Victoria Dahl – Strong Enough to Love (страница 2)

She waved Grace into the truck, vaguely remembering the invitation now. She’d been forgetful lately. Somehow she’d been shrinking further and further into herself, seeing everything through a camera filter, pretending that was life.

But it wasn’t life. Not yet anyway. Maybe she’d better give it the old college try before she gave up completely. Maybe she should flirt with a few cowboys and see what happened. Then again, the last time she’d had sex it had been so resoundingly mediocre it had turned her off for months. Thank God Mitch hadn’t been friends with any of her friends. She’d ignored his calls and never seen him again.

But it had been almost a year now. Eve grimaced and squeezed her eyes shut for a moment. She couldn’t just be celibate forever. Could she?

Not yet. Grace was right. Eve hadn’t put in the time yet. So she’d go to the party and maybe she’d even talk to a few men. For an hour, tops. Just to say she had. Then she’d hurry home to feel sorry for herself in a hot bath.

A few more years of that kind of effort and she could respectfully retire into spinsterhood and never date again.

* * *

OR SHE COULD give up on dating starting tonight.

She couldn’t imagine where Mitch had come from or why he was at Jenny’s party, but there was no avoiding him, because he’d cornered her near the doorway of the tiny apartment and he was making a concerted effort to reconnect.

This town was too damn small. She’d have to be more careful. If she wanted to scratch an itch, she should do it with men who’d just come to town to ski. They moved on in the spring like migrating wildebeests.

“Oh, there’s Jenny!” she said, latching on to the perfect excuse to escape. “I need to say happy birthday!”

“Wait.” Mitch reached out as if he’d grab her arm, but pulled back before he touched her. He looked down at his own hand before he let it drop. “I had a really good time when we went out, Eve. I thought you did, too.”

“I did,” she said in a rush. “Of course I did.”

“Right. So I think maybe the...after...was maybe slightly awkward?”

Oh, God. Eve felt her face heating. No. This wasn’t happening. She shook her head.

“You didn’t call me later, and... Well, I think I mentioned I’d just gotten out of a relationship, and it had been a while since I’d dated.”

She shook her head again, more frantically this time, and held up her hands in desperation. “Mitch, it’s okay. It was fine. It just wasn’t the right connection.” She wished she could melt through the wall and be outside and free.

“But what if it was? When we got to your place, I was nervous. I admit it. We both were. But before that, I had a great time. You’re funny and smart. It felt natural.”

She nodded, trying to give in just enough to give herself room to escape.

“I’d really like to see you again,” he pressed. “We could get to know each other a little better this time. Not rush things.”

She wanted to say no. She wanted to dodge to the side and dart past him to break free of this awful awkwardness. Surely he could feel it. But he wanted to go on a date? How could he even ask?

Then again...as much as she wanted to say no, she had to admit that the guy was brave. And up-front. And honest. That alone stopped her mouth from forming the word no.

He was also right. Everything else had been nice, which was how they’d ended up in bed together after their second date. A terrible mistake. She’d remembered the problem as him being awkward, but she couldn’t deny his claim that they’d both been nervous. He’d managed to power through and finish the job. Eve most decidedly had not.

She tried to relax her face when she realized she was cringing at the memory of that uncomfortable goodbye. She’d regretted that night so much, but mostly for reasons that had nothing to do with him.

He watched her patiently, one eyebrow tipped up in slightly sardonic awareness of how strange this was. “Maybe?”

“Maybe. Yes. Okay,” she stammered. “Call me. Maybe we can meet for lunch this time instead of dinner?”

His face broke into a slow, wide smile, and Eve remembered why she’d agreed to go out with him in the first place.

“Great,” he said simply. “That sounds great.”

She wished she could say that she felt the same, but at least she wasn’t hoping for the ground to open up and swallow her anymore. In fact, when he excused himself a few minutes later, he left her laughing with a self-effacing joke. Maybe another date wouldn’t be so bad. Maybe she’d been too quick to dismiss him.

Grace, who was making a beeline for her from across the room, would definitely say Eve was being too picky. They’d had plenty of discussions on the subject. Grace was of the decided opinion that Eve was single and successful and should be reaping the rewards of that the way a single and successful man would. Eve agreed in principle. In reality, the idea left her sadly cold.

“Hey, boss man,” Grace said. “Are you chatting up the hotties?”

Eve couldn’t help her smile. What the hell. She may as well embrace the situation. “Maybe.”

Grace’s eyebrows rose in surprise. “Really?”

“I’m not completely hopeless, you know. I can pick up men and...do the hookups, or whatever you call it.”

Grace threw back her head and laughed. “Oh, my God. You’re such a dweeb.”

“I know.”

“But you look hot.”

“Yeah, I took my hair out of its ponytail. Pretty sexy.”

“I’m serious,” Grace insisted. She ran her hand down Eve’s hair. “I’m glad you finally gave in to my coloring skills. You look brighter. Not just your hair, though. I’m glad you’re starting to relax a little.”

Yes, she was finally letting go. She’d fought her life for the past couple of years, white-knuckling it through a sorrow she hadn’t even earned. It wasn’t so hard anymore. It wasn’t so damn lonely. “I need to find Jenny.”

Grace pointed her in the right direction, and Eve set off to give Jenny a hug. She’d been here for thirty minutes. She’d agreed to a date. So she gave herself permission to escape as soon as she’d spoken to the birthday girl. She even gave Mitch a friendly wave as she left.

Maybe the chemistry wasn’t there, but when was it ever? She was thirty-six. She’d had two careers and lived in four states. And in all that time, there’d been only one man, one out of the hundreds she’d met as an adult, who’d wrenched her heart and set every nerve in her body vibrating.

Eve walked slowly down the dark street, shoving her hands into her pockets to pull her jacket closer against the cold.

She couldn’t keep looking for that, wanting that. Hell, maybe even that hadn’t been real. They’d never acted on it. Despite the countless nights she’d spent imagining his hands on her, nothing had ever happened, because he’d been too honorable, or they both had. So maybe all that chemistry would’ve evaporated the same way her mild attraction to Mitch had.

She nodded, lying to herself. It might’ve been awful with Brian. Sure. So why did tears spring to her eyes at the loss?

“Stop it, you idiot,” she muttered, blinking back the stupid emotions. “You gave that up.” She had. On New Year’s Eve, she’d vowed not to spend one more night crying for him. Not one more tear. She didn’t have a right to them.

Brian had been her boss. Her mentor. And her best friend. But what he’d been more than anything else was someone else’s husband.

And while she hated him for having the strength to walk away, she was so thankful for it that it made her stomach hurt. She’d never touched him, and that was her greatest regret and her best truth, all rolled into one.

“Fuck chemistry,” she whispered as she turned off the dark residential street and walked toward the cheerfully lit square that was the center of Jackson. Her studio was one street off the square, but still part of the lively tourist district, and she adored the little apartment overhead. If she hadn’t had that, she’d have holed up in some secluded cabin long ago and lost track of the outside world completely.

But here, even on this cool night in the middle of the off-season, people still walked along the western boardwalks of the town, fading in and out of the light cast by old-fashioned lamps.

Even on her street, a man stood in front of the bright windows of her studio, absorbed in a wall-size photo of the Tetons that she’d taken last year. She loved that picture, even though it wasn’t as vivid as the others behind it. She’d taken it in late fall, when all the color had already fallen from the trees. The whole expanse of land looked dead, but the mountains still rose up, solid and unmoving and dominating the world. She didn’t mind the browns and blacks and greys. She didn’t need the more flagrant shades of autumn to capture the beauty of the place. It stood on its own.

Apparently the man at the window liked it, too.

She was trying to decide if she should speak to him or just sneak past to the narrow staircase beyond when something about the line of his jaw caught her eye. The pace of her boots hitting hollow against the wood slowed. In that moment, she wished she’d worn quieter shoes, because she didn’t want him aware of her. She wanted to sneak past. She wanted time to get a good look at him and see—