Page 83 of Sawyer
He did. Didn’t make him feel less jumpy. Something was wrong. He just knew it. “I’m going to swing by her place and see if she’s home. I can’t wait. If she’s not—then I’ll know. If she’s asleep, she won’t care if I wake her up.”
“I’ll come with you, Doc. Just in case there’s some scary dude outside her apartment.”
He knew Kyle was trying to make him laugh, but he couldn’t manage it. He scooped up the wine and the flowers and headed down the stairs. At the door, Kyle tossed him his coat, which he’d forgotten about, and they were off.
Phoebe’s apartment wasn’t very far, and yeah, he felt a little self-conscious as he walked across the street and tried to see if the lights were on in her apartment. Kyle only watched him, his brow furrowed, smiling pleasantly at people passing them on the sidewalk.
“Maybe you should just ring her apartment,” Kyle called out.
Yeah, probably. Paris might be a bustling city, but someone might call the cops on him if he kept trying to peep into her window. Rushing across the pavement, he rang the call button. Once. Twice. Three times.
“She’s not answering.”
This is what he’d become. A man who stated the obvious with his guts in knots. But now heknewsomething waswrong. God, surely nothing bad had happened at Beverly’s party? But what could have? His mind spewed out another crazy scenario about her and Beverly getting into a fight over which artist was greater, Picasso or Monet.
Nuts. He was nuts.
“Why don’t you leave her a note?” Kyle pulled out a slim notepad of good cardstock and a pen from the lining of his jacket.
A message was probably smart, but he couldn’t refrain from hitting the button again. And again. Kyle only watched him, his mouth twisting. Yeah, this was what he’d been reduced to. Dr. Sawyer Jackson, PhD, with published articles in respectable academic journals, tapping the call button to his girlfriend’s apartment like a two-year-old with a new drum set.
“Hey!”
Phoebe’s voice.
He looked up, his heart skyrocketing with joy. She was hanging out her window, her red hair glinting fire in the sunlight. “You’re home!”
“Yes!” she shouted. “Stop pushing my call button. If I wanted to talk to you, I would.”
Her words struck him with the force of a moving truck. She didn’t want to talk to him?
Something inside him died. Maybe it was him falling to the earth and splatting on the ground. He strode over and looked up at her tight expression. “Why don’t you want to talk to me? What the hell happened?”
Her green eyes could have hurled fireballs at him. “What happened?Do you know where your agent is planning to have your first show?”
Duh. Why would that make her mad? “Yes. The Anderson Gallery.”
He heard the gasp before she shouted, “Thank you for clearing that up!”
Then she disappeared from sight and slammed the window.
He stood there looking up at the second floor. He could hear his breathing change, anxiety causing him to pant. His lungs had pretty much melted like plastic on a hot stove.
Kyle’s hand landed on his shoulder, shifting his attention. Maybe he had a sudden case of brain fever because he couldn’t make sense of what just happened. “I don’t understand.”
“I have my suspicions,” Kyle ground out, steering him down the sidewalk as he pulled out his phone. “But I think we should go over to Brooke and Axel’s and then call your agent. It’s still a little early in New York, but you have her cell info, right?”
“Stored in my phone.”
“Good.” Kyle pulled out his phone and talked to Brooke, telling her they needed to come over before clicking off. “Okay, I’m calling a car. We’re going to figure this out.”
The more steps he took, the more grounded he became. “You don’t think Beverly is thinking the London gallery for the show, do you? I asked if she knew Phoebe. We?—”
Kyle’s mouth twisted as he trailed off. “It’s the only explanation that makes sense. But you should confirm it.”
He looked back over his shoulder, the pain throbbing in his body unlike any he’d ever known. This was what the poets called the agony of love. He hated it. “But I want to talk to Phoebe?—”
“She doesn’t want to talk to you right now, and we need her to calm down and for you to be better prepared to handle things when you see her again. Because you will, Sawyer. This is all a terrible misunderstanding.”
