“He doesn’t have a cat. Him and his wife have a dog, Ziggy.”
See, and you knew that but still fell for it, she thought to herself. She even pictured the dog in question when he said it: a miniature schnauzer that lived for dragging people’s socks off their feet.
She couldn’t let Miller know any of this, however.
She had to play dumb.
“But then why wouldn’t he just say what kind of pet he actually has?”
“I take it you’ve met him, right? And seen him trying to cover his tracks?”
“Yeah, he does it poorly. That still doesn’t explain why he would do this.”
“Maybe he thought you could persuade me. Given our past relationship,” he said, the last two words so casually spoken it jolted her a little.Since when do you think we had one, she wanted to spit at him.
But then he rolled his eyes.
So she rolled hers back.
“Since when did our past relationship involve me ever persuading you of anything? I couldn’t even get you to concede that fast zombies are superior to slow zombies. You stormed out of a whole classroom because I argued that something slower than a sloth could never really be a threat to humanity,” she said, and was relieved to see how hard it got to him.
She practically saw the memory slap him across the face. “Yeah, and I’m still furious about it. Asloth,” he ground out, near enough between gritted teeth. Just like when she’d done it all those years ago. In fact, everything was just like it had been all those years ago.
It almost made her dizzy to feel how easy slipping back into it all was.
Everything was supposed to be distant. Stiffly polite. Unfamiliar.Gracie Bremmel, wasn’t it?he was supposed to say.I sort of remember you. I kind of know what you’re talking about. Here, hold my latte for me while I get settled in business class.
Or worse. Like some of the footballers and celebrities she’d handled before Alfie. The spoiled ones, the gross ones. The ones who’d thrown up on her and called her at three in the morning.He won’t be like that, Beck had said.
And he’d been right.
But somehow, the reality was worse.
It was making her sweat; it was making her blush and be as awkward as she had been at twenty-three. The cracks in the brisk professionalism she’d papered over her personality were showing. She had to really dig her nails into her palms. Straighten, smooth out her expression.You have your own business now, Daisy, she told herself.And you run it like a well-oiled machine. You run everything like a well-oiled machine. Your whole life is breezing in, all brusque and efficient, and solving everybody’s problems.Then she answered him, as firm as she had ever been with anyone. “I’m not going to argue about it while stuck up here,” she said. “In fact, I’m not going to argue about anything like that with you at all.”
Only the second she had, he came right back at her. “Well, there’s a real simple solution to that dilemma. It’s called going back to where you came from before I call the cops,” he said, and on the wordcopsit just happened. Words burst out of her before she could stop a single one of them.
“Youhatethe cops. You’d sooner be murdered by burglars than call them.”
“Back then. But maybe I don’t feel that way now. Maybe I like them.”
“Maybe you should. Maybe it’s great that they havesuch massive budgets and almost no oversight. In fact, I’m thinking of writing to my congressperson to demand they be allowed to act with even greater impunity, primarily—” she started, but of course he cut her off before she could finish.
Of course he did. She had known he would.
He even threw up his hands. Near exploded about it.
“Oh my god, stop, stop, just shutup. You do not believe that, I know you don’t. And even if you did, you don’t have a congressperson. You have whatever they have in England… a parliamentary… Lord… a guy in a wig or a guy with a big wand or I don’t fucking know. Either way, knock it off.”
“Right, because you can’t even stand to hear it when you know it’s bait.”
“Fine, I can’t, I won’t be calling them,” he conceded. But oh boy, the concession infuriated him. He jabbed a whole finger at her before he continued. “But Iwillbe going back inside, and locking all the doors, and nothing you do is going to make me come back out. So if you drop down into the yard, you’ll just be stuck here, all night, with nothing to climb on to get back out again. Good luck.”
Then he spun on his heel and stomped back to the house.
The slammed door echoed like a gunshot in the silence that followed.
Satisfying, she thought. Or, at least, she did until something started to dawn on her. Slowly, as she levered herself back over and down to the bonnet of the car. She shoved her feet back into her heels, got behind thewheel, and started the engine, and then there it was—a flash of that anger of his, too fierce to just be about how she’d baited him.
