Hold Me Close - Talia Hibbert Page 0,53

tried to remember the way he’d been going to say things and failed. He’d been aiming for something approaching a romantic declaration, but not romantic enough to make Ruth choke on her own spit. Or hit him and run away. Then again, she seemed unusually receptive to gentleness right now. Apparently, orgasms loosened her up.

“Well,” he said slowly, “It’s funny, what with Burne being here and all, but I actually wanted to tell you that, well, that I know about Daniel, and I don’t care.”

She blinked. “I beg your pardon?”

“He, um…” Evan searched for a simple way to explain. “He and I had a disagreement at work today.”

Ruth had become very still, very stiff and upright in his arms. “A disagreement about what?”

“You, I suppose.”

The last scraps of contentment faded from her expression. “Are you taking the piss?”

“No. I—”

“Put me down.”

This was not going well, but then, he hadn’t expected it to. “Why?”

“Put me down,” she repeated, “and put your bloody dick away.”

He sighed. “Whatever you want.” Letting go of Ruth felt like throwing away a vital organ, but that was silly. She was still right there in front of him, glaring in a comfortingly familiar manner. Evan yanked his clothes into place but didn’t bother to zip up his jeans. “You’re upset. Do you want me to keep talking, or do you want to rant?”

“Keep talking,” she said, “and I’ll rant when you’re done.”

“Okay. I guess that girl we bumped into—his sister-in-law? Told him that she saw us together. Or maybe it was the plumber. Or maybe it was both. Anyway, he was pissed. And I realised that…” Evan sighed. “He’s jealous. Right? He sent the flowers. He’s your ex.”

Ruth wasn’t looking at him anymore. She was looking at the wall, her face as blank as the clean, magnolia paint. “You realised. You just… realised.”

“Yeah. I don’t know why I didn’t figure it out before.”

She looked at him sharply. “Why would you figure it out before?”

Evan had the feeling that he was heading into dangerous territory, but he couldn’t tell if the ground would fall out from under him, or the walls would close in around him, or something else entirely. He didn’t know where to look for the threat. “Well… he always told me to stay away from you. He was so fucking smug when I found out about his car. He—”

“His car?” Ruth looked furious now, but he wasn’t sure who she was furious with. “He’s still banging on about that fucking car?”

“Not exactly. But—”

“He had no right to do that.” She jerked back, began to pace. Evan stared. He had never seen Ruth pace. He had seen her wander around a room as she spoke, and he had seen her sit in odd places or in strange positions, and he had seen her wring her hands and tap rhythms out against table-tops. He had never seen her stride from one end of a space to the other with a look on her face that screamed murder, and he didn’t like it.

“It’s okay,” he said. “I don’t care.”

“You don’t care about what?” she demanded.

He couldn’t decipher the look on her face. He should be cautious, he knew—but she was upset. Ruth was upset, and he couldn’t stand it, and he thought he could fix it. So he said, “I don’t care if you have a criminal record because you smashed up that dick’s car.”

Ruth stared at him for a moment, her face impassive. Then she said, “I think you should go.” Her tone was mild, unreadable. Which meant that she was hiding a hurricane of emotions he’d never have access to.

“Talk to me,” he said. “Tell me why you’re upset.”

She shrugged. “Why don’t you go and find whoever’s been feeding you this shit and ask them, since they know everything?”

“Ruth. No-one’s—”

“You’ve been sitting around talking about my family,” she said quietly, “and you want me to act like you’ve done something good.”

“No.” He shook his head. If the movement was a little frantic, well—it matched his mind’s desperate cries of Fix it! “That’s not what happened, and that’s not what I want.”

“So what do you want? Because I’m really starting to wonder. Do you want to do this? Do you want to be with me? Or do you just want to solve a mystery and save a girl?”

“What the fuck?” He had no idea how things had gone so exquisitely wrong. “Ruth. You know it’s not like that.”

“It’s not?” Her jaw was hard, as if she were