Page 46 of Heart's Masquerade

Jaz schooled her face. “I told you, that’s in the past. I’m over it. This party is for the people in the community and for raising awareness for the center itself.”

“Save the spiel, girl. I know you. You hoped he would show up. Why don’t you call him?”

“I can’t. It’s too late.”

“Not if he was hung up on you like you are him.”

“That’s the million dollar question.”

“The answer to which you won’t—”

“Stop.”

Yasmine sighed. “Okay, fine. Let’s herd these monsters together and end this thing.”

Jaz agreed. They led the unmasking, and all the usual f

aces grinned back her in the crowd. Not that she hadn’t already recognized them all. A couple new ones who had just moved to the area were there, but as she already found out, no Torrian. The cleanup crew started their thing. The partiers drifted through the doors to go home or wherever they chose to go, and Jaz went to grab the plates she had fixed for her parents from the kitchen.

“Yasmine, you and your people have this?” Jaz asked.

“We got it. You go ahead. Tell Mom and Dad I’ll bring the kids around on Tuesday.”

“Got you. Okay, good night. Love you.” Jaz kissed her cheek, and Yasmine hugged her.

“Love you, too. Take Rhashon with you.”

Jaz rolled her eyes and slipped out. She knew her brother was all over the woman he had been seeing for a while now. Rhashon wouldn’t know she’d gone before tomorrow, and then he would lecture her, and she would ignore him. She wrapped up the visit to her parents quickly, and when she stepped back outside, memory of Torrian waiting for her in the cold came to mind. She pulled the collar of her jacket higher and tucked her chin close to her chest. Soon, she arrived at her apartment and let herself inside. The little place had never felt so lonely. How had he made it come to life in such a short time together? Why had she given so much of herself in that same period?

She stilled in the center of her living room and stared into the corner. The table she had moved into her bedroom to make room for the Christmas tree was back in its place. Atop it sat a small statue of an angel. She wasn’t into angels or any other religious carvings, but she supposed it was a Catholic thing for Torrian. The angel had been one of his gifts. She had kept it, as she had everything he had given her last Christmas.

Sinking to the carpet in front of the table, she reached fingers out to the angel. The cool surface gave her no connection to Torrian, and she realized tears spilled down her cheeks. On some level, she had been hoping to see him, proof that he cared and hadn’t just been using her. Who the heck knew how him coming to the Halloween party would have been proof, but kneeling alone in her apartment, she accepted that she’d been thinking it.

“Guess I’m the idiot,” she mumbled.

After a few moments, she decided the day was a wash and all hope gone. She wasn’t going to call, and neither would Torrian. The end. With a shower, she washed away the last of the costume makeup she’d started to remove at the bathroom sink. Then she dried off and threw on an old nightie. Dosing on sleeping pills, she climbed into bed and under the covers. Tomorrow, she planned to turn over a new leaf and get on with her life. She would reclaim the bouncy, joyful exuberance she liked to display and shake off the depression. She might even meet a new man, one on her financial level and from her world. Love existed in endless supply, and she would claim some for her own.

* * * *

Jaz stepped out of bed groggy and annoyed. She stumbled through a shower and brushed her teeth. Today was her day off, but she wanted to get laundry done and clean up her apartment. For the last few months, she had been trying recipes out of the cookbook Torrian had given her for Christmas, and she needed to go to the market to buy supplies for a new dish.

When the bell rang at ten in the morning, her foul mood hadn’t lessened, and she vowed to tell Glenda where to go if it was her. She would just slam the door in the face of anyone else, especially if it was a solicitor. “Okay, I’m probably not going slam the door in their face,” she mumbled to herself as she left the bedroom and the piles of clothes she had been sorting.

A peer through the peephole made her freeze, and the man on the other side rang the bell again. She swallowed and straightened. He rang again, then knocked. When she had gathered her nerves, she unlocked and opened the door. “What are you doing here?”

“Ms. Crane, I don’t know if you remember me.”

“Niles, of course, I remember you. It hasn’t been that long.”

“To some it has,” he said, and she wondered what he meant. “Pardon me for showing up unannounced. Do you mind if I come in?”

She peered past him to the BMW parked on the street.

“Mr. Donnelly doesn’t know I’m here.”

She blinked at him, but curiosity got the better of her, and she stepped back to let him pass. When Niles moved into her living room, she cursed herself for not starting with the cleaning instead of the laundry. There were clothes she hadn’t gathered here and a takeout container she hadn’t thrown away because her habit wasn’t completely broken.

“Um,” she said, trying to cover her embarrassment.

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