I’m serious. I pay your wages, not the firm. If I leave and you stay, you’ll probably be assigned to Anderson’s group. If that sounds like fun to you, fine. If not, get your ass up to Summer Lake.
She could picture his face as he thought it over. She didn’t think it would be a difficult decision. His reply confirmed it.
When do you need me there?
As soon as you can get there. Karen made all my bookings, get her to do the same for you.
When you say as soon as, do you mean Monday?
It was Friday now. Maybe he wanted a weekend to himself. She shouldn’t ask him to give that up.
Sure, if you want to wait until then.
I don’t! I didn’t want to appear overeager.
She laughed.
Be as eager as you like. I need you. She paused, wondering if Ryan would be sneak reading what she wrote. She added an oxo at the end just in case he was. Donovan would get the surprise of his life, but if he was going to move to the lake with her, then she probably needed to loosen up a bit with him anyway.
She had to laugh when his reply came in.
Err, oxo to you, too.
She put her phone away and looked out the window. She knew she shouldn’t have told Ryan that it was her boyfriend—that she had a boyfriend. But it had been an ego thing. The alternative would have been to admit that she didn’t have a boyfriend. That she hadn’t had a boyfriend since him. Sure, she’d dated. But nothing serious. She didn’t trust herself anymore.
Her childhood—hell, her whole life had taught her that it was better not to trust anyone, better not to get close to anyone because when you loved people they only hurt you and left you. She’d trusted Ryan—against her own better judgment. She wasn’t going to blame him, wasn’t going to claim that he’d made her trust him. It’d been her own choice and she’d gone willingly. She’d chosen to trust him even though she knew better. He’d said all the right things, made all the right promises, and then he’d destroyed her. She hated him for it, but it was her own damned fault.
But she didn’t want him to know just how badly being with him had destroyed her. Claiming to have a boyfriend would seem like she wasn’t such a total loser. She could get Donovan to play along. He wasn’t her type, but he was a good-looking guy. He was no Ryan, but … she blew out a sigh. No one was. And she shouldn’t even be thinking about him like that anyway.
He glanced at her when she sighed.
“Problems?”
She frowned, wondering what he meant. Oh! He thought there might be problems with her boyfriend? “No. Only that he’s not sure when he can get to the lake.”
She could see the little muscle in his jaw twitch.
“It should be before Monday, though,” she added with the sweetest smile she could muster.
~ ~ ~
Ryan’s hands balled into fists again. What was his problem? It was hardly surprising that she should be with someone. She was a beautiful woman. She was … He bit the inside of his cheek at the thought of her in bed with some other guy. And wasn’t that dumb?
What did it matter to him? It didn’t. It’d been seven years since he’d shared her bed. Of course, she’d had other men. He just couldn’t think about it. He’d worked his way through an army of female admirers in that time. But that was it—there had been many, but there’d never been a girlfriend, not someone he saw more than a handful of times.
What the hell was his problem anyway? It didn’t matter. None of it mattered. They’d agreed to close the door on the past. He had to see her, to treat her, as a polite stranger. Nothing more.
Chapter Twelve
Nine years earlier
“Are you going home to Texas once the exams are over?”
Leanne chewed on the end of her pen as she looked at Dan. They were sitting in the library, supposedly studying, but she couldn’t focus. Her mind kept drifting to Ryan. He’d been gone for ten days, and he wasn’t due back until Friday night. She should be grateful. She had a lot of studying to do. But she missed him.
“No. I’m staying here for the break this time. What are you doing?” Dan asked.
She made a face. That was the question she kept asking herself. She didn’t know.
Dan raised an eyebrow. “What’s Ryan going to do?”
She blew out a sigh. “I don’t know.”
“Haven’t you guys talked about it?”
She shrugged. Ryan had tried to. But she’d kept putting him off. She knew that he was only supposed to be here for the semester. When they’d started seeing each other—when they’d finally agreed after a couple of weeks of spending all their time together, that they were seeing each other and planned to keep doing so—he’d told her that he had to leave when the semester was over. She’d told him she was fine with that. It was for the best that they had a predetermined end point. It had made it easier for her to relax and enjoy spending time with him, without having to wonder where it might go. She’d thought that knowing it wasn’t going anywhere—that it couldn’t go anywhere—was for the best.
Dan poked her arm. “Where’d you go?”
She brought herself back to the present and smiled. “Nowhere. Exactly like we said.”
Dan gave her a puzzled look.
“Ryan and me. We said from the beginning that we were only going to be together for now—that we weren’t going anywhere.”
Dan laughed. “That was a long time ago. It’s obvious that the two of you are going somewhere. You’re great together.” His smile faded. “Or has he said that it’s over?”
“No. He hasn’t said anything … because I won’t let him.”
“Why?”
“Because I don’t want to face the fact that it’s over, but there’s nowhere for us to go. He has to leave. I have another year to do here. He has his weird job to go do somewhere. Lord knows where.”
“So, you guys aren’t even going to try?”
She shrugged again.
“You don’t want to?”
She blew out a sigh and met Dan’s gaze. “I’d never lie to you, Danno. Of course, I want to. But what we want and what we get are rarely the same thing.”
“You know I’m no expert on relationships, but I would have thought …”
Leanne smiled at him. “You don’t get a say. The closest you’ve come to a relationship is getting railroaded by Olivia.”
She felt bad when she saw a tinge of pink on his cheeks.
“You know I’m only messing with you. If you like her, you like her. Just watch yourself, okay? I don’t trust her.”
“She’s nice enough. Anyway, you’re deflecting. We were talking about you and Ryan.”
“We were. But what we should be doing is studying.”
Dan chuckled. “I was, until you interrupted.”
~ ~ ~
Ryan knocked on Callahan’s door on his way in but didn’t wait for permission to enter.