“It was…” He had to clear his throat again. “It was really nice seein’ ya again. I’m glad to know ya grew up to be such a badass.”
He could hear the smile in her voice. It wrapped around his ribs like silk. “If we’re handing out trophies for being badasses, I think you take first place.”
“Speaks volumes for Rabun County, huh? Producin’ two of us?”
That made her laugh. “I guess that’s better than being known for being the place they filmed Deliverance.” She thickened her accent, dropped her voice, and quoted, “You got a real purdy mouth, boy.”
“Ya know, I never saw that movie.”
“What? I thought everyone in Clayton had to watch it. It was, like, a requirement or something.”
“My momma told me it wasn’t fit for little ones. And by the time I got old enough, I reckon I wanted to forget where I came from. Too many bad memories.”
Another pause.
Damnit Graham! Way to spoil the moment.
“They say home is where our stories start,” she finally said, her voice soft and low. “Good thing we get to decide how they end.”
For some reason, that made a lump form in his throat. He couldn’t get a word around it.
“Well, okay then.” Again, she was forced to fill the void he left in the conversation. “I'd better get back to it. You take care, Graham.”
“You too, Lura,” he managed. His usually gritty voice sounded like crushed gravel.
The click of the line disconnecting hit him in the chest like buckshot. It was sudden, surprising, and oddly final.
He’d gone nearly twenty years without seeing, talking, or even thinking about her. So why the hell did returning to that status quo make him feel so…unsettled?
Nostalgia, he told himself as he stepped away from the desk. Sentimentality and a touch of homesickness. That’s all it is.
Somewhere in the back of his brain, a little voice whispered…bullshit.
22
“Hey,” Hew said quietly as he caught Sabrina on the bottom tread of the stairs leading up to the third floor. She was still barefoot. Still wearing that short silk robe that was doing its damnedest to kill him by inches. And her cheeks were flushed a pretty pink.
Flushed because of her conversation with Martin?
He could feel a muscle twitching in his jaw. The one beneath his right eye tried to follow suit, but he stilled it by briefly glancing away from her expectant expression toward the short hallway leading to the offices.
It’d taken every ounce of self-restraint he possessed not to eavesdrop on her call with the vertically challenged hedge fund manager. And maybe he’d even started down the hallway before turning on his heel because Boss and Graham had been posted up outside the door like a couple of goddamn bouncers.
Now, he hadn’t a clue what she’d said to Martin. Where she stood with Martin. Whether her confession upstairs to him had changed everything or nothing between them.
He was flying blind.
He hated flying blind.
“Hew?”
Her voice drew his attention back to the moment. Back to her quizzical expression.
After clearing his throat—too noisily if her rapid blink was anything to go by—he finally managed, “We need to talk about?—”
“All right, everyone!”
Boss’s deep voice boomed across the mezzanine, slicing clean through Hew’s words and his rapidly fraying nerves.
