Page 232 of A Matter of Time

“I do.”

Every Friday night Channel Ten screened a classic romantic movie, like From Here to Eternity, and Regina gave out tips on what to cook or what wine to serve. It was fun, and she loved it. The reviews were really good. People loved her and made a point of staying home with their loved ones and watching her and the movie.

“I had no idea. I mean, I’ve been back a year, and she never once told me that her new gig was all because of you.”

“Why would she?”

“She could have at least mentioned it.”

I shrugged. What he found odd, I saw nothing wrong with at all.

“She misses you. She said she hasn’t seen you in almost four months.”

“We’re both busy,” I commented. “I’ll call her, though. Maybe we can grab lunch soon.”

He nodded.

I walked farther down the hall, away from the office. When I turned to face him, he was closer than I thought, having followed right behind me. Before I could take a step back, he grabbed a handful of the front of my crew neck sweater.

“What?”

He just looked at me as his hand dropped away.

I tried to keep things light. “What’d Michael say?”

“He said his firm hired you, and that you and Dylan were phenomenal. He didn’t really get a chance to talk to you alone much, and he was sorry about that.”

“Me too.”

He took a breath and stepped closer to me. “Can I talk to you?”

“We are talking.”

“I mean, I’d like to sit and… I just wanna sit, if that’d be all right.”

I stepped back slowly. “I’m not trying to be a dick or anything, but why? I mean, what’s the point?”

He cleared his throat. “You must have questions about what happened and⁠—”

“No, I know what I need to.” I forced a smile. “A couple of detectives came to see me when I got out of the hospital.”

“Oh yeah? Tell me what you know.”

I took another step back from him. “Well, I know when you got to Maggie’s place that night, it didn’t take her long to come clean that it was a diversion to get you away from me.”

He nodded.

“Except the detectives didn’t know about you and me, of course, they just said that Dominic used her to get you over there.”

His eyes didn’t move from mine.

“There was actually no mention of our relationship in any official report.”

He nodded. “No, there wasn’t. If there had been, I would’ve been thrown off the force.”

“So that was good.”

No response to that.