Trust Me on This - Jennifer Crusie [66]
All right, he needed Dennie and she thought she didn’t need him, but that was wrong. He’d just track her down and—
I have to do this on my own, she’d said. All right, he wouldn’t track her down. He’d just sit tight and trust her on this. He loved her. She loved him. She’d come through.
Maybe.
He shoved the sorted papers off his desk into the box and punched the intercom for his secretary. “All this stuff can be filed, Kath,” he told her. “Whenever you’ve got the time.”
“I can do it now,” she said cheerfully. “Also you have a call on one.” Her voice grew cheerier. “It’s Dennie.”
Alec grabbed the phone, and all his altruistic plans went south. “Where have you been?”
“I’ve been busy,” Dennie said lamely, but even lame, her voice was wonderful. She went on, her voice full of nerves. “A few things came up.”
“A few things? A few things? You didn’t call for three days.” Alec leaned back in his desk chair and told himself to calm down. “You had me scared to death.”
“Sorry,” Dennie said, and her voice cracked.
Something was wrong. His pulse kicked up again. “Don’t ever do that again. Now tell me what’s wrong, and we’ll fix it.”
“Nothing’s wrong, and I won’t do it again.” Dennie stopped, and Alec gave her as long as he could before he prompted her.
“So. Which job did you decide to take?”
“What?”
“Which job? You had three offers in New York, remember? Which one did you take?”
“Well, actually, none of them.” Dennie swallowed again. “I sort of jumped.”
Alec’s heart sank. More job-hunting. Less Dennie. “None of them?”
“None of them. I didn’t like New York.” She hesitated. “You weren’t there.”
“Oh.” Alec’s heart rose again. So maybe she’d come to Chicago. He closed his eyes at the thought and started thinking of arguments to convince her. “Good decision.”
“I thought so.” Dennie’s voice picked up a little more speed and a lot more confidence. “So since the Trib loved the article I sold Chicago Magazine on the database, I called them. I have an interview tomorrow.”
“The Trib? The Tribune? The Chicago Tribune?”
“That’s the one.” Dennie sounded unnaturally breezy. “I see them tomorrow.”
“Oh.” Don’t yell, “Yahoo,” Alec told himself. That would be immature. “So when are you getting in? Can I meet you at the airport?”
“Uh, no. I told you. I jumped.” He could hear her swallowing over the phone. “I know we never discussed commitment or anything, and I should have talked to you about this, but I couldn’t stand it anymore, and … I’m here, Alec. I know I should have called to see if you wanted—”
“You’re here?” Alec stood up. “You’re at O’Hare?”
“No, I really jumped,” Dennie said. “Walter and I are here in the lobby of your building.”
“My building?” He almost dropped the phone. “This building?”
“Right. This building,” Dennie said. “But if you don’t want …”
Alec dropped the phone and headed for the door. He took the six flights of stairs at a run when the elevator turned out to be at somebody else’s floor—somebody else who didn’t have the rest of his life waiting in the lobby—and he hit the ground floor at a run, only to stop in the middle of the lobby, lost. She wasn’t there.
Then his eyes reached the row of old phone booths in the back. She was biting her lip, leaning a little against the booth, wearing a sleeveless white dress with a big red belt cinched around her waist and dangling red earrings the size of half dollars. He absorbed it all—her lush red lips and glossy dark curls and the fullness of her body above and below the red belt and most of all her eyes, huge with apprehension—all of her hit him like a punch to the solar plexus.
He went to meet her using everything he had not to run to her.
“Alec,” she said, and the crack in her voice was there beside him, not over a damned telephone wire, and she was there beside him, not half a continent away, and the lobby was full of people. He took her arm—she was warm and solid and right there with him and he lost his breath for a minute—and hauled her out the front door and around the corner of the building to a side street, and then he pulled her into his arms and kissed