Page 54 of The Best Worst Mistake
She kicks off her slippers and locates her shoes.
“No lettuce in bed?” I confirm, standing to grab my jacket.
“Absolutely not.” She rolls her suitcase back through the doorway of her bedroom. “I’m going to find a hat. What time is that reservation?”
I glance at my watch.
“You have forty-seven minutes. Enough time to change.”
She turns around and gives me a wide grin, patting the top of her messy bun. Her nose is still red and her eyes are swollen from crying, but somehow she still looks beautiful.
“I hear wind-blown chic is in,” she retorts, “and thank God for that because you’re right there with me, I’m afraid.” She points to my hair, still sticking straight up from the freefall earlier, I’m sure. “You might want to find a hat as well.”
“Unfortunately, this place has a dress code. You up for that?”
“Nope,” she says. “Would you mind if we just found a pub or something? Somewhere that’ll accept me in jeans?”
She shuts the door to her room and, without her eyes on me, I breathe a real sigh of relief.
There you are, Jules.
“Yeah,” I call through the door. “I’ll have Ryan cancel and find us a place nearby.”
She peeks her head back out.
“Can we not?” she asks.
“Not cancel or—?”
“No, can we not bother Ryan again?”
I blink like the thought is foreign to me. “It’s literally his job for me to bother him.”
“Exactly. I’d rather just walk around and see what we run into.”
I pull my phone out to see what’s around the hotel on my Google Maps app.
“Okay, how much time do you need?”
“Do you not remember how fast I can whip myself into shape?” she asks. The door closes again but her voice calls out, muffled now through the wood. “Pretty sure I’m lower maintenance than you! Give me ten minutes!”
When I hear her bathroom tap turn on, I sit back down on the couch and run my face through my hands, feeling ill.
Thank God for Ryan’s diligence.
I didn’t believe Jules could have been right about us completely missing something that important in the report, but I could have never lived with myself if she was. That would have been the end of me.
I breathe in deeply, waiting for the raging panic-driven nausea to subside, wondering if Jules is doing the same thing on the other side of that door right now, knowing without a doubt that there’s nothing either one of us could have done to save him.
Chapter 23
Juliet
An hour later, I’m sitting opposite from Silas at a solid wood plank table in a little fondue restaurant. A flight of white wines is out in front of us. I let him order since his German is nearly impeccable, thanks to an array of foreign au pairs and nannies growing up.
The waiter has just left us with a collection of bowls filled with crusty breads, pickles, and tiny boiled potatoes that are soft enough to spear with our long forks before dipping them into the simmering cheese pot in the center.
“Dig in,” he says, handing me a fork. He looks somewhat aged after that discussion we just had, and I don’t blame him.
