“When she looked excited about filming a town meeting,” she admitted. “That is not a young woman who is interested in civics. You came to the same conclusion.”
It had been cool that they’d been on the same page. In sync.
“Hey, Zep, now that you’re the animal man, can we talk about the snake population out near my place?” A man in overalls tried to stop them before they hit the doors that led out of the main auditorium.
“He’s got paperwork to do,” Roxie insisted. “You can call him during his office hours.”
“I have office hours?” Zep asked.
“You’re going to. I assume you’re going to accept the job? I didn’t want to speak for you back there.” She was restless, and a million questions were going through her head.
She’d ensured that he had a good job, one that he would enjoy, one that would fulfill him, and she was happy about it.
But didn’t it ensure that when she left, he would want to stay here?
The conversation with her dad weighed on her, and she couldn’t stay behind and pretend like her head wasn’t going a million miles a minute.
She could go back to New York. She could potentially have her old job again. Well, her dad hadn’t said that in so many words, but she could work toward it. She could basically erase the last couple of years and start over.
But the idea of not being with Zep made her ache inside. She didn’t want to ache. She didn’t want to hurt. She wanted this to be simple, and sex was simple.
She would get him in bed and not let up until she could breathe again. In the morning, things would be clearer. She wouldn’t be thinking about how nice it had felt to sit with his family and feel perfectly comfortable, like she was one of them. She wouldn’t think about how much fun she’d had solving a stupid case and standing in the middle of the town hall and feeling like she belonged.
“Hey.” He tugged on her hand, stopping her. “I thought we were supposed to do paperwork.”
“I don’t want to do paperwork right now, Guidry.”
His jaw tightened. “I don’t like it when you call me that. My name is Zep.”
She felt her eyes roll because the last thing she wanted to do was fight with him or be reminded of how she disappointed him. “Zep, I would like to go home now. I would like to go to bed.”
“I think we should probably talk about this. A whole lot of crazy stuff happened in there.”
He didn’t want to go to bed? He wanted to bask in the approval of the town? God, did she have a right to keep him from that? But she couldn’t. She stopped because she was doing what he’d accused her of before—using him for stress relief, and he would be upset to find that out again. She schooled her expression before replying. “It’s cool. You probably should go back in there and be with your family. I’m going to head home. I can walk.”
The last thing she wanted to do was walk. Walking would lead to thinking, and she didn’t want to think at all. If she walked, she would have to pass Dixie’s, where she had coffee most mornings, and consider the fact that the coffee in New York wasn’t going to taste the same and she’d just gotten to where she liked the coffee here, and where would she find jambalaya the way Remy made it and . . .
“Hey.” Zep was suddenly standing over her, his deep blue eyes staring down. “What’s the matter?”
“Nothing.” She’d played this all wrong. She should have followed her rule book and stayed backstage. She shouldn’t have followed her stupid heart and pretended like she was one of them. “Like I said, go back to your family.”
He glanced around. “Come with me. I know a way out.”
She knew one, too. It was the door. The one he was leading her away from. “I can find my way home.”
He turned down a hall and his grip was strong enough that if she wanted to break it, she would have to fight. That would draw a crowd, and then she would be the subject of gossip yet again. Maybe he knew a back way out, but he didn’t have to come with her.
“I told you, I can make it on my own, Guidry.”
He stopped in the middle of the empty hall, the voices from the meeting now hushed by distance. “And I told you not to call me Guidry.”
He pressed her against the wall and loomed over her, and just like that, she was back to wanting to get in his pants and forget about the rest of the world.
But there was a problem with that. She put her hands up, meeting his chest and keeping a careful distance between them. “Guidry’s your name.”