Infatuation. Alison Kent
have too much free time.”
He leaned against the doorjamb, crossed his arms over his chest, arched a brow. “Maybe I do. Maybe you could help me fill it up.”
She stared at him for several long seconds, strands of hair catching on the folder she held. Her dark eyes were narrow and made up in colors of purple and blue to match her blouse. She kept her lips pressed together, and wore no lipstick.
For some reason her lips being bare like that made it easier for him to see when she started to go mad. “What exactly is it you’re saying, Hector? And be very clear so I don’t start thinking you meant something you didn’t.”
Cripes and double cripes. But since he was already in for a pound… “Tomorrow night. You want to grab a burger?”
“A burger?”
A burger and a beer would be better for a night with Rennie and Jin. “We could go for shrimp. Or steaks. Whatever you like.”
“I like lasagna.”
“Italian’s good. You have a favorite place?”
She nodded. “I do. Thank you for asking.”
“Okay, then,” he said, pushing off the door. “I’ll pick you up at seven-thirty.”
She walked toward him, walked past him, walked out into the shop. “Don’t be late. And don’t honk. Come to the door. If you don’t, you’ll have to explain to my mamma that you are not disrespecting me.”
“You still live with your mamma?”
She stopped and swung around, one hand going to her waist. “I take care of her. I support her. Do you have a problem with that?”
Hector shook his head quickly. He knew more than enough about supporting his own family, the sacrifices it took, how nothing about it was easy. He’d just never thought of Angie that way. Living like he did…
He’d just thought of her as the girl who answered Bergen’s phones. Not as a girl who might understand his life. “No problem. I was just asking, that’s all.”
Her cute little nose came up in the air. “Okay, then. Tomorrow night. Seven-thirty.”
“On the dot,” he assured her, thinking he really needed to stop looking down girls’ blouses before he did something more stupid than inviting one out to eat.
UNBREAKABLE.
She couldn’t believe he’d called her unbreakable. After all they’d shared and all they’d been through, did he really not know her at all?
Milla stood at the window of her office, staring at the afternoon traffic ten stories below, her late lunch spread out on the desk behind her.
She’d left Bergen Motors and driven for an hour before realizing she’d done nothing but go nowhere. She didn’t like that about herself. The way she so easily drifted, searching, unsatisfied. It was a state with which she’d become too emotionally intimate the last few years.
When she’d finally arrived back downtown, she’d stopped at the deli on the corner for a sandwich, realizing she hadn’t eaten since the night before. But thinking of Rennie made it impossible to think of anything else, no matter all the things on her mind.
Food, work, the new shoes that pinched her feet and she needed to return, the book in her drawer she’d wanted to finish at lunch, deciding on a dress for tomorrow night, the fact that Natalie would be stopping by any minute for a blow-by-blow of Milla’s morning excursion—
“How’d it go?”
Smiling at the confirmation of her uncanny sixth sense, Milla turned, hoping the tracks of her tears had dried. She pulled in a shuddering breath. “I have a date, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“That’s good, and Joan will be pleased, but that’s not what I’m asking.” Natalie closed Milla’s office door, her silk jacket swinging around her hips, her gaze sharp and demanding. “What happened with your Mr. Bergen?”
Hugging herself tightly, Milla avoided her friend’s eyes that saw too much, staring at her soggy sandwich instead. “Not much, actually. We talked for less than ten minutes.”
Gripping the back of the gold-and-blue paisley visitor’s chair, Natalie leaned forward. “Talked? About?”
“Honestly? Nothing. Absolutely nothing.” Milla dropped into her own chair, pulled a pickle from her sandwich and popped it into her mouth.
“So, what then? You compared notes on the weather? The state of the union? Old times?”
“He said, ‘What’re you doing here?’ I said, ‘I don’t know.’ He said, ‘What took you so long to look me up?’ I said, ‘I don’t know, but would you like to go out tomorrow?’ He said, ‘Sure, I’ll see you then.’” She chomped on a tomato slice. “And that was it. Like I said. Ten minutes and absolutely nothing.”
Natalie stepped back and frowned. “But he said he’d go out with you.”
Milla nodded.
“And you’ll talk more then?”
She couldn’t even measure the level of dread in her stomach. “If not, it will be an uncomfortably dull date.”
“Then it is a date?”
All she knew was what she’d told Rennie. “A work date. Not a hot and heavy night on the town.”
“Hmm.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Milla asked as Natalie finally circled the guest chair and sat.
“It’s not supposed to mean anything. I was just thinking.”
“About?” Milla pinched off a triangle of cheese.
“How two people with the history you and Rennie Bergen share could get anything out of your systems in ten minutes and by saying nothing.”
Another triangle of cheese. Another pickle slice. She tasted none of it. “Who said we had anything to work out of our systems?”
“I did, but no one has to say it to make it so. Just like no one has to say there’s been an earthquake when the cracks in the wall tell the tale.”
Milla chuckled beneath her breath, deciding the sound was a bit too hysterical for comfort. “Are you saying I’m cracked?”
Natalie’s fingernails rat-tatted against the chair’s maple arms. “I’m saying you haven’t been whole since the last time you saw Rennie Bergen.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Milla said, unable to swallow.
“Is it?” Natalie’s dark brows winged upward. “I may not have known you then, but I know you now. And I’ve been waiting a long time for you to make your way back from wherever it was that he left you.”
“He didn’t leave me anywhere,” Milla grumbled.
“Don’t interrupt.” Natalie held up one elegant finger. “You haven’t wanted to face the impact Rennie Bergen had on your life. I figured that first you had to reach your breaking point. Maybe this was it.”
Milla remained silent and continued to pick at her sandwich. It was easier to pick at the veggies, cheese and bread than her life. “Rennie said I was unbreakable.”
Natalie, always so poised, actually squeaked. “What?”
“Unbreakable.” Milla shook her head because she couldn’t think of anything else to do. “He said we both were.”
“And you believed him?”
She didn’t know what to believe. To tell the truth, as often as she thought about Rennie Bergen, she’d never expected to see him again.
They’d