Exposed to You (One Night of Passion 2)

tie did a double take when she noticed his tense expression. “No. The car was gone when I got up. I thought maybe you two had gone to the diner for Sunday breakfast or something.”

“She’s gone,” he said starkly, staring around the sunlit kitchen as if he thought it’d provide him some vital clue that would explain Joy’s inexplicable absence. “Where’s Seth?”

“He’s sleeping, of course.” Her green eyes looked bewildered. “Everett, what’s that you’re holding?”

He paused and glanced at his hand in rising irritation. “It’s a note. From Joy.”

“What’s it say?”

“It’s a Dear John, that’s what it is. It says this whole thing between us would never work, and she thinks she’d better end it before one or both of us gets hurt. Some kind of crap like that,” he said bitterly. He started to walk determinedly toward the staircase that led to the dormer bedroom where Seth was staying.

“Everett, what are you doing?” Katie called, standing. Daisy made a muffled sound of protest and then started to cry.

“I’m going to ask Seth what he knows about this!”

“Why would Seth know something that you don’t?”

“He’s got to understand something better than I do, because this”—he snapped Joy’s note in the air—“completely blindsided me.”

“Everett, stop it.”

Katie’s sharp tone brought him to a halt as he reached for the door that led to the stairs.

“Come back over here. Please,” she added more softly. “Let’s try to sort this out.”

He rolled his eyes in exasperation, but gave in to her request, although he refused to sit. He was too worked up. Adrenaline was pumping through his veins. He experienced an almost imperative mandate to get in his car and chase after Joy. It was torture to just stand there.

Katie sat and murmured to an agitated Daisy, reinserting the nipple into her mouth. The baby almost immediately began to suck again with gusto. Katie turned her attention to him.

“When you called last night on the way home from the hospital, you said Joy was going to be fine. Seth didn’t indicate anything different when he came in. Did something happen between you and Joy that could explain this?” She nodded at the letter he still gripped in his hand like a bloody knife discovered next to a dead body.

For a second, he just stared at his sister, dumbfounded. Had something happened? Hell yes, something had happened. They’d had a mind-blowing, life-altering, intimate sexual and emotional exchange, and for the first time in his life, he’d told a woman he loved her and meant it in the way he’d always worried he never would.

“Did you fight or disagree on something?” Katie prompted when he just continued to stand there.

“No. We—” A puff of air popped out of his throat. “Talked.”

“You talked?”

Everett stared at Katie, his mouth hanging open. He felt like he was still disoriented from a sucker punch. “I told her I was falling in love with her.”

For a few seconds, only the wet, sucking sound of Daisy breakfasting could be heard in the tense silence.

“You’ve fallen in love with Joy?” Katie asked slowly.

“You don’t have to look at me like I just said I’d cured cancer while I slept. I do have the capability to love someone, you know,” he said, annoyance creeping into his shock at seeing Katie’s amazement.

“Of course you do. And I’d been hoping it was true, watching you with Joy this weekend. It’s just that . . . it’s awfully big news, isn’t it?”

“What’s big news?”

Everett turned to see Seth walking into the kitchen. He looked like he’d already showered and dressed for the day in jeans, a white shirt and a leather belt with a tooled silver buckle. A flicker of suspicion went through Everett. Hadn’t Seth woken up midmorning yesterday, and hadn’t Joy once referred to the fact that he was a night owl who often slept until ten or eleven? Joy’s uncle had certainly risen early, almost as if he’d been preparing for something.

He held up the letter. “Joy has left.”

Seth’s features looked even more classically Native American than usual as he gave Everett an impassive, cold stare.

“Yes. I know.”