Entwined With You

eyes had the sparkle I enjoyed seeing every morning.
    I stopped by her desk. “How are you?”
    “Good. Michael’s meeting me for lunch and I’m ending it. Nice and civilized.”
    “That’s a killer outfit you’ve got on,” I told her, admiring the emeraldgreen dress she wore. It was fitted and had leather piping that gave it just the right amount of edge.
    She stood and showed off her knee-high boots.
    “Very Kalinda Sharma,” I said. “He’s going to be scrambling to hold on to you.”
    “As if,” she scoffed. “These boots were made for walking. He didn’t call me back until last night, which made it nearly four days without contact. Not totally unreasonable, but I’m ready to find a guy who’s crazy about me. A guy who thinks about me as much as I’m thinking about him and hates it when we can’t be together.”
    I nodded, thinking about Gideon. “It’s worth it to hold out for one. Do you want me to give you a bailout phone call during your lunch?”
    She grinned. “Nah. But thank you.”
    “All right. Let me know if you change your mind.”
    I headed back to my desk and dug right in to work, determined to get ahead to make up for leaving early the day before. Mark was fired up, too, segueing from work only long enough to tell me that Steven had a binder full of wedding ideas he’d been collecting for years.
    “Why am I not surprised?” I said.
    “I shouldn’t be.” Mark’s mouth curved with affection. “He’s kept it in his office all this time so I wouldn’t know about it.”
    “Did you get a look at it?”
    “He went through the whole thing with me. It took
hours
.”
    “You’re going to have the wedding of the century,” I teased.
    “Yeah.” The word held more than a little exasperation, but his expression remained so happy I couldn’t stop smiling.
    My dad called just before eleven.
    “Hey, sweetheart,” he said, in reply to my usual work greeting. “How’s your day going?”
    “Great.” I leaned back in my chair and looked at the picture of him. “How’d you sleep?”
    “Hard.I’m still trying to wake up.”
    “Why? Go back to bed and be lazy.”
    “I wanted to let you know that I’m going to take a rain check on lunch. We’ll get together tomorrow. Today, I need to talk to your mom.”
    “Oh.” I knew that tone. It was the same one he used when he pulled people over, that perfect mixture of authority and disapproval. “Listen. I’m not going to step in the middle of this with you two. You’re both adults and I’m not picking sides. But I have to say that Mom wanted to tell you.”
    “She should have.”
    “She was alone,” I pressed on, my feet tapping restlessly on the carpet, “going through a divorce and the trial against Nathan, and dealing with my recovery. I’m sure she desperately wanted a shoulder to lean on—you know how she is. But she was drowning in guilt. I could’ve gotten her to agree to anything then, and I did.”
    He was quiet on the other end of the line.
    “I just want you to keep that in mind when you talk to her,” I finished.
    “All right. When will you be home?”
    “A little after five. Want to go to the gym? Or back to Parker’s studio?”
    “Let me see how I’m feeling when you get in,” he said.
    “Okay.” I forced myself to ignore how anxious I was over the upcoming conversation between my parents. “Call me if you need anything.”
    We hung up and I got back to work, grateful for the distraction.
    When lunch rolled around, I decided to grab something quick and bring it back to my desk to work through the hour. I braved the midday sauna outside to hit the local Duane Reade for a bag of beef jerky and a bottled health drink. I’d skipped my workouts pretty frequently since Gideon and I had gotten back together, and I figured it was time to pay a penalty for that.
    Iwas debating the wisdom of sending Gideon an “I’m thinking of you” note when I twirled through the revolving front door of the Crossfire. Just a little something to say thanks for the flowers, which had made a tough day more bearable.
    Then I saw the woman I’d prefer never to see again—Corinne Giroux. And she was talking to my man, with her palm resting intimately against his chest.
    They stood off to the side, sheltered by a column outside the stream of traffic heading in and out of the security turnstiles. Corinne’s long black hair fell nearly to her waist, a glossy curtain that stood out even against her classic black