Page 44 of Trick of Light
“It goes all the way back. I’m sorry about Sasha. I’m sorry I’ve been rude about your podcast. I’ve had bad experiences with the press. I got talked about like some idiot globetrotting playboy. But I shouldn’t blame you for that. I was out of line. Why is your jaw dropping like that?”
She snapped her mouth shut. “I just never took you for an apology kind of guy.”
“Maybe you don’t know me well enough to think that.”
“You’re right. Now it’s my turn. Sorry for jumping to the conclusion that you were too full of yourself to apologize.”
Full of himself? He swung around in shock. It wasn’t a characteristic he would ever want to have. “You think I’m full of myself?”
She blinked, but didn’t back down. “Sure. You were very arrogant when we first talked at the hotel.”
Arrogant. She’d used that word before, in the lilac bushes. Had he really behaved arrogantly? Maybe he had. That whole time was a blur.
“I was in shock. My sister and brother and mother-in-law were under arrest. My father was possibly diagnosed with dementia and doing things he’d never talked about before. Everything was exploding all over the place and I was the one who had to hold it together. And that’s after I spent my whole adult life putting distance between myself and the Carmichaels. Really, I seemed arrogant and full of myself?”
She tilted her head at him, considering. At least she was choosing her words with care and not slinging them just to insult him. “Yes, you did. But I’m willing to say it was just how you came off, and that maybe you aren’t either of those things.”
“Well, thanks,” he said dryly. “That’s big of you.” He rubbed at the back of his neck, where tension throbbed.
A crack of lightning was followed by a low rumble of thunder, closer than he would have liked. “If you have any electronics charging, you might want to unplug them,” he said as he looked around for anything Tamara might have left plugged in. She wasn’t much for electronics, but she did have an ancient desktop computer that she used on occasion for research.
“Barnaby,” Gabby said softly, coming to her feet.
“Yeah?”
“Did I hurt your feelings?”
“God no. I’m used to people taking one look at me and running the other way. I mean…” He gestured at his own face. “I look like Blackbeard the pirate. And that was before I knew I was related to a real-life pirate.” He grinned, suddenly delighted by that fact. “Now it all makes sense.”
He found another open window in the kitchen and closed it. The rain was slanting hard against the old cedar siding. This house had been through many storms over the years, and had weathered them all. But for some reason, he was prowling around like a nervous cat.
Maybe it was because he felt like a fool. Gabby had been in his thoughts to an uncomfortable degree, and the whole time, she’d been thinking he was full of himself. In other words, a jackass.
“Okay, but I didn’t run the other way. Just want to point that out,” she said.
He turned to find Gabby in the kitchen with him, just a few feet away. Heat flushed through him.
“I didn’t take into account what you were going through at that time,” she went on. “Now I know you better. That’s how it works, right?”
“How what works?” The shift of expression in her eyes mesmerized him. He almost forgot what they were talking about.
“Getting to know someone. Building a friendship. Or any relationship. First impressions only go so far.”
“Want to know my first impression of you?”
She made a funny face. “I don’t know. Do I?”
“I thought you were fascinating and out of my reach.”
That seemed to surprise her. “Out of your reach? How do you mean?”
“You’re a person with a lot going for you. You have drive and ambition. You have the talent and smarts to go as far as you can. I’m not even bringing up how stunningly beautiful you are, because that’s beside the point, although obviously I noticed that too.”
She opened her mouth, then closed it again. He’d left her speechless. That had to be a first.
“You have purpose. I know I’ve made fun of your podcast, but I see what you’re doing with it, and it’s good. We need people like you exposing corruption and all the evil shit people do. But me—I’ve been chasing something my whole life, trying to do good things when and where I can. But sometimes, in the middle of the night in some foreign country that I’ll leave in a few weeks when the project’s done, I wonder if I’m really just still running.”
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