Page 77 of Always Red (Chasing Red 2)

Chapter Twenty-one

Caleb

Red had been quiet since I’d picked her up from campus. There was a tiny furrow between her eyebrows. You’d miss it if you weren’t looking hard enough.

I always looked.

It wasn’t difficult to figure out Red’s emotions. I’d studied her face and her moods for a long time, and I could almost always tell what she was feeling.

She didn’t wear her emotions on her face around other people, but around me, she’d started to. There were times when she didn’t, but she could never hide them for long.

Now, her face was a blank canvas, devoid of emotion. You’d never think something was wrong unless you looked, unless you knew her facial expressions and their corresponding moods. And I knew that very tiny furrow meant she was annoyed. On impulse, I made a sharp U-turn and drove through a deserted park, sliding my car in a parking lot that was hidden between densely packed trees.

“What’s wrong, baby?” I asked, but she was looking outside through the window.

I wanted her eyes on me. Just on me.

“If I did something wrong, I’m sorry. I’m an idiot, and I will do anything—grovel at your feet, buy you diamonds, a car—no?” I grinned when she looked up at me dryly. “Okay, how about if I buy you a big jar of peanut butter?”

>

That teased a small smile out of her.

“Now why don’t you tell me what I did wrong so I can start making it up to you? Right,” I added, backtracking quickly when she narrowed her eyes at me. “I should know what I did, but I’m—” I stopped myself before I said I’m drawing a blank. She’d just skin me alive. “Let’s see…” I sucked my bottom lip.

“I picked my clothes up on the floor this week, every day. Just like you told me. Ask Maia.” Maia was the wonderful older lady I’d hired years ago to do household chores for me three times a week.

Red flicked her hair over her shoulder. Okay, it wasn’t the clothes then.

I sniffed at my armpits. “I showered.”

A twitch on her lips. Those pink lips…I knew how soft, how giving, how delicious they were when she…

When she caught me staring at her lips, I grinned.

“Do you have your period?” I asked.

Now she laughed reluctantly, looking at me with exasperation and fondness.

“I saw Beatrice-Rose today,” she said finally.

My smile disappeared. “Did she say anything to you?”

“I didn’t know she’s coming to your party.”

I straightened in my seat. “If I had a choice, I wouldn’t have her invited to my party. Actually, I wouldn’t even have a party. It’d just be you and me.”

I sighed when she didn’t say anything. “My mom arranges these things,” I explained. “I have no say on the guest list. And I really don’t care. She says it’s a birthday party for me, but it’s never just a birthday party.”

“What do you mean?”

I picked up her hand, traced circles on her palm.

“My mom is a businesswoman. That party is mostly an excuse for me to meet our business partners’ investors and to get more investors. Think of it this way: My mom is a T. rex. She needs food to feed herself and her babies. So she sets up a place where all the animals with the most body fat gather. And then she starts picking out the fattest of them all.”

She laughed, rolled her eyes, then grinned at me. “Only you would make an analogy like that.”

“That’s why you like me.” I kissed her fingers.

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