One corner of his mouth quirked. “Not exactly.”
“What then? Broken dialing finger? Couldn’t find a phone?” Yes, she sounded bitchy. But for nine months, hurt and anger had been simmering inside her and it seemed that it had chosen now to boil over.
“None of the above,” he said, keeping his voice low in spite of the surrounding clatter. Pushing one hand through his thick, dark hair, he fixed his gaze on hers and said simply, “It’s complicated.”
“So complicated you couldn’t use the last nine months to come up with an explanation?”
“Yeah,” he admitted. “Something like that.”
Amazing that she could still feel disappointment. Pain. He wasn’t telling her anything new. Wasn’t even trying to explain away what had happened after their time together. And she wasn’t going to sit here pretending that it was okay with her.
“Great.” She stood up again and this time he didn’t try to stop her. “Glad we got that all straightened out.”
“Where are you going?”
“Home.” She glanced around, then shifted her gaze back to his. “No point in staying now, is there.” It wasn’t a question.
“I suppose not,” he agreed and stood up. Fishing into his pocket, he drew out a folded stack of bills and peeled off two of them to toss onto the table. Then he took Kayla’s elbow and steered her toward the door before she could twist out of his grasp.
Once outside in the cold, he let her go and she slipped into her coat. Wrapping the edges of it around her as if it were body armor, she said, “Goodbye, Matt.”
“I’ll take you home.”
Her heartbeat jittered. “You don’t have to. I have my car here.”
“Fine. I’ll follow you.”
“Not necessary.” She took a step past him.
He moved to stand in front of her, blocking her way. “It is to me.”
“Forgive me if I’m not really interested in what’s important to you.”
“You can keep giving me grief or you can hear me out somewhere more private.” He stared into her eyes. “What’s it gonna be?”
Kayla was torn. She wanted to know why he’d disappeared on her so abruptly after what she had considered the most magical, romantic, life-altering night of her life. But she also didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of knowing that she cared. But the longer she stared into his eyes, the more convinced she was that she’d never be able to get over the memory of him if she didn’t listen to him for some answers and find the closure—God, she hated that word—that she needed.
“Fine. You can follow me home.”
“You still live in the same place?”
Her small, cottage-sized house on the outskirts of Cheyenne. “Yes.”
“All right then. We’ll talk there.”
Yippee.
* * *
What the hell was he supposed to say? On the short drive to Kayla’s house, Matt’s mind raced, jumping from one idea to another, never settling on one. There was no easy way to say that meeting her, going to bed with her, had jolted him out of his complacency.
She was the reason he’d happily taken that promotion and moved to California—and more importantly, she was the reason that Cheyenne still haunted him. He hadn’t been able to get her out of his mind. Hadn’t been able to convince himself that she was just another woman. Just another passing blip on a radar that was so finely tuned he’d managed to avoid commitment for most of his life.
And that was why she’d hit him as hard as she had. He was so used to cruising smoothly through his romantic encounters that when he slammed into Kayla, she’d knocked him off his feet. The first couple of months he’d known her, he’d worked to convince himself that there was nothing special there. That he was overreacting because she irritated him on so many levels. But that irritation was really just a form of sexual tension so taut it took his breath away. And once he’d had her under him, over him...once he’d been buried deep inside her damp heat, he hadn’t been able to lie to himself anymore. She was different. Special.
And he hadn’t been ready for special.