Her Favorite Husband. Caron Todd

Чтение книги онлайн.

      IAN SEEMED TO BE WARMING up. At least he’d stopped glaring. Sarah sipped her wine and tried to be unobtrusive while he stared at the TV. After what felt like at least an hour, he made a disgusted sound and turned his back to the screen.

      “Am I in the way or are they having trouble catching the ball?”

      “Both.”

      “We could change seats.”

      He gave her a less unfriendly look than he had so far. “No, thanks. It’s pretty clear how the game’s going.” He moved his mug back and forth on the bar, like someone reconsidering a chess move. “Did you get in this evening?”

      “A couple of hours ago.” Right away, she’d discovered the first weakness in her travel plan. Yellowknife was bigger than she’d expected, long and narrow, sticking close to the northern shore of Great Slave Lake, and it was full of desk clerks committed to customer privacy. She’d gone from hotel to hotel, hoping to stumble across him in a lobby or coffee shop or lounge.

      And she had. Lucky stars, after all.

      “You had quite a chunk of the globe to choose from, if you wanted to see the North,” he said. “Bit of a coincidence that you walked into this bar.”

      “Must have been fate.” He didn’t like fate. Maybe some tiny part of her was still annoyed, too. Still skeptical.

      “You could have gone to Alaska.”

      “That’s true. Nearly straight up from Vancouver, a direct flight. One takeoff, one landing. Much more sensible. You know how I hate takeoffs and landings.”

      “Or Baffin Island, the Yukon, the Beaufort Sea—”

      “I’m not keen on seas, especially cold ones.”

      “Labrador, the Queen Elizabeth Islands—”

      “The who?”

      “That big triangle at the top of the continent.”

      “I’ve learned something already! My explorations are bearing fruit.” She thought she saw a break in his expression, a tiny, tiny ray of amusement, but it quickly disappeared. She looked at him encouragingly, willing him to realize how much fun it was that they should run into each other in a sportsman’s bar in the Northwest Territories.

      He frowned. So much for her powers of silent persuasion.

      “But you chose this spot.”

      “The Diamond Capital.”

      His face cleared. “Is that it? You’re looking for diamonds?”

      “Myself? In the ground, you mean? I’ll concede I’m not dressed for prospecting.”

      Another flicker, suppressed again.

      “Anyway, I have enough diamonds.”

      “Three, I hear,” Ian said. “If you count the first.”

      “Of course I count the first.”

      “You’re not wearing one now.”

      “The stone was a hazard,” she said lightly. She wished he hadn’t noticed. “They made me put it in my checked baggage.”

      “Was your wedding band a hazard, too?”

      This wasn’t a discussion Sarah wanted to have. After ignoring her for the better part of an hour, did he have to study her so closely now? What did he think he’d see? Pain? Shame? She wouldn’t show him either.

      “I’m between wedding bands at the moment.”

      “Between the second and the third?”

      “Post-third.”

      He looked at his beer bottle, long enough, she thought, to read the label five times in both official languages. “That’s too bad. You’re all right?”

      “Of course.” At least he didn’t seem shocked or titillated by the news, the way some people did. “Puzzled, though. Because here I am, so glad to see you and there you are, so…skeptical.”

      “You surprised me.”

      “Which I should never, never do.”

      At last he smiled, and unexpectedly, it was his old smile—the one she’d wanted to see—warm, kind, much better than the bartender’s.

      “One second I’m watching a football game and the next you’re standing in the doorway. You, of all people…”

      “Here, of all places. A ghost. A bad dream. Indigestion.”

      His chuckle, brief as it was, instantly made her happy.

      “None of the above. More of a fold in time.”

      “Like being catapulted back ten years…”

      He’d stopped leaning away from her. Stopped playing with his beer bottle. “Exactly. You came through the door and for a weird millisecond it was like we were back in that dark little apartment on Corydon.”

      Basement apartment, all they could afford, but handy to the university. “I wish we were.” She let her knee bump his in case he missed her point.

      “Sarah.”

      “Don’t you wish we were?”

      “It was damp, remember? And sometimes we had crickets.”

      His СКАЧАТЬ