But figuring out how to do that was going to be hard.
* * *
“You haven’t talked to Abby, have you?”
“Give me a minute, Zach.”
Marin’s assistant Leo put the phone on speaker, but judging by the sound of Zach’s voice, she might have to rethink that decision. Facedown on the massage table, she glanced at Leo and said, “I need some privacy, Leo.” She wasn’t too concerned about the masseuse, Rosa. Rosa was paid to be discreet and uber-professional.
Leo could be as well, when it suited him. That was one of the reasons she kept him around. He let things slip and it was usually the right kind of things, things that helped with publicity and the like, but her friendship with Zach and Abby wasn’t fodder for that particular mill. Leo didn’t always get that, and she wasn’t going to take that chance. Not with her two closest friends.
Once the door closed, she blocked out the brutally strong fingers that were trying to separate her muscles from her spine and said, “The last I talked to Abby was a few days ago. Everything okay, Zach?”
“No. When she calls you, tell her . . .” He stopped, sighed.
Something about the way his voice sounded set off a warning inside and even though he didn’t say anything for a long, long moment, dread curdled inside Marin.
“Zach?”
“Never mind,” he said, his voice flat now, emotionless. “But when you talk to her, see if you can find out where she is.”
“Ahh . . .” She lifted a hand and Rosa stopped, huffing out a sigh of frustration. Fine. Let her be frustrated. Marin lifted up onto her elbows. “What do you mean, find out where she is?”
“We had a fight. She’s gone. She isn’t at home, she won’t answer her phone, and I haven’t seen her in hours. Just see if she’ll tell you. I need to see her, okay?”
The misery she heard lying just under the flat tone of his voice made her heart hurt. No. Not this, she thought dismally. Things had finally clicked for them. Those two belonged together. That was something she had always known. What—No. Just stop. It’s a fight. Fights are normal. Couples have those sorts of things, right?
“Zach, why don’t you tell me what’s going on?”
In response, she got a long stream of colorful cuss-words that might have made her blush, except she’d already heard those variations and others from Zach or his brothers over the years.
“That’s very inventive, sweetheart, but that’s not a response,” she interrupted.
“Shit.” He muttered something else and then abruptly said, “I got to go. Let me know if you hear from her.”
As the phone disconnected, she groaned and dropped her head down. Immediately, Rosa’s nimble hands went back to work on her spine. “Wait, Rosa . . . I need to make a call.”
“The massage isn’t going to help with the tension if you don’t let me do my job.”
Yeah, well, she wasn’t going to relax when she was worrying about her friends, either.
* * *
Speeding down the highway, ignoring the thick, dark blanket of the sky overhead, Abigale propped her left elbow on the door and rested her head on her hand, swallowing the knot in her throat.
She’d thought . . .
Stop thinking, she thought darkly.
Thinking hurt. When she thought, she remembered what she had just seen. She’d gone to Zach’s thinking she’d figured out something amazing. Gone there thinking that maybe, just maybe, that thing she’d been looking for her entire life was already hers.
Have you ever been in love?
The expression on his face when he looked at her, then the careful way he hadn’t looked at her when he answered that question.
I’m thirty-two years old, Abby. Yeah. I’ve been in love. It didn’t work out.
Her heart ached and she tried to cut off that tide of memories.
She never seemed to notice that I was staring at her when she walked into the room.
Emotion swelled inside her throat and it was a miracle her eyes stayed dry. No matter what she did, she seemed to recall a hundred, a thousand times when he’d been staring at her when she walked into the room. When he’d look up at her, that slow smile would light his face. It was like he’d been waiting just for her and until he saw her, he couldn’t really smile. Not that way. It was the kind of smile that said . . . the day’s complete now.