And he didn’t offer to take her bag—a worrisome bag, because he’d seen it dozens of times before.
It was her favorite overnight bag.
He flipped on the ceiling fan and opened the windows and said nothing to her as she took a look around at his simple furnishings.
“You shopped the Bachelor Pad collection at Ikea?” she sounded amused.
He said nothing. “Okay, talk, Rebecca.”
“Well. Are you going to offer me something to drink first, Johnny?”
“I’m afraid if I do you’ll be like Persephone and be obliged to stay here for six months out of the year.”
Her brow furrowed a little. “Who’s Persephone? Is she in the latest Harry Potter movie? It sounds like a phone sex pseudonym, if you ask me.”
He stared at her. He honestly wasn’t certain whether she was joking.
“Persephone. Daughter of Demeter, the Greek goddess of the spring? She was kidnapped by Hades, taken to the underworld, and because she ate six pomegranate seeds she’s obliged to return for six months out of the year, and that’s why we have fall and winter.”
She furrowed her brow as if he were speaking Sanskrit. “So... so you’re reading about Persephone for a role?”
He opened his mouth to reply. Then he sighed. To be fair, a really successful acting career didn’t often leave anyone much time for reading, or to become otherwiseinteresting.
And her career was stratospheric.
“Green tea? I can throw it over ice.”
He belatedly wished he’d pretended he’d forgotten about the green tea. It seems he’d lost the art of game playing. Everything had always been strategy with her. They’d always traded the power back and forth, because he’d known he was Rebecca’s weakness.
“Thanks,” she said softly. Touched he’d remembered.
He just snorted. He vanished into the kitchen, put the kettle on to boil.
“Does Underhill know you intended to come here?” He didn’t look back at her.
Underhill. The man she’d dumped him for in Cannes.
Her ensuing little silence felt planned. And that just made him angrier.
“He may or may not still be my boyfriend.”
At one time he would have found this coyness maddeningly irresistible. Because Rebecca was smart the way an animal was smart, and when they’d first met, she’d seen underneath his cocky, effortless charm and magical bone structure to his deep-buried seam of doubt: that because he was a backwoods Tennessee boy and he would never be good enough for her, that he would always have toearnher, that he’d won the lottery when she’d thrown her lot in with him.
And boy, did she work that seam skillfully.
Except that he wasn’t that guy anymore.
He’d once felt lucky to be with her. He now knew, thanks to Britt, that “happy” and “lucky” weren’t synonymous.
Shit! Britt! He scrambled for his phone and called her immediately as the kettle boiled.
She shot him straight to voice mail.
He swore softly.
He turned around suddenly. Rebecca was watching him.
And she didn’t disguise her expression fast enough.
