’s compliment had elicited such a response from her.
“I’m going to leave the hall light on, okay? You know I have to wake you up in a few hours to give you another quiz.”
“I’ll bone up on provincial capitals while I’m sleeping.”
Colin smiled. It seemed as if he was going to leave, then he changed his mind and took a couple of steps inside her room.
“Sally, I know you told me you were by yourself when you fell tonight. Are you sure about that? Is there any chance your head injury affected your memory?”
She was so tempted to tell him. But the habit of holding her best friend’s husband at a distance was too ingrained to break now.
“I was alone and I fell, Colin. That’s all.”
He looked at her sadly, as if her answer had disappointed him.
“By the way,” he said. “There’s a silver pen on your island. It’s engraved with the initials ‘N.A.’”
The pen she had used to sign the passport application earlier. Trust the crown prosecutor to have noticed that. He was looking at her expectantly now. Waiting for her confession, no doubt. But she wasn’t giving in to his courtroom tactics.
“I guess Neil must have left it here the last time he came to visit Lara,” she replied softly. Then she closed her eyes and pretended to sleep.
CHAPTER THREE
AT TWO O’CLOCK in the morning, the alarm on Colin’s wristwatch began to beep. He’d been sleeping lightly and woke easily. Careful not to disturb Armani at the foot of the bed, he got up and pulled on his jeans.
When the puppy had started whimpering an hour ago, Colin hadn’t wanted him to wake Sally, so he’d let him into his room. The puppy had hopped up onto the bed as if permission were a forgone conclusion. Colin suspected this was not the case. Still, at least the dog had been happy.
Colin crept down the hallway. At the entrance to Sally’s room, he paused. The door stood open, and light from the hall spilled onto Sally’s bed, highlighting the blond streaks in her hair and emphasizing her pale complexion. One hand, the uninjured one, clutched the sheet, holding it to her chin.
She looked unaccustomedly young, vulnerable and sweet. And seeing her that way filled Colin with an uncomfortable guilt.
In the almost twenty years he’d known her, Sally had rarely let down her guard around him. He was used to her alert and wary, her keen mind poised to take advantage of his first sign of weakness.
He didn’t know why she’d developed an almost instantaneous animosity toward him. He supposed it had all began in Foundations to Law—their very first class on the first day of law school.
He’d stood up to disagree with a point she was making—about what, he could no longer remember. He’d turned her opinion into a joke and made the entire class laugh. Sally had appeared to take the insult calmly, but from that moment on, she’d made a point of gunning for him whenever she could.
She’d proved herself a worthy adversary, in a battle that Colin soon understood he was destined to lose.
Because it hadn’t taken more than a few weeks for him to realize Sally was the last woman he wanted to argue with. But his belated attempts to win her over had failed miserably.
For almost three years they had failed, and then, inexplicably, they hadn’t.
It was just a week before December exams, in their final year, when he’d offered Sally a ride home from the library and she’d surprised him by accepting. In the car that night, they had managed to have their first real conversation since they’d met. And when he’d invited her to his off-campus apartment, she’d accepted.
They’d made love that night and their relationship had changed.
Only, unknown to him, the cute education student he’d dated a couple of times previously was Sally’s best friend and roommate. Once Sally connected the dots—apparently she’d never in a million years have surmised from Beth’s glowing descriptions that her friend was talking about Colin Foster—she’d become colder and more antagonistic than ever.
He’d only just met Beth. He hadn’t been in love with her yet. “I’m not going to ask her out again,” he’d told Sally when she’d decreed their one night together would never be repeated.
“I still won’t get involved with you,” Sally swore. And that very night she was on Neil Anderson’s arm at the university pub.
Every day for a whole week Colin had fought her to change her mind. Finally, angry at her stubbornness, he had asked Beth out again and his relationship with Sally had reverted to its original footings with one twist. They still argued, disagreed and, whenever possible, avoided each other. But underlying the old antagonism was a new awareness