She hated that version of him, the falseness of it all. But what else could she do? He was right. They needed to bury this so they could work together. If they kept arguing every time they saw each other, she’d just end up pissed off, frustrated…and completely turned on. Something about their clashing did it for her. So the best defense was treating him as if he were a benign colleague. “Thank you, Lane. I appreciate you walking them over.”
“You’re welcome.”
“Have a great day.”
“Right.” A little smile touched his lips, and he tucked his hands in his pockets. “Polite looks so wrong on you, doc. But I appreciate the effort.” He turned for the door. “Enjoy the cupcakes.”
He strode out without looking back, giving her an unimpeded view of his wide shoulders and well-sculpted backside. The door clicked shut behind him before she’d gotten her fill.
Elle sagged back in her chair, all the breath whooshing out of her. God, she hated that guy.
And still wanted the hell out of him.
She sighed. What else was new? The scoreboard was only getting worse. Poor taste in men: three. Elle: zero. Story of her life.
She reached out and grabbed a cupcake from the box, pink teeth, calories, and sharing with the break room be damned.
That night, Elle picked at a kale salad, trying to offset the four cupcak
es she’d managed to polish off at work, as she flipped through movie stations. But she wasn’t really hungry and she was looking through the TV instead of at it. Maybe she was tired.
No. She stabbed a slice of tomato. She was restless and annoyed and…lonely.
Lonely. The word rattled around inside of her and made her stomach turn.
She set aside her salad and reached for her glass of wine instead. Usually she was one-hundred percent fine with being alone. Growing up, she’d gotten accustomed to it. Her parents had both worked long hours, and she was always left home and responsible for her younger sister, Nina, when the housekeeper left for the day. Then once Nina hit her preteens, Elle didn’t even have that on her plate. Nina was always out at a friend’s house or a sleepover. The girl had popularity as a part of her DNA and had never been short on invitations. Elle had been less outgoing and had spent most of those nights reading, studying, or working on some hobby or another. So flying solo was her default setting.
But lately, after Donovan, and particularly since her night with Lane, her evenings had felt vaguely empty and…depressing. She took a measured sip from her glass and turned that word over in her head. Depression. It was an ugly, scary word. One she was far too familiar with. After her marriage had fallen apart, she’d been walloped with a bout of it that had lasted for months and had left her feeling dangerously hollow.
She’d confided in a friend from med school when things had gotten bad enough that she was finding it hard to get out of bed and do her job. She hadn’t wanted to die. But she just didn’t care about…anything. She’d overslept. She’d barely eaten or had eaten everything in sight. She’d only put in the bare minimum effort at work. Being cheated on by her husband was bad enough. She hadn’t wanted to add unemployed to her list. And she certainly hadn’t wanted to give her ex the satisfaction of knowing he’d broken her. She hated knowing that she could be broken by someone. That she’d allowed herself to be that vulnerable. So she’d decided to do what she could to try to fix it.
Ainsley, the friend she’d told her secret to, had suggested therapy and meds. Elle had sucked at talk therapy. Doctors were notoriously bad patients, and she had been beyond difficult. She’d quit a few weeks in. But the prescription had helped, and once she was able to get some of her energy back, she’d forced herself to start eating right and exercising again, and had thrown herself into her work and research. Eventually, it’d gotten her out of the hole, and all that hard work had afforded her an opportunity to interview here at The Grove—a job she’d wanted for a long time.
Since then, she’d been hypervigilant about not letting herself sink into that quicksand again. She stayed busy, focused on her health, and had kept her attachments to others in check so she didn’t put herself at risk again. But at the same time, she hadn’t let herself become a monk. Having a sex life was important to her. She knew herself well enough to know that she needed that physical connection on a regular basis. It kept her feeling feminine and sexy and alive. She’d simply chosen to go about it like a young single guy would instead of how a thirty-nine-year-old woman was expected to. It worked for her.
Or at least it had been working.
But now that tendril of unease was growing in her, sprouting vines and spreading. Donovan had started it. He’d put a wrinkle in her neatly ironed-out life. He’d shown her how things could be when you stuck with the same person instead of stringing together one-night stands. How the experience became richer, more satisfying.
Things hadn’t been romantic with her and Donovan. Neither of them had had any interest in committing to an actual relationship—well, he hadn’t until he’d met Marin. He and Elle had barely talked outside of bed unless it was work-related. But it had filled a need for something steady that she could count on and was strictly physical. Safe and satisfying. And without the stress of having to manage a relationship.
For a while the other night, she’d thought that maybe she had found something similar in Lane—only a hundred times more intense. Their physical connection had been electric and amped up to a level she’d never had with Donovan. There was something more there—darker, dirtier. Lane had been fully present and into it. Donovan had never been like that. Donovan had only slept with her after he had a few drinks in him, and he had always kept an emotional distance between them. He didn’t try to get in her head. Lane, on the other hand, left nothing standing between them. He’d wanted her eyes on him. He’d wanted her stripped. Naked in every way.
It’d freaked her the hell out.
But it had also left her craving more. Had made her realize how wholly unsatisfying it’d be to go pick up some guy at a bar and have perfectly adequate vanilla sex where the guy would tell her she was smart and pretty and sexy, whether he meant it or not. Where the guy would try to impress her with his job or his car or his timeshare in Mexico.
Snore.
That was what had her restless. She’d finally figured out what she needed and now she couldn’t have it. Not with Lane at least. Even if she hadn’t insulted him and he was open to some kind of arrangement, he was too dangerous. He saw too much too easily. He expected emotional openness. He would require things she couldn’t give.
She just wanted the hot time in bed, not that guy who had recognized how lonely she was at the party. But she didn’t have the faintest idea of how to find that with someone elsewhere. Donovan had once suggested she go to a kink club and find a dom. She’d visited one a few weeks afterward—out of curiosity or as a last resort, she wasn’t sure. The staff had been welcoming and the place upscale. But after spending the evening observing, she’d only confirmed what she’d known in her bones already. She wasn’t submissive—or dominant, for that matter. She wouldn’t be what those guys wanted and vice versa. Everyone would be left disappointed.
Elle sighed, polished off the rest of her wine, and idly flipped through stations. When a young and very naked Richard Gere filled the screen, she stopped the aimless clicking. Ah, the eighties. When full-frontal male nudity in movies was somehow less scandalous than it was today. The thought only made her feel old, but she didn’t change the station because…Gere. Naked.
She hadn’t seen American Gigolo in at least a decade, and an old movie with a good-looking guy seemed like a better way to spend the evening than flipping over to the news or catching up on emails. Richard could be her date tonight. Tomorrow, she’d figure out a more realistic solution to her nonexistent dating life. She wouldn’t let that melancholy feeling linger too long. Depression had an insidious way of sneaking back into people’s lives, especially when it’d made a home there before. She’d seen it with her patients and she refused to let it happen to her.
She poured herself another glass of wine and grabbed a blanket off the back of the couch to curl up for the movie. Richard the gigolo—or his character, Julian, rather—was standing naked by a window and talking to Lauren Hutton about how he had a client who couldn’t orgasm and that it’d taken him three hours to get her off. Who else would take the time? That was what he asked Lauren.