Free Love Isn't Blind 2 by Sweet and Special Books Page B

of her. "Yeah, of course. I get it. We'll talk tomorrow?"
    "Sounds great," he said, not bothering to turn and face her while he fastened the buttons on his own shirt.
    She left without another word and hurried up to her room. She had no idea what had caused Anthony to go so cold on her like that, and she hoped he'd come around by morning. He probably just needs time to deal with the change, she thought to herself. Everything would be okay in the light of day.
Chapter Ten
    UNABLE TO SLEEP WELL after her quick dismissal from Anthony's office the night before, Ashley arose early, slipped into her robe and slippers, and shuffled down into the kitchen to see if Helene had put the coffee on. She had no misguided ideas about finding Anthony there, she hadn't known him to once take breakfast before ten o'clock in the morning, and he always took his morning coffee in his study. She did, however, worry about facing poor Helene who'd probably had to listen to the erotic noises coming through the thin walls of the house and echoing throughout the hallways; but it was early enough that even she wouldn't be up for another twenty minutes or so.
    Ashley was surprised to find Helene already there at the sink, a soapy cloth in one hand and a coffee cup in the other. If she had heard anything inappropriate the night before, she did a fine job of not giving any indication when she noticed Ashley entering the room.
    "Morning, Helene. You're up early."
    "Oh, a woman my age doesn't need much sleep. When Mr. Lang let me know he'd be leaving early this morning and wouldn't need me to prepare breakfast, I told him that was nonsense and that I wasn't going to let him stumble around trying to make coffee and burn his bagel at five o'clock in the morning."
    "Anthony left this morning?" asked Ashley, unable to keep the shock from her voice.
    "On a research trip, I guess." Helene rinsed off the mug and placed it in the drying rack. "He does this once in a while; just ups and goes away for a week or two so he can research some part of the novel he's working on. Can't say as I remember the last time he left so abruptly, but there's no predicting that man."
    "No, there certainly isn't," said Ashley, mulling over what the news meant. Could he have been so thrown by what had happened between them that he rushed out of the house less than eight hours later? It didn't make a lot of sense for him to be so afraid of a bit of sex. He'd been a CIA spy for nearly a decade after being recruited from the Marines. Surely he wasn't the kind of man to run away from a woman.
    "I assume he went to Copenhagen?" asked Ashley. His current novel was set in Washington and the capital city of Denmark, and from what she could tell of the recent transcription, he'd struggled to recall certain details of his time there.
    "That's the place," answered Helene. She retrieved a mug and poured fresh steaming hot coffee into it. "Here you go, dear. I take it he didn't let you know he was leaving?"
    "This is the first I'm hearing of it," she admitted.
    "Anthony is a difficult man to understand," said Helene. She threw her dish towel on the counter and sank into a chair where her own cup of coffee sat waiting. "He's even harder to get close to."
    "Tell me about it," said Ashley. "I've been working with him more closely than anyone else probably has in years, and it seems that I don't know the first thing about him."
    "Don't discount it," said Helene. "There's not many people he'd even let work with him in the first place, and most of them are men he either looks up to as a writer or those he knows from the service. Don't underestimate how big an impression you've already made on him."
    What Ashley really wanted was to explain everything that had happened between them over the last few days. She wanted to talk about that first kiss, and how he'd pushed her away. She wanted to know why Anthony could make such furious passionate love to her and then run away to Europe on a supposed research trip.