Page 58 of Edge of Secrets

I took a few seconds to breathe down the surge of anger and frustration. “You’re hung up on the money thing, Nell,” I said. “I was communicating to them that I’m willing and able to protect you. Money is protection, too, whether you like it or not. And they know it. In fact, I didn’t hear anyone objecting to it but you.”

She was silent for a moment. “Sorry if I’m being oversensitive,” she said finally, her voice subdued. “And thanks for making that offer to Vivi—about your friend in Oregon. I hope that works out. She needs a break. We all do.”

“I got that sense too,” I said. “I’ll get right on it.”

The silence that followed was an invisible wall between us. She was lost in her thoughts behind it, hidden from me. It made me anxious and lonely. I wanted to break through, get inside. I needed more intel. She was so complex. There was so much going on in her head. I wanted her exact specs, a manual of her operating systems. I wanted to study her, absorb her. Master her like she was a math problem.

And she’d have my ass barbecued if I ever said anything like that to her. I had to watch my metaphors with this woman.

“Talk to me,” I blurted.

She looked at me, startled out of her reverie. “About what?”

“About yourself. I want to know more. You’re incredible. Unique.”

She harrumphed. “Yeah. I’m so unique, I’m practically extinct.”

I ignored that. “Tell me about your childhood, your mother, your sisters,” I urged. “Tell me anything. I don’t care what. Just let me in.”

Her big eyes were wary of the need she felt emanating from me, a vibration I could do nothing to hide. “Duncan ...”

“You make me feel so alive. Just please, Nell. Tell me how it is to be the way you are.”

My appeal touched her. She gave me a shadowy smile, and something relaxed inside me. Excellent. By sheer chance, I’d hit upon the exact trick to calm her down. Some judicious pity-mongering, a small, tasteful glimpse of desperation, and she’d melted. I hadn’t calculated the strategy, either. It just came to me.

Maybe this incomprehensible emotional shit could be learned, after all.

Chapter Twenty

Nell

The note in his voice released the floodgates. I talked so much, I embarrassed myself. I told him things I hadn’t let myself think about in years, things I’d pretended to forget. The boarding schools. The bad foster homes. That solitary afternoon in the funeral home, alone with my mother’s coffin. That bleak memory still haunted me.

I had no idea there was so much to say about my childhood, but it tumbled out. I told him about Lucia finding me. About Nancy and Vivi, and discovering that I could have a family after all. I talked about stories, poetry. My magical refuge.

Duncan listened intently. His rapt attention was flattering, but the car clock said it was after three a.m., and I looked up at the street numbers and realized that he’d been driving in big, aimless circles around his neighborhood for the better part of an hour.

“Why aren’t you parking the car?” I asked.

“I wanted to hear you talk.”

“We could talk at your apartment,” I pointed out.

“What I want when we get home doesn’t involve much talking.”

I crossed my legs with a shiver at the sensual promise in his voice. “Well. Be that as it may. I’m about talked out for now.”

He turned at the next block and started back toward his condo. “This morning you told me that you’ve got plans for your life,” he said. “Ambitions. Do those include a man? Or any room for one?”

I hesitated. There was a peculiar tone in his voice when he asked the loaded question. Something that made me vaguely nervous.

“You know, Duncan, I’ve babbled for over an hour, but you haven’t volunteered one single thing about your own life,” I said.

“You’re evading my question.”

“Why, what a coincidence. You’re evading mine, too.”

“I asked first,” he said stubbornly. “And? So?”

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