Don't Make a Sound (Sawyer Brooks #1)(28)

“I’m here.”

“First off, I wanted to tell you how sorry I am for your loss.”

“Thank you.”

“I also wanted to thank you for putting one hundred percent into the story about the birthday party gone horribly wrong and let you know I appreciate your hard work.”

Her chest puffed just a little bit. “You’re welcome.”

“It’s a tragic story that you told in a respectful and meaningful way. Your words will bring awareness to what should have been just another party.”

She didn’t know what to say. She couldn’t recall Derek Coleman ever calling her in the past to hand out praise, or for any reason at all. It felt somehow unnerving, and yet she wasn’t sure why. It took her a moment to think of what to say next, and by the time she started speaking, he spoke too. They laughed. “Go ahead,” she said.

“No. You.”

“Sean Palmer told me he talked to you about the job offer,” she said.

“That’s right. He did.”

“He told me there was no need for me to give you notice.”

“Correct.”

Okay, she thought, so he isn’t calling about that. She felt a tickle, a fluttering in her belly at the thought of not working with him any longer. “You’ve been a good boss,” she said, then rolled her eyes.

“I could have been better. You and I were sort of thrown together at one of the worst times of my life. I definitely could have done better.”

“Oh, no,” she offered lamely. “That’s not true.”

He laughed.

She felt like an idiot, but that didn’t stop her from stumbling onward, tripping over her words, probably making a fool of herself. She was good at that. In that moment she realized this was the first time in the three years since his wife’s death that he’d so much as hinted at the tragedy. “I’m sorry about the loss of your wife. I should have told you that years ago, but there are simply no words when someone so young is taken too soon. Or maybe there are words, but I certainly was and still am at a loss as to how to express my sorrow for what you’ve been through.”

“It’s okay, Sawyer. There was and is no need.”

Her nerves had quickly gotten the best of her, and when that happened she tended to talk too much. “Sean Palmer told me about the nice things you said about my work . . . about me. From the sounds of it, your generous praise made me look so good he had no choice but to give me a shot at it.”

He laughed again.

She couldn’t recall if she’d ever heard him laugh before. Hell, he hardly smiled. This conversation was getting weird. Stop, Sawyer. Say nothing else.

Coleman said, “Sean told me you plan to return on Wednesday.”

“Correct.”

“I realize this might sound as if it’s coming from left field, but now that you’re not working directly under me, I was hoping you would have dinner with me sometime.”

She’d taken another swallow of coffee and nearly spit it out.

“Are you there?” he asked for the second time.

“I’m here. You caught me off guard. Sorry.”

“No. Don’t be. You’ve traveled back home for a funeral, and here I am, out of the blue, asking you out on a date. I only called to let you know I appreciated you getting the story to me with all you had going on.”

A date. Connor had never taken her on a date. They’d met at the coffee shop where Aria worked part-time. She and Connor had kept running into each other, and the next thing she knew, she was moving in with him.

But this was Derek Coleman—the man who’d been calling the shots for the past three years, the sad, grieving widower who kept to himself.

This was definitely the Twilight Zone. She’d traveled to another dimension. Which is where her brain was at the moment—in another world. “I don’t know what to say. I’m . . .”

“No need to give me an answer. We’ll talk when you return to the office next week.”

Before she could think of what to say next, he said, “Again. My condolences. We’ll talk soon. Goodbye, Sawyer.”

“Bye,” she said absently, still in a daze. Derek Coleman had asked her on a date? She rarely discussed her life outside work, so it made sense that he wouldn’t know about Connor . . . And now that Connor was out of the picture, that was a nonissue. But the thing that niggled at her was that she hadn’t seen it coming.

Not even close.

She finished her coffee, shouldered her bag, and exited the coffee shop, still feeling blindsided by her conversation with Coleman as she walked along the sidewalk. Over the years, she and Coleman had talked about story projects and her work performance. But it never went beyond that. Even so, did she want to go on a date with him? He was six years older than she was. He was serious about his work. He was over six feet tall. He had nice eyes. God, it felt weird, thinking about him this way. She’d always thought of him as the sad, grieving widower. The man of few words.

She wove around a couple. Somebody had once told her about Coleman’s large, supportive family. She couldn’t remember why they had told her or why she remembered that tidbit at all, except that maybe such a loving image didn’t compute—a big family gathered around the table at Thanksgiving, everyone happy to see one another. Weird.