Page 41 of Dangerous Obsession
Julia glanced at the clock on her nightstand. 9:58 p.m. On a Friday.
She pulled her pillow over her face and screamed into it. A long, muffled, thoroughly undignified scream.
When she finally lowered the pillow, the room remained exactly the same.
Empty.
She stared at the ceiling. At this rate, she really was going to end up with a cat. The thought should have made her laugh. Instead, she wanted to cry.
Her mind drifted to Leland. To the way he’d looked at her the last time she’d seen him. To everything he’d said. More so, everything he hadn’t.
He’d come short of that old, tired breakup line: It’s not you, it’s me.
But they’d never actually been together, and damn if rejection, in any packaging, didn’t feel all about her.
Julia rolled onto her side and pulled the blanket higher.
Tomorrow will be better.It had to be. Because if this was what moving on felt like, she wasn’t very good at it.
Morning light was creeping in before she finally drifted off to sleep.
Chapter 12
Club nights were usually easy. Tonight, it felt like punishment.
Leland stood behind the bar, polishing a glass that didn’t need polishing. Music, mostly a drumbeat, drifted through the doors. Laughter rose from the patio. Members who’d finished playing relaxed for a few minutes before heading out. Drinks, made by him, flowed.
Normally, he’d be somewhere else. Monitoring, patrolling, anything but bartending. But after three straight days of dead ends and frustration, he’d volunteered for bar duty where his distraction wouldn’t matter.
It wasn’t helping.
Alec appeared from nowhere and dropped onto a stool. “You look cheerful.”
Leland snorted, which he thought was answer enough. Alec, not so much.
“I take it the lead you were following didn’t pan out?” he asked.
“Waste of time. What are you having?”
“White wine.”
Leland looked up, brow arched. Alec was a beer or bourbon man.
“For my lovely bride. Nothing for me. I’m driving.”
Leland searched for the corkscrew, which wasn’t where he’d left it. He looked under a bar towel and in a drawer. Nothing.
A few minutes later, Dev slid onto a stool next to Alec. “I was in Jacksonville all day. How’s the investigation going?”
Alec shook his head. “Slow.”
“Gaby and Rhys?”
They’d just arrived. Rhys as composed as ever. Gaby looking ready to punch someone—never a promising sign.
“I spoke to him earlier,” Alec advised. “Nothing useful.”
“The list of people who didn’t kill anyone continues to grow impressively,” Leland grumbled as he pulled a twist-off bottle of Moscato out of the fridge and poured.
