"I need to work."
I managed a smile, despite feeling all twisted up and achy inside.
Nothing was right in my world when things weren't right between me and Gideon.
"Catch me up on what I missed."
* * *
The morning passed swiftly.
I had a checklist of follow-ups waiting from the week before, and Mark had an eleven thirty deadline to turn around a request for proposal for a promotional items manufacturer.
By the time we sent the RFP off, I was back in the groove and willing to just forget Gideon's mood that morning.
I wondered if he'd had another nightmare and hadn't slept well.
I decided call him when lunchtime rolled around, just in case.
And then I checked my inbox.
The Google alert I'd set up for Gideon's name was waiting for me.
I opened the e-mail hoping to get an idea of what he might be working on.
The words former fiancee in some of the headlines leaped out at me.
The knot I'd had in my gut earlier returned, tighter than before.
I clicked on the first link, and it took me to a gossip blog sporting pictures of Gideon and Corinne having dinner at Tableau One.
They sat close together in the front window, her hand resting intimately on his forearm.
He was wearing the suit he'd worn to the hospital the day before, but I checked the date anyway, desperately hoping the photos were old.
They weren't.
My palms began to sweat.
I tortured myself by clicking through all the links and studying every photo I found.
He was smiling in a few of them, looking remarkably content for a man whose girlfriend was at a hospital with her beaten-half-to-death best friend.
I felt like throwing up.
Or screaming.
Or storming up to Gideon's office and asking him what the hell was going on.
He'd blown me off when I'd called him the night before - to go to dinner with his ex.
I jumped when my desk phone rang.
I picked it up and woodenly recited, "Mark Garrity's office, Eva Tramell speaking."
"Eva."
It was Megumi in reception, sounding as bubbly as usual.