An Act of Persuasion(12)

“I told you. I’m sorry I upset you.”

They approached a red light and once the car stopped, she faced him again. “Do you know why I reacted the way I did?”

“You mean why you quit?”

“Yes.”

“You weren’t happy with my decision to have the stem cell transplantation. You were less happy that I deliberately kept it from you. I understand that. Up until that point you had shared much of my treatment and recovery. But the decision was mine to make and I didn’t want it up for discussion. I didn’t expect you to leave because of it.”

She opened her mouth and then closed it. The light turned green and she resumed driving.

“So you’re apologizing for lying to me and that’s it?”

That irritated him. “I didn’t lie. I simply didn’t tell you my plans. Do you think you were entitled to know everything?”

“Yes.”

Her answer surprised him. Ben didn’t believe he had a person in his life who was entitled to know everything about him. He was purposefully insular and preferred to live his life that way. Then he realized he’d been dancing around the elephant in the car and not very successfully.

“Because we had sex,” he said.

“No, because I thought we were... It doesn’t matter. I was upset about your decision, yes. But also because you shut me out of your life when you made it. After we’d been together. Once you did that, I knew the sex meant nothing to you. I was only a convenience for you that night.”

“I told you, that’s not true.”

“You said it yourself. It just happened. Remember?”

As if he would forget anything he said to her that day. Immediately after they had sex, he thought he had escaped unscathed. She hadn’t needed a postgame breakdown of the event. Amazing. And he assumed that nothing had to change because of one night.

It wasn’t until he finally told her about the stem cell transplant that everything exploded. She’d been furious, angrier than he’d ever seen her.

Hell, she threw a snow globe.

She didn’t say anything to him after that fight, but he’d seen something in her eyes had died. Something he was certain he’d killed.

She was there for him the next morning to take him to the hospital, although they didn’t speak a word to each other. It wasn’t until later, when he was in recovery after chemo and he saw Madeleine at the hospital that he knew.

Anna was gone.

Madeleine never said anything and Ben didn’t ask. It was implied that Madeleine would handle the business end of things and she would hire a nurse to help him when he returned home after his quarantine period in the hospital.

Reflecting on that fight he entertained the possibility he’d been lying then. Maybe he wanted to believe that what they had done that night was nothing more than time-out for both of them. A temporary reprieve from the sickness, done and then forgotten. But if that were true, he wouldn’t still be thinking about it months later.

If Anna was nothing more than a convenience, then he wouldn’t be in this car right now. And if she had felt it was only a harmless night of sex, she wouldn’t have needed to quit.

And that put an entirely different light on this negotiation to get her under his employ.

“We’re here.” She stopped at the top of his driveway and he blinked, thinking he’d been so intent on watching her face that he hadn’t even recognized they were on his street.

“Come in.”

She shook her head. “I don’t think so. I’m kind of drained.”

He could see it, too. Her face was pale, which made the freckles stand out. It wasn’t like Anna. Anna was always alive, always on, as if she was constantly filled with energy. This paleness worried him.

“We’re not done talking.”

“I can say what I need to. You’re going to need time to process it anyway.”

Now he was really worried. He reached over and grabbed her hand. It was damp. She pulled it away and wouldn’t look at him.

“Tell me you’re not sick.” She had to tell him that she wasn’t sick. The words had to come out of her mouth now. Panic started to bubble up in his stomach, a feeling he’d never felt before.

“I’m not sick.”

Relief washed through him. “You’re scaring the crap out of me, Anna.”

She looked over and smiled. “Yeah? Well, my news isn’t going to be any less scary.”