Page 65 of Spies without a Face
She touched my arm. “Pandora?”
“Yes?” I turned to her.
“Are you okay?” Her brows furrowed with her concern.
I released a slow breath. “I am. And I’m sorry that I kept what was going on from you.”
She grimaced. “No need. I get it. I shouldn’t have interfered with trying to get you and Austin together. I’m sorry.”
“No need,” I repeated her reply with a smile. “I know you meant well.”
She pushed one of her curls off her face. “You’d light up when you talked about him—even the disastrous moments.” She chuckled. “I liked seeing you happy and didn’t want you to get in your own way.”
I groaned with a half-hearted laugh. “You know me well. But it looks like I got in my own way in the end.”
She nodded with understanding. “Are we good?”
“Of course we are.” I gave her a hug.
When we pulled apart, she nudged me toward the door. “Go.”
The drive homewas much faster. Not only had the traffic dwindled, but I was heavy footed in my urgency to see things with Austin and try to make things right.
When I parked in the driveway, his car wasn’t there. My stomach sank. Oh well, it gave me time to run inside and make myself presentable.
I parked the car and rushed up to the front door. As soon as I entered, the cats greeted me as if I’d been gone for a year rather than a couple of hours.
And then there was a knock at the back door. My heart fluttered with hope. Austin?
Maybe he’d parked down the street. When I headed into the kitchen to see who was there, my gut plummeted. It wasn’t Austin.
It was Marius.
CHAPTER23
PANDORA
“Ithought you’d left,” I told Marius, struggling to keep the wariness from my voice.
“Without saying goodbye to you?” He sauntered into the living room as unhurried as one of my cats, as if he lived there. “Never.”
Seeing Marius in my living room, in the room where I’d like to curl up on the sofa with my cats and read under a cozy blanket, struck me as wrong. “Does that mean you’re saying goodbye?”
Marius arched his brow. “Not quite.”
My muscles tensed. “What does it mean then?”
“I came for you, Pandora.”
Alarm bells rang in my head. “I know you saw me at the concert. With him. Why would you follow me there, anyway?”
“I like to watch you.”
Ickiness slid over my skin like slime. “Stop it. I don’t like it.” I rolled my shoulders back.
Marius paced in my living room. “You can’t want him over me,” he scoffed. “Remember what we had together. The passion.” He raised his fist to accentuate his point. “He’s nothing. What could he possibly do for you?”
“What you couldn’t do,” I replied. “Care for me and accept me the way I am, not how you want me to be.”
