Firing people was the closest thing to feeling guilty I ever felt. Not exactly guilty-guilty or bad, but… something similar. I was waiting for him to show up tomorrow so I could talk to him in person.
So when my phone beeped with the light flashing with a call coming from the front desk, I mentally prepared myself for some other small problem to pop up since it was that kind of day.
“Yeah?” I answered before pulling the receiver away from my face so that I could yawn.
“I’m sorry to bother you again, Lenny,” she apologized immediately.
“You’re not bothering me, Bianca. What’s up?”
“Oh, okay,” she said with a tight little laugh. “Umm, there’s a woman here—”
Grandpa’s ex-wife? Again? She hadn’t called since that other day or tried to communicate in any way, and I wasn’t even a little surprised. I’d never been worthy of being worth her attention in the first place, why would I be now?
“—looking for Mr. Collins—”
Oh.
Why did that instantly make me feel nauseous? Who was looking for Jonah? Why was a woman looking for him? He’d said something along the lines of there not being someone else. I wasn’t imagining it.
Just four days ago, he’d clearly stated that he hadn’t cheated on me.
Even though we hadn’t actually been together, as I’d been telling myself. Even though he had been telling himself something different, and I wasn’t sure how I felt about that.
Okay, I was sure, I just wasn’t going to think about it.
“—and I’ve explained to her that he’s not here, but even if he was here that he doesn’t work here so I wouldn’t know where he was. And, umm, she’s refusing to leave. What should I do?” she asked, and I could already picture her wringing her hands.
Nausea flared up in my stomach and more than a little anger because if this fucker had lied about having a girlfriend or a wife, I wasn’t just going to kick him out of the first circle of trust, but I was going to beat his ass too. It was just a little harder than it should have been for me to ask, “Is she young or old?”
“Eh… older?” Her voice dropped and she whispered, “I think it might be his mom. She has the same accent, I think, even though he’s only said about five words to me.”
How about that?
That shouldn’t have felt like such a relief, I accepted. And then my negative ass picked up on a stray thought… or his sugar mama? I’d known a couple guys who trained here who had some cougars they spent some time with. You know, good for those ladies.
But that doesn’t mean this lady is here for that, my brain tried to be reasonable.
I made a quick decision. “Just leave her there. I’ll go talk to her.” After I contacted The Not Really an Asshole at All first.
“Okay, I will. Thanks,” Bianca agreed quickly before ending the conversation.
I didn’t waste a fucking second picking my cell up and finding the number I had saved for him, then dialing it. He picked up on the third ring.
“Hello, Lenny.”
I was going to shove that Lenny up his ass if this was bad. “Hi,” I told him, hearing just a tiny hint of aggression in my voice. “There’s a woman here asking for you.”
“Who?” he asked, sounding genuinely surprised. The sound of a voice coming over what I could assume was a loudspeaker blared in the background. Where was he?
“I don’t know. I wouldn’t be calling you if I did.” All right, that came out totally bitchy. “My receptionist said someone was asking for you, and I’m heading out there to tell her that you don’t work here, so why should I know where you are.” I got up as I talked, heading out of the office and through the building, pushing the door outside open with my hip. I didn’t hesitate to ask, “Where are you?”
“Hiring a car finally,” he answered, his voice still sounding confused. “I don’t know who it might be. The only women who would be looking for me are you, my sisters, my nan, and my mum.” He cut off abruptly, and I was pretty sure he whispered something under his breath that might have been a curse word.
“What?”
There seemed to be a short hesitation before he answered with, “I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
I didn’t like how that sounded, and I had to know. “Jonah, are you secretly married or have a girlfriend or something that you didn’t tell me about?” AKA that you lied to me over?
There was a pause.
And then he let out that deep laugh that didn’t sound like he was genuinely all that amused. Honestly, he sounded more than a little on edge as he did it, and I definitely didn’t like that either. “No.”
I just bit the inside of my cheek and then ground my molars together for a second before punching the code at the door to the gym part of the facility and yanking the door open pretty freaking hard.
“I’ll be there soon,” Jonah said, and then he hung up like Grandpa Gus had been rubbing off on him too.
I swear to God. I swear to God….
I took a deep breath in, let a deep one out, and told myself that I wasn’t going to be fucking pissy. Not over Mo’s dad. Not over the man who said he’d come back to Houston… for me. Not over the man who said he’d been crazy about me and wanted to be my—newest—best friend and asked what prerequisites he needed to get the position.
Nope.
And I kept right on telling myself that as I walked through the building, calling out a grumpy “hey” at a few people who I knew as I headed toward the front desk. At first, all I saw was Bianca standing behind it, doing something on the computer with her back to me. It wasn’t until I was pretty much at the tall counter that I spotted the woman sitting on one of the three benches in front of the giant glass windows that just a little bit of my blood pressure regulated.
The woman waiting around, in dark black slacks and a silky yellow shirt, was 100 percent related to him. There was something so similar about their faces… and she was definitely old enough to be his mom. And as she sat there with her ankles crossed, I could see that she wasn’t in the best mood of her life. She was tapping her fingers on the back of her opposite hand and would press her lips together for a second, pucker them, and start that cycle all over again.
Huh.
If this was Jonah’s mom, why would she be here and he not know? If I had thought about it, I would have picked up on the fact that he had only ever mentioned her in passing before. He had briefly talked about his dad a few times. Two sisters and three brothers too. Both sets of grandparents too. But not his mom.
Fuck it.
I rapped my fingers against the counter and said, “Hey, Bianca.”
The younger girl turned around and grinned at me. “Hi.” She discreetly tipped her head to the side as she said, “The package I was telling you about is here.”
I flicked my eyes in the direction of the woman. “Oh yeah?”
She nodded so slowly I couldn’t help but smile at her and her code words.
“Thanks for telling me.”
I put one foot in front of the other until I stopped just a few feet away from the woman burning a hole into the wall while flexing one foot and then the other.