Buttoned Up Read Online Free Page A

significance of the comment. “Evangeline is—”
    “What?” She was back and with a fresh coat of lipstick accentuating her smile. As if she’d never left, she slipped her arm right where it had been, through Nev’s. “What’s he saying about me?” she asked, turning to me. “Because my guess is whatever it is, it’s not true.”
    “Nev’s nothing if not one hundred percent honest.” It was one of the things I appreciated most about him. After all, I’d once been married to a guy who specialized in lies. Knowing Nev always had been and always would be aboveboard—about everything—was one of the reasons I liked him so much.
    “And one hundred percent trustworthy.” Evangeline added to my assessment of Nev’s character at the same time she turned Nev around and piloted him over to the next item in the exhibit, an altar decorated with buttons. “That’s why you didn’t look surprised when he introduced us, right? Nev’s already told you all about me.”
    When I didn’t answer, she looked up at Nev. “I’m sorry,” she said and I didn’t doubt her for an instant. Evangeline’s face was pale. “You and Josie look so comfortable together, I just assumed you’d been dating a long time. I figured she knew all about us.”
    “And I’m feeling a little like everybody knows where this is going except me.” Three cheers for a bravado I suddenly wasn’t feeling; I kept my voice light and airy even though my insides felt as if I’d guzzled a Slurpee in record time. “Somebody want to clue me in?”
    Nev, apparently, didn’t.
    But that didn’t stop Evangeline.
    She adjusted her arm to hang onto Nev a little tighter. “I just assumed you knew,” she said. “Nev and I, we used to be engaged.”

Chapter Two

    Slack-jawed is not a good look for me.
    I froze—yes, slack-jawed—and stared at Evangeline just long enough to see those gorgeous green eyes of hers go wide with horror. I didn’t know the secret, and she’d let it slip from her lips. The poor woman was mortified!
    Not nearly as much as I was.
    I couldn’t have been paralyzed for more than a second or two, but it felt like a lifetime. Every muscle tensed except for my stomach, which was twitching like a son of a gun, I finally forced myself to pivot toward Nev, and in that one moment before the emotion took over and swamped me like a tsunami, I was more curious than anything else. What would I see registered in his blue eyes? Embarrassment? Anger? Indifference? What excuse would he offer for keeping this huge piece of his past from me all this time?
    I never had a chance to find out.
    Before either Nev or Evangeline could open their mouths again—and before I could close mine—a hand grasped my upper arm and a voice I recognized from phone calls (not to mention that argument that had echoed through the church just a little while earlier) drowned out the thrumming of my blood inside my head.
    “There you are, sweetheart! Why, you are as cute as a spotted puppy under a red wagon, just like I knew you’d be. I been lookin’ all over the place for you.”
    “Forbis.” How I managed to say the name when my mouth was filled with sand, I don’t know. I’m also not sure how I pulled off a smile. Apparently, it wasn’t as anemic as I feared because Forbis beamed back like a lighthouse.
    We stood eye to eye, me and Forbis, and he was stick-thin and seventy-five if he was a day. The publicity photo that appeared on his website and on the back of the exhibition brochure had been taken by a pro, that was for sure. It somehow managed to downplay his prominent nose, the large ears that didn’t lay anywhere near flat against his head, and his flapping jowls.
    “You got my button, don’t you, darlin’?”
    “Button?” Even to me, my voice sounded as if it came from the depths of some deep, dark cave. Not acceptable. Not in public. Not when the Button Box’s reputation—and mine—were on the line. I shook myself out of my daze. “Of