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She’d come to the same conclusion. “Yeah. But tomorrow. I can’t face them or Aunt Faiza tonight.”
“Your aunt, too?”
“Otherwise she’ll worry. If she can’t find me in the hospital.” She sighed. “It’s complicated with her.” She thought of how Jonas had suggested that Auntie Fai was interested in her sister’s kids only because of the money attached to them. She didn’t want to think about all the difficult relationships she had with her family, so she changed the subject. “You live here alone?”
“Yeah.” He leaned back in his chair. “Just me. Considered a dog once and a cat a couple of times, but I’m gone too much.”
“Ever married?”
One side of his mouth lifted. “Thought about it once, but no.” He shook his head, dark hair glinting under the lights high overhead. “Never seemed to be the right time or the right woman.” Wadding the paper that had wrapped his sandwich, he asked, “You?”
“I figure you know all about me.” She motioned to the computer and his scribbled notes, noticed that the room, with its soaring ceilings and wall of glass, had a warmth to it she hadn’t noticed at first glance. Despite the loft’s austere walls and mishmash of furniture, there was a lived-in comfort to it, an ambiance that she found strangely inviting.
Don’t go there, Kara. Do not. It’s trouble, pure and simple.
“I only know what court records show,” Tate was saying as he opened a small bag of chips. “Most of the stuff I found on the Internet.”
“Most of the stuff on the Internet is garbage. Rumors. Opinions. Even the made-for-TV movie about that night wasn’t all that factual, just a lot of hype and innuendo.”
“You watched it?”
“Yeah.”Like once a year just to keep it real. To never forget.
As if she could.
“So you googled me?” she asked.
“And then some, but I found no marriage licenses and hence no divorce decrees. No engagement announcements.”
“That about sums it up,” she said, not elaborating about her love life, though Brad’s arrogant face sliced through her mind for just an instant.
Brad had left angrily, disbelieving that she would have the nerve to throw him out. “You’re a freak, you know that, right?” he’d said when she’d insisted he leave. He’d been gathering his faded jeans, polo shirts and hoodies, along with his much-loved bong and trophies from being a standout soccer player in high school and college. “A fuckin’ freak!”
“At least I don’t cheat,” she’d thrown back at him, along with a pair of soccer cleats, as he’d scrambled out the front door.
“Maybe you should,” he’d screamed. “Maybe it would help.” He’d climbed into his aging hatchback and roared out the drive, nearly backing over a kid on a bike.
Good riddance!
Now, Tate was staring at her.
She felt the need to explain as she plucked a chip from her own opened bag. “I’m different from you.”
He frowned. “Really?”
“Yup. You thought about marriage and decided against it.”
Interested, he leaned across the table. “That’s right.”
“I thought about a dog once,” she said, and swallowed a smile, surprised at herself that she was actually teasing him. What was wrong with her?
“Yeah?”
“Unlike you, I committed. Went to a shelter, saw Rhapsody and, as they say, it was love at first sight.”
“Ever experienced that before?” His turn to banter with her, the corners of his lips lifting almost imperceptibly in his beard shadow. God, was he flirting with her? Is that what was happening here?
If so, she had to close it down. Break this too-comfortable mood.
