‘Hey, Sam. Is she in?’
‘If by she you mean Director Farringdon, then, no. Not in.’
Okay, maybe he should try that again. ‘May I make an appointment to see the director, please?’
‘Sweet manners, but you’ll still have to wait your turn. How about—?’ Sam turned her attention back to her computer screen. ‘Friday week?’
‘Seriously? She left a message saying she wanted to see me.’
‘That was last week, when she was being hauled over the coals for a stunt some fool pulled in Amsterdam. Two dead, apparently.’
Jared scowled. ‘I’ve seen the report.’
‘Have you, now? And yet it still took you three days to put in an appearance? Where have you been, Mr West?’
‘Busy.’
‘Aren’t we all? The director’s not here and she no longer needs to see you. I’ll let her know you’ve been in.’ She slipped her headphones back on, dismissing him. ‘You know the way out. You’ve walked it enough.’
Yes, he should have called her. He’d been somewhere in Poland when Damon had relayed her first message. He’d thought about calling her and lying outright, but that hadn’t sat well with him. He’d thought about calling her and coming clean, but he honestly hadn’t known what she would do with the information.
She was a director for the Australian Secret Intelligence Service. She’d have been obliged to hand that information over to them. She couldn’t tell them what she didn’t know.
Surely she would know that he’d been protecting her?
Surely she could see that a new start had been imperative for Celik and that someone had to organise it and that the best man for the job had been him?
Surely …
And even if they did have differences of opinion when it came to the way he’d handled the situation, surely she’d hear him out?
Wouldn’t she?
He had every confidence in her ability to bring a thoughtful, rational approach with her to their current predicament. That was why he was currently pacing the pavement outside her apartment block like a downtrodden preacher without an audience.
He saw her drive past and into the car park beneath the building. He knew he was in trouble when she walked back out of the driveway and started towards him. She looked older tonight, in the shadows of the evening. As if her own light had dimmed in the week since he’d last seen her.
It had only been a week.
Okay, a week and a half—and he’d got here as soon as he could.
She stopped in front of him and simply stood there and looked at him—and the tilt of her lips might have been a smile but for the complete lack of a smile behind them.
He tucked his hands in his pockets and tried not to worry.
‘You’re looking good,’ she said. ‘You always do.’
Okay, he had no idea where she was going with this. Nowhere good. ‘I got here as soon as I could.’
‘You heard about Celik Antonov’s death?’
‘I heard about his supposed death. Not sure I believe it,’ he offered carefully, and watched as what little light she had left went out altogether.
‘I tried to call you,’ she said quietly. ‘I was hoping to bring you in on the case before the situation worsened. I thought you’d want in on it. Did you not get my messages?’
‘They caught up with me a couple of days back.’ He opted for the half-truth, knowing as the words spilled from his lips that his explanation wouldn’t satisfy her.
‘And the reason they didn’t catch up with you before then …?’
‘I switched phones and left the old phone at home.’
At least that was the truth. He hadn’t known that Rowan had been trying to contact him practically from the moment he’d left for Europe.
‘I should have called you sooner, though. I just wasn’t altogether sure who I’d get. The woman I have a relationship with or the ASIS director.’
‘Something we might have discussed had you rung,’ she said bleakly. ‘Why couldn’t you have given me that opportunity? Do you trust me that little?’
‘I was trying to protect you.’
‘In that case, keep up the good work. Go home, Jared. And if you don’t have one of those go wherever it is that you go when you don’t want to be found.’
‘Rowan, please. Hear me out.’
‘No. I don’t want to hear what you have to say. Not in relation to any case that has just been closed. Not in relation to anything else.’
‘We have a relationship,’ he insisted.
‘No. A relationship requires some small measure of trust and respect for the other person’s feelings. We had sex.’
‘We had more than that.’
‘I thought you were dead.’
Okay, so there was that …
‘I go into work and have a report come in on Celik Antonov’s situation. I immediately ask for permission to bring you in on it. I call and you don’t answer. Two days later I get hauled over the coals for a situation that I know nothing about and I try to call you again. Still no answer. And then it gets worse. I get a report over my desk that Celik and an unidentified man are dead. I sit there and I wonder, and I try not to fall apart. Finally I call your sister and tell her that I haven’t heard from you, that I have this report on my desk. And she knows what I’m thinking without me having to say a word and she throws me a bone. She tells me that you’re not dead—and at least that’s something, right? You’re alive.’ Her voice cracked. ‘That was two days ago.’
‘Ro—
‘No! Do you have any idea how I felt? One phone call, Jared. You could have told me you were in Antarctica and I wouldn’t have pushed you for anything else. But you never made the call. You didn’t trust me with any information at all. How do you think that made me feel?’
‘Rowan, let’s take this inside.’ He was shaking. ‘Let me explain.’
But she went toe to toe with him instead. ‘What’s to explain? You don’t trust me. You left me and I didn’t even know where you’d gone. Where—in any of this—is your consideration for my feelings for you? Anywhere? Because I can’t see it.’
‘I can do better. I will. There won’t be another situation like the one we were just in. We can do this, Rowan—please. I’m sorry.’
‘I’m sorry too. Because I so badly wanted to believe in us. But you don’t get to diminish me like that—make me feel as if I barely exist.’
The tears that spilled down her cheeks gutted him.
‘I won’t let you.’
‘Rowan, don’t—
‘No! Go away, Jared. I don’t want to hear it. I’m sorry, but we’re done.’
RIGHTEOUS ANGER MIGHT have helped Rowan hang together long enough to do what had had to be done, but it didn’t make for good company. She spent one night locked in misery and the next day and night functioning on autopilot, wishing Jared West would disappear