“It’s none of your business.”
“How about his?” Terry inquired quietly.
Callie turned just as Jason emerged from his limo. His gaze locked with hers and fireworks erupted in the pit of her stomach. She swore to herself that they’d been set off by fury and nothing else.
Terry brushed a kiss across her cheek and squeezed her hand. “See you.”
Her startled gaze flew to his. “Where are you going?”
“I’ve just remembered an important engagement across town.”
“Liar,” she muttered as she warily watched Jason’s approach.
“Traitor,” she added for good measure as he waved cheerfully at Jason.
“Not very nice names to be tossing around about your friend,” Jason chided.
“You should hear the ones I have saved up for you,” she shot back, then clamped her mouth shut.
“I take it you missed me.”
“Oh? Have you been somewhere?” The jaunty tone was valiant, but even she knew it was too late. His smug expression was proof enough of that.
“Just working. We’re getting down to the final decisions on the fall season schedule. If you’ll have dinner with me, I’ll tell you all about it.”
“Sorry, I have plans.” His expression was so skeptical, she quickly improvised. “I promised my mother I’d take her out tonight.”
“Terrific. She can come along.”
Callie stared at him. He seemed totally sincere. He seemed anxious to make amends. Okay, maybe she had overreacted to his absence. Maybe she’d just gotten addicted to his attention far more rapidly than she’d had any right to. The past few days had been a warning not to take him too seriously. But that didn’t mean she shouldn’t enjoy his company occasionally.
“You’re sure you wouldn’t mind having my mother along?” she asked, trying not to show her disappointment that he wasn’t as eager to be alone with her as she was to be with him.
“No, indeed. I can pick her brain to see what viewers in the Midwest really want to see.”
“Farm reports,” Callie said drily. “Weather predictions.”
“Surely there must be more.”
“Not in my household. Television was considered a frivolous waste of time unless it was providing crop-related information. You can just imagine how overjoyed my mother is that I am now working in that very medium. The two of you should get along famously, assuming you don’t mind being told that you fry brains for a living.”
Jason’s startled and suddenly wary expression provided her with the most amusement she’d had in days. The evening promised to be a revelation of the depths of his tolerance. Given his abandonment over the past two weeks, she figured it was no more than he deserved.
12
Callie’s excuse to avoid being alone with Jason wasn’t home. Callie called out to her mother as they walked in the front door, then went from room to room for good measure, but there was no sign of Regina Gunderson.
“I guess your mother forgot about those plans the two of you had,” Jason observed drily.
“It’s not like her,” Callie said, more worried about her mother’s absence than she was embarrassed over being caught in a blatant lie.
“It’s not like her to forget something?”
“No, to leave the apartment. She’s been here every day when I got home.”
“Obviously she likes to be here to welcome you.”
“No, she hasn’t been going out, unless it was with me or Terry or Neil. I could swear it. She’s intimidated by the city. She’s never been very adventurous. She never even left Iowa, as far as I know.”
She stood at the window and peered anxiously down at the street below, hoping to catch a glimpse of her mother heading home. “What if something’s happened to her? She doesn’t know her way around. She could have gotten lost or mugged.”
Jason came closer and cupped her face in his hands. “Whoa, you’re getting carried away. I’m sure there’s a simple explanation. She probably just ran out to the store for a minute.”
Callie could feel panic—rational or not—churning inside. Jason didn’t know her mother. He couldn’t possibly understand how ill-equipped she was to deal with a city like New York. She’d always resisted trips into Iowa City, for heaven’s sake, claiming she preferred to stick close to home.
“I’m telling you, I don’t think she even knows where the store is.”
“Maybe she’s with Terry.”
“No, you saw him. He left the studio when we did. He couldn’t have beat us by much, assuming he even came directly home.”
“Neil, then,” Jason said, persisting with his maddening attempts to offer a rational explanation for something Callie knew was anything but rational. “Perhaps she’s downstairs visiting with him.”
It was a possibility, Callie thought, grabbing the phone and pressing the number she’d set to automatically dial the apartment downstairs. No one answered. She hung up when the answering machine picked up.
“Nothing,” she said.
“Okay, then, sit down and let’s think about this,” Jason said calmly. He nudged her onto the sofa, sat beside her and took her hands in his. The firm grip was reassuring, but Callie’s imagination went spinning out of control, anyway.
“What if—”
“Stop it. There’s no point in wild speculation,” he said, accurately guessing the gruesome direction her thoughts were taking.
Callie bounced back up. “Maybe I should call the police.”
“They won’t do a thing until she’s been missing twenty-four hours,” he reminded her. “Now let’s think about the chores she might have decided to run— grocery store, cleaners...what else?”
“I didn’t have her doing my errands,” Callie snapped.
Jason’s eyes remained level with hers. “Maybe she had errands of her own.”
Another tide of hysteria washed through her. “I’m telling you—” she began just as she heard a key turning in the lock. She flew off the sofa and flung the door open. Relief warred with anger at the sight of her mother clutching a plastic bag filled with groceries.
“Where have you been?” she demanded, knowing the question was totally irrational given the evidence right before her eyes.
Her mother looked taken aback by the attack. “Callie, what on earth?”
Callie drew in a deep breath and tried to calm down. “I’m sorry. I got here
