Dead Even - Mariah Stewart [91]
She waited for him to respond. When he did not, she leaned over and grabbed her bag from the floor. She rummaged around for a minute, then held up a tin of mints.
“Want one?” She offered the box to him.
“No, thanks.”
She dropped the box back into her bag, then took out her cell phone. She checked for messages.
“Message from John, Jayne is on her way to Mara’s, with Mara and Julianne . . . she and Aidan will be there until we arrive.” Miranda paraphrased John’s message. “How do you think Julianne will react when she realizes that her mother is involved with another man? Mara and Aidan are inseparable.”
“Guess we’ll find out soon enough.”
“And a message from . . . huh, no message.” She hit a button on the phone and scrolled for the number of the caller who had declined to leave a message. Finding it, she hit the return call button, then held the phone up to her ear. The number rang and rang, and finally, she heard the message prompt.
“This is Miranda Cahill, FBI, returning a call from this number. The caller didn’t leave a name, but if there’s someone there who still wants to speak with me, please call me back. You obviously have the number. . . .”
She disconnected and dropped the phone into its designated spot in her bag, then opened the box of mints and popped one into her mouth.
Finally, she asked, “So, are you going to tell me what’s eating you?”
He appeared to be debating a response, but when a full minute had passed, and he hadn’t replied, she said, “Nod if you can hear me, Fletcher.”
“I’m thinking,” he said, and moved to the right to allow a large truck to pass. “It’s hard to think when I have a headache.”
“You have a headache? Why didn’t you say something? Pull over and I’ll take the wheel. I just realized, you’ve been driving all day. I’ll drive the rest of the way, and you can relax.”
“It’s not the driving that’s making my head hurt.”
“What is?”
“You are.”
“I make your head hurt?” She sat straight up in her seat, offended.
“Among other things, yes.”
“I hope you’re going to explain that, and not sink back into silence again.”
“I’m thinking, Cahill, okay? Just stop talking for a minute and let me think, will you?”
She grew quiet then, and waited, hurt, wondering what she’d done to cause him to react to her in such a manner. They’d always gone round and round with each other, but it had always been mostly in fun, hadn’t it? And she couldn’t recall that there had been one of their usual go-rounds today. Or maybe even yesterday, for that matter. She looked over at him, confused, and felt the slightest stirring of apprehension, and thought back several days to having watched him and Annie walking across the parking lot, their heads close together, chatting like conspirators.
Miranda swallowed hard. Well, she hadn’t given him much encouragement, had she? She had no one to blame but herself if he had found someone else.
Which wasn’t to say that she wanted him, of course. Did she?
“That lightbulb go on yet?” she prodded, suddenly impatient.
“Okay,” he said, still looking straight out through the windshield. “I guess the best way to say it is like this: I just don’t want to go on like this anymore.”
“Like what?” she asked cautiously.
“Like, friends. I don’t want to be your friend anymore.”
“You don’t want to be my friend?” She felt as if he’d struck her.
“Well, of course, I want to be your friend.” He exhaled sharply. “I just don’t want to be just your friend, okay, Miranda? We’re a little old for this shit.”
“But you were the one who brought up the friends thing. You said you wanted to be friends, Will.”
“I said what I thought you wanted to hear, okay?”
She blinked, not expecting him to sound so . . . vehement.
“Will—”
“Let me finish, will you? You wanted to hear this, you listen.”
“Okay.” She shifted in her seat so that she could watch his face, give him her full attention.
“I understand that the way things have been between us hasn’t been especially . . . stable. I don’t know if that’s the right word, but it will have