She blinked. ‘Well, yes. But I guess he wasn’t wholly to blame.’
‘Seems to me that that kind of behaviour is inexcusable,’ he muttered, wondering exactly where such a violent reaction had come from.
She bit her lip. ‘True, but I was too easy-going, too easy to please. Too afraid of confrontation. I let him get away with too much. I let him walk all over me.’ She shrugged.
Easy-going? Afraid of confrontation? Matt nearly fell off his chair. That didn’t sound like the Laura he knew. Since the moment he’d met her she’d been feisty, fearless and determined.
Snapshots flew around his head. Of Laura on the path, batting her eyelids and pouting. Arching her back on his sofa and staring up at him with that come-hither look. Sitting in his office, limbs crossed, chin up as she told him she wasn’t leaving.
His stomach churned with a weird combination of lust, admiration and something that felt suspiciously like jealousy.
‘Which has kind of been the story of my life,’ she was saying. ‘Much as it pains me to admit it, I have been a bit of a doormat.’
Matt dragged himself back to the conversation. ‘You could have fooled me,’ he muttered, his voice not betraying any hint of the confusion battering his brain.
Laura grinned. ‘Ah, well, that’s because after the double whammy of losing my job and my boyfriend I went on an assertiveness course.’
‘That sounds dangerous.’
‘It was. Very. Module One was entitled “How to Embrace Confrontation”. Module Two covered learning how to say no. And Module Three focused on how to get what you want.’
‘You must be a fast learner.’
Laura nodded. ‘Like lightning.’
‘For someone allegedly afraid of confrontation,’ he said dryly, ‘you’re pretty good at it.’
She grinned and his stomach swooped. ‘It’s turned out to be surprisingly liberating. As has going for what I want and saying no.’
Sometimes saying no wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. Sometimes the only word a man wanted to hear was yes. In exactly the breathy pleading way she’d said all those little yeses that afternoon.
‘Anyway
. Change is good, don’t you think?’
‘Depends on the change,’ Matt muttered, struggling to keep his focus on reconciling the Laura he knew to the one she described and not on the yeses. ‘Where did the pushover tendencies come from?’
‘My parents’ divorce when I was thirteen, I suppose.’
‘Tricky.’
‘Very.’
‘Amicable?’
She winced. ‘Hideous.’
‘I’m sorry.’
Laura shrugged. ‘Things had been bad for years, even though at the time it all seemed so sudden. I think I probably compensated by trying not to put a foot wrong, in the childish hope that if I was good enough they’d stay together. Which was nuts, of course,’ she said. ‘I know it had nothing to do with me and they’re far happier apart, but I guess old habits die hard.’
‘If ever.’
Laura shook her head. ‘Ah, you see, that’s where you’re wrong. My people-pleasing days are well and truly over.’
That was a shame.
The thought slammed into Matt’s head before he could stop it and stayed there flashing in neon, reminding him just how well she’d pleased him.