Stolen Hearts (Hearts 1)

There was a beep of the outer door opening, and Ronan left my body so fast I stumbled, catching myself against the desk.

“Poppy?” It was Theo.

This was some kind of total breach of driver etiquette. Never would he have come looking for Jim. Or me, previous to the driving lessons.

But never in my life had I been so glad to have destroyed protocols. I’d been weakening against Ronan’s mouth. The bittersweet words he’d said. What mistakes had he made? What mistakes was he talking about? Staying when he should go?

“Back here!” I said and patted down my hair. Straightened my jacket. Without looking at me, Ronan grabbed the garbage from our meal.

“I’m sorry,” Theo said as he came walking in, a big smile on his face. A smile that disappeared when he saw Ronan. And his face snapped back into that passive employee look that I’d been surrounded by during my marriage.

Ronan was doing the same.

It was like they were both in disguise.

“I got a notification from the alarm company a while ago,” Theo said. “I thought you would have gotten it too, but when you didn’t come down—”

“Alarm company?” I grabbed my phone from my purse. I’d turned it off after the fight with my sister and then forgotten to turn it back on as I worked.

There were four missed calls from the alarm company.

“What’s happened?” Ronan asked, and Theo gave him a sharp look before looking at me. There was a beat of silence before I realized Theo wasn’t going to say anything in front of Ronan unless I told him it was okay.

Ronan realized this too and stepped forward like he’d take Theo apart with one hand.

“It’s fine,” I said, holding up my hand like a traffic cop, not sure if it would stop Ronan. But it did. “You can tell me.”

“No one has gone inside,” he said. “But . . .” He pulled out his own phone and showed me the screen. There on my back deck was a roaring fire in the fire pit. A dark figure sitting in one of the chairs turned and faced the camera like she knew it was there. Cheekily, the figure waved.

Zilla.

“It’s my sister,” I said.

She drove to my house and sat outside by the fire because we fought.

“Let’s go,” I said.

“I’ll go back downstairs,” Theo said. “The car will be waiting.”

“Thank you.” And then proving how far I was from kind, from sweet, I turned to Ronan. “Theo, this is Ronan. He works for Caroline.”

Briefly, Ronan’s eyes met mine, and if he had a reaction to this reestablishment of power, he showed nothing. “Nice to meet you,” Ronan lied.

“Likewise.” My guess was Theo was lying too. And he lingered, as if afraid to leave us alone together.

“I’ll be right down,” I said with a smile, easing his departure out the door. I felt undone. By the kiss. By the whole night. And I didn’t know how to manage any of this.

Once Theo was gone, I gathered my things as Ronan waited by the door.

“Are you all right?” he asked, and the question brought me up short. His concern brought me up short.

“Fine.”

“Your sister—”

“What about her?” I snapped.

“Is it a good thing she’s at your house?”

It felt like he was truly concerned. Worried. And I didn’t trust that for one moment. As much as I might want to. As much as it might be nice to lay down the load that was loving my sister at anyone’s feet but my own.

Not his, I had to remind myself. Don’t be so stupid.

“It is,” I said, which was true, but not the whole truth.

“Good.”

He waited for me to gather my things and walk out the door, turning the lights off as I went. I set the alarm while he stood in the hallway waiting for me.

“You don’t have to—”

“I know.”

At the elevator we stood there, side by side. If I took a deep breath my shoulder would touch his, so I took a tiny step away.

“Poppy,” he said, looking down at the garbage.

The elevator opened and I stepped in, expecting him to follow but he didn’t. And there was something ominous about him on one side of the closing doors and me on the other. Something that made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. It was like the scene in those movies when the trap is closing around a character.

The door started to slide shut, and I slapped my hand against it.

I wondered if anything he’d said to me tonight was real.

Some, I thought. In the way of all liars, Ronan had probably seeded his lies with small truths. The story about Caroline and the purse stealing, I could see that unfolding. The priests.

And I imagined so many mistakes in his past. More than mine, maybe.

But I didn’t imagine him being sorry for a single one of them.