She sat primly on the edge of the light tan side chair. “Yeah,” she said. “New job.”
The beginning of a smile curved his mouth. “Doing what this time?”
She tried not to take offense. In fact, she couldn’t do much of anything since she’d looked at his mouth except relive every deliciously wicked moment those lips had spent on her body. “I’m actually putting my education to good use this time.”
“That’s right,” he said. “UCLA. What did you study, again?”
Sneaky, because she’d never told him her field of study. “Law.”
His jaw fell slack and she resisted the urge to smack it back in place. “Don’t look so surprised.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, shaking his head as if to clear it from the shock she’d just given him. “I just assumed you had some sort of liberal arts education.”
“A totally useless degree for a totally useless woman, is that it?” she asked without an ounce of animosity. “It’s okay. Actually, my really useless degree is in art history from Long Beach State. I went to UCLA for law school.”
“I didn’t know.”
“It wasn’t something I broadcasted.”
“Then why all the . . .”
“Menial jobs? I wanted to be sure practicing law was what I really wanted to do. All those jobs allowed me to have a small taste of many different fields.”
He glanced at her stomach, at the loose-fitting, button-down shirt. “But something made you decide it was time to start practicing law?”
“We all have to grow up sometime,” she said with a careless shrug. “And I’m not practicing law yet. I’m clerking while I wait for the bar results.”
“And you’re moving.”
“And you’re observant. Look, Noah. I don’t know why you’re here, or what you want, but I have a lot of work to do before the movers get here tomorrow, so you’ll—”
“I wanted to know how you’re doing.”
She issued a short bark of laughter. “Nice try. You want to know if I’m pregnant.”
His hand tightened on the water bottle he hadn’t bothered to open. “Are you?”
So that was the reason he’d flown across the country. “What do you care?” She t knive a rip if she came off snappish. He was rude.
“I’ve missed you.”
Oh, God. Just like that, she melted. She couldn’t survive him. Not again. “I’ve missed you, too,” she admitted, “but that doesn’t cha—”
He sprang up off the sofa and started to pace. “I can’t remember the last time I had a decent night’s sleep.”
“I hear they have a pill for that.” Not that she’d taken anything for her insomnia.
He stopped to crouch in front of her. He looked miserable and she wanted to be smug, but he was already chipping away at the wall she’d worked so hard to build aroun
d her heart, and all he’d done was show up and tell her he’d missed her.
He slipped a curl behind her ear. “I can’t stop thinking about you.”
That made two of them, because she’d never fully managed to evict him from her mind. Or her heart.
“It doesn’t make any sense.”
She smoothed her hand over his jaw. “I don’t think it’s supposed to.”