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She wished she could do the same, wished she could fall back into the comfortable, warm, dreamless sleep she’d experienced since they’d made love. But the person blowing up her phone wouldn’t stop. As soon as her voice mail picked up, whoever it was would hang up and call again.
“Sounds like someone’s anxious to reach you,” Brant said with a yawn, shoving aside the pillow.
“Might be my mother. The time difference between here and Sierra Leone is so big she tends to call at odd hours. And Sunday is our day to catch up.” The last thing she wanted was to speak to her mother while she was naked in bed with Brant, though. “I’ll call her back.”
Rolling over, she got her phone from her purse on the nightstand to turn off the ringer, at least—but hesitated when she saw who’d been so determined to reach her. It was Paul.
He hadn’t called all day yesterday. What could he want this early in the morning? It was even an hour earlier in Seattle.
“Don’t tell me it’s Averil,” Brant said.
“No, but it’s not my mother.”
“Let me guess. Paul?”
“Yeah.”
“You going to answer it?”
She didn’t want to. She’d enjoyed the break. But... “It could be about the diner.”
“Wouldn’t he text you if it was an emergency?”
The way he’d behaved the last time he was upset with her, leading her to believe their business had no managerial support, didn’t give her a great deal of confidence that he’d go to the extra effort. She could already hear him justifying himself for not texting.“I tried to reach you. You wouldn’t pick up.”
“To be honest, I don’t know,” she told Brant.
He got out of bed. “I don’t mind if you feel you should take the call. I have to go to the bathroom, anyway.”
Just in case Paul needed to talk to her about an employee emergency, or a myriad of other potential problems, she hit the talk button. “Hello?”
“You couldn’t callmefor once?” he demanded without preamble. “Not even to check on the diner?”
Damn it.This was more personal bullshit. “Paul, I’m half-asleep. Are you really going to start an argument at...what?” She checked the time on her phone. “Six in the morning?Fiveyour time?”
“I’m up doing all the baking forourdiner. Why shouldn’t you be up, too?”
He did have quite a bit of work to accomplish each morning, work they typically did together. But she was going to return the favor, and he knew it. “I’ll be handling all the baking on my own next month, won’t I?”
“Yeah, but I’ll be hiking with friends, not banging other women.”
Talulah squeezed her eyes closed. “I’m going to ignore that.” She cleared her throat as Brant came back to bed. “I’ve been preoccupied, I admit. There’s a lot going on here.”
“A lot going on? You call packing up your aunt’s junk on a Saturday a lot going on?”
“I didn’t pack yesterday. I spent the majority of my time with Jane. I don’t get to see her very often when I’m in Seattle. And then Averil showed up at my place last night. We talked until late.”
“Are you saying you’re no longer seeing Brant? That he isn’t part of what’s keeping you so busy?”
Paul knew she hadn’t talked to Averil, her former best friend, for fourteen years. It’d been a source of pain and loss all that time, since before he met her. And yet he didn’t care enough about that to let what she’d said even register. “Paul...”
“Are you still seeing him?”Paul said, raising his voice.
Talulah could tell Brant had heard, because he lifted his head from the pillow in sudden interest. “Paul, please,” she said.
“Answer the question,” Paul insisted.
She considered the implications of her response, how an admission could potentially impact the diner—theirdiner. But doing the right thing was more important than any business. She wanted to be fair and honest with Paul. “Yes.”
