nice. Pleasant. Convenient.
Tepid.
They’d gotten along.
Shared interests.
Enjoyed the other’s company.
But never had there been even a fraction of the intensity she experienced with Levi. This man had been her friend.
And the reason his forcing her to choose between moving for his career and staying near her family had been so crushing was that it had felt like a betrayal from someone who should have understood.
So they’d both made the right decision. Marriage would have been a terrible mistake.
“I’ve been good, Eric. Busy. I’m trying to open my own studio, so I’m working even more than before, if you can believe it.”
That chagrined expression said he could.
Skimming over the details of her parents, she filled Eric in on her family. Primarily, the adventures of Ally pregnant, and the joy of her new nephew Dexter. When she’d finished, she found Eric watching her with something that might have been pity in his eyes.
Something she didn’t like. Crossing her arms, she took a step back.
“Sounds like the life we’d always talked about. Only it’s someone else’s.”
Deflated, she shook her head. “I just want different things these days. A studio of my own. Working toward that goal has taken up most of my time.”
“Sounds lonely.”
Lately it hadn’t felt that way. But once Levi left …
Eric set his mug on the counter between them. “Just take care of yourself, Elise. I want you to be happy. I want you to have the life we couldn’t have together.”
Something was going on with Elise.
Levi’d seen it the second she stepped into his loft. Sensed the tension and noted the way her smile didn’t match her eyes. All kinds of alarms had started sounding in his head as he braced for something he wasn’t going to want to hear. Something he wasn’t going to let happen. But then she’d walked up to him and, without a word, gone to work on his belt.
Not him.
Whatever it was. It wasn’t about him.
And that should have been enough—with any other woman it would have been. But this was Elise.
Stilling her hands at his belt, he lifted her face with a finger beneath her chin. “What’s going on?”
She blinked, as though surprised—frustrated that he’d noticed. Or frustrated that she’d let him notice.
“Talk to me. Maybe I can help.”
Levi waited for her to explain, but instead Elise stared down at the floor. “No. It’s been one of those days. At the coffee shop—no, before that …”
“Hey, come here.” He pulled her into his arms, drawing in the sweet scent of her shampoo, subtly overlaid with roasted grounds.
“I should have canceled … I just thought if I saw you tonight—”
She broke off with a weary shake of her head that made the center of his chest ache as if he’d taken a blow to it. “What did you think?”
“That you’d distract me. Do what you always do and make me forget about everything else.” With each word, her eyes darkened like a swollen rain cloud about to burst. “Just for a few hours.”
“That’s what you want? Me to make you forget?” He would have liked her to confide in him. To share her burden, but maybe the distance she kept was smarter than this playacting at intimacy he couldn’t seem to resist.
“It was stupid—”
Catching the soft curve of her cheek in his palm, Levi tipped her face to meet his. Gave in to a single second of wondering how this woman had the ability to affect him so completely differently than any woman he’d met before. And then pushed every ounce of his cocky arrogance to the fore as he intentionally crowded into her space.
“What, you don’t think I can do it?” Fingers trailing lightly up her hip, waist, and ribs to graze the outer swell of her breast, he lowered his voice to a slow, seductive taunt and spoke against the soft shell of her ear. “Guess I’ve got something to prove, then.”
“Come on. You need to eat.” Levi laid the boxes of pasta all’arrabbiata, fresh baked bread, and insalata caprese across the foot of the bed as Elise curled her legs beneath her at the center.
“I know. I just lose track when there are too many things on my mind.”
Forking up a spicy penne, Levi pulled a distraught frown. “Are you telling me I didn’t distract you enough?”
Hand up to him, she clutched the sheet to her chest, laughing. “I’m distracted! I swear.”
So distracted, it was a miracle she was sitting upright and not sleeping in a boneless heap of sated exhaustion.
“Yeah, well, just in case—” He rounded the bed, coming to sit behind her as he held the pasta to her mouth, waiting for her to bite.
Delicious.
“Let’s talk about your favorite subject. The studio. Do you want to tell me about the wood you think would be best in the studios or the quotes you got on the Pilates machines? I’m game, either way.”
A weight lifted as she drifted toward the comfort of her fantasies and plans—the productive escape she used to shut out all the things beyond her control.
Even Levi saw that she’d turned talk about the club into some kind of security blanket.
“I don’t know.” She shook her head, wondering again what she would do if the studio plans fell through. She’d put everything into this one, abstract idea.
Her breath came short. “Oh, God, what if the loan doesn’t go through?”
Fingertips trailed down her spine and then the flat of his heel rubbed low across her back. “It will. Don’t worry.”
“It’s just that I can’t even imagine what I’m going to do if it doesn’t.” Peering over her shoulder at Levi stretched across the bed, she confessed, “I haven’t got another plan. I mean, it’s not as though I won’t have work. But there’s no next step. No fallback plan. I’ve put everything into this studio and suddenly I feel like if it doesn’t go through, I’m going to be left with nothing.”
Suddenly nothing held a whole new meaning for her. When things had ended with Eric she’d been upset. She’d felt abandoned. But even just twelve months ago things had been different with her parents than they were now—she’d looked into her father’s eyes and, once in a while, she’d still seen him looking back. Today, even her mother was shutting her out.
And then there was Levi. She’d never
