“I should hope so,” Alec muttered. He’d put them on speaker, apparently.
“What can I do?” Emily asked.
“Go see her tomorrow. Reinforce that it’s dangerous. Get her to promise to stay away.”
“I can try, but what if I crash and burn too?”
The comment landed like a solid jab to the chin. Emily’s way of reminding him who’d created this mess.
“I’ll have Dev put eyes on her.” A pause. “Bring Cari. Gaby, too.”
“Why?” Emily asked slowly, her tone sharp with suspicion.
“She was upset when I left.”
“What did you do?” Alec asked.
He didn’t answer. Julia could share if she wanted to.
“Emily?”
“She walked away,” Alec said. “She’s pissed at you. Has been for a while. She just doesn’t know to what extent it will escalate after this latest fuck-up.”
Leland scrubbed a hand over his face before rubbed it over his head. “I handled it wrong.”
“So, what else is new?”
“Not helping.”
Silence dropped between them. He deserved the sarcasm, but it didn’t make it any easier to hear.
“Leland?”
“What?”
“The day you finally tell me what this is about,” his friend said. “It’s coming fast.”
The line went dead, and Leland drove on, the uneasiness sitting heavy in his chest still with him.
Chapter 14
Julia didn’t sleep. Not really. She’d drifted for an hour at most, waking with her legs tangled in sheets, the smell of him still on her skin, even after a second shower. Every time she closed her eyes, what happened at her door replayed. His hands, his mouth, getting lost in the moment, in him, and forgetting everything that had passed between them.
Now, as she looked at her reflection in the morning light, she called it what it was—stupid. One heated look from him, and she lost every shred of common sense. Which was exactly why she had to stay away from him and Devil’s Pointe.
Leaning closer to the mirror, she dabbed eye repair cream lightly beneath her eyes, wincing at the tenderness. The mirror didn’t lie. Red. Puffy. Beyond fixing in the few hours she had before work.
She reached for the eye drops on the counter, blinking rapidly as the cool liquid hit. Then she bent close again and reassessed. Marginally better, still not good.
A knock sounded at the door.
Her head snapped up, and, for one irrational second, her heart leaped. He’d come to say he was wrong. That he wanted her. That he couldn’t walk away—
A short, humorless sound escaped her. Delusional. That was what she was. From a mix of not enough sleep and too much wishful thinking.
The knock came again. Louder and more insistent.
She took one last look in the mirror. Not great. Not terrible. But never going to fool anyone.
