I can sense a bit of bitterness there.
“Yes, you did,” I tell her. “And here you are, with me, exactly a year since we last met. What are the chances?”
Jenna looks away and says nothing.
“Maybe we should get a drink and catch up?” I suggest.
She looks into my eyes. Hers narrow in warning. “Dax, don’t.”
Don’t go there?
I glance at her hand just to make sure I didn’t miss anything. No ring. No sign of any commitment.
“Were you here with someone?” I ask.
“No,” Jenna answers.
My eyebrows crease. “What are you doing here?”
“I saw someone.”
My mind goes back to the moment she stepped into the elevator. The eleventh floor. There are only suites there. She saw someone there? A man? Just the thought of it makes my blood simmer.
I know I broke up with her. I know we each were free to see someone else. But I haven’t been with any other women. I couldn’t. Has she been with other men? How many?
“Listen, I have to go,” Jenna says.
She starts to walk off. I grab her arm.
“Jenna.”
She turns her head and meets my gaze, her own eyes wide. Her lips part but no words come out. I want to put my lips on them. I want to kiss her, to steal her breath and make her head spin so she can forget we were ever apart. I want her to know I still want her. God, I do. I want to kiss her silly and strip her and bury myself between her quivering –
Jenna finally speaks. “Dax, you’re hurting me. Let me go.”
I look at her arm and realize I’m gripping it too tight. Shit.
I regain my self-control and let her go. She walks away. This time, I don’t stop her. I just run my hands through my hair in frustration.
What am I doing?
“So you prefer going after women who don’t want you,” Victor speaks behind me. “I guess that is thrilling.”
I turn around to give him a questioning look. How long has he been standing there?
“I thought I’d go after you, make sure you didn’t bolt,” he says.
“I said I’d see you later.”
He ignores me, touching his chin as he steps forward. “I’m guessing that woman is the reason you haven’t been with any other in the past year.”
I frown. I just hate it when he’s right.
“Does she have a name?” Victor asks.
“Jenna. Jenna Holt.” I let out a deep breath, then pat his shoulder. “Find out where she lives.”
Chapter Two
Jenna
Why did I have to see Dax again?
The question has been plaguing me since I walked away from him in that hotel lobby. And yes, it took every ounce of my will to steer my feet away. I spent a good fifteen minutes in my car just sitting behind the wheel and staring at the wall past my windshield trying to recover from the shock of seeing the man who once owned my heart and then broke it, a man I never thought I’d see again, exactly one year after he turned his back on me.
What are the chances indeed?
All through the drive home, I tried not to think of him. I didn’t want to crash. Now that I’ve pulled into the garage, though, and the engine is turned off, I find myself sitting still behind the wheel again, staring past the windshield at the blank concrete wall.
I’m still in shock. It feels like a planet has just exploded and the force has sent me floating in space like debris, like I’ve just fallen through thin ice and I’m fighting to keep myself alive in freezing water.
I close my eyes.
Breathe, Jenna. Just breathe.
So what if Dax is back? That doesn’t change the fact that he left. Dax left me. He threw me away. He’s not my boyfriend anymore. I should have forgotten about him. I should have moved on. At any rate, I should not be this affected.
But I am. Rattled to my core.
At the sound of his voice, the sound of my name from his lips, my heart leapt and my world stopped spinning. Even before I turned around, I knew it was him. I wanted to run then. I should have. Instead, I turned and found myself a captive of his gaze once more.
Outside, I appeared calm and in control, trying to act as if the chance meeting was no big deal. Inside, I was in complete turmoil. I was being split open, pulled in different directions by my raging emotions – joy upon seeing Dax again, guilt and stupidity and anger for feeling that joy, pain from remembering what happened the last time we met, sadness because I realized just how much I missed him, hope that I won’t have to because maybe things would work out this time, desire because damn, he looked so good, and again more guilt and anger from feeling those.