Page 9 of Payback
He looked hopeful. “You mean you haven’t? Even better.”
“I have.” She didn’t know why she was confiding in him. He had no right to know, but that’s the way it had always been with him. He made her open up, whether she wanted to or not.
“Son of a—”
“You have no right to be angry,” she reminded him. “You’ve been with other people too. Dozens, I’m guessing.”
“You think I don’t know I don’t have the right to be pissed off?” he demanded. “That’s what pisses me off!” He slammed his glass down on the table and started pacing. “If I hadn’t gone off on you in that Vegas hotel we wouldn’t be having this conversation. We’d have been together long enough to be planning our wedding by now!”
Her jaw dropped. “Our wedding?”
“Yeah, don’t tell me you’ve never thought about being married to me.”
“I haven’t.” Much.
“The point is, you slept with someone else, because I left the door open for that to happen. And I hate myself for that.”
When she found out Loran would be at the bar tonight she was afraid of what might happen. She didn’t trust herself, so she invited Jeff as a buffer. Yet they were still in the place she feared the most… confronting the truth. Their feelings for each other. Feelings she didn’t know how to process, much less acknowledge.
“The timing wasn’t right,” she said, forcing herself to believe that was true. “You weren’t ready for anything serious when we met. Neither was I.”
“And now?”
There was no way to answer his question without lying to him or admitting the truth to herself. “I don’t know.”
“You’ve been wasting time with the engineer. You wouldn’t have been doing that if you weren’t ready for a real relationship.”
Her relationship with Jeff wasn’t real. He was safe. Someone she could spend time with who wouldn’t press her for more because he accepted her for what she was: a workaholic with a fear of relationships who had no real desire for a family of her own. Or so she told herself.
“Or would you?” He stopped pacing long enough to wait her out, stare her down, and make her skin prickle with awareness. “Maybe you were using him us a buffer. You thought I’d back off if I believed you’d moved on.”
She stared into her glass before bringing it to her lips. Anything to avoid answering the question in his eyes.
“That was it, wasn’t it? You knew Ethan and Grace would fill me in on what you’d been up to. You thought if I heard about the engineer I’d give up on you, move on. You could retreat back to your safe little bubble, right? Meaningless one-night stands or flings with guys so boring there was no chance of them holding your attention for the long haul.”
She’d never known a man who could read her mind as easily as he could. It was unnerving. “I made no secret of what I wanted. The same thing you did, I thought. Fun, no strings attached. So why are you accusing me of being shallow now?” Before he could defend himself, she said, “That’s the pot calling the kettle black, isn’t it, Loran?”
He crouched down in front of her, resting his hands on either side of her thighs. “You want the truth? I was a shallow, self-centered, egotistical pig until I met you.”
She diverted her gaze, trying to ignore the rapid thump of her heart. “We weren’t together long enough for me to have that much of an effect on you.” But she knew that wasn’t true. He’d made a lasting impact on her too. She was a completely different person, pre-and-post-Loran.
“Look at me.”
He wasn’t even touching her, yet his voice was soft and commanding, willing her to obey. And she wasn’t a girl who blindly obeyed anyone.
“What?” She wanted to pretend she couldn’t see in his eyes everything he was feeling, but it was as obvious to her as if he’d said the words she was trying so hard to bite back.
“You want me too.”
“No.”
“Yes, you do.”
The fact that he was confident had never been a secret to her, but this assuredness was borne of a certainty that had nothing to do with his ego. Fate, that’s what he’d called it once. She laughed in his face then. But she wasn’t laughing now.
“You should probably go.” She looked at the door, as though it would magically open. “It’s getting late and I have an early morning.”
He nodded slowly. “I can wait, Bella.” He brushed his fingers over her cheeks. “As long as it takes.”
