She itched to read that email from Frank. Told herself not to. Told herself to object. To have him forward it elsewhere. Her finger was almost on the delete key when the phone on the desk jangled. Sabrina inhaled and stared at the offending device.
She reached for the phone. “This is Sabrina.”
“Read the email,” Frank ordered and hung up.
Sabrina grimaced and hung up the phone, then opened the email that read, “Look at the date on the attached.” She frowned and pressed the key to bring the attachment into view. It was a copy of the mayor’s visitation register that showed the wife of the dead soldier visiting him, then another copy of the same document, that had been edited to erase her name. She eyed the date and her jaw dropped. The wife had visited the mayor before her husband had died. What the heck was going on?
She quickly typed an email to a friend in a high place to see what she could find out about the soldier’s military unit, and then another to a medical specialist she knew who’d been a credible source in the past. She knew someone well up in the Army ranks, as well, a friend of her father’s, but getting him to talk would mean first talking to her father. She’d hold off on that contact as long as she could. She’d barely finished typing the emails when her phone rang again. She grabbed it. “I saw the document,” she said, without giving Frank time to talk. “And yes, I’ll look into the story further, but I’m only helping, someone else can take any credit. No—I don’t, so don’t ask.”
“I expected no after you ignored my calls for a week, but you could at least say hello first,” came the warm, sexy, maddening voice so unmistakably Ryan’s.
“Funny,” Sabrina said before hesitation could form. “I thought you liked the word no far more than yes.”
“I like yes very much,” he said, his voice a soft purr of seduction.
She snorted. “Just not from me.”
“Most definitely from you.”
She could feel her jaw tense. “Right. That’s why you left. Because you wanted me.”
“I want you, but I want you honest. Not reacting to emotion you may regret the next morning. But that night, things were, as you like to say…complicated. Under the same circumstances, I’d still do the same thing.”
Emotions spun inside her and settled in her chest with a thundering jolt. She wanted to see Ryan. She wanted to touch Ryan. She wanted him to want her so much he couldn’t walk away like he had. But he didn’t. He couldn’t. And it upset her on some deep, irrational level that she blamed on some feminine need, bordering on fantasy, to feel desired by a man as ruggedly male as Ryan. That had to be it. There could be no other reason. They barely knew each other.
When she didn’t immediately respond, he gave her a reprieve with a lighter subject. “I saw your Marco feature. It’s good, Sabrina. Really good.”
“Thank you,” she said, relieved, the change in topic allowing her a chance to regroup. “It would never have happened without your help.”
“My help wouldn’t have mattered if you hadn’t turned the interview and the presentation into gold. I’m sure you’ll soon have the new career. That is, if you decide you still want it.”
Still want it? What did that mean? She would have asked, but he spoke first. “We should talk,” he said softly. “In person.”
“No,” she said quickly when she wanted to say yes. Wanting him more than he wanted her would only mean heartache she couldn’t withstand right now. Resolve thickening, she repeated, “No. I think it’s better we leave things as they are. I’m a firm believer that things happen for a reason.”
Suddenly, Jennifer appeared in her doorway, smiling and waving a hand, looking adorable in jeans and a blue-and-white plaid shirt. She tipped her hand back and pretended to drink, and then mouthed, “Happy hour.”
“Sabrina—” Ryan started.
“I have to go,” she said. “I’ve got a visitor. Thanks for calling. It was—” she paused for the right choice of words “—good to hear from you.”
She could hear his hesitation, his frustration, crackle through the phone line, before he said, “Goodbye, Sabrina.” And the line clicked. Sabrina’s stomach pretty much hit the floor at the sound. That was it. She should be relieved. And she would be. Soon.
Sabrina motioned Jennifer forward. “Did someone say happy hour?”
***
WITH A GRIMACE, Ryan ended the call with Sabrina, his boots scraping off the wooden desk of his Hotzone office where they’d rested. He planted his feet solidly on the ground. Damn it to hell, the woman was killing him. Giving him mental whiplash. Never in his life had he had a woman do this to him. Thank God the Army had contracted a skydiving training camp at the Hotzone—he’d been absorbed with it all week, sunup to sundown. Otherwise, he might have gone and seen Sabrina, and made a real fool of himself. At least he’d got the proverbial “Dear John” slap in the face by phone.