Was it time to go to bed yet? She’d never sleep with all this fear and fury inside her, though. Sometimes she did worry that her anger would eat her up. Or that her emotions would explode and she’d fly off, fragmented, into the ether. She needed ballast in her life, some emotional constancy that would give her what she—
Oh, no. No.
Darcy covered her face with her hands and leaned on her desk. Would she never learn? Ballast…emotional constancy…
She’d immediately gone back to thinking about him.
TROY HAULED HIMSELF OUT OF THE Milwaukee Athletic Club’s pool, breathing hard. Seventy laps had been all he could handle today. He’d done a sloppy, unfocused job, his concentration shot. Didn’t do much better at work that day, either. Half-assed, in fact—luckily it wasn’t a crunch week. And thank God he wasn’t still designing interactive webpages for the book with Justin on top of his day job. That would have gotten exactly nowhere.
He stood, dashing water out of his hair, and headed for his towel.
“Hi there.”
Troy turned at the familiar voice. Oh, man. He’d forgotten about Missy. More proof of how far he’d fallen from sanity. “Hey, how’s it going?”
“Great.” She dimpled a sweet smile. “You looked sharp out there.”
“Actually, it felt bad today. Just didn’t have it.”
Missy nodded sympathetically, water darkening the blond strands of her short hair, droplets glinting on her cheeks. She didn’t bother to hide that she was doing her usual thorough check of his body. “Those days suck. You heading to the weight room now?”
“Uh…” Did she have his routine memorized? He’d noticed Missy over a month ago—her stunningly toned body and pretty features were hard to ignore. Since then he’d intersected with her here at the pool or on the machines a few times a week, more often recently. They’d struck up a casual friendship, talking mostly about their workouts. Troy had been flattered by the attention, and before the night at Esmee, he’d been planning to ask Missy out, to see if his initial interest could grow into anything more.
Now, faced with the same person he’d been fantasizing about less than a week ago, he hadn’t the slightest idea what had seemed special about her. Well…maybe the slightest idea. Her body was in great shape. But today, instead of flawless, it looked overmuscled. She was very attractive, yes, but she didn’t have the kind of beauty that hollowed him out with a glance.
In short, Missy wasn’t her. She who still had him hollowed out, in spite of the fact that she hadn’t been interested in anything but screwing him and getting the hell away.
“I’m meeting friends for a beer later. Going to skip the weights today.” He hadn’t been planning to meet friends or skip the weights, but he wasn’t in the mood to listen to Missy’s cheerful chatter. He could still lift at home.
“Oh, too bad.” She sidled closer, tipped her head to look up at him coyly. “Listen, I was wondering…”
His body tensed. Back a few days, he would have been eager to hear whatever she was about to say. Now every instinct was telling him to make his escape.
“If you’d like to have a drink together sometime?”
There it was. The invitation he’d been planning to extend. He should go out with her. He had no reason to think The Woman wanted to see him again, or that she’d be able to find him even if she did. Troy wasn’t quite pathetic enough to sit hopefully at Esmee every night until she happened in again, though he was so taken with her it had crossed his mind.
Going out with Missy was a good idea. An excellent way to loosen the unfortunate vise grip this unnamed lover had his brain and balls in.
He opened his mouth to accept, but at the last millisecond his brain did an about-face without his permission. “Thanks, Missy, but I’ve just started dating someone and want to see where that goes.”
What the hell had he just said?
“Ah. Okay. I completely understand.” She pasted a smile back on her disappointed face and nudged him with her hard shoulder. “Let me know if it doesn’t work out, though, okay?”
He grinned, feeling like a lying piece of dirt. “Absolutely. Thanks again for the invite.”