Better Hate than Never (The Wilmot Sisters, #2)(48)

Opening the second drawer, I riffle around. A slender leather-bound notebook that looks promising. A condom that upon further inspection accordions out to ten condoms.

“Ew.” I drop the condoms and scoop up the notebook, which my gut tells me is some kind of diary or journal.

A decision is before me, a proverbial fork in the road. Do I read it? Do I not?

I’m annoyed at Christopher. I’m wary of whatever he’s been up to the past few days . . . But the thought of violating his privacy makes my stomach sour.

“Dammit,” I grumble, exasperated with myself.

I miss my reckless wild side. But this is growing up, I think. That and my ADHD meds, which I’ve managed to take pretty regularly lately, helping me with my impulse control, like metaphorical brake taps that slow my brain from acting on its natural inclination to press the pedal to the metal.

Still, this is even more than recognizing my maturity, the impact of my meds. This is caring. And I don’t like it. I just can’t seem to override it, either.

Sighing, I drop the notebook back in the drawer, then freeze when I notice something that’s slipped partway out of it.

A faded bit of paper-white cotton with a poorly stitched deep blue border.

My stomach drops.

That looks eerily like my first, frustrated attempt at embroidery. Like a handkerchief I abandoned a decade ago.

Slowly, I slide out the fabric. My stomach plummets down, down, down.

In the corner, just like I knew it would be, is a terrible rendering of forget-me-nots. Uneven stitches of periwinkle and midnight blue form lopsided petals, silvery white and yellow gold knotted in lumpy pistils. Lime green leaves hover too far from the flowers, floating aimlessly.

A lump forms in my throat.

I made this on the tenth anniversary—what an awful word to use for such a sad occasion—of Christopher’s parents’ death. But I never gave it to him. I hated it. How inadequate it felt, how poorly done. I pricked my finger so many times and lost my patience, and after I’d deemed the handkerchief a failure, I shoved it God-knows-where, threw out the embroidery hoop, and settled on knitting when my hands needed to be busy and I wanted to make something for someone I cared about.

How did he get this?

Why does he have it?

As I sit back in his office chair with the handkerchief, my thumb dancing across the bumpy threads, a new voice carries out in the hallway.

Christopher’s.

I drop my feet from his desk, shove the handkerchief hastily back inside the drawer, and bang it shut. I might have been ready to see him for these corporate headshots five minutes ago, but five minutes ago, I was not holding a humiliating reminder that (1) I used to not only foolishly care about Christopher but also try to make him care about me, and worse, (2) he has that proof carefully tucked away in his desk drawer.

Frantically, I scan the room for an escape until my eye snags on another door besides the one I used when I found his office. Voices come from the other side of it, reassuring me it leads toward a viable escape.

That’s when I do what anyone would when their snooping’s got the better of them—

I run.





? EIGHTEEN ?


    Christopher


My desk chair is empty yet swaying when I walk into my office. Frowning, I glance around the room and stroll toward my desk. I slide my messenger bag off my shoulder and set it on the chair opposite from where I sit, then round the desk, examining its surface.

I don’t leave out loose papers. My desk has very few things on it, and none of it’s been disturbed—except the framed photographs. Both of them are slightly skewed.

My jaw clenches in irritation. I reposition both frames until they’re how I left them, my thumb lingering on Kate in her headgear orthodontics, holding Puck, who’s so plump he’s as big as her entire upper body.

A double knock makes me look up and drop my hand.

Curtis, my assistant, smiles. “Good morning!”

I arch an eyebrow. “Is it?”

“It is now,” he says brightly, walking in with a steaming espresso, a mini chocolate-dipped biscotti nestled on the saucer.

“You’re a saint.” I dunk the biscotti in the espresso and bite off half of it.

“It’s self-preservation,” he tells me, adjusting his thick, black-frame glasses. “When you’re happy, I’m happy.”

“I’m happy,” I say defensively around my bite.

He snorts. “Sure you are. You’ve been a real peach the past three weeks. A pure delight.”

I drain half of my espresso and curse under my breath. It’s scalding. “It’s the end of Q4. I’m always ‘a peach’ this time of year.”

“True,” Curtis says, interlacing his hands in front of him. “However, you forget how much you rely on me to maintain your calendar and that I am thus aware of how . . . unoccupied your evenings have been the past few weeks . . .” He purses his lips meaningfully and raises his eyebrows.

I glare at him. “Did you have a point to make?”

He lifts his hands in surrender. “Nope. No point. Just plenty of thoughts that I’ll keep to myself.”

“Excellent.” I take a small sip of espresso this time, careful not to burn myself again, before draining it. “While we’re on the subject of calendars, what happened to this morning’s schedule? Everything was as it should be before I got on the train, then by the time I was walking to the office and checked again, you’d cleared the all-hands meeting and blocked us off until two.”