“A reason to find out what’s going on with you.” He sat next to me on the couch, forcing me to turn to him. His thumb ran over the dark bag under my right eye. “You’ve been crying.”
I pushed his hand away and stood up, walking to the window. “What’s it to you if I have?”
He followed me to the window, spinning me around so fast I had to grab for him so I didn’t fall. “Damn it, Honey. You’re talking to me now. I know your moods and emotions right down to the way your right eye twitches once when you’re lying.”
I rolled my eyes to the ceiling, mostly to avoid gazing into his. “No, that twitch is a neurological condition caused by my mother, who used drugs while she was pregnant with me.”
His hands held my shoulders, and he directed me back to the couch, where he sat me down. “Honey, why didn’t you come to work today?” His head was cocked to the left, and his gaze was filled with pure confusion. “I saw you on the camera, but you just kept walking. You were hunched over like you were in pain. I couldn’t get off the phone fast enough to get over here.”
I thunked my head back against the couch, biting my lip to keep it from trembling. Nope. I was not going to cry in front of him for the ten-thousandth time in my life. Nope, I told myself as a tear ran down my cheek. Make that ten thousand and one. He stood and started pacing, but whether he was waiting for me to speak or waiting for me to quit crying, I didn’t know. It was time to get myself together, so I headed toward the bathroom. “Give me a few minutes and I’ll be ready to go.” After I closed the door, I leaned against it and bent over with my hands pressed into my thighs. My head was killing me, and I desperately sucked in air to keep from vomiting. There was no way I would tell him that and risk seeing pity in those baby blues of his, though.
If I had a choice I would go to bed, but instead, I yanked my work clothes off the hook on the door, took off my sleep shorts, and tugged the skirt back on. Rather than change it, I tucked in my tank top out of indifference to the whole thing and brushed my mussed hair. A warm rag cleaned up my face, and once my hand was steady, I swiped on a new round of mascara. There, ready to face the world. Not.
I swung the door open to grab my blazer off the chair where I’d thrown it and find a new pair of shoes that didn’t hurt my feet. What I saw stopped me dead in my tracks. Mathias leaned against the desk, a padded folder in his hand.
I swallowed hard and rushed over to him, aiming to grab it from his hands, but he held it out of the way at the last minute. “Give me that,” I ordered, unwilling to jump around and risk him dropping it.
“Not until you tell me what it is.”
I motioned at it. “I think you can read, Mathias. You do have a master’s degree, after all.” He raised one brow at me, putting us in a standoff. I knew he’d win, so I put my hands on my hips and sighed. “It’s my diploma.”
“Your diploma?” he parroted. “From the University of Green Bay. Did you order it off eBay?”
In one motion I snatched it out of his hand and pointed at the door, my finger shaking. “Get out! Just get out of my life, Mathias Jørgensen! I’m done! I’m done working for you! I’m done with whatever this toxic thing is between us! I can’t do it anymore! I’m just done!”
He turned on his heel, and when the door snapped shut behind him, I let out a sob. It wasn’t lost on me that life as I knew it had just ended with those three words.
CHAPTER 2
Something was pounding. Was it my head? I sat up in bed and blinked twice. When I still couldn’t see, I rubbed my eyes until the clock came into focus. It was after eight p.m., and the room was dark. The curtain billowed out into the room, carried by the force of the spring storm they had predicted was coming. I stumbled out of the bedroom and felt around in the dark for the lamp next to the couch. The pounding continued until I made it to the door and yanked it open. That’s when I remembered what had happened all those hours ago.
“Honey,” Charity said, grabbing me into a hug. “Thank God you’re all right.” She twisted her arm around my waist, walked me to the couch, and helped me sit. “Okay, so not all right, but alive. Migraine?”
I nodded but still didn’t speak. I noted my neck was tight, but at least the blinding pain in my head was slightly better than it had been earlier.
She disappeared into the kitchen, and I could hear water running. I looked down at myself, dressed in only my tank top and bikini briefs. Before I could think about moving off the couch for other clothes, Charity was back. A clap of thunder burst out, and I jumped, grabbing the arm of the couch to steady myself.
She held the glass out to me. “It’s over the lake, but we can enjoy the cool breeze, right?”
Charity is the fiancé of Gulliver Winsome, the co-owner of Butterfly Junction with Mathias. At barely four feet tall, she’s a little dynamo who goes the extra mile to help anyone in need. Charity is also a computer wizard, and when she rolled into Plentiful last summer to help fix the computer server at Butterfly Junction, she became an immediate friend. What she ended up doing was discovering the truth about the people blackmailing me, and she was nearly killed because of it. Charity never held it against me, though. She’s now a partner in the business she single-handedly saved and is planning her wedding to Gulliver this summer.
Butterfly Junction is one of the only businesses Mathias co-owns. Normally, he’d buy out the business, make it profitable again, and eventually sell it to the highest bidder, but that wasn’t in the cards for Butterfly Junction. Gulliver had the skills to develop an eco-friendly pesticide to save the pollinators, but he lacked the capital he needed to do the research. Mathias had the money but lacked the skill. Somehow, the two men, who were polar opposites, struck up a friendship that went beyond business.
Mathias needs someone like Gulliver in his life. Gulliver is down-to-earth, logical, and scientific. All the things Mathias isn’t. It’s my opinion that Mathias holds on to his shares in Butterfly Junction because it was the one place that he found true success. It was the one place he found humanity again, and he was holding on to it for all he was worth.
“We’ve been trying to call you all day. Mathias told us what happened. He was worried you had a migraine.”
I raised the glass, the water sloshing out before I could get it to my lips. I almost dropped it, and that’s when I noticed the severe spasming of my fingers. My right hand always had issues, but if I was tired, sick, or upset, it became unusable. Unfortunately, tonight I was all three of those things. Charity grabbed the glass and held it to my lips for me.
“Thanks,” I whispered when she lowered it again, “but I highly doubt Mathias was worried.” I patted the couch, my right first and second fingers refusing to do anything but point straight up in the air.
She patiently held my hand down. “What are you doing?”
“Looking for my phone. I never heard it ring. I took a blue pill and passed out.”
“Blue pill?” She found my purse, discarded on the desk chair, and brought it over.
I dug out the phone and tapped my head twice with the end of it. “My migraine medication. I can’t remember the name right now.” I fumbled with the phone for a second, and she grabbed it, holding it for me as I pushed the button on the side to illuminate the display. It read eighty missed calls and forty text messages. “Are those all from Mathias?” I asked, leaning my head back against the couch.
