A Thousand Miles

Part 21

The elevator doors slid closed and Shane pushed the floor button.

The last time he was in this building he'd chased JoLynn down a hall upstairs and into this very same elevator. A smile emerged. Well, maybe he hadn't chased her as much as she'd run away. The doors slid shut between them, but not in time to cover the challenge in her eyes.

Her beautiful green eyes.

He ran a hand through his hair and shook his head. Had he really told her he loved her last night? The words slipped out before he could even really lend a thought to them. He had always imagined that, when the time came to speak those words to a woman, it would be difficult to push them out, that the situation would be tense; fraught with anxiety and sweaty palms. But when the phrase slipped out last night, the unplanned ease of it surprised him. The time and circumstance had been right. It had felt natural. As if he'd said it to her a hundred times already.

The elevator lurched softly as it stopped on his floor.

When he'd arrived home at the RV last night, he'd called her with nothing more to say than goodnight. What kind of idiot did that? And his heart had been hammering and his palms sweating since receiving Truman's text message an hour ago calling him to a meeting.

The elevator doors slid open and he stepped off.

He couldn't wait to see her, even if it was in the context of a meeting. Sure, they'd see each other later at the studio in preparation for this weekend's trip to DeLeon. But getting to see her sooner made the day all the better.

"Good morning, Bess." He greeted Truman's ever-composed secretary in such high spirits she smiled.

"Good morning, Mr. Quinlan. Go right on in. He's expecting you."

He pushed open the door to Truman's office and stepped inside to find the show's primary financial backer swearing at his monitor as his beefy fingers hunted and pecked at the keyboard.

"Shane!" Truman didn't even look up from the keys. "Glad you could make it, son. Have a seat."

"JoLynn's not here yet?"

Truman stopped pecking and turned to cast a glance at him over the rims of his reading glasses. Then he shook his head. "No. This meeting's between you and me."

Shane's gut lurched. Why would Truman want to meet just with him? He nearly groaned. Was it possible he'd already somehow heard about the turn his relationship with JoLynn had taken? Did he disapprove? There was no clause in his contract that he could recall forbidding a personal relationship with a coworker, and he didn't want to do anything out of bounds. He sure wanted to keep this job now that he had it. But he wasn't willing to break it off with JoLynn if that's what this meeting came down to.

"Have a seat." Truman repeated his invitation. Or was it a command?

Shane sat. Sweat filmed his face suddenly and he took a deep breath fighting the rising panic. Ten years had passed since his last flashback. But there was no mistaking the symptoms: furiously pounding pulse, sudden tunnel vision, faint ringing in his ears. He bit down on his tongue to try to refocus his mind before it overtook him—the sensation of brutal hands coming down hard on his shoulders to jerk him off his seat unexpectedly and throw him to the ground.

God, why?

The question formed now in his soul just as it had on the day of the attack, and countless times the year his mother died, and the day of his father's stroke.

Why? Why, if God was such a loving father, had He allowed these things to happen? What had they done to cause or deserve the tragedies that had shaped their lives?