Hours later, Wolfe walked back into the office. “Gotta get going. I’m needed elsewhere.”
I’d barely scratched the surface of the chaos here. “Pick me up on your way back?—”
“I’m not leaving you here alone.” He walked out of the office again, leaving the door ajar as he disappeared down the stairs.
If this were a week ago, he would have christened the place by fucking me on the desk. Now he treated me likewe’d never kissed.
I packed up my things and left the mess before I headed back downstairs.
He was a short distance away, talking on the phone. “I’ll meet you there after I drop off Frankie.”
Frankie? I’d never heard him call me that once.
He hung up and turned to me, indifference in his eyes. “Ready?”
“Um, yeah.”
He didn’t open the car door for me like he had in the past. Just hopped into the driver’s seat and started the engine while he waited for me to get settled in the passenger seat. Then he took off and headed back to Caltanissetta to get me home.
It was another awkward drive, somehow more awkward than the first one.
After he’d told me there was no escape from him and I asked the real estate agent to take me home, I’d thought he would unleash a storm of rage, a wrath so fiery he would scorch the earth. Thought he would tie me up and not let me go until I apologized. I wasn’t sure exactly what he would do, but this cold facade had not been on my bingo card.
Thirty minutes later, he returned to the winery and pulled up in front of the house. He left the engine on anddidn’t unbuckle his safety belt. He kept one hand on the wheel like he intended to get out of there the second I stepped out of the car.
I grabbed my bag from the back seat, and as soon as I shut the door, he took off.
Leaving a cloud of dust behind him.
I sat alone at my dining table with my dirty dinner plate in front of me. I enjoyed half a bottle of wine for company and stared at the empty seat across from me. I’d been so scared of Wolfe a couple days ago, but now…I missed him.
He acted like I hardly existed. Treated me like we didn’t have a past. I was just his boss’s daughter and nothing more. He somehow rewrote history without saying a single word. I still remembered the look in his eyes when he told me he would never stop hunting me if I tried to leave him. And then he dropped me.
Acted like I’d never meant anything to him.
I wasn’t sure if he was trying to make a point, or if he was pissed off at me.
I tapped the screen of my phone and looked at ourmessage box. The last message he’d sent me wasOn my way, baby.
And earlier today, he’d called me Frankie.
I typed out a message.Can we talk?Then I deleted it.
Can you come over?I deleted it.
I think we need to talk.I deleted that too.
Then three dots popped up from him.
“Oh shit.” I cupped my mouth, wondering if he’d seen my dots appear and disappear over and over this entire time.
You got something to say to me?
I heard his authoritative voice in my head as I read it. The anger and the aggression he sometimes showed when he was in a foul mood. It caught me off guard so much that I froze on the spot.
Then fucking say it.
There were two different versions of him, the one that acted like I didn’t exist…and then this one. The one that was probably pissed off that this estrangement had gone on for so long. I think we should talk.
