“May I?” she asked, holding the ledger out toward the table.
“Sure.” Darting to the table, he scooped up a smattering of papers which he quickly shoved into a notebook with an elastic band, snapping it shut. He tucked it behind his back. “All yours,” he said, gesturing to the tabletop.
She eased past him, a flicker of their moment locked together upstairs behind her eyes. Turning quickly away, she noticed how he held the notebook behind him.
Flipping the ledger open to the page she’d saved, she pointed to the entry that readstud fee.“Do you know if there are any stables on the property?” she asked. “Besides the carriage house.”
He rubbed at his brow, pulling his T-shirt tight across his chest. “There’s a small barn on the western perimeter. It’s pretty dilapidated. What’s this about?”
“I’d like to see it. Could you take me?”
His expression shifted to surprise. “Now?”
“Unless you’re busy…”
A trace of emotion, unreadable, crossed his eyes. “This way.”
Cordelia left the ledger on the table and walked at his side. It occurred to her she hadn’t been farther west on the property than his place. Giant oaks spread their branches in an emerald dome, the grass threadbare like a rubbed blanket beneath their shade.
“I guess this isn’t because you’re interested in horses?”
“No,” she said with a laugh. “I’m not much of an animal person. That’s Eustace’s territory. I thought I wanted a dog once, but…”
He waited as she reached to find the words.
“I think I just wanted an accessory.” She crossed her arms and looked up at the tangle of branches, the pockets of sunlight bleeding through.
“That’s an interesting way of putting it.”
She shrugged. “For a while, I believed that if I could just make everythinglookperfect, then it would be.”
“And now?” he asked, bending low to swipe at a stem of goosegrass, then twirling it between his fingers.
“Now, I know that really beautiful surfaces can hide very ugly messes behind them.” The mold peppered her brain as it had the wall. She eyed him sidelong.
His lips twitched. “The ex-husband?”
Cordelia smiled. “Is it that obvious?”
He shook his head. “You did promise to tell me your story sometime.”
She rubbed the back of her neck, eyes trained on the rounded toes of her rubber boots. “It’s nothing dramatic. Just another foolish woman falling for the wrong man who has an affair with her assistant, then blames her for it, then steals her identity and tries to take her for everything she’s worth, including her life.”
Gordon scrunched up his face. “He sounds like a colossal ass.”
“He is,” she told him. “Unequivocally. But he was charming once, and I thought he was my forever. I don’t get things wrong often, but when I do, I have a way of getting them spectacularly wrong.”
“Some people can hide their true character until it’s too late,” he said, a touch of bitterness in his tone, as if he knew firsthand.
“Were you married to John too?”
Gordon smiled, dimples winking as his guard dropped. She’d hardly registered them before. Another irresistible detail. “My ex, the one I told you about. We formed the band together. She’s fucking my replacement now.”
Cordelia set her fingers against the broad plane of his forearm. She didn’t want to tell him that she’d looked his band up online, stared into the catlike eyes of its enigmatic lead singer, seen the toss of long, dark hair, the leather pants and septumpiercing, the intensity he’d talked about. “She sounds delightful. I think we should invite them both for dinner. See who claws whose eyes out first.”
Gordon smirked. “That’s one way to spend an evening.”
She let her hand slide naturally down his arm until it rested in his. She stopped suddenly. He turned to face her, staring at their hands together, and she immediately let go. “I think it’s really over.”
