Page 45 of Snowed In
“Yeah.”
“It’s okay if you’re not,” I continue, especially considering this is exactly what she was worried about.
“I’m fine. I just…” She shakes her head.“He hated this coat.”
“What?”
“He said it made me look like a child.” A line appears on her forehead, but before I can say anything else, she gets into the car and pulls the door firmly closed.
* * *
As soon as we’re back on the road, I realize how much I’d gotten used to talkative Megan. Snapback, quippy, teasing Megan. This Megan, the one currently sitting next to me, is quiet. Withdrawn. And it’s kind of freaking me out.
She’s silent the whole way back to the village. And I mean silent. Not a word. Not a peep. She just turns her head to the side and stares out the window, lost in thought.
And I hate it.
I hate it even more that I don’t know her well enough yet to drag her out of it. So I sit there in silence too, growing progressively angrier every time I think about Isaac freaking Quinn.
She was glowing on the way up here. I thought I’d have to spend the ride convincing her not to call the whole thing off. Hence the cupcake. But instead, her good mood was so bright it was infectious. She was excited. And now it’s like it’s all been sucked out of her. Leaving her lifeless. And it’s all because of him.
Which is going to be a big problem if it happens again.
No one’s going to believe we’re madly in love if she freaks out every time her ex walks into the room. And chances are she’ll be bumping into him. It’s a small village, and we’ll be here for two weeks. It’s going to happen again.
And if other people see her react like that…
I gaze out at the dark road as I consider it. Did she still have feelings for him? Was that why? Maybe not so much seeing him as seeing his new fiancée? I hadn’t considered it before, but I guess it’s a possibility. I never felt it was my place to ask why she ran out on the guy, but I assume she just realized what a complete waste of space he was and left while she had the time. But maybe that wasn’t the case. Maybe something else happened and she still loves him.
Maybe that’s why she never came back.
The thought stays with me, sitting uncomfortably in my stomach as I drive through the village and out the other side to where her family is. The only thing that distracts me is when I make the turn for her house and remember one very important thing.
Megan is rich.
Or at least her mother is. I know her dad left the picture when she was pretty young, but her mother is some property tycoon heiress alongside her own job and did just fine. More than fine. They lived about a mile from the village in a house that was big, even by countryside standards. I’d grown used to living in cities. Box rooms and tiny apartments. Any place with more than a handful of rooms might as well be a mansion to me. But Megan’s actuallywasa mansion. And a big one at that.
“I forgot you were loaded,” I say, as I slow the car. There are no streetlamps out here, and I have only the headlights to show me where I’m going.
Megan frowns, but it’s the first bit of life I’ve seen from her in ages, so I’ll take it. “I’m not loaded.”
“Your family is.”
“I guess.”
“I’m not judging,” I add. She sounds uncomfortable, which wasn’t my intention, but I don’t know what else to say when I pull up to the large gates that mark the entry to her property.
“You can just leave me here,” she mutters, but I ignore that.
“You might get lost in the five miles it takes to get up your drive,” I tease, but she doesn’t answer; just takes out her phone and calls a number to open the gate.
The driveway is graveled, and even in the dead of winter, the plants on either side of the doorway look fresh and manicured. Not like Mam’s enthusiastic but forgetful garden phases, where flowers seem to bloom and die within the week.
The house itself is a big, three-story block painted light yellow with white shutters on the windows. Thick stone pillars bracket the front door, and the steps leading up to it are decorated for Christmas with garlands of ivy and carefully strewn fairy lights. The lights in the house are on, but no one comes out to meet us, and as soon as I stop the car, Megan is all business, grabbing things like her phone and her knitting and the two lip balms, one water bottle, and the bag of homemade trail mix she’d left in the side pocket.
I leave her to it while I get her bags out, lining them up by the door as she gets out.
“I’ll pick you up tomorrow?” I ask, and she nods, her attention on anything but me, and the curdle in my stomach sours even further.
