because the guy called out of the blue doesn’t mean anything’s changed.
She hit the button on her key, and the brightly colored car chirped and unlocked itself obediently.
He’s got a problem, that’s all, something he knows you’re good at. He’s probably got a steady girl by now, anyway, one who isn’t so picky.
She yanked open the driver’s-side door and tossed her big bag on the seat.
You’re acting like you’ve been missing him all this time.
She got into the car and jammed the key into the ignition with more gusto than was needed. She hurried to start the car and head out. She needed to focus on driving.
So she could stop thinking about the irritating fact that her last thought had been true.
Ryan watched Sasha thread her way past crowded tables back to the booth he’d managed to snag because he’d once bussed tables here. She was still the most amazing woman he’d ever seen.
She’d laughed when he’d told her that once, saying she had a mirror, thank you, and knew she wasn’t beautiful. Striking, she could manage, she’d said. With the sense of a guy who’d just been asked if something made a woman look fat, he’d stumblingly answered, “That’s what I mean. No, I meant…You’re not…I mean, you are, but…different.” He remembered that drowning feeling as he gave up and muttered, “You make it hard to breathe.”
To his amazement her laughter had turned to a genuine smile. And she’d told him that was the nicest compliment she’d gotten in a while.
Things hadn’t changed, he thought as he watched eyes lift and heads turn as she went by, a spot of bright, mobile color in the sunny yellow sweater she wore. It was, he knew, her favorite color, usually paired with black, “for contrast” she’d told him. She had a huge bag in the same colors slung over her shoulder; the bag was different, but the size the same as he remembered.
She’d cut her hair; that was about the only real change. And the short, sleek bob, longer at the front and sides than in the back so it moved every time she did, suited her. He usually preferred long hair, but there was something about the bare nape of her neck…
And then she was there, and he belatedly stood up, remembering his mother telling him a gentleman always did when a lady arrived. He thought such things ridiculously old-fashioned, but Sasha had also once told him she was an old-fashioned kind of girl, so he figured it couldn’t hurt.
She smiled at him.
Score one for Mom, he thought as Sasha slipped into the booth opposite him.
Suddenly he couldn’t think of a thing to say. He’d rehearsed in his head what he’d tell her about Trish, but he’d somehow forgotten to work on anything else. Desperate, his gaze landed on the brightly colored bag.
“Still carrying your life around, I see,” he said, then groaned inwardly at the lameness of it.
“You never know,” she said, as she always had when he’d teased her before about seeming to need a ton of stuff with her at all times. “Besides, it’s a special bag. It was made for me by a friend.” He looked more closely as she went on. “It was knitted, then washed in really hot water to shrink it. It’s called felting.”
“Shrink it?” he said, eyeing the thing that seemed the size of a large briefcase skeptically.
“It’s perfect,” she said, her voice taking on an imperious tone he hoped was teasing. “It’s solid, sturdy, but nice and soft to the touch.”
She stroked a finger over it as if to demonstrate. It was a simple motion, and he had no explanation for the sudden hike in his pulse rate. He studied the bag for a moment, more to give himself a moment to collect himself than out of real interest, but when he did, he noticed the intricacy of the pattern.
“It looks like the geometric screen saver Ian uses.”
Sasha laughed. “Maybe that’s where she got the idea.”
“She?”
“Liana Kiley.”
His head came up then. “Liana? Our Liana?”
Sasha grinned. “I love the way you Redstone people are. Yes, your Liana. I figured you’d know her, given she works in your neck of Redstone, as it were.”
He did know Liana. She worked for Lilith Mercer, who was cleaning up a mess left by the former head of the R&D division, a task he’d been involved in periodically, including some time spent with the pretty redhead. She was relatively new to Redstone, but that she was a perfect fit had become clear very early. Ryan liked her. And not just because she liked computers and was pretty good with them; she was a genuinely nice person.
And apparently a friend of Sasha’s, which he hadn’t known.
“Your colors,” he said, not sure what else to say; that she was friends with someone he saw almost every day bothered him somehow.
“Liana called it ‘Fright of the Bumblebee,’” she said with a grin.
He couldn’t deny it fit; the explosion of yellow and black did look a bit like a bumblebee gone berserk.
The waitress arrived with two large glasses and set them down, along with a couple of menus, then left to give them time to look. Sasha looked at the glass, then at Ryan.
“I took a chance you’re still into Diet Coke,” he said.
She smiled. “As long as it’s not decaf. I mean, what’s the point?”
He laughed, and the knot in his gut loosened a bit. “Order something. I’m buying.” She lifted a brow at him. “I called you,” he pointed out.
“Point taken,” she said, picking up the menu. “And since they fund us as well, I know how Redstone pays.”
“I’m not hurting.”
She looked up from the menu. “Not about that, anyway.”
For an instant he thought she meant hurting about her, and he winced inwardly. Then he realized she had to mean Trish, and he felt like a fool, and worse, an uncaring idiot, for even momentarily forgetting the matter at hand.
“Tell me about your sister,” she said in that soft, encouraging tone that had always made him want to go out and climb a mountain or slay a dragon, and not in any virtual world, but the real thing.
She’d never met Trish during the short time they’d been together, but he knew he’d told her about his little sister, probably with that exasperated tone most older siblings used. Although with ten years between them, he’d moved out on his own when she was nine, so he hadn’t had to deal with the teenage angst on a daily basis.
And then he’d hacked himself into that colossal mess and she’d become a staunchly furious eleven-year-old defender, changing
