Pushing His Luck - Rhyannon Byrd Page 0,20
yeah, she, uh, got into some trouble back in March. It was actually the night that you and I… The night I asked you out.” He caught her sharp intake of breath, but kept going, keeping one hand firmly on the wheel as he scraped the other one over his jaw and chin. “She called while I was on my way home from the bonfire, and I could tell there was something wrong, so I went over to her place. She managed to open the door for me, then lost consciousness. I rushed her to the nearest ER, and they had to pump her stomach.” He paused for a moment, feeling a little sick as the fear from that night swept through him again. Then he cleared his throat, and muttered, “Jenna claimed it wasn’t a suicide attempt, but she’d drank a shit ton of Vodka while taking some heavy-duty sleeping pills.”
“And when her sister got to the hospital, she blamed what had happened on you?” she asked, obviously piecing together how things had played out from the conversation he’d had with Lisa.
He rubbed his jaw again, trying to work out how to explain the rest without sounding like a jackass. But despite Lisa’s surprising apology, he knew damn well that he was a fucking jackass, so he finally just said, “Even though things between me and Jenna were casual, she’d apparently bitched about me to her family after we stopped seeing each other. According to Lisa, Jenna said that I led her on and then dropped her cold when she wanted more than I was willing to give. That I told her I wouldn’t ever let any woman come before my career, no matter how I felt about her, which she attributed to me being a selfish prick. She… Hell, she even claimed that she’d been in love with me, and when I broke things off, it…broke her.”
A quick glance to his right showed her staring out the passenger-side window, but then she looked over at him, her big brown eyes filled with a chest-tightening array of emotions as she quietly said, “So that’s why you dropped me.”
Even though she’d voiced it as more of a statement than a question, Paul responded with a tight nod.
He turned his attention back to the road, but could feel the vibrant force of her gaze burning against the side of his face. “You know it’s not your fault, right?”
Hah! Like hell did he know that. He hadn’t been aware of Jenna’s issues with depression, but he’d known she was getting serious about him. She’d started complaining that they didn’t spend enough time together, constantly accusing him of only caring about his job, just like she’d complained to her family. That’s why he’d ended things when he had, unwilling to go down that road with her.
But he appreciated Karin not thinking the worst of him. “Thanks,” he grated.
“Well, thanks for helping me tonight. You were a lifesaver.”
A husky, humorless laugh rumbled up from his chest. “I thought you thought I was a shit.”
“You did a shitty thing,” she readily agreed, and he wished like hell that he wasn’t driving while they were having this conversation, since it would have been so much easier if he could just keep watching her expressive face, rather than relying solely on her tone and whatever glances he could steal of her. “But that doesn’t define you as a person,” she went on to say, surprising him. “You’re… Well, you’re clearly going through something.”
He didn’t know what to say to that uncomfortable observation, so he kept his mouth shut, just happy that she was finally talking to him.
“I’m curious though,” she murmured, and from the corner of his eye he could see her nervously fiddling with the hem of the black cardigan she’d thrown on when she went up to her condo to grab her purse, the soft material covering the sexy bronze top she’d worn for her date with the dickhead doctor.
“About what?” he husked, when she fell silent.
“Why you asked me for a date in the first place,” she finally admitted, before giving a wry laugh. “I mean, we’ve known each other for months, but after that first time we met, you never once mentioned us going out. And it’s not like I was chasing after you and so you maybe felt bad about it or something, like you needed to throw me a freaking bone to get me to stop glomming on to you. Because