He caught up with who was speaking before she did. “Margot. We’re not dating.”
She snorted, making her doubts clear, then moved on.
It was a children’s ward, but Angel took one comfort in the fact that there wasn’t a single child in sight. Just the hallway. Just Margot and Wolfe and her, the confused mute who couldn’t think of anything to say and who held her eyes especially wide open now to keep from doing that blinking thing again.
He looked at her, the anticipation she’d seen there gone, replaced by a new look of irritation. Was he upset that he’d almost kissed her or that they’d gotten caught?
She didn’t know because he didn’t say anything, just stepped out of the alcove and began down the hallway.
Which was when she remembered that she’d wanted to speak with him earlier. As fast as her leg would allow, she scooted from the alcove and called, “Wolfe? Dr. McKeag?”
That stopped him. He half turned to look at her, his jaw clenched repeatedly, and in profile she could see how rapid the rise and fall of his chest was—breathing fast—but he said nothing.
“Will you come speak with me later? About another outing?”
“Lunch.” Single-word answer, then he kept going the direction he had been, stiff as she’d never seen him.
Lunch. She’d better eat before he got there. If her automatic body processes kept trying to fail around him, she’d choke to death if she tried to eat. The Heimlich Maneuver was not the way she wanted to get his arms around her. Because she did want that, she had to admit. Even if she wasn’t able to share anything else, she wanted him.
And he wanted her too, heaven help her.
CHAPTER SEVEN
“I BOUGHT US ugly Christmas sweaters,” were the first words out of Angel’s mouth when Wolfe approached her table in the cafeteria.
No greeting. No variation in the table she preferred even. It was the same empty table he’d found her at earlier in the week.
As awkward as he’d expected this meeting to be, his wandering mind had it revolving around resisting attraction, and the pull of intense, longing looks. Uncomfortable meaningful pauses.
But she’d flipped it before he’d even sat down by using the wrong word. The exactly most wrong word. The word that had been ringing around in his head since he’d almost kissed her in the hallway earlier. Us.
It helped dissipate that desire to kiss her.
Grabbing the closest chair, he sat and held up one finger, not sure what prompted this bizarre, instant confession, but addressing it before he went forward seemed the safest thing. “Angel, you’re saying ‘us’ a little too easily. We’re not an us.”
She’d looked nervous before, but now her cheeks started to turn red, and she did the worst thing he could think of, just nodding at his words, without saying anything else.
The sweater talk had been her wall to hide behind to avoid the subject of her earlier embarrassment, and he’d shorted her out by taking it head-on.
This turning down of colleagues was becoming a weekly thing. The difference this time was he felt guilty about it; he’d never had guilt over Reynolds.
Her gaze drifted back to the table, but her eyes stretched wider, alert, as if she expected an attack. What the hell had Lyons said to her?
“I assume you want to wear the jumpers to something?” he asked, gentling his voice and trying to get back to the reason she’d wanted to talk to begin with.
It wasn’t a nod, and it wasn’t a shake for the negative—her head just sort of bobbled around in a way that didn’t commit to anything. “Or work. Or not. It’s fine if you don’t want to.”
Too forceful. He had to be forceful with Reynolds, who was always grabbing, but Angel needed a lighter touch. She wasn’t exactly grabbing. Her actions seemed more hapless and mostly accidental seduction than the whole...breast-baring thing.
“I’ll wear it. It’s fine.” He leaned back in his chair and tried to start whatever conversation she’d wanted to have, let her speak before he said his piece. “Were the jumpers what you wanted to talk about?”
She picked up her fork and pushed a lingering bit of lettuce around her empty bowl, distracting herself. Fidgeting, but with a fork.
“I wanted to tell you that you don’t have to keep doing this with me. I know you don’t want to, and I’ll tell Alberts that what I did, that it crossed a line and you don’t want to and shouldn’t have to...you know, spend all this time with me now.”
Definitely too forceful. He tilted his head to try and catch her gaze, but she looked so intently in the empty bowl that he had to touch her arm to get her to look at him, and even then it was more of a quick, furtive glance that lasted a bare second than connecting eye contact.
“You don’t have to do that. You don’t have to apologize and get yourself into trouble. I almost kissed you in the hall, and I guarantee it wasn’t going to be so chaste as yours.”
“But you’re upset,” she whispered, and turned her gaze back to the bowl as if it was helping her, because that wobble in her voice said she was more upset than she was trying to pretend.
“I’m not upset like that. I don’t know what the word is for what I am. Frustrated?” Telling her the truth would be easier. On him, at least. Maybe her. “I have a code. About work. About dating at work. About bringing drama to work.”
“Which is what this is, right? I mean, I made it awkward.”
“No.” Touching her hadn’t helped, but he wanted her to look at him. It was hard enough to read her expression when she looked at him dead-on, but in profile? Nothing. He nudged her foot with his. “You just shined a spotlight on the fact that I already was fighting the urge to break my own code with you.”
“I try to be so careful and deliberate about what I say and do, but then I get...” Her words trailed off and she shook her head. “I don’t know. My mouth gets ahead of my mind, I guess other parts of me too. Just doesn’t happen very often, and has been happening a lot the past week, mostly with Jenna but also with you. Maybe I’m burned out.”
“How old are you?”
“Thirty-two.”
“You’re not burned out,” he said, then asked, “Is this your first full-time position?”
She nodded, then winced and shook her head. “I had another job when I first got to New York, but it didn’t last.”
“Why not?”
“Interfering ex,” she mumbled, studiously staring at a flaw on the tabletop.
“You had to quit to get away from him?”
She shook her head, and the look of embarrassment that passed over her face made the earlier incident look like nothing.
“He got you fired?”
“Before I even got through the first week of in-service they required for all Emergency personnel,” she muttered, lifting one shoulder as if it didn’t matter even while her face broadcast an entirely different story. “Let’s talk about the next...what did you call it? Shenanigan?”
Fired before she’d even hit the floor? Which meant Jenna was her first patient in her first real, full-time job. And she was far from home, and struggling to fit in, and recently betrayed by someone she trusted—at least that was the only situation he could imagine, knowing even a little bit about her. There was more to the story, a shadow he didn’t want to ask about, but this was enough to draw some conclusions. And he didn’t know how to ask her about that any more than he knew how to ask Lyons the things someone needed to ask him. Not without pushing him further away.
One thing he knew without asking: this was what kept her so quiet and reserved, protecting herself or beating herself up over it somehow. All he could do was ignore it.
“Christmas shenanigans. Right. Tell me what you want to do next. Alberts wants us to keep it up, do things he can use for a PR campaign, but I’m not doing this for him. I’m doing it for the kids, and you are too. We n
eed to do stuff the kids will enjoy. So, what’s your idea? Does it fit that?”
Refocusing the conversation seemed to help, the shenanigans had united them, after all, but, damn, he wanted to ask about the ex. He’d had some spectacular break-ups, but none that ended with quite that much drama. It was almost McKeag-worthy.
“I was thinking of a couple things. Decorating gingerbread houses could be fun. Funny too, because I’m a terrible cook, and, unless you’ve been to pastry school, you probably are too. The next day, we could bring in gingerbread men purchased from a bakery, so as to be edible. If we can get it cleared by Dietary.”
Gingerbread? Frosting?
“That works.” He had no business in a kitchen. “But we’re agreed the rest need to be something amusing to the kids, something they’ll enjoy. Not whatever Alberts has hashed up. That’s the only way I’m continuing.”
She nodded again, but still looked...offended? No. That wasn’t it. Upset. Hurt. She looked hurt, and it wasn’t only the talk of the ex from hell. It was still him, and the wrong foot he’d started this out on.
Even Lyons had only made her angry. Wolfe had never in his life had a successful relationship, and he was sure he couldn’t. It wasn’t that he hadn’t tried, he’d just never succeeded—whether because he was inherently selfish or what, he couldn’t say. What he knew was that look in her eyes, and the way her soft lips turned down ever so slightly at the corners, made him want to kiss her just so she wouldn’t look like that anymore.
Given what he knew, maybe a friendship could be possible. She certainly seemed in no hurry to get involved with a relationship after whatever happened.
And she was leaving soon...
She took long enough to answer that he touched her arm again, just to get her going. “Angel? Is that short for Angela?”
“Angelica.” She answered that at least. “My other idea was decorating a tree, or a Santa visit. Something like that. We could hire a Santa to come to the floor, but he’d need to be instructed on all the protocols. Doubt a typical mall Santa would be up for handling the children with special requirements. Would you want to dress as Santa?”
It was an opening he couldn’t pass up.
“Would you dress as an elf or Mrs. Santa?”
“I don’t know—either?”
“Elf,” he said, and then grinned. “With pointy ears or the deal is off.”
She almost smiled then; the corners of her mouth were at least flat, or maybe had a slight upward tilt. “If I can find them. Or Mr. Spock ears if nothing else.”
“Vulcan elf, even better.” Even hotter, his mind argued. “And a Christmas tree? Here?”
“No, I was thinking your place. It’d probably make them happy to see where you live.”
Having her in his house would only ratchet up the temptation. “Why not your place?”
“My place is very spartan. And small. I mostly have bedroom furniture, a couch and bookshelves everywhere. I don’t even have a dining table, just a desk where I often eat.”
“Already packed up for your move?”
She paused, back to weighing her words before speaking. He’d been demoted.
“Never really settled, I guess. Maybe I’m just stuck in the resident mindset where everything is temporary. Or maybe it just felt temporary here because I don’t fit.”
Dammit, he was going to have to ask. It was inevitable, because as much as he wanted to get some distance, he didn’t. It pulled at him in equal measures. Was this idea about the jerk she’d dated? Could he get the guy’s name to go smash him in the face?
“Why is it you don’t think you fit in?”
“I don’t know. Almost a year and I’m still practically brand new. Tomorrow could be my first day, every day could be my first day except I know where everything is and who I’m supposed to report to or contact for information for this or that. I’m just not suited to New York, I guess. Which is too bad.”
“That’s a non-answer.”
“There are things about me that...people wouldn’t approve of.”
“Another non-answer.”
“It’s not.”
“Whatever it is can’t be that bad.”
She sighed hard, then waved a hand. “Fine, but I still don’t want to tell you. I barely know you.”
“Fair enough,” he conceded, but said directly, so there could be no mistake, “But you’re suited to the job, Angelica.”
When he used her full name, her head snapped up and she looked at him; none of the sadness or wariness that had been lingering in her eyes was there when he said her name. “I don’t know the last time someone called me Angelica.”
“Family?”
Shut up, idiot. No more prying.
“I don’t think so.” Her gaze drifted to the side and he could see she was searching her memory. And when she found it, he knew then too, that line that had appeared between her brows softened and faded.
Let it go. Stop digging. He’d be angry if she dug into his problems. But he asked anyway. “Who was it?”
“Ah...” It was a verbal tic, she didn’t really want to tell him who, but, after a moment, seemed to wrestle with something and finally said, “A social worker.”
Social worker. An ex who got her fired for something. Gods.
He knew he shouldn’t have asked. Now what did he do with that? Leave it lying there? Act as if it never happened and move on? Would she even tell him if he asked?
Unlikely.
After several long seconds, he made a noise that brought her gaze back to his. “I like you, so I’m going to be blunt. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do when you reluctantly mention a social worker from a long time ago, but you basically already said you don’t trust me.”
“I said I don’t know you.”
“Do I pretend it never happened, so you don’t feel awkward?”
“I’m sorry,” she said immediately. “This is getting messed up.”
“Agreed. But now I have to ask, why were you speaking to a social worker who called you by your first name?”
She winced. “There were some things. No one’s childhood is perfect, right?”
Another dodge. No one’s childhood was perfect, but there was a certain level of imperfect that required social workers.
Stop now.
He jerked his hand through the air, cutting himself off more than her, and returned to the subject he understood. “My place is fine for stuff. I guess. I wouldn’t want people thinking it’s too ostentatious or something.”
“Where do you live?”
He gave a short laugh. “I live above my pay grade, Angel.”
And avoided her full name.
“Where?”
“Tribeca, in an old converted church with a small parsonage on the side,” he said, and then tilted his head in a half-shrug. “Which I suppose would be a good place for Christmas stuff. Let’s just do it all at my place, the gingerbread and the tree. I’ve got a big, never-used kitchen. All bright and modern, lots of counterspace, and two ovens, I think? The sanctuary was split into two floors, and the upstairs loft has space in front of the big rose window. It’s not one of those windows with a story in the glass, but old stained glass, so it’s churchy. Could put the tree there to frame in the window. People would probably think that was pretty.”
“Where were you going to put your tree? There?”
He shook his head. “I don’t do trees. I’ll have to get one and the stuff for it. But if we do the gingerbread stuff first, that gives time for the tree stuff to be delivered.”
“Why don’t you do a tree when you have all that room?”
“I told you, I don’t like Christmas.”
“Because of Lyons’s shooting?”
“No. I never liked it. We didn’t do Christmas when I was growing up. Just never was a thin
g for me. Or just something that failed to live up to expectations.” He also didn’t talk about his family, a survival tactic from his childhood that had carried over, long past the time when people asked pointed, not innocent questions.
She digested this for a couple of seconds, confusion growing on her face. “But I thought your family was moneyed?”
The question implied not having money was the only reason she could think of that people wouldn’t do Christmas. Maybe that was the cause of her need for a social worker. And a reason for her to not like Christmas. And perhaps why she didn’t speak of her family. Was she one of those unfortunate little children who shuffled around foster care or group homes where money was always tight?
Did he even want to answer her about his own Christmas-shaped issues?
No, this was already a lot of prying into personal business, but it felt as if he had to give her something in return. Even the score, or at least let her feel on more equal footing, because it was clear neither one of them knew how to work and play all that well with others.
“My family comes from a long line of wealth, true. But money never made anyone a good person, lass. My parents are both a complete mess, and our family has been immersed in one salacious scandal after another. Neither Lyons nor I associate with them beyond the odd call every few years.”
“Salacious?” she repeated, prompting more information. Information he’d really rather not give.
“Public affairs, extremely indecent behavior, instigated but never completed divorces with as much drama and child-shaped weaponry as you can pack into it.” He shrugged. “It was a lot to deal with. Still is, as I understand it. You want to know more? Do an internet search for them. You’ll find lots of gritty details about my mum and dad, Tavia and Ewan McKeag.”
Let her learn more about them without him having to go over it. Maybe she’d understand his hesitance to get anywhere near drama after having a good read, even if he already regretted telling her. And maybe she’d feel him more trustworthy if she knew something about his own closet skeletons. In Scotland, it was difficult to get away from talk about them, and the distance, both geographical and emotional, prompted his escape, but this once he could revisit it.
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