Rather than answering, Clara lifted her cup to her lips and absently took a drink. She grimaced, barely stopping herself from spitting out the hot liquid. It was still bitter, with a kind of sickly sweet flavor running over the top of it. Compliments of that extra sugar she had dumped into the cup to linger over Asher a little longer.
She really, really didn’t like coffee.
Alex treated her to a strange look.
“It’s strong,” she said, gesturing with the cup. “Just the way I like it.”
“Glad to hear that.”
“Well—” she waved her fingers “—bye.” She continued walking past him, heading out the door.
Much to her chagrin, he followed.
She paused, turning slightly in the gravel parking lot. “You didn’t get your coffee.”
“I actually wasn’t there for coffee. I don’t like places like that.”
“Why not?”
“You can only get one size. What the hell is up with that? I don’t need some hipster giving me prescriptive coffee. I don’t need to be told the way they think coffee must be served to be better. I need it the way I want it.”
He stopped walking, crossing his arms over his broad chest. He was wearing a plain, tan-colored T-shirt and a pair of dark jeans. Somehow, even out of uniform, he still looked like he was in one.
“Why did you stop in then?”
“I saw your truck outside.”
She frowned. “You acted surprised to see me.”
“No,” he said, “I believe what I said was ‘Fancy meeting you here.’”
She rolled her eyes. “Well, you knew how I would take it.” A strange sense of disquiet stole over her, a feeling of creeping tension.
“I tried to call your cell phone,” he said.
She blinked. “How did you get my number?”
“It was on some paperwork I got from the attorney’s office. It looked like something we both should have had copies of.”
Right. Paperwork that was probably sitting unopened in a pile on her table. To go nicely with the messages from the lawyer she’d been avoiding. He’d tried to talk to her at the funeral too. But she hadn’t been able to handle it. Because then they’d be talking about her brother’s estate. Which was what your possessions turned into when you were dead.
An Estate.
She’d had to discuss her mother’s. Then her father’s. She’d had the feeling she’d crawl out of her skin talking to anyone about her brother’s. It was stupid, and she knew it. Ignoring bills didn’t mean they didn’t need to be paid. Ignoring a lawyer wouldn’t make Jason not dead.
But once she talked to him, it would all feel final. And she couldn’t handle that. She was barely keeping her head above water. She was dependent on her routine. These quiet mornings where she got coffee she didn’t want to drink from a man whose whole being made her feel...happy. If only for a few moments. Then she would go and work at the winery showroom until closing time, enjoying being surrounded by people. Then she’d head home. Home to her empty house, where she would do any chores that needed doing before she fell into bed, passed out, didn’t dream—if she was lucky—and repeated the whole thing the next day.
Maybe it was denial. But she deserved a little denial.
Alex was interrupting her carefully orchestrated coping mechanism. She didn’t like it. “You took my phone number from a piece of paper?”
“I told you, I need to talk to you about a few things. I assumed you knew some of this—I thought an effort had been made to contact you.”
Her cheeks got hot, and she went prickly all over. Efforts probably had been made, but she just hadn’t been able to cope. Which made her feel small and humiliated. She hated it.
Alex continued. “Your brother had a will.”
She didn’t want to do this. Not here. Not now. She couldn’t talk about Jason. She couldn’t talk about his will. She couldn’t deal with this. “I have to go to work,” she said.
She was going to deal with all of this—Alex, Jason’s will—someday. But not today. She just didn’t want to do it today.
“What time do you get off?”
“Six. But I’m going to be really tired and I...”
“Why is your phone turned off, Clara?”
She blinked hard, and yet, no matter how much she wanted him to disappear, no amount of blinking accomplished it. “It’s not a big deal. I don’t use my phone.” She wasn’t paying her bills. That was the truth. There was some money, it wasn’t like she was destitute. But there was something about dealing with the mail right now that felt overwhelming. Envelope after envelope, cards, condolences, bills addressed to Jason like he wasn’t dead. Like he could come back and open them.
He couldn’t. He couldn’t do anything.
“I’ve been busy,” she said. “I forgot to pay the bill. That’s all.”
She wasn’t going to admit her mail gave her anxiety. What kind of twit had mail anxiety?
Well. She did.
“And if I come to your house at six tonight are you going to be there? Or am I going to have to stalk you at your favorite coffee place again?”
She frowned. “Come to think of it, it’s a little bit weird that you were able to find me here.”
“Not really. I saw you here yesterday when I drove into town. I took an educated guess this morning and decided I would stop in. It’s pretty lazy stalking, all in all.”
“Lazy stalking isn’t really less disturbing than energetic stalking.”
“You can avoid all future stalking if we could just talk now,” he said, his expression suddenly turning serious.
“No,” she said, the denial coming out quickly.
She really couldn’t deal with this now. She couldn’t deal with discussing Jason in the past tense. Couldn’t deal with talking about his will in a parking lot. Couldn’t face looking at all the things her brother had left behind, his worldly possessions, which no longer belonged to him because he wasn’t part of the world anymore.
Hell, she couldn’t open a damn phone bill. She wasn’t going to do any of the rest of this.
“Then we’ll talk later. If I have to camp out in your yard, we’ll talk later.”
Then he turned and walked back toward his truck, leaving her standing there with her cappuccino.
She took another sip. “Dammit!”
She forced herself to swallow it, rather than spitting it out into the gravel, on the off chance Asher was watching.
She had to get to work now, she couldn’t worry about Alex. Whatever he had to say to her, she would take care of it then. Her life had already been rocked beyond recognition in the past couple of months. There was nothing Alex Donnelly could say that would bring it crumbling down now.
* * *
VERY FEW PEOPLE would call Alex Donnelly a coward. He had dodged gunfire, survived a rain of mortar shells—more than once—and worn full tactical gear in arid heat that could practically bake a loaf of bread, or a man’s brains for that matter.
But he had been a little bit of a coward when he’d allowed Clara Campbell to put off their conversation about her deceased brother’s will.
The