The Seven-Day Target Read Free

to follow him to Pittsburgh, he would have eventually left her once he’d realized what an obstacle to his happiness she’d become.
    She felt a pinch of guilt about keeping her biggest secret from him. She’d meant to tell him the truth, she really had. It’s just that the words had lodged in her chest. Instead, in that final, awful argument, she’d told him she didn’t love him. Maybe that was also the truth.
    Libby chewed at her thumbnail, but then stopped. She was being better about that. She was quitting caffeine, which made her shaky and disrupted her sleep, and she was not chewing her nails. The past few years had been difficult ones, but she was working on pulling herself together. Seeing Nick again was a matter of taking her medicine. Toughen up and get it over with, and afterward she would feel better.
    She shifted in her seat and studied him. He still looked the same. No, maybe he looked a little different. His golden-brown hair was longer than she remembered and slightly messy, and his cheeks held the beginning shadows of a beard. He definitely hadn’t shaved that morning. He looked broader in the shoulders, as if he’d been working out more. Had she expected him to be broken down and lost without her? To look gaunt and haunted? To the contrary, he’d never looked better. Something about that stung.
    Nick returned to the table and sat down across from her. “You look well.”
    “You, too.”
    His dark eyes were as intense as ever but softened by an unfamiliar sadness. Even in the dim afternoon light streaming through the window beside their table, Libby could make out the flecks of gold around his pupils. She sat up straighter. “You called me.”
    At the office, no less. He’d sounded frantic about something and scolded her for keeping her cell phone off. “What if someone needed to get in touch with you?” he’d asked.
    She’d been this close to hanging up on him, except that she was so stunned that he was calling her after not talking to her for nearly three years. She’d clutched the phone with white knuckles, remaining on the line out of sheer curiosity, nothing more. “What do you want, Nick?”
    She’d heard him sigh. When he’d spoken again, his voice had lost some of its edge. “To talk, Libby. Can we meet somewhere? Today?”
    The morning was impossible. She had to be in court, and no matter how much Nick had tried to persuade her, she didn’t want anyone else covering her hearings. So they’d agreed to meet in front of the park on Main Street, and Libby had imagined a quick, cordial meeting followed by a rapid getaway in her car. She wasn’t interested in whatever Nick wanted to discuss.
    She silently cursed the weather. Of course it had rained. Of course! And they’d had to move their meeting indoors, where awkwardness would be distilled to cups of tea and coffee and served piping hot. Curse her luck.
    “I’m glad we’re meeting,” she said brightly. She wasn’t lying. She was trying to be pleasant, and that was different. “I have something I wanted to talk to you about, too.”
    “You do?” He arched an eyebrow. “You’ve piqued my interest.”
    “It’s nothing, really.” Libby reached into her coat pocket and wrapped her fingers around the black velvet jewelry case that held the engagement ring Nick had given her. After she’d broken off their engagement and he’d left, Libby had called and left a message on his cell phone, asking what she should do with the ring. He’d responded with a text message: Keep it .
    What did he expect her to do, pawn it? He knew she wouldn’t. He knew that she would bury that ring at the bottom of a drawer, lest she see it and think of everything that had gone suddenly, terribly wrong in their lives. He was just being difficult. Besides, the modest diamond must have cost Nick over two months’ salary. Even if returning the ring hadn’t been a matter of burying the past, the gesture would have been a matter of clearing her