Tessa nodded her agreement.
“I’ll catch up to you when I’m done with Morris.” Gil turned toward the parking garage.
Tessa fell into step with Gil and called over her shoulder, “Faith, I’ll be back in a minute. I’ll have Gil drop me back at the door.”
Faith responded with a nod and disappeared inside the building.
“I don’t need an escort to the car, Tessa.”
“Yes, you do. None of us needs to be wandering around parking garages alone right now.”
She had a point, and she stayed close as they walked to his car. His phone buzzed, but he didn’t pull it from his pocket until they were in the car and he had backed from the parking space and moved into a less confined part of the garage. Then he pulled it out of his pocket. After a quick glance, he dropped his chin to his chest, then took another, longer look. Luke had sent him a photo of Ivy asleep in a chair in Tessa’s apartment. Safe. Resting.
“You okay?” Tessa placed a hand on his arm.
He turned the phone in her direction. She saw the photo and grinned. “You’re okay.” She squeezed his arm and released it. Then her expression grew speculative. “What happened this morning?”
“What?” He might have been able to pull off the innocent and confused act if his voice hadn’t cracked.
As it was, Tessa wasn’t buying it. “Ivy’s worried.”
“She’s worried? Why?”
“I gathered the two of you had a heated conversation this morning.”
“What did she tell you?”
“That you’d had a disagreement. She said she lost her temper and the situation hadn’t been resolved before you dropped her off at work.”
Gil groaned. “I overstepped.”
“Did you try to kiss her?”
“Not that kind of overstepping. Although, in the future, if I screw up and she starts yelling at me, kissing her might be a good way to short-circuit the argument. Couldn’t hurt to try.”
Tessa gave him a withering glance. “I wouldn’t recommend that.”
“What would you recommend?”
“Groveling.”
Gil couldn’t stop the snort that Tessa’s matter-of-fact response shocked out of him. “Pretty sure that’s a given.”
“She’s crazy about you. You don’t need to worry about it. You messed up. Apologize. Ask for understanding. Seek to understand. Then move forward.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
“She’s under an overwhelming amount of stress, and she’s mostly alone. The only people who are in the know are people she met less than a week ago.”
“She’s known me her whole life.”
“Yeah, with a fifteen-year gap that ended only five days ago.” She paused, and when he didn’t argue her point, she continued. “It has to be disconcerting. You know we’re trustworthy and only have her best interests at heart. She wants to believe that, but under the circumstances, you can hardly blame her for having doubts. We’re asking her to trust strangers while simultaneously telling her everyone who knows her is a suspect. That’s a mind game no one should ever be asked to play.”
Gil counted the cars ahead of them. Four more until they could pay and leave. He hated parking garages, and he’d never wanted out of one so badly in his life.
Tessa didn’t speak as they inched forward while two more cars cleared the gate. “I don’t like this. Who shoots up a hotel lobby in an effort to get to her? I don’t know how we stop them from doing whatever they might do next when I can’t make any sense of it.”
Gil grabbed his credit card and slipped it into the reader. “I still think it has to be the money, but there’s an edge of desperation to their actions this week that I don’t understand. It’s not like the money is going anywhere.”
