Deadly Notions - By Elizabeth Lynn Casey Page 0,44
like that didn’t change their feelings for a person with the flip of a switch or upon the arrival of a woman who had walked out on them well over a decade earlier.
Or did they?
She refused to speculate. For as painful as Jeff’s indiscretion had been, it had left no room for misunderstanding or second-guessing. She’d known, by the time she’d left the engagement party, that they were over. And if things were to go the same way with Milo, she needed to know the how and the why. Even if the answers to those questions shattered her heart once again.
Chapter 17
Uncertainty and fear drove her from bed long before dawn, her stomach a nauseous mess. Try as she might, she simply couldn’t get the image of Milo and Beth lying side by side from her brain. And even when she tried to come up with some perfectly innocent explanation to make it all easier, reality came knocking.
There was no reason under the sun the two should have been in the same house overnight, let alone the same bed. Which meant the explanation she wanted desperately to hear from the horse’s mouth was not likely to happen.
Padding softly across the hardwood floor that led from her bedroom to the kitchen, she willed herself to find the happy place that had been hers since moving to Sweet Briar. The place that had her living her dream job, surrounding herself with the kind of friends people searched for their whole lives, and finding the perfect companion.
“Milo.” She waited for the sound of his name on her lips to make her smile, yet it didn’t. A sure sign she’d shrouded her heart for the inevitable hurt daylight was sure to bring.
As she rounded the corner into the kitchen, her gaze fell on the open notepad she’d tossed onto the table when she returned from Melissa’s, the various scenarios they’d concocted covering every square inch of the top page.
• Perhaps Ashley’s death was a magic trick gone wrong (in her quest to save one of Paris’s kinfolk, Leona swapped a magician’s bunny for Ashley Lawson)
• Perhaps her husband had hit his limit (not hard to imagine)
• Perhaps she’d strangled herself (after her darling Penelope tried on the wrong color)
She managed a laugh in spite of everything, the ludicrous parentheticals they’d insisted on including relieving some of the tension she felt in every fiber of her being.
It’ll be okay. It really will. I don’t need Milo.
Determined to convince herself of those thoughts, she uttered them aloud. “It’ll be okay. I don’t need Milo.”
“Hmmm . . . that’s not exactly the kind of thing you want to hear when you show up at your girlfriend’s house bearing a surprise breakfast.”
She whirled around to see Milo standing in the doorway between the living room and the kitchen, his left hand clutching a bag from Debbie’s Bakery. “What are you doing here?”
His smile failed to reach his eyes. “I wanted to surprise you but, well, I think I’m the one who just got surprised.”
Resisting the urge to hug him like she normally would, she dropped into one of the kitchen chairs and shoved the notebook to the side. “I’m betting what you just overheard isn’t even close to the surprise I got when I called your phone last night.”
“You called?” His face brightened. “I didn’t hear it ring.”
She inhaled slowly in an attempt to keep too much emotion from her voice. The last thing she wanted was for him to see just how much he’d hurt her. He didn’t deserve to know he’d meant so much.
“I suspect you didn’t hear it ring because you were sleeping.”
With furrowed brows he pulled his cell phone from his pocket with his free hand and stared at the screen. “There’s no sign of a missed call.”
“That’s because it wasn’t missed.”
He met her eyes. “Then I don’t understand.”
“It wasn’t missed because it was answered. By Beth.”
All sign of color drained from his face as his phone-holding hand dropped to his side. “Tori, I can explain. It’s not what you think.”
“It’s not? You mean sleeping side by side in your bed with your old college sweetheart is perfectly normal?”
“Sleeping side by side? What are you talking about? We didn’t sleep side by side in my bed. She slept in my bed. I slept on the couch.”
She steeled herself against the relief that flooded her being. “That’s not what Beth said.”
“Beth told you we were sleeping in the same bed?” A flash of pain flickered