Suddenly One Summer (FBI/US Attorney #6)(85)

“So? What are you going to do about it?” Audrey asked.

Victoria pulled back. “Do about it? There’s nothing I can do. Whatever we had between us, he’s obviously moved on to some other woman.”

“You don’t know what that was,” Rachel said. “You were wrong that other time, when you saw him with the woman who turned out to be his friend.”

“Even if that were true, he’s not looking for a serious relationship,” she pointed out.

“That’s what you said, too, once,” Audrey said.

“And I’m still saying that.” Victoria paused for a moment. “Maybe.” When her friends smiled, she pointed, quick to cut them off at the pass. “No. Whatever you’re thinking, just . . . no.”

“I’m thinking you have to tell Ford how you feel,” Audrey said.

Oh, God.

Feeling her stomach clench, Victoria bent over, her head between her legs. “Yep. Here I go again.” Breathing deep for several moments, she turned her head to the side and peeked at her two friends. “You can’t be serious. Look at me.” She sat up. “I’m supposed to ignore the fact that Ford says he doesn’t want anything serious, and the fact that he may have already moved on to someone else, and just walk up to him and lay my feelings on the line, without having the faintest idea whether he feels the same way? Do you honestly think—even on my best day—that I’m capable of putting myself out there like that?”

Audrey and Rachel both looked her dead in the eyes. “Yes.”

Victoria blinked, not having expected them to be so unequivocal.

Then Rachel grinned. “Although on your worst day, you might end up puking on his shoes. So choose your moment wisely.”

Right. Helpful.

* * *

SEATED AT HIS dining table, Ford looked over when he heard a front door close in the hallway.

He went momentarily still, and then realized that the sound was too muted to be coming from Victoria’s place.

Turning back to his laptop, he tried to focus on his research. He was working on yet another follow-up piece in his probation department series, cross-checking arrest records against the list of nearly one thousand convicted felons who hadn’t been seen by their probation officers for two or more months. It was turning out to be a massive investigation, although at least now he had someone to share the workload.

He and Samantha, his co-worker on the Watchdog Team, had planned to meet that afternoon to divvy up the names of lost convicts. But then her one year-old son’s nanny had called in sick and Samantha had taken the day off. Eager to nevertheless get a jump on things over the weekend, and seeing how she lived only five minutes away in Bucktown, she’d offered to drop by Ford’s place that evening, after her husband got home from work, so that Ford could bring her up to speed on the investigation and give her copies of his files.

It was a wholly platonic meeting—obviously—but he knew what Victoria must have been thinking when she saw him and Samantha heading to his place. And he couldn’t decide what bothered him more: that Victoria would assume he was already hooking up with someone else, or that he found it so incredible that she might actually think that. Because he and Victoria were done. Finished. And they’d never had any kind of commitment between them even when they were together. So if he wanted to go on a date, or meet a woman for drinks, or bring a whole goddamn bachelorette party back to his place for a wild orgy, he was perfectly free to do so.

But there’d been that look that Victoria had given him when she saw him with Samantha.

And that look was bullshit.

That look had pissed him off all over again, because they’d had their nice talk last week. They’d had their closure and they’d parted ways on good terms and they were supposed to be done but that look, that fleeting, brief, probably meaningless look of hers . . . had given him hope.

And he didn’t want to have hope.

Not when he knew exactly how this would turn out.

He checked his watch and saw that it was nearly ten o’clock at night. Swearing under his breath—so much for not sitting around ruminating over Victoria—he grabbed his phone and nearly texted Charlie and Tucker before stopping himself. He knew they would be at a bar, and he had zero interest in the bar scene tonight. Texting Brooke also was out of the question, because the only reason a single man would ever text his married female friend at ten o’clock on a Friday night was to talk, and he didn’t want to talk. He just wanted to get out of his place and burn off some energy.

So he changed into his workout clothes, went to his twenty-four-hour gym, and just . . . ran. On the treadmill, for an hour. Afterward, he lifted weights, and by the time he got home it was after midnight. He took a long, hot shower that sapped every last bit of mental and physical energy out of him, and then he crashed hard.

He slept until nine o’clock, then dove back into the research he’d started the night before. All morning long, there was this nagging sensation in the back of his mind, and at noon, when he broke for lunch, he finally figured out what it was.

No hair dryer.

Granted, there’d been a couple other weekend mornings when Victoria had skipped her interminable hair-drying routine. But now that he thought about it, he hadn’t heard any sound coming from her place for nearly the last eighteen hours. No hair dryer, no heels on the hardwood floors, no shower, sink, or bathtub running, and no front door opening and closing. Not even a toilet flushing.