Page 27 of The Betrayer
“Have you even left the office?” she asked without looking back.
“No. Just trying to catch up on all the work I didn’t get to do while I was getting ready for last night.”
It wasn’t a lie. I had pushed a lot of work to the side to make sure everything was perfect for the gala. But it wasn’t the entire truth, either. After all of Angela’s recent support, I wasn’t sure why I didn’t want to tell her the real reason I had called off our upstate weekend or why I still didn’t want to.
Angela had been here a couple of times already this weekend, once to bring me breakfast and another to drop off the gift basket from the museum. Now it sat towering over the glass coffee table.
“Have you opened this yet?” she asked, wandering back to it.
“No, not yet. Feel free, though,” I answered, returning to my desk, determined to finish that email. Or start it, at least.
I could hear Angela opening the cellophane and rummaging through whatever the basket held. A box opening accompanied my typing, and I had almost finished the message by the time she was at my desk, a chocolate truffle with a bite out of it held between her fingers.
“Here, try this. It’s excellent.”
She held the truffle out to me, which I could see out of the corner of my eye. I shook my head. “Thanks, but I’m good. Just need to finish this email.”
“Seriously, try it.”
I took a deep breath to quell my annoyance, knowing she wouldn’t stop, and turned my head to take a small bite. It was soft and decadent, melting on my tongue with notes of vanilla, cinnamon, and a spice I couldn’t identify.
“Good?” Angela popped the rest in her mouth.
“Very,” I answered, already turning my attention back to the computer screen.
Angela made her way back to the table, and I heard her rustling around the gift basket some more before the sound of creaking leather told me she had taken her usual place on the couch. I focused my attention entirely on the business at hand, knowing Angela would take it up if I didn’t.
A final email finished, and I blinked at the clock—several hours had gone by, and the subdued quality of the sunlight slanting through the window said it was late afternoon. The clock told me it was right on the cusp of evening and dinnertime.
Angela was still on the couch, scrolling through her phone, and I wondered what she had been looking at for the past hours.
“Hey, you want dinner?”
“What?”
My girlfriend jerked her head up, wrenching her phone down to her side almost guiltily. It was odd, but I let it go. I’d probably just startled her.
“Do you want dinner? I still have work to do, but I can run out and get something from the Italian place down the street.”
“Oh, sure.” Angela had drawn her composure back around her, and she slipped her phone into her bag. “I’ll go get it.”
“No, I’ll go.” I pushed my chair back and stood up, stretching to get the kinks out of my joints and neck. I really did need to get out at least once today. I highly doubted my father would be around the office at this late hour, especially on a weekend.
Angela watched me for a moment, her expression unreadable, then shrugged. “Okay. You know what I like.”
The walk to the restaurant and wait for the food didn’t take long, but the chilly fall air and leaves on the ground were reviving. I could breathe slightly more easily, like my chest wasn’t so tight. As the elevator doors dinged open, I made my way around the outside of the cubicles and desks.
Through the glass wall of my office, I saw Angela still in my office, which I had expected. But I hadn’t expected to see her looking into an open drawer of my desk.
“Angela?”
The woman popped up and jumped away from my desk like she’d been hit by an electric current. Even though the light was dim in my office as the sun dipped below the horizon, I could have sworn I saw a flush color to her cheeks.
But it was gone as quickly as it had appeared, and Angela was back to the same, collected woman I had fallen for. Except that this was the second time I’d made her jump guiltily.
What looked like guilt, anyway.
“What were you doing?” I asked, placing the brown paper bag with our dinner beside the gift basket on the coffee table. From my vantage point, I could see my favorite cookie peeking out, which would make a good dessert.
