Wait for Me Read Online Free PDF Page A

wasn’t reading his mind, was she? He didn’t believe in such stuff, but still, she had an uncanny way of responding to things he was thinking about. “Or are you just saying you drink it like this to be nice?” she asked.
    “Oliver? Nice?” Barbara chuckled, sounding as if she thought Oliver couldn’t be nice. The notion rang a familiar bell with Holly. Her first impression of him was that he might be a rather severe sort of person, but as he’d been nothing but kind and gentle with her, she took instant umbrage to the inference.
    Oliver didn’t notice it.
    “Truly,” he said, squeezing her wrist gently, reassuringly. “This cup is fine. Perfect.”
    “Okay.” She nodded feebly. “Then if there’s nothing else I can get you, I’ll leave you to finish. It was nice to meet you,” she said to the ladies in general, with a special smile for Johanna. “It’s been nice seeing you again, Oliver. I’m glad you came.”
    “I am too,” he said, and then he watched her walk away.
    “Not much room to kick yourself in here,” Holly muttered to herself, glancing at the walls of the employee’s rest room/lounge that wasn’t much bigger than a closet. She bent to splash cold water on her face.
    The thing with Oliver’s coffee had been bad enough, but it hurt in a way that was totally unreasonable that his family hadn’t liked her. Except Johanna. Who seemed to be a very kind person—which meant she wouldn’t show her dislike of a stranger if she had any, anyhow.
    She shouldn’t have gone to the table. She should have left Oliver in peace to enjoy his meal with his family and his friend and not have been so stupid and self-indulgent as to intrude on his privacy.
    Who was she to him after all? A person he’d met on an airplane. She should have been grateful that he’d remembered her name. Well, part of her name, anyway.
    “Holly?”
    She frowned. For a moment she thought she’d conjured up his voice at the door.
    “Holly? Are you in there?”
    “Oliver?”
    “Yes. Will you come out? Or... or can I come in there?”
    She opened the door to face him. She wasn’t going out and she wasn’t letting him in, but she couldn’t have him speaking through the door at her.
    “Hi,” he said gently. Because he wasn’t sure of what he was seeing, he tipped her chin upward with two fingers. “Have you been crying?”
    “No. I burnt my finger in the kitchen,” she said, hiding her perfectly fine index finger in the palm of her other hand. “It smarts.”
    “Let me take a look. How bad is it? I’ll get some ice—”
    “No. It’s fine. I’m clumsy. I burn myself all the time. What are you doing back here?”
    “Oh,” he said, recalling the reason himself. “Louis told me where to find you. He... he won’t give me our bill. He says it’s on the house, which is very nice of you, but I really can’t let you do that.”
    “Why not? I invited you here for a free dinner. I know it isn’t much, but... you saved my life.”
    “That was my privilege,” he said, his eyes roving over every inch of her face, enjoying every simple detail for the hundredth time. “I don’t need to be paid for it.”
    “But I feel indebted. So do my brothers. And my mother. Besides, who’s going to miss four plates of Italian food in a place like this? Please, it’s a small price to pay for my life.”
    “All right,” he said, giving in and not liking it. “But I insist on paying the bar tab. That wasn’t part of the deal.”
    Before she could stop him, he was reaching inside his suit jacket for his wallet. He tried the other side and his pants pockets before he looked at her, embarrassed to the bone.
    “I don’t have my wallet,” he said.
    “You see,” she said brightly, feeling for him. “It’s fate. Destiny knew you weren’t going to need it tonight, so she let you leave it at home.”
    “I can’t even pay you with a credit card,” he said, shamefaced.
    She laughed.
    “Oliver Carey, you’re a very