Needing Her

by Annabelle Love

  His touch wasn’t something I could bear at that moment. My anger was too new, too fresh, that it was like a raw wound.

  It made me want to attack out of self-defense. To make him hurt like I was hurting.

  “It’s me,” I told him blandly, and stepped away from the door to let him come in. “I’ll show you to Justin’s office.”

  He reared back at my tone, nearly fell down the stairs at the move. “What?” He shook his head, almost as though he was incapable of understanding what I was saying.

  “I said, I’ll lead you to Justin’s office.”

  Another head shake. “You can’t be…” His mouth worked. “Aren’t you happy to see me?”

  For a second, time froze once more as I processed that ridiculous question. “Happy to see the man who broke my heart?” I demanded, my mouth curling in a sneer. “Yeah, I’m really goddamn happy.”

  Chapter 3

  LAUREN

  Eight Years Ago

  I tugged at my skirt, wishing it was longer, wishing I hadn’t listened to Clarice when she’d told me to wear it.

  Jesus, it was short. So short I was certain the football team would be able to see my panties and take it as an open invitation.

  For all I considered myself a bland little wren, other people didn’t seem to agree.

  Okay, when I said other people, I meant guys.

  For some reason, they saw something I didn’t. Clarice who was a statuesque blonde with tits the size of melons and legs as long as my body—seriously, they were crazy long—got less attention than I did.

  And I didn’t get it. Didn’t understand why the guys seemed to bypass her for me. In a way it was great for my ego, but it was more irritating than anything else.

  I’d asked her once if it was because they thought I’d be an easy lay. She looked as puzzled as me as she’d said, “No, honey, you’ve just got something they want.”

  To this day, two years into our friendship, neither of us ‘got’ it. And to be fair, I wasn’t willing to use it to my own gain either.

  Being the center of the football team’s attention wasn’t exactly my goal in life. Even if it was some of the cheerleaders’…

  Rolling my eyes at the thought, I knocked on the door and waited for Clarice and her current no-hope of a boyfriend to join me on the top step.

  Clarice was shrieking as he chased her out the car, trying to slap her ass as he ran. Why she put up with that shit, I didn’t know.

  She was beautiful and Steve was just a jerk, but still, we all had our issues and Clarice’s was an inability to pick a decent guy.

  The door opened and a guy with dark, but somehow golden hair and the brightest blue eyes I’d ever seen stood there. He had his hand on the top of the door, with a red cup in his other. I could see it was half full—not with beer, but coke.

  Blinking at the sight, then blinking at him, I murmured, “Hey.”

  He smiled, and it wasn’t a ‘I’m gonna rock your world, baby’ smile that I was used to getting when we came to these shitty parties. It was more genuine. Curious.

  I bit my lip as he carried on staring at me. Not once did his gaze drop to my tits or my legs—a fact I had to give him credit for. Instead, he was glued to my eyes, and he only looked away when Clarice bumped into me with a drunk giggle.

  Yeah, that was another one of her issues. She drank way too much.

  But that was an argument for another day.

  Ever since we’d drawn lots as roommates, we’d been inseparable. Sometimes, a guy would come along on her side that would make her go distant on me, but she usually came back when they treated her like shit.

  The jerks.

  Clarice, giggling all the while, wrapped her arm around my shoulder and tugged me close. “He’s staring,” she told me, dopily.

  I couldn’t help but snort at her comment—it was so blatantly true, and something only a drunk person would remark upon.

  The guy in the door chuckled too. “She’s right,” he admitted. “I am.”

  Clarice squinted at him. “I know you. You’re the Senior taking English Lit with me.”

  He grimaced. “Yeah. I needed the extra credits.”

  So, he was a year older than us.

  He didn’t look it. Or did he? I wasn’t sure. There was an air of maturity about him that I appreciated, but he was young enough to want to hang out at parties without needing to get roaring drunk… I liked the stranger’s style.

  Clarice dismissed his comment, however, by letting out a shriek as Steve grabbed her, hauled her over his shoulder and dragged her into the party.

  She squealed all the way through the door, kicking her legs up and slapping his ass all the while.

  I sighed at the sight, a fact golden guy noticed.

  “I’m Cooper.”

  His abrupt introduction had me blinking. “I’m Lauren.”

  He smiled, and that smile about knocked me for six. Jesus. He had a crooked front incisor that was cute as hell, but the way the grin hit his eyes had my heart fluttering in my chest.

  I’d never been affected like that before.

  I’d managed to hang onto my V-card all throughout college and the constant come-ons from jocks and popular guys who thought they were the bees’ knees because they threw a ball or bounced one.

  I’d never been interested in them. Never wanted to go out with a guy more intrigued by his own ego than me.

  But this guy?

  He was different.

  He screamed it.

  Everything about him.

  From the well-worn jeans that clung to his strong legs to the coke he was drinking at a frat party…

  His smile told a tale I wanted to listen to, and for the first time in my life, I’d found a man who pricked my curiosity.

  As any woman knows, that’s the knee to the balls right there.

  Chapter 4

  COOPER

  Present Day

  Lauren was…

  Jesus, she was beautiful.

  As stunned as I was to see her, that was the only thought that kept ramming into my brain.

  Well, that thought and the fact she was here at all.

  Lauren was here. And she was as beautiful as ever.

  More beautiful, in fact, than the last day I’d seen her. When I’d knowingly broken her heart and all out of the attempt at self-preservation for both of us.

  Regrets filled me now as I watched her bristling back striding through a grand entryway.

  She was mad.

  Still.

  Could I blame her?

  I guessed not.

  I hadn’t broken it off with her to be a jerk. If anything, my desire to do right by her, to enable her to fulfill her own dreams rather than wait on mine had been my prime motivation.

  I’d loved her.

  So fucking much.

  Breaking up with her had nearly broken me. But I could tell she didn’t know that. Could also sense she wouldn’t want to hear it.

  Might never want to.

  Somehow, that thought alone was what closed my throat up. The horror of actually having her here, in my line of sight, and never making her see why I’d done what I’d done…

  How could she understand anyway?

  She was still in her hometown. Hadn’t gone off into the big wide world as I’d imagined she would. As her talent should have entitled her to…

  Her major could have taken her anywhere in the world, so why was she here?

  As, what? Justin Gandy’s PA? His gofer?

  The notion didn’t sit well with me.

  Lauren was way too intelligent to be some rich bastard’s administrator. Such talent was a crying shame to waste, and as I’d made the fucking sacrifice to let her follow her dreams rather than follow mine to make me happy, it pissed me off more than I could say.

  Anger roared through me, so strong and so fast that I could feel as well as hear my heart pumping. It blasted my ears with a whooshing sound, which, in turn, had my lungs going into ove
rdrive.

  I reached out, grabbed her and dragged her to a halt. She jolted in response, freezing in a way she’d never frozen me out before.

  “Lauren? What the fuck are you doing here?” My words were spat out, and I hated that my first genuine question, one that wasn’t founded in my bewilderment at being here in this estate, was angry.

  But I couldn’t help it.

  I’d done without her all these years so she could stay in fucking Willow’s Hearth?

  I’d lived without her, had to find solace in other women, all for her to work as a PA for some jumped up inventor who thought more of his ego than his inventions?

  She stared at me a second, then her head dropped and I saw her gaze focus in on the hand I had used to hold her in place.

  “Let. Go. Of. Me.”

  The words were spat out as furiously as mine had been, and each one was individually pronounced, as though she wanted to verbally strike me.

  It worked.

  In a sense.

  I felt punched in the gut, but I didn’t let go. “Answer me,” I snarled. “Why are you still here? Why aren’t you in fucking Milan? London? Paris?” All places she’d dreamed of going. All places she’d wanted to live in and work.

  All reasons why I’d let her go, knowing that if I wanted to make it big, my world would have to be in New York.

  She frowned at me. “Paris? London? Why would I be there?”

  “Because that’s where the best curator jobs are, of course.”

  She stared at me, confusion making her squint up at me in a way that narrowed her beautiful, rich, caramel colored eyes.

  It had never ceased to astonish me how unaware the woman was of her own beauty.

  She wasn’t a brassy beauty. Was demure, almost. A Grace Kelly kind of gorgeous, not a Pamela Anderson type.

  I’d always loved that about her.

  She’d been an innocent. In so many ways.

  I hated that I’d given that up for... what? A PA’s job in her home town?

  “You were supposed to be a curator,” I hissed at her, not realizing I was shaking her, trying to make her understand. “You were supposed to work at the Uffizi, the Louvre. You were not supposed to stay here, goddammit!”

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