Chapter Seventeen
Chap-ter Sev-en-teen
D ina walked through the door sep-a-rat-ing the con-fer-ence room of the county li-brary from the pub-lic por-tion of the build-ing and stopped so quickly the per-son be-hind her rammed into her back.
“Sorry, Jack,” she said to her col-league, mov-ing out of his way and over to where Tracy was pour-ing her-self a cup of cof-fee. They were both at-tend-ing an all-county li-brar-i-ans’ meet-ing and had got-ten an early start this morn-ing. Now, they were in the mid-dle of a fif-teen-minute break.
“I swear I thought I just saw Adam head-ing into the ref-er-ence room.” She shook her head. She must be imag-in-ing things.
“That’s weird. Are you go-ing to go look for him?”
“Maybe dur-ing the next break.” She stretched her back. These meet-ings were al-ways long, but in-for-ma-tive. That would be a re-ally funny co-in-ci-dence.
“Uh oh, trou-ble in par-adise?”
Dina laughed. “Of course not. We don’t track each other’s ev-ery move.” She grabbed her cup and a small plate of fruit and re-turned to the con-fer-ence ta-ble. Her pulse in-creased. What was he do-ing at this li-brary?
You’ll never know un-less you ask. At the next break, she headed to the ref-er-ence room. Sure enough, Adam sat in front of a com-puter, a stack of pa-pers next to him.
Smil-ing wide, she walked over to him. “Hey, I didn’t know you were plan-ning to come here to-day.”
Flip-ping the pa-pers over, he jumped and turned to-ward her.
Her cu-rios-ity in-creased.
Bank-ing sur-prise, he smiled back, but his neck was red.
“I didn’t ex-pect you to be here, ei-ther. I’m do-ing some re-search.” He clenched his hand on top of the pa-pers.
His law of-fice didn’t have a re-search de-part-ment? “Tracey and I are here for a meet-ing. What are you re-search-ing? Any-thing I can help with?”
He spread his hand out. “No, I’ll be done in a lit-tle bit. Want to do some-thing when I’m fin-ished?”
She ad-mired his hands, even as she won-dered what he was do-ing. “I can’t. I have a hair ap-point-ment for the re-union.”
“Don’t do any-thing to your hair.” Adam’s voice rose and those around them glared. He low-ered his voice, but his tone was no less com-mand-ing. “It’s per-fect just as it is.”
“Re-ally? I was think-ing of get-ting it straight-ened. The curls are all over the place.”
“Those curls are you. Don’t change them.” He looked al-most fierce as he stared at her, his fin-gers flex-ing and straight-en-ing as if he were run-ning them through her strands.
Dina fin-gered her frizz, not un-der-stand-ing why springy hair was his thing, but feel-ing warmth in her belly that he cared. “I still have to get it trimmed though.”
“Not much.”
“Se-ri-ously, you’re crazy.”
His green eyes glowed as if he looked deep into her soul. “Don’t let the mean girls change who you are.”
His un-der-stand-ing pulled her up short, be-fore a tin-gling fol-lowed the trail of warmth. No mat-ter what hap-pened at the re-union, he’d have her back. If they promised to be silent, would the other peo-ple mind if she and Adam had sex right here? With a sigh, she pulled away. “I’ll let you get back to your re-search, what-ever it is. Call me tonight?”
“Only if you text me a pic-ture of your hair af-ter your ap-point-ment.”
“Only if you tell me what you’re re-search-ing.”
He shifted in his chair. “Law stuff. How’s your meet-ing?”
Why was he sud-denly so ea-ger to change the sub-ject? “It’s fine. What kind of law stuff? Must be pretty out-side the box if you have to do it at the county li-brary rather than your of-fice.”
He swal-lowed, shift-ing his gaze around the room. “It’s just…it’s noth-ing. Don’t worry about it. Want to come over to-mor-row and watch a movie?”
“You’re chang-ing the sub-ject, Adam. What’s go-ing on?”
He sighed. “Can we talk about this later?”
She nod-ded. “Come over to-mor-row and we’ll watch a movie at my place. I’ve got the per-fect one.”
The next evening when Adam en-tered her apart-ment, she held up a DVD. “I just came across this again and it’s amaz-ing.”
“ Mr. Smith Goes to Wash-ing-ton ?” Adam frowned as he read the back cover.
“Have you seen it?”
He shook his head.
“It’s about a na?ve politi-cian bat-tling cor-rup-tion. It’s great.”
A strange look crossed his face. “Sure, if this is what you want to watch.”
She ran her hand up and down his arm. Be-neath the cot-ton shirt, ten-sion hard-ened his mus-cles. “I thought you’d en-joy this, but if not…”
“No, it’s fine. Sit with me.”
She put the movie in and sat next to Adam. He put his arm around her shoul-ders and drew her close to him, so she was lean-ing against his chest. His fin-gers played in her hair.
“I like what you did with this,” he said.
She’d had about two inches chopped off, and the rest of it shaped. She smiled and turned her face into his hand, kiss-ing his palm. “I’m glad.” Against her back, she could feel him ex-hale, as if he’d been hold-ing his breath. Some-thing was both-er-ing him, but she had no idea what. His list of se-crets was get-ting longer and she wasn’t sure how much longer she could wait. Maybe if she could re-lax him with the movie, they could talk.
It didn’t work.
Dina wasn’t sure if it was the spe-cific movie, al-though his at-ten-tion and fo-cus in-di-cated he liked it. Maybe it was the time of day, al-though a Sat-ur-day night didn’t usu-ally bother him. Per-haps it was her, yet he hadn’t once moved or sug-gested she sit fur-ther way. What-ever the rea-son, he re-mained as tense as when he ar-rived.
Watch-ing the movie hadn’t achieved her goal.
She wished she knew some ob-scure fact about keep-ing se-crets from your girl-friend. Maybe that would help break the ice. Be-cause he’d walled him-self off from her and it was start-ing to make her ner-vous.
“Good movie,” he said, stretch-ing.
“I love Jimmy Stew-art. My grand-mother used to watch his movies all the time and I re-mem-ber sit-ting with her on Sat-ur-day af-ter-noons. Did you know that the word ‘Phil-a-del-phia’ was mis-spelled on his Os-car?”
Adam laughed. “I’ll bet you were adorable as a child.”
She shook her head. “No, I had these huge glasses, I asked tons of ques-tions and drove ev-ery-one crazy. Ex-cept her. She would an-swer any-thing I asked.”
“Is she still alive?”
Dina shook her head. “No, she died a few years ago. What about your grand-par-ents?”
“They died be-fore I was born, al-though I was named af-ter my mother’s fa-ther.”
“Did your mother ever talk to you about him?”
He leaned back and took her hand. “Not that I can re-mem-ber. There wasn’t a lot of con-ver-sa-tion in my house.”
That ex-plained a lot. Maybe he just didn’t know how to open up.
“That’s a shame. Talk-ing keeps the bad things from fes-ter-ing and cre-at-ing more stress.”
“I se-ri-ously doubt that.” He’d pulled away from her and there was a wari-ness about his face.
She wanted to draw him close and re-as-sure him that what-ever was both-er-ing him would be eas-ier shared, but she didn’t want to spook him.
“It’s true,” she said. “Kind of like the an-tic-i-pa-tion of some-thing is worse than the ac-tual event. Bring-ing it out in the open makes the bur-den lighter.”
“Or it con-vinces you of the mer-its of what you wor-ried about in the first place.”
Some-how, she didn’t think he was talk-ing about the grand-fa-ther he’d never met. “But isn’t it bet-ter to just get it over with?”
His mouth whitened around the edge of his lips and he stiff-ened. “No.” He rose and stalked to-ward the DVR, kneel-ing be-fore it. He tried to look busy, but Dina could read him. He was fid-dling.
“What’s the worst that can hap-pen?” she asked.
He kept his back to her, his mus-cles strain-ing against his shirt.
At any other time, Dina’s throat would have gone dry at the sight. How-ever, know-ing he was, in ef-fect, strain-ing against her at-tempts to know him bet-ter, made his mus-cles de-cid-edly less at-trac-tive.
Adam rose and turned to-ward her, but kept his gaze fo-cused some-where be-hind her and to her left. He opened and closed his mouth sev-eral times be-fore clench-ing his fist and fo-cus-ing on her. He thrust his hand through his hair. “I know what you’re try-ing to do. I know I need to talk to you, and I will, but I need time. Please, I need you to trust me. Can you do that?”
Her stom-ach twisted and she swal-lowed. He hadn’t done any-thing to abuse her trust, but how much time did he ex-pect her to give? And what was so im-por-tant that he needed time to pre-pare? With a nod, she gave in. For now.