Her lips hitching to the side in a cute little pucker was the only hint that she’d heard him.
He paused in the doorway. He hated to leave things like this. “Last night,” he started, not entirely knowing how he intended to finish. Last night was fun. Last night was just the start. Last night—
“It was one night,” she said.
He watched with a sinking stomach as she stiffened, her chin tilting up in stubborn defiance. “You asked for one night and you got it. Now I expect you to honor your part of the bargain and leave me alone.”
He stared. Well, crap. He’d seriously backed himself into a corner. If he pursued her now, he’d be breaking his own word. But if he didn’t…he’d be breaking his own heart.
Not to be too sentimental about it, but it was the truth. He hadn’t been kidding when he’d used the L-word. Love, love, love. He’d never used it before and part of his teasing repetition earlier had been because he’d been testing it out, savoring the feel of it on his tongue.
He was in love for the first time in his life.
And she was kicking him out.
Crap.
This was not ideal.
She was gnawing on her lip, but she didn’t move and she didn’t say anything to make him think she might be wavering on her decision to kick him out.
She liked him, at the very least. She might not be in love with him—not yet, at least—but there was no way she could deny this attraction, this chemistry, this connection.
He gave her one last look that may have bordered on pleading.
Nope. His woman was not budging.
With a sigh, he relented. “Okay, I’m going, but only because I said I would.”
She lifted one brow at that inanity.
“You know what I mean,” he grumbled. “I’ll leave, but I’m not happy about it.”
She gave a little shrug as if to say she didn’t care. But she did care…
She just didn’t know it yet.
Or maybe that was just a desperate hope he was clinging to. But did it really matter? Whether it was insane optimism or the truth, it was the only thing he had to cling to so he embraced it wholeheartedly.
One hand on the doorjamb, he gave her a last lingering look, hoping and praying that giving her space was the best way to get her to see she wanted him too. It had to be since, at this particular moment, it was his only option.
Unless he could find some sort of loophole…
He shoved that thought to the side for a later time. Right now, the clock was ticking on his time in Kat’s presence. “I’m leaving,” he said again. “But I’ll always be here if you—” He cut himself off before he could say “need me.” She’d made it clear she didn’t need him, even though he clearly needed her. “If you want me,” he finished instead.
He thought he saw a flinch before she turned her head.
Biting back a sigh, he added, “Take care of yourself, Kat. And when you’re ready to listen to your instincts, I’ll be waiting for you.”
Eleven
I’ll be waiting for you.
Kat stabbed a fork into her salad with enough force to tip the bowl, sending croutons flying.
“Whoa there, chickadee.” Caleb brushed some crumbs from his lap as Kat signaled the waitress to get another side of croutons.
And maybe French toast.
What was she thinking ordering a salad on a morning like this? First of all, it was a celebratory brunch in honor of Yvette’s successful opening night. Second, she was stewing.
Celebrating or moping, salad was the wrong option. It was neither a guilty pleasure nor a comfort food.
Yvette sipped on her coffee as she studied her. “What’s wrong?”
Kat stabbed at the salad some more. “I ordered wrong.”
“Uh huh.” Caleb gave Yvette a wide-eyed meaningful look that Kat caught.
“What? Stop looking at each other like that.”
Caleb took a deep breath and shoved his plate to the side so he could cross his arms on the table and give her a terribly patronizing stare. “Come on, Kitty Kat, tell your best friends what’s wrong.”
Her nostrils flared at the old, hated nickname. “I don’t have a problem.” She stabbed the fork in his direction. “And never again call me Kitty Kat.”
He smirked and Yvette made a noise behind her napkin that sounded suspiciously like a smothered laugh.
Kat turned on her. “Seriously? You’re laughing at me now too?”
Her friend’s eyes widened in surprise and Kat realized that yes, that had in fact come out way too harsh. “Sorry,” she muttered. “I’m having a bad morning.”
They stared at her in silence and she knew that they were waiting for her to continue. Habit told her to shut up. She was the problem solver, not the problem haver. She was supposed to be the one who had her act together.
She stared at one of the croutons as a stinging sensation suddenly made it imperative that she blink frequently and rapidly.
“What is she doing?” Caleb whispered to Yvette.
“I don’t know,” Yvette whispered back. Then, to Kat, her voice turned so sweet it was almost unrecognizable. “Kat? Honey? Is everything okay?”
Kat didn’t answer. She couldn’t. Her throat was closing up on her and there was no point in denying the inevitable.
She was going to cry.
Oh crap. Crap, crap, crap.
“Maybe her contacts are irritating her,” Caleb offered.
“She doesn’t wear contacts,” Yvette reminded him. They were both talking like she wasn’t there, and she was grateful. She just needed a moment.
“How have you been friends with her for so long and not know that she doesn’t wear contacts?”
Kat stopped listening as the conversation devolved into a squabble that was familiar and comforting, but also irritating in the extreme. She was having a crisis here, people! But they didn’t know that because she had yet to say a word. Her eyes were still fixed on a stupid rogue crouton as if staring hard enough would make the crying sensation go away, along with the rest of her problems.
She heard their bickering come to an end as Caleb shushed Yvette. “Yve, quiet. Look.”
Kat could feel their eyes on her, concerned and wary.
She was the sane one, dang it. She was the business major. The one with a stable career.
That thought made a short laugh escape her, but to her horror it came out as a choked sob.
“Oh my gosh.” Yvette scooted her chair closer so she could wrap an arm around her. “She’s crying,” she hissed to Caleb.
Kat heard his chair scooting closer too and soon his head was level with the table as he tried to see her face. “Kat? Um… Do you maybe want to talk about it?”
She shook her head. But then words started spilling out of her as if of their own accord. They tumbled out in a jumble of emotions, and tears came along with them. “I quit my job…And he left.” She shook her head. “I told him to leave. How am I going to pay rent?” She caught a sob and sniffled instead. “And when am I going to see him again?”
The last part came out with a wail that had Caleb and Yvette staring at her in horror.
She slapped her hands over her face to avoid anyone seeing her cry—although, it was probably too little too late for that.
Yvette ended up pulling her hands down, and what she saw surprised her.
Her friends were still watching her with concern, but they no longer wore the slack-jawed looks of horror and shock. Surprisingly, they looked…capable. Like they were all business.
“First thing’s first. What happened with your job?” Caleb asked.
Yvette shot him a look of disgust. “This is obviously about the guy, Caleb.” Turning back to Kat, she softened her voice. “What happened with the hottie last night?”
Kat picked up her napkin and started shredding it, the methodical motions giving her something to focus on as she talked. At first the talking didn’t come easy—she was not the one who crie
d over brunch. She just wasn’t. But Bryce’s words from the night before came back to her. Maybe he’d had a point about her friends. Maybe it was time she let them help her. They’d all grown up, and while they still might not be the most responsible people in the world, they had just as much life experience as she did.
Heck, when it came to romance, they had a whole lot more experience.
So she opened up, slowly but surely. With difficulty at first, but it got easier as her friends pulled on threads until the whole story unraveled.
Once she was done, the full story was out there. How she’d quit, and how she’d given him one night to get him off her back, and how he’d left that morning after telling her he loved her. Loved her. The word still stung.
He doesn’t love me. He can’t.
“Why not?” Caleb asked.
Her head snapped up. She hadn’t even realized she’d said that part out loud. But Yvette and Caleb were frowning at her and she realized her inner monologue had not been silent.
“Why not?” Yvette echoed Caleb’s question.
Kat stared at them both. Surely they weren’t serious. “Because… because he can’t.”
They exchanged a look and she wanted to smack them both for their ill-concealed amusement.
“Yes, but why not?” Caleb asked.
“It’s crazy,” she said.
“He didn’t seem crazy,” Caleb said. “He seemed like a cool guy.”
“He is a cool guy.” It came out automatically and she instantly regretted it. “Cool but crazy. Obviously.” She turned to Yvette. “Right?”
Yvette’s brows came together in a dubious expression. “I don’t know, Kat. I’m with Bryce and Caleb on this one. Just because he knows what he wants—”
“I know what I want,” she interjected.
“No, sweetie,” Yvette said with a hand pat. “You know what you’ve planned.”
Kat blinked at her. Was there a difference?
Yvette nodded as if she’d asked the question aloud. Oh crap, had she been thinking out loud again?
“There’s totally a difference,” Yvette said.
Well, she supposed that answered that. But she wasn’t convinced Yvette was right. “I planned for things I wanted when I wanted them.”
Caleb laughed. “I think you just made Yve’s point for her. You planned for things you wanted when you wanted them.”
She frowned at her ludicrously beautiful friend. “Why are you repeating my words with weird emphasis?”
He rolled his eyes to the ceiling. “That’s all in the past tense. You made those plans years ago, but life changes. Surprises occur. Sometimes you meet someone when you least expect it.”
Yvette popped one of the stray croutons into her mouth. “I think what he means is, sometimes plans are made to be broken.”
“Not mine,” Kat muttered, but it came out with little energy. Her body felt sapped of life—probably exhaustion after another all-nighter talking and laughing and…ugh.
Why did he have to be so much fun to be around?
Yvette and Caleb shared a look that made her weary. It also made her slightly alarmed. Because they were giving her the look that she typically gave to them. The ‘oh, sweetie, you have so much to learn’ look.
She knew that look well. Heck, she’d patented that look.
Shifting in her seat, she suddenly felt like a naughty child. Was this how they felt when she lectured them on keeping tabs of their checking accounts and paying off their exorbitant credit card bills on time?
She’d have to think about that later. For now, she was being lectured… And it wasn’t pleasant.
“Look, Kat, don’t take this the wrong way but…” Caleb started.
Kat cringed. Nothing good ever followed those words.
“You’re kind of rigid,” Yvette finished, wincing as if that would soften the blow. “And not in a good way.”
This was not news. But it was also not welcome. “Being rigid, as you put it, is how I’ve made a good career for myself,” she said. “It’s how I’ve managed to afford rent on a place of my own. It’s how I’ve kept my love life from being a complete and total disaster.”
Unlike you two. She didn’t say it, but she was fairly certain they’d read the not-so-subtle subtext there. They exchanged knowing grins that confirmed it.
“Maybe you’re right,” Yvette said, but her tone said the opposite. “Maybe Caleb and I are not the right people to give romantic advice.”
“We’re clearly not experts,” Caleb confirmed with a nod.
Kat raised one brow. That was putting it mildly. Yvette couldn’t seem to stop falling for bad-boys and Caleb was forever in search of his dream girl who was too perfect to actually exist.
“But we are experts on living,” Yvette said. Her cute pixie features turned just a touch haughty as she picked up her coffee and took another sip. “Our lives might be messy and complicated—”
“You can say that again,” Caleb interjected.
“But we’re out there,” Yvette said. “We’re meeting people and having new experiences.”
Kat gaped at her. “And I’m not?”
The wide-eyed look of disbelief they both gave her was apparently her answer.
“You couldn’t even enjoy a free, all-expense-paid trip to a fancy mountain lodge because it was outside your comfort zone,” Caleb said.
She frowned. “I hate nature, you know that.”
“When’s the last time you’ve even been in nature?” Yvette continued before she could answer. “My guess is, your last experience in nature was in Girl Scouts, am I right?”
Kat didn’t answer. She was right. “That doesn’t mean—”
“You had a bona fide hottie—a super successful billionaire hottie, I might add—wanting nothing more than to spend time with you at that lodge,” Yvette started, disbelief obvious in her voice.
“And I let him,” she bit back, not without a hint of pride. See? She had experiences. She did things.
“Yes, you did,” Caleb said, his tone so condescending she expected it to be accompanied with a pat on the head. “But I think Yvette’s point is that you only let him in when you thought you’d never see him again. It was only okay because he was compartmentalized.”
Yvette gave an exaggerated nod. “My point exactly. He was nice and safe in the work retreat bubble… until he wasn’t.”
This was true. She couldn’t deny that. She’d been happy as a clam to have him in her life, as long as him being in her life didn’t affect her actual life.
Caleb grimaced as if it pained him to agree. “You did kind of flip out when he showed up in New York.”
Her jaw dropped as she stared at him. “That’s because he showed up to announce that he’d bought my company.” She shook her head. Did no one else see how crazy that was?
They stared at her blankly. Apparently not.
“For me,” she added, her eyes wide with expectation.
“It was pretty over the top,” Caleb conceded.
“But also?” Yvette’s voice was tiny. “It was kind of sweet.”
Caleb tipped his head from side to side as if deliberating. As if the sanity of Bryce buying her company was somehow up for debate. “It was kinda romantic,” he eventually said.
“I can’t believe I’m hearing this.” She shook her head, trying to block them out. She didn’t want them taking his side. These were her friends, dang it, they were supposed to have her back.
“I had to quit my job,” she said.
“A job you hated,” Yvette pointed out.
Kat frowned at her.
“Something tells me you could have found a way to work out your sexy boss situation if you’d really wanted to stay in that position,” Caleb said. Then he gave her a wicked grin. “No pun intended.”
She ignored his juvenile humor and the crass innuendo. Honestly, his words had thrown her argument off track. It wasn’t like she’d been happy there. Heck, she hadn’t been happy in sales
for a long time. Like she’d told Bryce, she loved being successful, doing something she was good at. But selling stuff she either didn’t believe in or was a construct of the human mind like time?
Not really doing it for her.
That whole conversation with Bryce had gotten her thinking, and a niggle of an idea had taken hold but she’d been too focused on brooding over Bryce to pursue it.
Brooding over the memory of his walking out of her apartment, to be precise. Just the memory was enough to cut her to the quick. Her breath caught in her chest and she drew in air too quickly, like she was winded.
Once again that stupid stinging feeling had her batting her eyelashes in a way that might have been considered sexy if her nose wasn’t also running and she didn’t have to press her lips together like a weirdo to keep from sobbing.
Yeah, this probably wasn’t sexy at all, come to think of it.
Yvette’s voice temporarily distracted her from thoughts of Bryce exiting stage left. “Didn’t you say he worked out a way that you two could still work together? He wouldn’t be your supervisor or anything and—”
“Yeah, yeah, I get it,” she cut in rudely. “He tried to make up for it and maybe—just maybe—if I’d really wanted to stay, I could have.”
Her friends grinned at her despite her grouchy tone. Man, she hated to be wrong. More than that, she hated it when they were right. But in this moment, she needed them to know what was wrong with her and what she should do, because like it or not, this time she was the one with the problem and she had no idea how to fix it. “What do I do, you guys?”
Her words seemed to temporarily stun them into silence.
But not for long.
“Do you like this guy?” Caleb asked, his voice oddly serious. Grave, even. She’d only ever heard him use this voice on television, like when his character was about to announce that the heroine’s sister had just been diagnosed with amnesia or something.
She found herself focusing on the latest storyline and how little sense it made. It was far easier to focus on plot holes than on his question. A seemingly simple question, but it was one she’d studiously avoided asking herself for some time now.
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