One week later, the silence and solitude of Gemma's house closed around her like a cage. Her restlessness spiked.I can’t be trapped in here right now or I’m going to go stark raving mad.
She flipped up one corner of the living room rug, then unlatched and opened the trap door. A series of metal rungs bolted to one of the stilts provided her most direct route to the lake.
Gemma draped a throw blanket over her shoulders, wearing it the way Vikings on TV shows wore fur pelts, and climbed down. Her rowboat bobbed on the water, secured with a loose loop so that it could raise or lower with changes in the height of the lake. She climbed in the boat, released it from its moorings, and began to row.
She’d been in a blue mood ever since Jude had informed her that Operation Scent-sible was at an end, then abruptly dismissed her from his life as if she were a magazine subscription he was eager to cancel. Though he'd been perfectly polite—politeness was woven into the fabric of Jude Camden's soul—the way he'd severed their connection left her feeling as though he'd delivered a slap.
Every time she thought about it, which she'd been doing ceaselessly, she experienced a spurt of annoyance followed by a gloomy feeling of loss.
Two and a half weeks had come and gone since she’d heard from him. Two and a half weeks! Instead of his absence becoming easier to bear with every passing day, it was becoming harder.
She'd known, of course, that her conversations and meetings with Jude had taken up a large chunk of her time over the past two months. What she'd failed to recognize until now was just how muchvalueshe'd come to attach to the time she spent with him. He'd entered her life as an interruption. But as they'd been preparing for their operation, he'd become much more to her than that. She loved sparring with him, she loved looking at him, she loved hearing his voice over the phone. He entertained her. He could make her swoon with a glance.
And now he’d been wiped from her calendar.
Gone.
Though she'd enjoyed an active life before Agent Jude Camden had walked into her shop, his absence had left a void bigger than she would have dreamed. It was shocking and dismaying, the size of the void.
Her breath came faster as she put more muscle into the movement of the oars.
Maybe this empty feeling was magnified because Chaz had disappeared from the scene around the same time as Jude?
Chaz had taken her decision not to get back together in stride—likely because he hadn't been much more invested in her than she’d been in him. He'd stayed at a hotel the night he’d arrived at her house unannounced, then driven back to New York the following day. He'd texted once to say he'd returned home safely. Nothing else.
So. Did some of this emptiness have to do with Chaz?
Listening to the rhythmic splashing sounds of water, she pondered that.
No. All of it, every bit of the emptiness, had to do with Jude. The failure of their operation, yes. But mostly the end of their relationship.
Via their last text message exchange, Jude had made it clear that they were colleagues in his eyes and nothing more. In the days between then and now, he'd verified that with his silent detachment. Yet before he'd distanced himself from her there had been times when he'd looked at her with heat and softness. She'd thought . . .
What? That he was attracted to her?
Well.Yes.
She was positive she hadn't been generating the chemistry between them all by herself with wishful thinking. She'd bet Jude had felt a tug toward her. But maybe the FBI’s rules preventing agents from entering into romantic relationships with witnesses were still in play even now? Or maybe whatever tug Jude had felt for her was smallish and had died a quick death after the case was suspended?
Gemma, what had you expected would happen with Jude?It's not as if she, a small-time perfumer and daughter of a convict, had ever been fated to capture the heart of the Camden family's most elusive son.
With a groan of irritation she yanked the oars into the boat.
Her view from this spot on the lake was as peaceful as her internal state was not. The sky had gone a dreamy, dusky shade of blue. The buildings and trees on the shore cast long reflections on the water. The shadows were deepening, the sun sinking toward the horizon in a puddle of gold.
Her phone rang. Listlessly, she checked the screen, intending not to answer. It was her mom calling. Ever since she'd received the news that her mother had suffered a stroke and was suddenly and unexpectedly hanging on to life by a thread, Gemma answered when Mom called. “Hello?”
“Hi. Remember me saying that the name Jude rang a bell with me, back at Pasta Bella the night we met him?”
“Yes. Vaguely.” She pulled the throw blanket snugly around herself.
“The famous quarterback Felix Camden has a son named Jude!”
Oh no. Cold clutched Gemma's chest and squeezed.
“As you know,” Mom went on, “I watched Felix marry that model Isobel O'Sullivan on TV decades ago. Since then, I've always kept an eye on them both. Anyway, Felix had two sons with that awful woman—his wife's sister—that he married after Isobel. Those sons are a few years older than you and they're named Jeremiah and Jude.”
“I see.”
