Close Up. Erin McCarthy

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       3

      “HOW CAN IT BE LOCKED?” Kristine brushed him aside to check the knob herself.

      Sean shrugged, wondering why he wasn’t more concerned. He had a meeting in an hour, a million emails to answer, and yet he wasn’t panicking. In fact, he was rather enjoying the thought of spending time with Kristine. A few moments to study the woman she had become before they both went on with the rest of their lives. “It’s locked. The dead bolt has been thrown on the other side. I can see it.”

      “What? How could that happen?” She turned and looked at him, licking her lips and shifting to the left.

      “My assumption would be that unless the building has a precocious ghost, someone shot the door bolt closed.”

      “But why?” Kristine stuck her face to the door, trying to peer through the sliver between the frame and the door.

      Her actions caused her backside to rise enticingly toward him, black fabric stretched tight over her perky ass. He tried not to get distracted, and failed. The chemistry between them had been off the charts when they’d been married, with many a weekend lost to satisfying sex. So it didn’t surprise him that he immediately had a hard-on. But he managed to focus on the problem at hand. They were trapped. Right. “I’m assuming that’s a rhetorical question. So, what is the caterer’s name again?”

      “Allison.”

      “Why don’t you call for her? Maybe she’s still here. She said she was going to be around for another ten minutes.” Sean stuck his hands in his pockets to prevent himself from reaching out and sliding them across her ass. It was strange to be this close to her for the first time since their split. His body, his head, all wanted to pick up where they had left off, yet nothing was the same after so much life had happened to both of them. He had no right to touch her.

      He was angry. Frustrated with himself. Why was he immediately having this reaction to Kristine, when for years, he had found himself merely going through the motions with women he dated?

      It was completely illogical, and he had a hard time accepting it. He wanted answers, and ironically, this might be the perfect way to get them. What was it about Kristine that drew him on such a cellular level? Why had he never been able to forget her?

      Maybe because their ending had been so abrupt, so seemingly unnecessary. Marriage interruptus.

      “Allison! Allison, are you still out there?”

      Kristine yelled for the caterer in a voice so booming, it made Sean grin. He hadn’t ever heard her use that particular tone. She was clearly desperate.

      Kristine put her hands on her hips in distress. “I don’t even have my phone with me.”

      “The gallery sounds quiet. They obviously all left.”

      “Do you have your phone?”

      He reached into his jacket pocket. “Yes.”

      “What am I saying? Of course you do,” she said. “You did everything but shower with your phone when we were together, and that was even before internet access on cell phones.”

      What was that supposed to mean? Sean frowned at her. “I don’t know if my phone will work,” he said, just because her sweeping assessment irritated him. “These concrete buildings are hell on reception.”

      “This is a nightmare,” she declared. Then she glanced at his phone in his hand. “Do you remember when I bedazzled your phone as a surprise? God, you were so pissed off at me.”

      Oh, he remembered. He remembered not having time to pick the jewels off it before he went to his business internship, and his boss had seen it. “I seem to remember little jeweled skull stickers, yes. I also remember you going through my phone.” That had been the cause of their last monumental fight. Her unwarranted suspicions that he had been cheating on her. The hurt he had felt had been overwhelming, the anger loud and immediate.

      Kristine leaned against the door, blowing out a huff of breath so that her bangs rose slightly. “Well, yeah, there was that. But you were so territorial about your phone, and you started working out five days a week. It was a logical conclusion for a nineteen-year-old.”

      “I hid my phone because I didn’t want you bedazzling it again,” he said drily. “But I don’t imagine you want to dredge up all that ancient history. It’s time to move on, right?”

      Contrition crossed her face. “Look, Sean, you weren’t supposed to get those papers until tomorrow. I was planning to call you today and ask you to meet me for coffee so I could tell you myself. There is no way I wanted you to be served impersonal papers like that.”

      Sean studied her face. He believed her. She looked sincere. Kristine was a lot of things—impulsive, silly, generous, sweet, afraid of commitment. But she was not a liar. He firmly believed that. “You don’t owe me anything at this point, Kristine. But I admit, it caught me off guard.”