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The click of her heels echoed in the stillness of the house as she made her way to where she was certain Wyatt was hiding out in the study. Her home didn’t usually feel so unnaturally quiet. She supposed that it was the departure of all of the guests that made the difference. Despite the calm tenor of the party as a whole, that many people still generated quite a bit of ambient sound.
The only sound in the darkened study was that of slowly melting ice being clinked against the side of the glass that her fiancé held in one hand. His other hand supported his head as he leaned forward with his elbow braced against his knee. The dejected posture, sitting in the dark, drink in hand picture he created was nothing short of pathetic.
He had had plenty of time to indulge in his wallowing (he had, after all, left her on her own to deal with the party guests and their questions and proper hostess departing procedures for just over two hours). She wasn’t going to complain about that.
If he couldn’t keep himself calm and detached for public viewing purposes, then he should remove himself from public view. She had taught him that herself. The point, however, of such a removal was to get oneself together (not to bask in one’s inadequacies). He could pull himself together, or she could do it for him. Either way, this little display was going to come to an end immediately.
“Sulking is an incredibly unattractive pass time,” she observed as she turned on a light. “Perhaps you should skip over it.”
“I’m not in the mood for one of your cryptic run arounds, Meredith,” he said as he slumped backwards and sank further into the couch. He swirled the contents of his glass around in an almost absent minded manner.
“And, I really don’t want to hear about your mind games with your ex,” he stated with a harsh sounding attempt at a chuckle. “We lost out. Ridley out maneuvered us, and we never even saw it coming.” He took a sip and frowned at the glass in his hand before shaking his head slowly. “All that time and effort down the drain and we’ve got nothing to show for it except the knowledge that we lost,” he carefully enunciated the final word of the sentence. “Sulking, if I was sulking, would be an appropriate response.”
“If you were two,” she dismissed his commentary as she relinquished her position of surveying the room from the doorway. She placed herself directly in front of where he was slumped on the sofa and waited. He didn’t look up at her. His eyes remained trained on his lap. He was ignoring her presence (very much like the two year old she had mentioned). This was not going to continue. She had things to tell him -- he needed to snap out of his sulk mode so she could get to it.
“If you have something to say to me, then spit it out.” He was annoying her. This requirement that she be the one to spur him out of his stupor and into action was unattractive. It was nearly as unattractive as him going out on his own without her direction. Couldn’t the man find a balance and stay there? She took a deep breath; that was an unnecessary thought. They were both disappointed and short tempered. The moment would pass.
“You never saw it coming.” He finally muttered into his glass. It was a passive aggressive move. She could pretend she hadn’t heard, or she could call him out on his questioning of her judgment. Must he be such a baby about this?
“I know when Connor is up to something,” she chided. He should know better than to question her on such a topic. Just because she didn’t care to share all of her insights into the situation at hand with him was no reason for him to break bounds and get snippy with her. “I would have been disappointed if he hadn’t pieced together what we were after.”
She didn’t bother to add that Wyatt, while no means a simpleton, wouldn’t have bothered to do any such piecing. He had a firm grasp on his limitations -- most of the time.
“Cheer up,” she told him with a harsh smile. “I’ve already taken care of it.” She held out her hand so that he could see the jump drive that it contained. “Consider this an early wedding present from Jennifer Ridley.”
“What is that?” He questioned looking as if he couldn’t decide whether to let go of his despondence or not.
“With some work,” she told him with a shrug of her shoulders. “It will be Glimpse.”
Backup plans were a necessity. You never knew when you might need them to come through for you. How many times had she said that? Despite the multitude of recent petty annoyances, she did so like being proven right.
Glimpse: The Complete Trilogy Page 19