“Matt!”
Grace’s voice eventually brought him back. But he couldn’t look at her.
“You’re sure it was Delilah.” He asked the question carefully and waited for her answer.
“That’s what she said.” Grace walked over to him. “Who is she?”
Anger lit up like a spark and he shook his head. “No one,” he barked.
“No one,” Grace repeated. “You expect me to believe that, that woman is no one to you, when you’re standing in front of me looking as if you’ve just seen a ghost.” Her voice rose sharply and Matt knew that she was pissed.
Fuck. He didn’t know how to deal with this. He didn’t want to deal with this.
“I don’t want to discuss Delilah with you.”
“You don’t want….” Her eyes were wide with disbelief and something else that he didn’t pay attention to. He couldn’t focus on anything other than that one name. Delilah. She wasn’t a ghost. She was a damn demon.
“Matt, you need to tell me what’s wrong. I can’t help you if I don’t know.”
He said nothing, because he had nothing to say.
“Your hands, the same hands that were just touching me a few minutes ago are clenched into fists. You look angry and…and mean. You’re scaring me, Matt. Who is this woman to you? Why are you reacting like this?”
He couldn’t deal with this—not right now—not when he could barely think. Matt slowly unclenched his hands and took a few more seconds to get his shit together.
“Look, Grace,” he managed to say. “I can’t talk about her with you.” No way did Grace and Delilah belong in the same conversation, let alone the same room.
She took a step back, looking more than a little defeated. Did it make Matt feel like shit? Damn right it did, but he couldn’t seem to help himself. In less time than it took to cross the kitchen and grab a cup from the cupboard, he reverted to the old Matt. The Matt who acted like an asshole. The Matt who didn’t talk.
That’s what he knew. That’s how he dealt with shit, and Delilah was a can of worms he wasn’t ready to deal with. At least, not just yet.
“We just spent the entire night making love and you can’t talk to me about some mysterious woman who shows up at your door asking for you?”
Her cheeks were red, her eyes shiny, and dammit, she looked like she was going to cry. What the hell was wrong with him? Why couldn’t he go to her?
She lifted her chin looked him square in the eye. “It’s Thanksgiving in a few days and my family is headed to our lake house in Canada. They want to know if I’m coming. If we’re coming.” She stumbled a bit. “I want us to go together. For Thanksgiving, I mean.”
“I can’t...” He tried to wrap his head around how quickly his day had gone into the shitter. It had to be some kind of record. And the longer he thought about it, the angrier he got.
“You want to talk about Thanksgiving right now?”
“Yes,” she yelled. “I want to talk about Thanksgiving. Right now.”
Unbelievable.
“I don’t give a fuck about Thanksgiving or your family’s lake house. Not when I’ve got this to deal with. Getting cozy with your family isn’t exactly in my top-ten list of things to consider over the next few days.”
“Well that’s good to know,” she snapped. “And for the record, I don’t give a rat’s ass where we spend Thanksgiving. What I do care about is the fact that I don’t know anything about you, Matt. NOTHING.”
She threw her hands into the air and paced back and forth. “I want to know who Delilah is. I want to know why you’re so upset that she’s here.”
He tried to get past her, but Grace sidestepped him. “I’m not doing this with you Grace. I can’t. Not now.” He needed to get hold of his anger before he did anything stupid.
“So you’re not going to tell me who she is.”
Matt felt as if his back was against the wall and he was shutting down. “I don’t want to talk about her.”
“I guess I should just head up north on my own?”