Total pages in book: 72
Estimated words: 66453 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 332(@200wpm)___ 266(@250wpm)___ 222(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 66453 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 332(@200wpm)___ 266(@250wpm)___ 222(@300wpm)
I wondered if she knew how much it was costing me, too.
I told myself it was for the best. If she’d come, if she’d offered, I wouldn’t have been able to stop myself from taking. And then we’d really be fucked. You didn’t sleep with a woman like Selena casually. She wasn’t like Molly or any of the others who wanted the same thing that I did – a few hours of pleasure without the dragging pull of commitment.
At least, that was what I had wanted in the past. But then, I’d never waited hours for a woman who said she wasn’t coming, so who the hell knew what I wanted anymore? I just knew two things for certain – one was that with every minute that passed, she wasn’t coming. And the other was that I desperately wanted her to. It was a shocking, sobering realization, and I didn’t know what to do with it. I started to call Molly, but the thought of kissing her instead of Selena created a cold, heavy feeling in my chest.
It wouldn’t work.
None of my usual tricks would work.
They’d been cultivated to scratch an itch, to get through a lonely night. But they weren’t a substitute for this near obsession. This overwhelming need for a woman I shouldn’t want. A woman who had realized she shouldn’t want me either.
I squeezed the stem of my empty wine glass so tightly I wondered if it would snap and walked back inside. We had to do something about one another. I just didn’t know what.
I figured I wouldn’t see Selena in the office on the Monday and Tuesday before the holiday. She hadn’t taken leave, but she’d been with the company long enough she could work from home a few days a week if she wanted to. If she wanted to say, avoid someone.
So, it was an interesting shock to my system when I got to work at 7:30 am and found her waiting for me in the seventh-floor lobby. She was sitting closer to Albert’s office, but I knew it was a ruse. Albert frequently stayed late, but he never came in before nine. She was waiting for me.
And she had coffee.
“Peace offering,” she said, holding out a cup.
I glanced up and down the floor, making sure we were alone. Unsurprisingly for the short week, most people had chosen to work from home. I stepped closer and took the coffee. Her sudden appearance had my blood pumping fast, like I’d jogged up the seven flights of stairs instead of taking the elevator. “We’re not at war, Selena.”
“No, but we’re not at peace either.” Her brown eyes were troubled. There were faint shadows underneath them again. I hoped they were from staying up late, regretting her decision not to come, and not from Mrs. Kloss running her ragged.
I couldn’t disagree with that. I hadn’t had a moment of peace since Selena had come into my life with her refreshingly sweet beauty, an almost reluctant talent for this job, and fierce dedication to the people she cared about. Every time I thought I had her figured out, I saw a new side of her.
I led her into my office. Her eyes went to the conference table, the place she’d told me she was a virgin and then crawled into my lap and nearly undid me. Wisely, we chose to sit in the chairs across from my desk. I sipped my coffee while she pried the lid off hers to let it cool.
“We both knew it was a bad idea.” I kept my voice low, even though there was no one else on the floor. “You did the right thing.”
Selena blew billowing steam off the surface of her coffee. “It didn’t feel like the right thing.”
It hadn’t felt that way to me either, but nothing did. It wasn’t right to do all the things I wanted to do to her without being able to offer her a commitment. Hell, I couldn’t even take her to this fucking Christmas ball she was working so hard on. She was my employee, my nephew’s ex, and too damn young for me.
But even if all of those things felt true, they didn’t feel right.
I wanted her. She was the first woman I’d ever met who made me feel the constraints of my life. Who made me want to change it so that she could have a place in it. If she’d just been my employee, I could have figured something out. I could have set her up with another company, or we could have worked with HR. But she wasn’t just that, she was Jake’s ex and best friend.
“I can’t offer you anything,” I said finally.
“I know.” Selena took a deep breath. “I thought about that all night because I’m not the kind of girl who doesn’t want anything. When I care about someone, I want them. I want to know their friends, their families. I want to be able to introduce them to mine. I want that…” she hesitated, looking for the right word, “...comfort. And I don’t know if I’ll ever be comfortable with you.”