The blond man’s nose wrinkled, like he’d smelled dog crap on his shoe. “Who’sthat, Mol?”
“That’s my new boyfriend, Karl. The one you heard on the phone.” Molly offered her adversary an evil smile. “He’s apparently very eager to meet you.”
Wisely, Blond Asshole stopped trying to grab her arm.
Somewhere behind Karl, Johnathan asked Charlotte, “Is it just me, or is this, like, peak teen-movie shit happening right now?”
“Rest assured, Johnathan,” Charlotte managed to pant out as she caught up with Karl and elbowed aside a gawker in the doorway, “it’s definitely not just you.”
28
After repairing her minimal, tear-ravaged makeup as much as possible in the high school bathroom, Molly had headed back toward the reunion with Lise at her side. Only to find her ex-husband in the hallway outside the event, scrutinizing its participants through the open gym door. Searching for her, she presumed.
Stunned, she abruptly halted. Stared uncomprehendingly.
Why wasn’t Rob in California? And even if he’d followed her to Harlot’s Bay for some unknown, utterly bizarre reason, how the hell could he have possibly known she was here, at the school?
“Lise...” Had all the drama of the evening caused hallucinations? “You see the tall blond guy in the boring gray suit, right? I’m not just imagining him? Or having a nightmare?”
Stumbling to a stop alongside her, Lise looked around. “Yeah, I see him. But... Molly, who—”
At the sound of his ex-wife’s name, he swung around. Spotted her.
“Molly. There you are.” With a charming smile and a smooth stride, he approached her. “I was beginning to think you’d left already, and I’d have to drive to the...” His brow crinkled attractively, and he checked the note-taking app on his phone. “The local... Spite House? Is that correct?”
Because politeness had been drummed into Molly’s core being since she was a child, she turned to her companion. “Lise, this is my ex-husband, Rob Brandt. Rob, please meet Lise Utendorf.”
Molly’s best friend didn’t say a word. Just stared at him stonily, arms folded across her substantial chest.
“Lise...” He thought for a minute. “Oh, right. She’s the one who wri—”
“Donotfinish that sentence,” Molly warned. “Rob, why are you here? And how on earth did you even find me?”
A flash bulb went off at close range, and she screwed her eyes shut for a moment.
“Because of... that woman, I believe,” Rob said, his voice amused.
Once Molly could see past the sparkling dots in her vision, she followed Rob’s pointing finger to... Sylvia, whose huge camera hung on a strap around her neck. The older woman waved, then took another photo.
“I don’t understand.” Which was the understatement of the century, as far as Molly was concerned. “What does Sylvia have to do with anything?”
Rob looked pleased with himself. “When I asked people in town where you might be, someone said he knew you were here, because he follows the local newspaper’s Instagram account.”
“Some dude in Harlot’s Bay needs to mind his own freaking business,” Lise muttered. “Or at least keep his damn mouth shut.”
Molly waved that off, too tired to care. “Fine. That’s how you found me. But why are youhere?”
“I could ask the same question.” A graceful flick of his fingers smoothed his rumpled hair. “Molly, why in the world have you stayed an entire month in the middle of nowhere?”
At that, Sylvia stopped taking photos and started glowering at him.
“This is so unlike you.” Rob peered closely at her, as if lookingfor evidence of trauma, or maybe a mental break of some sort. “You’ve lived in a dozen places, and we both know you never cared much about the people you left behind. So why come back here?”
He made her sound utterly heartless, but... at a certain point, once she’d moved often enough, she’d gotten so freaking tired of making connections, then having them ripped away without warning. So, yes, she’d stopped getting attached.
Harlot’s Bay had always been her one exception, though. Not that she’d ever told Rob. Something inside her hadn’t trusted him with that bit of her heart, and she’d kept it to herself.
Just another sign that Karl and Lise were right: Her instincts were fine. She simply hadn’t listened to them. But now was a great time to start, and those instincts were clear on one thing: Her past was none of Rob’s business, and she shouldn’t let him goad her into discussing it.
