Maybe she should email. No. Too impersonal. Make an appointment at his office? No. Too stalker-like. She’d call one more time. And then she’d stop embarrassing herself because she didn’t want to turn into one of those women who dialed the same number until the guy had thirty-five missed calls.
“Last time.” She stooped to hug Valentine. “If he doesn’t pick up this time then I’ll back off.” Straightening, she pulled her phone out of her pocket.
She called his number, her palms so sweaty the phone almost slid from her hand.
This time it rang instead of going to voice mail and suddenly she felt light-headed again.
What if he didn’t answer? What if he’d decided that she wasn’t worth the trouble?
Somewhere in the distance she heard a phone ringing, but she ignored it until she heard someone calling her name.
Daniel.
Daniel was calling her name.
He was here?
She turned, confused, and saw him sitting on the bench. Their bench. Holding his phone. For a moment she thought she was hallucinating. Lack of sleep. Something.
But Valentine bounded over to him happily and she realized she wasn’t conjuring him up from the depths of her imagination.
He really was here.
She hadn’t prepared exactly what she was going to say and now that she was with him in person everything vanished from her head.
As she moved closer she saw he looked even rougher than he had earlier. Whatever he’d done after he left her, it clearly hadn’t involved going home and getting rest. Or going to the office.
He looked shaken. No, worse than that. Devastated?
It horrified her. She felt as if her heart was being crushed. “Daniel?”
“Did Fliss call you?” He slid his phone back into his pocket, his voice scratchy and raw. “It was good of you to come. I appreciate it. The more people who are here, the better.”
He wasn’t making sense. He wanted to talk to her in front of an audience? She was hoping for something a little more private.
“I haven’t spoken to Fliss. Maybe we should go back to my apartment. Or your apartment.”
“No.” His gaze shifted from her to the park. “He doesn’t know his way there. He’s probably lost, but I thought it was worth coming here in case he remembered this bench. The others are searching the other side of the park. And the road.”
“The road? Searching for what?”
He dragged his gaze from the trees to her face. “Brutus. What else? I’m grateful to you for coming to help with the search, especially since I know what I said upset you.”
Search?
Slowly his words sank in. “You’re looking for Brutus? He’s missing?”
“You didn’t know? The people who were thinking of adopting him let him off the lead. He didn’t come back.” He sounded exhausted. “This was last night, but they only called Harriet this morning. We’ve been searching for hours. There’s no sign of him.”
“I didn’t know. No one called me.”
“I guess they thought you had enough going on. But if no one called you why are you here?”
“I’ve been calling you and calling you. When you didn’t answer I called Fliss and Harriet. I’ve been to your apartment and theirs—”
“We were all searching for Brutus. You couldn’t get through on the phone because we were all talking to each other.” He frowned. “Why were you calling?”
Now that the moment had come, she felt shaky. “It doesn’t matter—it can wait.”