Page 56 of Walking Wounded

Her face tells him yes before her mouth does, blue eyes widening. Then she says, frowning, “Yes. I do, actually.” Then, more sharply: “I haven’t seen you around the building. You aren’t a resident, so I’m assuming you must be a guest of his.”

Luke swallows hard, throat sand-dune-dry and aching. “Yeah. I am. Luke Keller.” He offers her his hand, because despite his efforts to the contrary, his motherhadraised him a gentleman.

Her expression shifts again, this time to shock. “Oh.Luke.” Like his name has meaning to her. “Best friend Luke.” She accepts his shake.

“Yeah. That’s me.” He stifles the urge to twine his fingers together like a nervous kid. “Does that make you the girlfriend chef?”

“Ex-girlfriend,” she says pointedly. “Kate Manning.”

“Oh, um…sorry?”

“Don’t be,” she says with a snort, turns and heads for the elevators at a pace that allows him to follow. “It was amicable, and it was my idea, I’m not bitter about it.”

“Well. Um.” He hates that he never sounds like a literary-minded person when he speaks. “That’s good.”

She presses the UP button and gives him a sideways, calculating look. “He didn’t tell you about it?”

“No.”

“You should tell him to. It’s time he was finally honest with himself.”

“What?”

The elevator arrives with a ding and Kate steps on board, turns to face him. “Aren’t you going up?”

“Thanks…no, I’ll get the next one.”

She shrugs as the doors slide shut.

~*~

“Why do you look like that?” Linda asks after her face has appeared on the tablet screen.

“Like what?” Luke says, still numb up past his ears, and not because of the cold.

“Like shit.”

Luke sighs and tries to rub some of the feeling back into his face with both hands, the tablet propped up on Hal’s kitchen counter. “I ran into Hal’s ex-girlfriend in the lobby just now.”

“Ooh.” Her eyes light up. “And now you’re a quivering pile of jealousy.”

“Linda. Just don’t.”

“Oh no. You can’t tell methatand then ‘just don’t’ me. Try again, Romeo. What happened? Was it terrible? Did you fight her?”

“She was nice, it was fine, she was…whatever. Not important.”

Linda makes a game show buzzer sound in the back of her throat. “And these are the descriptive skills of a poet? No. Try again. Explain your heartbreak to me, Lucas.Poetically.”

“I hate you,” he mutters.

“What was that? Best editor ever?”

“We sort of had a collision in the lobby,” he concedes, making a face at her that earns a beaming smile in return. “I helped her pick up her recipes, and I knew Hal dated a chef, and I just sort of word-vomited that I knew Hal and asked if they used to go out.”

“Theatrical prose there, bud.”

“Do you want to hear, or not?”

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