“Hey, what’s wrong?” I asked, rubbing her back as I tried to extract myself from my vehicle without hurting her.
Tears streamed from her eyes, trailing over my neck as her whole body shook against mine. Worry began to creep into every pore of my body at her reaction. This was worse than when her shop had been destroyed, and suddenly, the thought that someone had died shot through me.
“Hey, tell me what happened, Ellie,” I said, prying her out of my arms.
Her bloodshot eyes sent a stab of pain right through my chest. And even as she tried to collect herself, it was clear that she was too distressed to talk.
Tugging her back into my arms, I ran my hand up and down her back, hoping to give her any comfort I could. It took fivedamn minutes for her to finally calm down, and when she did, she looked embarrassed as hell.
Bending over to meet her downcast eyes, I lifted her chin, forcing her to meet my gaze. “Do you want to tell me what this is about?”
Sniffling, she swiped at her nose. “You didn’t come home last night.”
Confusion wrapped a tight band around my chest. “I know. It was late and I didn’t want to wake you.”
“And then this morning…I texted you, I called you…The secretary said the door was open when she got here.”
The sadness in her voice suddenly turned to rage. “She didn’t know where you were. I called you! I texted you!”
“I was working,” I huffed out a laugh, a little surprised by the anger in her voice.
“So busy you couldn’t send off a message to let me know you were okay?”
“Ellie, it was a time-sensitive situation. I haven’t checked my phone all day. I’m sorry you were upset, but I was working.”
She scoffed, spinning out of my arms. “You should have fucking called!”
My mouth opened to respond, but I never got the chance. She turned on me, the anger in her eyes reaching volcanic levels.
“I called your parents! I went to your house and searched through every possible thing that might give me some clue as to where you were! I called your fiancée!”
The hilarity of the situation suddenly wasn’t so funny. “You did what?”
“Yeah, I called her. Bianca,” she bit out.
“What the fuck were you thinking?”
“I was thinking that I couldn’t find you! I wasthinkingthat something had happened to you. There was no sign of your car. No one around town had seen you all day. You didn’t stopfor food. You didn’t grab a coffee. You had literally vanished from the town! And all I could think of was that you had been kidnapped or crashed outside of town somewhere! It was an insane hope of mine that you had headed back to New York in some desperate attempt to get your fiancée back!”
I was still stuck on the fact that she now knew I had a fiancée—that she had called her.
“Where the fuck were you?” she shouted.
“You called Bianca?” I bit out.
“That’s all you have to say?” she laughed. “You went missing! I was ready to call the FBI!”
And that would have been sweet of her if not for the fact that she went behind my back and called my ex-fiancée. The slow simmer that started in my gut the moment she mentioned Bianca was now working its way up to a steady boil.
I did not need this right now. I didn’t need to think about the woman I left behind or be reminded of why I never wanted to go back to New York. I had work to do, but now all this shit was surging through my head, reminding me of feelings I’d rather have left behind.
But they were on the surface now, bubbling up and threatening to boil over. Spinning away from her, I pinched the bridge of my nose and tried to push the negative thoughts from my head.
“Ryder—”
“Just fucking stay out of my business!” I shouted, losing my shit the more she pressed. “I didn’t fucking ask you to call Bianca, and I sure as shit didn’t need you to get the whole goddamn town in an uproar because I was working and didn’t check in with you.”
“I was worried,” she argued, not backing down.
