by Tawny Weber
Which meant he was at least semi-dressed. Wherever he was.
Apparently she was the only one who was having trouble walking after their sexy times.
As usual.
Larissa bent over, grabbing Jason’s shirt off the floor and shrugging it on. She shoved the buttons through the holes, her teeth clenched.
His scent wrapped around her as warmly as the fabric. She fingered the cuffs, then shoved them up her arms as she stomped toward the front of the store to glare out into the mall.
Seriously. It was the middle of the night. Where the hell was he? Why couldn’t he stick around for just a little while? Hadn’t the night been incredible for him, too? Hadn’t he groaned and moaned and had a wild old time? Hadn’t it been worth sleeping in each other’s arms for at least a few hours? She squinted at her watch, noting it was half past three in the morning. She wondered how many minutes he’d held out after she’d dropped into sleep before heading off. Five? Maybe ten?
Shoulders hunched, she stared down one side of the mall, then the other. She twisted her fingers together. She could go look for him. But that would make her look desperate, wouldn’t it? Or was it more pathetic to be found waiting here for him like a lovesick girl, her happiness hinging on his return.
Larissa tilted her head back, staring at the ceiling and blinking fast to clear the tears from her eyes. How did she end up here again? Had she learned nothing in the last few years? Was she so pathetic that she couldn’t resist Jason’s magic dick? Or was this a sad little romantic fairy tale she kept falling into, thinking that somehow, some way, they had a future. Together.
Larissa crossed her arms over her chest, pacing back and forth in the doorway.
This was supposed to have been one last fling. A chance to do all those naughty things she’d missed out on the last time with Jason, but to do them the smart way. Knowing it was just sex, she would not only have her fun, but finally put to rest her internal struggle with that one question… Could she settle for a relationship that was all about sex, knowing there was no emotion involved?
Larissa’s pacing had brought her to the back of the store, to their love nest. The mohair blanket was balled into a soft bundle, Jason’s clothes were strewn against the wall and an empty chocolate jar tilted on its side like a drunken soldier.
All evidence of decadent, intensely satisfying sex.
The only thing missing, as usual, was Jason himself.
Which said it all.
Larissa shook her head, the stomping sound of her bare feet against the marble taking her pacing to an angrier level. She really was pathetic. She couldn’t believe she’d actually believed, somewhere deep in the hidden recesses of her heart, that he’d take one look at her again and fall in love.
Or that if they gave in to their passion, he’d give up wanting to do all that traveling and wish he could build a life with her.
Larissa clenched her fists and growled. Because believing all that crap had worked so well for her the first time.
She stopped mid-pace to stare at the counter where Jason had stripped her bare the first time last night. A tear trickled down her cheek. Talk about a sucky time to face reality. At least last time, she’d had Conner there to distract her. She should be grateful he was nearby for this round, too.
“Hey, looking for me?”
Larissa spun to face Jason, who stood there looking like sexy temptation, his boxers thankfully covering those tempting magic parts. He had a large, Maglite-type flashlight in one hand and a few bottles of water in his other.
“No,” she told him in a distant tone as she surreptitiously wiped her cheek and wished, not for the first time, that he’d made it easier and just stayed away. “I was just getting a feel for the floor footage. It made sense to get to know the area since I’ll be working here.”
His smile downgraded. “What’s wrong?”
“Why would anything be wrong?”
“Number one, you sound irritated. Number two, you’re talking all formal again. And three, you haven’t come over here to kiss me or slide your hand down my boxers. So something’s obviously bothering you.”
Larissa opened her mouth, wanting to point out that there was more between them than just sex. Then she closed it. Because, truthfully, there wasn’t.
“Nope,” she replied with a friendly, totally fake, smile. “Nothing’s wrong. Like I said, I was doing a little planning. Getting comfortable in the space, you know?”
“Comfortable?” Responding to her anger by dumping his armload of stuff on the counter, he turned to face her with his arms clamped over his deliciously bare chest. “Yeah. You seem really relaxed and mellow here.”
“I’m focusing on business. You know how that goes, don’t you? Of course you do,” she continued, finally losing her grip on that emotional control. “You know all about how important it is to put work first. You’re the king of business first, aren’t you?”
“Why would you be thinking business after the way we’ve spent the last few hours?” He narrowed his eyes, getting that same wigged-out look on his face that he’d had earlier, before he’d gone on his ice run. “Or was it only some twisted way of trying to talk me out of competing for the storefront here?”
Larissa’s lingering tears disappeared.
He actually thought that after everything that had happened between them, she’d be standing here trying to figure out how to screw him over? Her? Screw him over?
A voice in the back of her head pointed out that if she’d thought she could influence him, she’d probably have tried. Not on her knees perhaps, but still…
Yet more proof that Jason wasn’t the man for her. She grabbed onto that realization, and the stirring anger, and held on tight. She needed to emotionally step back and, as usual, he’d just given her the opening.
“So where were you off to?” she asked. “Still trying to find a way out?”
“Just exploring.”
“What’s left to explore? I’d have thought you’d seen it all by now.”
“Sometimes it’s fun to check it out again. See if you missed anything the first time.”
She rolled her eyes.
“I doubt you missed anything. There’s this small mall area, a lunchroom, janitor’s closet and storeroom. What the hell else is there to see?” she asked, ignoring the double entendre. “That was the third time you disappeared since we’ve been here.”
“Not that you were counting or anything?”
Glad the darkness hid her blush, Larissa just shrugged. “Hey, at least I can always count on you leaving.”
“Where the hell was I going to go?” he snapped, starting to sound impatient. “You said it yourself. We’re trapped.”
“Your own version of hell,” she quipped.
“You keep saying things like that. What’s it supposed to mean?” He punctuated the question with a fist in the air, like he was so frustrated that he had to hit something.
She rolled her eyes. “You’ve said it yourself. You can’t stand to stay in one place.”
“Adventures are pretty boring if they are done in one place, don’t you think?”
“Life should be more than an adventure, shouldn’t it?”
He gave her a penetrating look and shook his head. “What’s the deal? You’re taking my business so personally. Like it’s all about you or something.”
“Of course it’s not about me,” she defended. Then, before she knew it, the words escaped, “But if you really cared, you’d have given enough of a damn to actually consider me.”
Jason shook his head, making her feel even more pathetic. He was like an emotional magnifying glass, damn him. She pressed her hand to her stomach, suddenly wanting to throw up.
“I don’t get it, Larissa. You’ve got this insane inferiority complex. You’re smart. You’re sexy. You’re sweet and gorgeous and talented. But when you say shit like that, it’s like you’re insecure or something. What’s the deal?”
What? Like she was supposed to
drag out her bag of neurosis and spread it across the floor for him to poke through? Hardly. Larissa shook her head.
“If I was all that, why did you leave me?” she asked. Horrified, she clamped her lips together and wished the words back. Oh, God. That’s not what she’d meant to say. She’d never, ever meant to ask him that. Her pride, and her heart, didn’t need the agony.
“What?” She didn’t need the sputtering light of the candle to see the shock on his face. His tone was clear enough.
“You left,” she said quietly. She wanted to get up and run away instead. But where? She was trapped, both literally and figuratively. “You took my engagement ring and you walked out.”
“You went out with Conner,” he replied, for the first time sounding hurt instead of cockily irritated. “Then when I got pissed about it, you handed me the ring and told me to leave. What the hell was I supposed to do?”
The heat of her glare combined with the tears wetting her lashes made it feel like there was steam billowing from her eyes. Fury, fear, pain, they all mixed together to tangle her thoughts and make her want to scream.
She didn’t know what she’d wanted him to do. To convince her that they could make it? To refuse to let her end things? To freaking fight and prove he loved her enough to want to stick around?
Yeah. She’d wanted all of that. But she’d also wanted him to leave. To take the broken dreams of a perfect romance and constant heartache of failure and go. Because she’d been sure it would be easier to live, to succeed and believe in herself, if she wasn’t always waiting for him to realize she wasn’t enough for him and leave on his own.
Horrified at the realization, she clamped her lips tight together to keep from crying out.
“That’s all in the past,” she said quickly, thankful that her voice was only a little choked up. “I’m sorry I brought it up. Let’s talk about now, instead.”
“Now?” he said suspiciously.
“Sure.” She floundered, mentally flailing around trying to find something safe about now. Desperate, she glommed onto what he’d said earlier. “Let’s talk about the store and how much better your business would do if you set it up in a different location.”
“I knew it,” he said. “You do want me up to change my plans, don’t you?”
Larissa threw her hands in the air. “Of course you should change your plans. They’re crazy. They don’t fit your business model, nor this location.”
“My plans aren’t any crazier than yours. You’re trying to fluff up a pussycat and make it into a tiger. Your idea isn’t tiger-worthy, Larissa.”
She felt like a million needles were stabbing her in the heart.
“What kind of stupid thing is that to say?” she asked, blinking the black spots away.
Jason shook his head, then strode over to grab up his jeans and shove his legs into them. Avoiding her eyes, he yanked the zipper up with such force that Larissa winced, glad she had finished playing with the package, since he probably just damaged it.
“Forget it,” he finally said as he snapped his pants.
“No. You meant something with that stupid cat analogy. Maybe you can put it in English so it’s clear what you mean,” she challenged, shoving her chin out to keep it from trembling.
“Let’s not do this, Larissa.” He backed away, shaking his head and sounding tired. She ignored his tone, focusing instead on the fact that, as usual, he was running from her.
“Why? Because it might hurt our non-relationship to be honest with each other? Why don’t you tell me how you really feel? You know, like you never did when we were together.”
Well, that got his attention off his fly.
“Aren’t you the one hiding?” he asked, his tone somewhere between taunting and pitying. “Using this as yet another excuse to run away from your dream? You could be living the life you always talked about, but you keep holding out until the perfect time. The perfect scenario. How long is it going to take before you accept that life isn’t perfect?”
Her heart pounded so loud, she was surprised it didn’t echo through the empty room. Larissa stared, blinking a few times to process his question.
When the answer hit her, she felt like she’d been punched in the gut.
He was right. She looked around the opulent store and all of the doubts that she’d had about fitting in here, and at the mall, crashed over her. Her perfect dream was to take over the bookstore. But she’d set that dream aside for this one.
Why? Because she’d created that dream when she was with Jason. She realized that whenever she thought about the bookstore, her image was of herself, married to Jason. Waiting and nurturing her business while he traveled. Raising their children in that darling location after they’d bought the house next door to live in.
Jason was such an integral part of that future, she’d had to give it up when he was no longer a part of her life.
Larissa swallowed back the pain that lodged in her throat and gave Jason a nonchalant shrug.
“I know life isn’t perfect,” she said, forcing the words out. “But at least I’m smart enough to know what I’m capable of instead of diving in over my head because I’m too cocky to be realistic.”
“Does this circle back to your brilliant assessment of how I should be running my business?”
“You mean ruining your business?”
“How’s that unlike what you’re doing? You’re going to give up a great location where you’re already established, all to chase a bit of glitter and gloss?”
“At least I understand the wisdom of making a plan instead of diving in with both feet and crossing my fingers I don’t break my ankles when I hit bottom,” she snapped.
“Yep, that’s you. The queen of the plan. You’re so busy planning, you don’t live. You spend so much time dreaming about what could be, you never actually live in the moment,” he told her.
“What are you? A self-help guru all of a sudden?” she challenged, her shoulders stiffening defensively. “Live in the moment? Where do you get that crap?”
“From you,” he barked.
They both slammed their mouths shut so fast and tight, the sound of teeth snapping echoed in the room.
“You know this isn’t right for you. Your idea is cute. It’s romantic and fun and clever, yes. But it’s not high end. You can try and make it work here,” he said, waving his hand around the store. “But it’ll never fit in. Not really. Not the way you want it to.”
Was he talking about her business? Or their failed relationship? She’d never realized how alike the two things were. Larissa hated him for saying out loud all the things she’d been secretly worrying about.
“I’ll fit just fine,” she defended weakly. “At least I’ll do better than you would. You’re talking about putting a travel agency into a mall that caters to the wealthy and pampered. How does that tie in with the theme and message Cartright is trying to put together here?”
The air changed. Humid and tense turned to hot and ugly in the blink of Jason’s blue eyes. Larissa gulped, mentally kicking herself.
“Cartright. You mean Conner, don’t you?”
Oh shit. He was so pissed. Larissa wished she could hide somewhere, but there was nowhere to go. Between his clenched jaw, his narrowed eyes and the waves of fury emanating off of him, she figured this was a smart time to shift gears. Not to back pedal, but maybe to stop poking him in the eye with a sharp stick.
“It doesn’t matter,” she forced herself to say with a jerk of her shoulders. “That’s the past, right?”
“Right. The past. So I should just forget that while we were engaged, you spent the weekend yachting with another man?”
She was so freaking sick and tired of carrying that unfair blame that she finally snapped, giving a little scream and tugging on her hair. Damn him for not trusting her, even after all this time.
“Another man, and twenty other friends,” she said through clenched teeth.
Looking shocked—whether from her scream or
her words, she didn’t care—Jason frowned, crossing his arms over his still bare, and oh, God help her, still tempting chest.
“You never told me there were other people there,” he accused, stepping closer so he towered over her.
“You never asked,” she offered back, her tone so saccharine sweet, sugar could have dripped on her toes.
“I shouldn’t have had to ask. A simple sentence from you and we wouldn’t have had a fight.” He glared down at her, his hands now fisted on his hips. “We wouldn’t have split up.”
Larissa shook her head so fast, her humidity-dampened curls smacked her in the cheeks. “We’d have still spilt up. You didn’t trust me. You believed I’d cheat on you. Why should I bother to defend myself if you didn’t love me enough to have faith? Faith in me. Faith in us.”
FAITH? WHAT THE HELL was Larissa talking about? Jason shook his head, wondering how much long-term damage reading all those romance books had done. She actually thought he was supposed to have faith, even in the face of proof to the contrary? She really did believe in fairy tales.
“That’s such bullshit,” he replied, fury pounding through his head. He didn’t know if he wanted to believe her or wanted her to be lying.
“No,” she snapped. “That’s such reality. You never cared enough to trust me and you never cared enough to stick around. We had no future.”
Yeah, he’d rather she was lying. Lying would mean she’d had faith in him and was just trying to hurt him back. Lying would mean that she’d believed in them. That she’d really loved him.
“You could have come on the trips with me,” he added, struggling to pull his thoughts past the anger pounding against his temples. “I asked you plenty of times. It wasn’t my fault you had to mind the store or some other crappy excuse.”
“You think my reasons for not dropping everything in my life and running off to play Jane of the Jungle with you were crappy excuses?”
Jason shoved his hand through his hair, then gave a whatever shrug. He should have left it alone. So she was irritated. Trying to find out why only led to these dreaded emotional time-sucks, discussions.
