Heating Up the Holidays 3-Story Bundle(111)

Goodbye.





Chapter 8


“What the f*ck, Miles?”

It was Owen on the phone. Miles almost hadn’t answered it, but in Owen’s last voice mail he’d threatened to fly out and make sure Miles was still alive, and the last thing Miles wanted was another overnight visitor on his doorstep. The last one hadn’t turned out so well.

“Hello to you, too, O.”

“You didn’t return my calls.”

“I didn’t have anything to say.”

There had been five or six of them. Most had been, more or less, Call me and tell me how it went with Nora.

“You could have called Nora,” Miles said. “Now that you two are bosom buddies.”

“Don’t be pissed.”

“I’m not pissed.”

“No, and the pope is the most recent convert to Mormonism. You’re pissed.”

“I wish you’d minded your own goddamned business, that’s all.”

There was a silence on the other end of the phone that, if Miles and Owen had not gone back quite so far, might have been hurt. “Point taken. So you probably won’t be surprised to learn that after I failed to get ahold of you for almost two weeks, I did call Nora, just to make sure you hadn’t strangled her in a fit of misplaced rage and tucked her body under the bed somewhere and were now the subject of a murder investigation.”

“Oh, that’s classy. Crime jokes.”

“I don’t think anything would be funny to you right now, Miles. You used to have a sense of humor.”

“And then someone accused me of a felony.”

“Which is exactly the time when a sense of humor comes in handy.”

He’d had a sense of humor again, briefly, while Nora had been with him. Not a laugh-out-loud raucous one, but he’d been able to find the usual range of pleasurable things pleasurable, the usual range of funny ones funny. He’d felt normal. Good.

Better than good, something whispered in the back of his brain. So good you scared yourself.

“Anyway, she refused to talk to me about it.”

Damn it, of course she did. Because she was a good person. Which of course only made everything worse.

“I figured I’d try you one more time before I flew out there. So how’d you manage to screw up the beautiful woman flying to Ohio to have sex with you?”

“She didn’t fly here to have sex with me.”

“Really? Could have fooled me.”

He wasn’t sure why he was arguing with Owen about any of this, but maybe it was because this was the first time in a week that he’d had a conversation with another human being, and, more than he wanted to admit, he was enjoying it.

Over the last ten days, he’d regressed to the point where he probably would have been a better fit for the company of wolves than the company of humans, showering only occasionally, venturing out only when he exhausted the delivery-friendly take-out options. Though he’d spent an obscene amount of time in bed, he’d slept poorly, with periods when he’d dreamed he was awake and periods he hadn’t been able to sleep at all. He’d sunk much lower this week than in the days after Deena’s desertion, and he could explain that only by saying that it was the cumulative effect of one blow after another.

Of course, he knew better. He knew because, in the days after Deena left, he’d never found himself whispering her name, but he’d whispered Nora’s. Just once, at a particularly low moment, when he’d thought maybe he could drown his sorrows in a good jerk, but he’d been unable to come. Then he’d murmured Nora’s name like a plea, as if she’d hear and relieve him. Bring him release. But no.

But nothing.

“What happened, Miles?”

Because it was Owen, and because he couldn’t stand his own rancid, pathetic company anymore, he told the story, exactly what had transpired between Nora and him, minus a few details that he kept to himself. The red lace, the front hall, the shower, the way he’d poured himself into her after the restaurant when he’d known their first date would also be their last. After he’d realized that he couldn’t drag her into his limbo and he couldn’t take the look of doubt in her eyes.

He hadn’t expected it, the way it would feel, filling her in the dark. The way the experience of her would take him over. How much harder it had felt, afterward, to know he wouldn’t do it again, not for a long time, maybe not ever. He’d felt flayed.

“She told you she was ninety-five percent sure you were innocent?”

“That’s five percent sure I’m guilty.”

Owen made a noise of disgust. “No, you *. That’s five percent not really sure. And how the hell do you expect anyone to believe you’re innocent when you act like you’re guilty?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Skulking around, avoiding people. Not talking to anyone. Not even talking to your staff.”

“I’ve been put on leave of absence with no pay. I’m a suspect. No one wants to talk to me.”

“They’re your friends, Miles. You told me you hadn’t even told them you’re innocent. And do you know why? Because you have absolutely no faith that anyone will believe you. You have no faith in your friends, and you act like you’re guilty. So what gives you the right to be angry with someone who has a five percent margin of doubt about the facts?”