that.”
Bullshit. I did not trust this woman one bit. She just wanted to get Luc alone for... I wasn’t sure what, but something I didn’t want to imagine.
“It’s okay, angioletto.” Luc squeezed my knee again. “I’ll be fine. She’s right. There are things I need to talk about that I can’t tell you. Not because I don’t want to, but because I don’t want to put you in danger. It’s safer this way.”
I didn’t believe that. There were things he was ashamed to discuss with me. Things he thought would make me see him differently.
“Are you sure? Because if you’re not—”
“I’m sure.” He lifted a hand to my cheek and pressed a kiss to my forehead. “I’ll be fine. I promise.”
I wanted him to kiss my lips. I wanted him to pull me in and show this bitch that he was mine and I was his and she couldn’t have him. But he didn’t. He just drew back and smiled down at me with those worried, stressed eyes that were once again like a mask, hiding things from me.
Abigail pushed to her stiletto-booted feet and crossed to the door. “This may take a while. You’re welcome to sit in the waiting room, but I’m sure you’d be more comfortable at the café downstairs. Or, if you’re in the mood for something stronger, there are several pubs in the area.” She tugged the door open, indicating it was way past time for me to leave. “Eve has your cell phone number and will call you as soon as we’re done.”
Luc rose and tugged me to my feet. With my head spinning and my stomach swirling, I looked up at him, fighting what this woman wanted me to do, needing to stay with him.
“It’s okay,” he whispered. “Go. We’ll be done here before you know it. Just... Don’t go far.”
His words didn’t ease my anxiety any, but when he pushed me forward and let go of me, I felt myself crossing the floor as if in a daze.
I startled when the door snapped shut behind me and looked around the empty waiting room once more. The blonde was back at her desk, clicking away on her keyboard. I thought about sitting back on that couch under the window, picking up one of those magazines on the side tables and waiting, but I knew if I did, I wouldn’t be able to concentrate. I’d strain and listen for any sound coming from the door at my back, and I’d imagine all kinds of things happening on that couch, on that stupid desk that was like an altar up on that raised platform.
Before I could change my mind, I rushed for the door and didn’t draw a deep breath until I was outside the old church, standing on the street near the high, iron fence that surrounded the property, shivering in the cool October air.
With shaky fingers, I tugged my cell phone from my pocket and looked down at the screen. It was two-thirty p.m. That doctor—or whatever she was—had cleared her entire schedule to treat Luc. And she’d told me it would be hours before she was done. Hours in which I would worry and conceivably make myself crazy imagining worst-case scenarios.
I’d never last.
Shoving the phone back into my pocket, I headed for the sidewalk and went searching for a bar—any bar—to save my sanity.
I was ready to shatter my phone.
Hours had gone by with no word from Luc or that office. The light was fading outside, and it was starting to grow dark. What in the hell could they be doing up there?
“Are ye sure I cannae get ye anything else?” the waitress said at my side as she checked on me in the back table of the dimly lit pub. “Ye been nursing that ale fer hours.”
I had been. After the two shots of Macallan I’d had when I’d first arrived that had chilled me out a bit, I’d been sitting here staring into my beer, trying to hold it together.
“No. Thanks.” I glanced at my phone again. Still nothing. But they had to be done soon. It was almost five o’clock. I’d just go back up to the office and wait. Even if I had to stick my fingers in my ears as I sat there. “Just the tab, please.”
“It’s already been taken care of,” she said in her thick Scottish accent.
“It has been?” I glanced up at her for the first time, realizing she wasn’t as young as I