Don't Blink by James Patterson, Howard Roughan Page B

“It’s very strange — everything is, Courtney. Mystery on top of mystery.”
    I couldn’t help but suspect that Jason was under some kind of orders. Someone didn’t want me snooping around. But who?
    That was just one question I had. There were so many others in the aftermath of my recording from Lombardo’s.
    But as I laid my head back and closed my eyes, all I could really focus on was how amazing Courtney was. She was sitting so close to me, her hair grazing my shoulder. Finally I couldn’t help myself.
    “I love you,” I blurted out.
    I just said it — boom! — like that. I didn’t know what I was thinking. Actually, that was it. I wasn’t thinking.
    For a second, there was some hope that she would answer, “I love you, too.” But in the next second, that hope was beaten down — worse than Jason at the restaurant.
    It was as if I had suddenly become contagious with Ebola or the swine flu.
    Courtney sprang up from the couch, practically darting to the other side of my office. She was shaking her head. “No, no, no,” she said. “Don’t say that, Nick. I wish you hadn’t said that. I really wish you hadn’t.”
    “Why, Courtney? Tell me why.”
    “Oh, for heaven’s sake, Nick, because I’m engaged! ”
    “But you don’t love him.”
    “You’re wrong, Nick. I do love him. I love Tom very much. I do.”
    It hurt to hear her say that — worse than any of the punches I’d just taken — but I wasn’t about to stop now. She meant too much to me. If I hadn’t known that before, I sure did now.
    “I don’t believe you,” I said. “I’m sorry, but I don’t, Courtney.”
    “You need to, Nick.”
    “No. You may want to believe that you love him.”
    I looked at her. That’s all I had to do. The big white elephant was back in the room. I hadn’t meant for it to happen; neither had she. But it had happened. Courtney and I had slept together. We had made love. Not just lust — which had been part of it, I’ll admit — but love. We’d been intimate with each other. Very much so. We had talked until dawn.
    “I told you, that was a mistake,” she said.
    “It didn’t feel like a mistake. Not to me, anyway.”
    “Nick, it did to me.”
    I got up from the couch. That one hurt, too.
    “Do you really mean that?” I asked her. I was trying desperately not to let my eyes plead.
    “Yes,” she said again.
    “Are you sure?” I asked, taking a step toward her. She raised her hand. “Stop,” she said. “Don’t.”
    I took another step toward her. She didn’t say Stop thistime. She didn’t say Don’t . She didn’t say anything. All she did was stare at me with those amazing blue eyes.
    But before I could take another step, the door to my office suddenly swung open.
    “There you are!” said Thomas Ferramore, Courtney’s fiancé, the man she said she loved.

Chapter 39
    I GUESS I couldn’t blame him for not knocking or, for that matter, acting as if he owned the room the moment he stepped foot in my office. Thomas Ferramore literally did own the room. The entire building, in fact. What better way to cut down on rent for his Citizen magazine than to buy the building that housed it?
    I stood and watched as Ferramore, with his salt and pepper hair and perennial tan, strode over to Courtney, planting a kiss on her lips. It seemed to last for a couple of eternities, and probably would’ve had Courtney not finally pulled back.
    “Tom, what are you doing here?” she asked. Very good question. Didn’t Ferramore realize that Courtney and I were falling in love now?
    “What else would I be doing here? I’ve come to see the most beautiful woman in the world.”
    “You know what I mean,” she said, rolling her eyesplayfully. ( Ugh .) “You told me you were coming home tomorrow.”
    “Change of plans,” said Ferramore. “Aren’t you happy to see me, Courtney?”
    “Of course I am,” she said. “Why wouldn’t I be? Even here at work.”
    He was still supposed to be in Paris making