Page 34 of Isolated (Harper Security Ops #21)

Iris

It was after I’d gotten out of bed and had breakfast the next day when I decided to make a call.

No matter how much I wanted to reach out to Landen and spend my day talking to him on the phone, I couldn’t.

I had to get some work done.

And before I could do that, I needed to clear my head of the one thing dragging me down lately. I needed to talk to Flora.

Landen had done a phenomenal job of keeping me distracted from all the things weighing heavily on me. It wasn’t until I woke this morning and spent my first waking hour relishing in the memories of the previous day that any of it really returned.

I still hadn’t received a return call from Eleni. She hadn’t even bothered with a measly text message. So, it was time to call Flora and find out if she had gotten any explanations from our sister.

Snatching up my phone, I settled myself on the couch. The same couch I’d spent hours on with Landen. How we hadn’t managed to take things beyond the kissing was a mystery to me. The man had such restraint where I was undoubtedly lacking.

But I liked it.

I liked that he wanted to take things slow and give us time to get to know each other better.

It had been a long time since I’d been kissed, and I couldn’t recall a time when anyone had ever kissed me for as long as Landen had without expecting more.

That he was enjoying the buildup to something much bigger only made me want him more than I already did.

Just sitting on this couch now, convinced I could still smell his scent lingering, was a challenge.

My mind was tossed right back into those moments from last night.

I gave myself just a few minutes, but ultimately, I shook those thoughts off. Back to the task at hand.

Before I had the chance to allow my thoughts to drift again, I made the call. A moment later, my sister’s voice came through the line. “Hello?”

“Hi, Flora.”

“How are you doing? How was your date on Friday?”

Though I expected the level of curiosity in her questions, it was her tone that caught me off guard. She sounded so despondent. I had a feeling she wasn’t going to have good news to relay to me when we broached the subject of Eleni.

Unwilling to presume the worst until I had confirmation, and wanting my sister to know just how wonderful my time with Landen had been, I was honest. “We had such a great time that we wound up spending the day together yesterday, too.”

“He spent the night?” The shock in her voice was much better than the hopelessness.

I laughed. “No. No, he went home Friday night, but he came back on Saturday morning to take me out.”

“What did you do?”

Without delay, I went on to tell Flora about my dates with Landen.

By the time I finished, my sister’s mood seemed to have turned around completely. “That sounds wonderful, Iris. I’m so happy you had such a good time with him.”

“Me, too. I don’t think I’ve felt that wonderful in so long. It really was nice.”

Flora didn’t respond, and the silence stretched between us. She might have always been the quietest of the three of us, but that didn’t mean we ever experienced moments like this over the phone. Especially not when I was sharing something that she’d normally consider so exciting.

And so, I knew, without even asking, that things were going to move in a much less pleasant direction.

“Judging by your silence, I can only assume you’ve spoken to Eleni.” Best to just put it out there so we could deal with whatever it was.

“I did.”

That was it.

That was all she said.

It was just more proof that Eleni didn’t have anything good to say when Flora had reached out to her.

“Has she… She knows I’ve been trying to reach her, right? ”

“She does.”

At this point, I was growing impatient with Flora’s ambiguity. She knew what I wanted, and she insisted on making me pull it out of her. “And?”

There was a long pause before she sighed. “I’m sorry, Iris. Eleni knows you’ve been trying to contact her, but she told me she was purposely avoiding taking your calls.”

Although that was precisely what was happening, I didn’t know why it caught me off guard to hear it. “Did she say why?”

“Not so much.”

My eyes narrowed as I thought back on the weekend we’d had together, attempting to figure out where it all went so wrong. “So, that was it? She just said she was intentionally avoiding me. She wouldn’t give you any explanation?”

“I wish I had an answer, but I don’t. She refused to share. But there was one other thing she did ask me to mention to you.”

My brows shot up. So, Eleni did want to communicate something to me; she just wasn’t willing to do it herself. “Okay. Well, what did she say? Maybe we can get to the bottom of this.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Why not?”

Flora hesitated again. “Because she told me to ask you to stop reaching out to her. She said that she wants to be left alone and would appreciate it if you’d stop contacting her every other day.”

My youngest sister wasn’t one for practical jokes, but this was starting to feel like one. “Are you kidding me? ”

Her voice was barely a whisper. “I wouldn’t make something like this up, Iris.”

I was utterly baffled. “I don’t understand. Does she ever plan to talk to me again?”

“Yes!” That single word was the most excited Flora had been throughout the entire phone call. Even more than she’d been when I told her about my dates with Landen.

“Well, that’s good news. How do you know? Did she say when that might be?”

“She didn’t give me a time, but she did say that she just wasn’t ready to talk about what was bothering her right now,” Flora shared.

A rush of air left my lungs. This was beyond frustrating.

“Nothing about what you said indicates that she’s ever going to talk to me again.

If she didn’t tell you what was wrong, those words just might mean that she’ll eventually share the truth with you.

I don’t understand, Flora. Can you think of anything I did that would have upset her?

Is it because I danced with Landen that night? She can’t be mad about that, can she?”

“I don’t see why that would bother her. Not to this extent, anyway.”

“And you’re sure she said nothing else? She didn’t give you any idea what’s bothering her?

This makes no sense.” My words came out harsher than I intended for them to.

I couldn’t help it, though. Thoughts scrambled, I tried to find an answer, an explanation, and something that felt a lot like desperation was taking over.

Flora’s voice ticked up a notch in response.

“I know this is upsetting to you, Iris, but you don’t need to take it out on me.

In fact, I don’t need to be the middleman here.

You’re both my sisters, and I’m not interested in choosing sides.

Whatever is going on, the two of you need to work it out on your own. ”

“How can I do that if she won’t take my calls?”

“I don’t know, but I’m going to ask that you leave me out of it. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to go.”

Flora didn’t wait for me to respond. She disconnected the call, and the line went dead. If I wasn’t already in such a state of disbelief, that certainly would have pushed me over the edge.

I would have called Flora back to apologize and clear the air, but I didn’t think it’d do much good at this point. Truthfully, I didn’t think I could handle another rejected phone call.

So, I gave myself a few minutes to replay my conversation with my sister in my head as I thought back on the weekend that she and Eleni had spent here with me.

When nothing obvious popped out as a possible explanation, I realized there wasn’t anything else I could do today that would give me the answers I was seeking.

If this went on long enough with Eleni, I’d have no choice but to head back to Grouse and try to work it out in person.

For now, I had to follow through on what I’d said I was going to do and get some work done. Monday morning would be here before I knew it, and I was fully prepared—and determined—to go in and have a great week at work.

With that, I set my phone down, got up off the couch, and went in search of my laptop. Then I got to work and only stopped to think about Landen half as much as I had been before I started.

The way I saw it, some progress was better than none.

Landen

A soft moan escaped from Iris, forcing me to tear my mouth from hers.

“It was only a day, and it feels like it’s been a month.”

My hands, which had been at her hips, slid around to her lower back and drifted toward her ass. “Yesterday felt impossibly long, like today would never arrive.”

She touched her lips to mine in a chaste kiss. “That’s not normal, is it? Is any of this normal?”

With my back resting against the side of her car, I urged her weight forward against me.

It didn’t matter that it was Monday morning, and we’d just finished our gym session.

I didn’t care that we were both sweaty from particularly challenging workouts today.

I hadn’t seen Iris since Saturday evening. I needed to make up for lost time.

“I don’t care if it’s normal or not,” I told her. “I missed you. And truthfully, when you kiss the way you do, I’m not sure you can blame me for feeling like that.”

Iris watched her fingertips as they brushed lightly against the side of my face, her mouth curving into a satisfied smile. “You have no idea how relieved I am to know that you feel that way. Do you think you’ve gotten enough to make up for yesterday?”

I didn’t think I’d ever have enough of her. “One more kiss should do it.”

“That’s excellent, because then I’m going to need at least two more beyond that to tide me over until tomorrow morning,” she teased.

A groan escaped, and I buried my face against her neck, her skin warm and flushed with a slight sheen of sweat. “Tomorrow is going to be even worse.”

Her body stiffened. “Why?”

Pulling my face back to look at her, my eyes roamed over her gorgeous, rosy face. “You don’t come here to work out on Wednesdays.”