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Landon rasped a hand across his chin. She didn’t begrudge him his reaction, but she couldn’t explain her abrupt coolness any better without getting into a discussion about her past.
After a long silence, Landon cleared his throat and asked, "So what’s going on? What are you worried about?"
Katie didn't even bother to answer.Didn’t he know?Couldn’t he see how stressed all this made her?
To be fair, he didn’t know. He knew about their illicit little relationship, but he didn’t have a clue about the anxieties that really kept her up at night. What fear of failure really meant for her. What this job meant.
Work. Ugh. With that thought and a nasty lump of dread in her tummy, Katie ruffled through her purse to find her phone. She turned it back on, and waited with a sigh for all the messages from Lori to roll in.
The cell struggled to get a full signal and even the radio faded out into a static that irked Katie in its symbolism. They’d been singing to the radio and laughing on the drive up. This felt like when they walked back to the coffee shop down those alleyways. Like the dream was about to end.
"Could we turn that off or change it or something?" She rolled her shoulders and blinked hard behind her sunglasses and, when she felt his concerned gaze on her, added, "Please."
"Yeah, uh, sure." Landon fiddled with the screen on the dash until a light guitar melody filled the background, then he cleared his throat and said, "I wanted to grab some burgers in this little town on the way back and have a picnic, but I don’t think we can risk that now."
"Ya think? No, definitely not," Katie snapped. Why was her phone taking forever to upload?
"Alright, let’s go back to my place," he suggested. "We’ll order some more food from downstairs. Steak, lobster, caviar…whipped cream. Whatever your heart desires."
At that moment, with that boyish grin and those blue eyes sparkling back at her, Katie’s heart ached for only one thing: him. But she never got a chance to agree to the plan.
Ding. Ding.
"Geezus, not now," Katie sighed under her breath.
Ding.
"What is it?" Landon asked.
Ding. Ding. Ding.
"Shit!"
She flipped the phone to silent, but it kept vibrating.
Bzzz. Bzzz.
"What’s going on? Did someone post a picture of us?"
"Not yet," Katie muttered, as she swiped through the settings on her phone to get it to stop vibrating.
Bzzz. Bz.
"Is it Lori? Something happen at work?"
"No."
"Then what?"
Katie stayed silent.
"Katie!"
His bark got a tiny jump out of her, but no information.
"It’s this Kyle character, right?"
Katie’s mouth dropped open. "How do you know his name?"
