Now . . .
Nope.
There is no sudden geological shift to save me.
Max breaks first.
“I’ve got to go,” he says into the phone in his hand, which I hadn’t even seen until he hung it up.
I catch a glimpse of a name and a woman’s face in the caller’s avatar as he ends the call without ever taking his eyes off me.
All the lack of oxygen must be getting to me, because I still don’t say anything.
Because I’m still staring at all those muscles.
But my brain slowly chugs to life.
Okay, Holly, say something.
You’re the communications specialist. You know how this works.
He says words. Then you say words. Repeat as needed.
So I say words.
“You opened the door.”
Not good words. But I do say some.
Out loud and everything.
I should have been more specific when I was giving myself directions.
“What I meant to say,” I babble, “is that you opened the door before I could ring your doorbell.” Probably because I’d been standing on his doorstep for several minutes working up the courage to ring the bell. Trying to decide if confronting Ramsey at home was a good idea or a bad idea. “But then you opened the door and so I never rang the bell.” I clear my throat. Praying again for a freak geological incident. And then blurt, “Were you going somewhere?”
As I say all the words—all the stupid, brainless words—his expression slowly hardens into his normal scowl.
“I was working out,” he says.
“Okay.” But that’s not really an answer to the question of whether or not he was on his way out. “Because I can come back if this isn’t a good time.”
“No. It’s fine.” But he still just stands there. Looking at me. His gaze moving over my face and my neck and my arms.
And for one crazy moment, I think,What if he feels this too?
What if this weird, crazy pull I feel isn’t one-sided? What if he can’t not look at me? Just like I can’t not look at him?
What if he’s just standing there because his brain is as foggy as mine is?
But then his scowl deepens into genuine dislike and he steps aside, opening his door wider with a noise something between a sigh of resignation and a grunt of disapproval.
“No. It’s . . . fine.”
He says “fine” like what he means is, “It’s absolutely the worst thing in the world, but you’re here, so we might as well get it over with.”
I cross the threshold into the most pristinely clean, austere house I’ve ever seen.
From the outside, it is a typical, upscale suburban ranch, common among neighborhoods all over Texas.
