Complicated

by Claire Kent

  He stared at her for a long time, his lips pressed tightly together. Then he broke the gaze and looked to the side. “No. We have a lot of work to do.”

  “And this thing with me will only get in the way. You should concentrate on your daughter right now.”

  “Victoria.” Greg’s voice cracked on the word. He cleared his throat and walked over to her, putting his strong hand on her shoulder. “I don’t know why they need to be mutually exclusive.”

  She shook his head—feeling a poignant kind of loss and a strange numbness at the same time. “We can’t always have everything.”

  She’d never had everything with Greg. She hadn’t even had close to everything.

  “It’s always just been sex between us, right?” she asked. She couldn’t help feeling a desperate kind of hope on the last word.

  There was a chance—the tiniest chance—that he’d changed his mind.

  That he wanted more than sex with her.

  His gaze was quiet and infinitely sober. “Right.”

  The stupid, tiny hope crushed in her chest, but she didn’t even wince. Just said coolly, “Are you actually going to tell me that sex—just sex—is more important than your daughter?”

  Greg closed his eyes very briefly. “No,” he admitted. “It’s not.”

  “Then it’s pointless to keep this up. It’s only going to complicate things with Carrie. And this would have ended eventually anyway. Casual sex has a pretty short shelf-life. We might as well end it now. Before things get any messier.”

  She waited for just a moment—to see if he’d object any further.

  He didn’t.

  He took a deep breath and released it, looking out the window as he did. “All right.”

  And so all that was left was for Victoria to finish gathering her stuff together. She didn’t have all that much stuff over here anyway so it didn’t take very long. When she closed her bag, Greg was still standing a few feet away, watching her.

  He looked just as scruffy and disheveled as he had before, but now he looked older, more tired.

  “So,” she said, not sure what there was to say.

  “So.” His mouth twisted slightly. “Is there anything I can do? You’re all right getting back?”

  She gave an amused huff that was only slightly bitter. It was so like him—considerate and courteous to the end. “I’m fine. I’m a big girl. I…” Her voice cracked and she had to start over. “I’ll miss you. I really enjoyed this. It was the best sex I’ve ever had.”

  The expression in his eyes was too distant to pin down, and he almost swallowed his response. “Me too.”

  That admission—and everything it implied—almost did Victoria in. She had to turn away to hide her expression before she was able to compose herself.

  “All right then.” There was no sense in stretching this out. It would get better as soon as they’d made a clean break. “I’ll take off. I hope things work out all right with your daughter.”

  “We have our difficulties, but we love each other. We’ll be all right.”

  “Good.” She walked over to the door with her bag. Turned back to look at him one more time. “Bye.”

  He looked so handsome, masculine, and human—standing barefoot in his sweats and t-shirt—that she had the almost irresistible urge to hug him.

  She didn’t.

  “Bye,” he said, his eyes never leaving her face.

  She left the room. Shut the door behind her. Made it out of the house and to her car.

  She drove back to the city.

  And didn’t cry until she got home.

  Three

  “So are you ever going to tell me about it?”

  “What?” Victoria gave a startled jerk and turned in her desk chair to face the door.

  Jeanie was standing in the doorway of her office. Her hair was a pinkish shade this week, and she was wearing all black—a turtleneck and stretch pants like a beatnik poet. “You’ve been moping around for the last three weeks. I was wondering if you were ever going to tell me why.”

  “I haven’t been moping.” But then she snapped her mouth closed at Jeanie’s knowing, sympathetic gaze. “I didn’t think it had been that obvious.”

  She had been depressed for the last three weeks, far more affected by her breakup with Greg than she’d expected to be. She’d known it wouldn’t be easy—she would miss him, miss the sex, and miss having such an exhilarating aspect to her life—but she’d thought she would be able to talk herself out of her low mood fairly quickly.

  She was a smart, realistic, matter-of-fact kind of person. She was used to not getting everything she wanted, and she’d always managed to be satisfied even when life didn’t go the way she wished.

  In the past, she’d been able to make the most out of circumstances.

  Which was why she wasn’t prepared to still be brooding about Greg almost a month after she’d broken up with him.

  She couldn’t stop thinking about him. Couldn’t stop wishing things had happened differently. Couldn’t stop hoping he was all right and hoping he missed her a little bit too.

  She hadn’t seen or heard from him since she’d left his house that afternoon. She hadn’t expected to.

  But that didn’t mean she wasn’t crushed.

  She was the one who had ended it, and she was still certain she hadn’t made a mistake. Obviously her emotions had gotten more involved than she’d intended—otherwise she wouldn’t be so upset about losing him. If they’d stayed together for meaningless sex, she would have had her heart broken eventually.

  It was better this way.

  It just felt like her heart was broken anyway.

  “You hide it pretty well,” Jeanie said, coming into the office and shutting the door. “But I know you. Did your fling with that guy fall apart?”

  Victoria let out a shaky breath. “Yeah. It fell apart.”

  “And it wasn’t as casual as you thought?”

  “No. I guess I just fooled myself into thinking it could remain casual indefinitely. It was bound to end badly, one way or another.”

  Jeanie perched on the end of a chair next to Victoria’s desk. Her face was compassionate. “Did he decide to move on?”

  “No. I ended it. It was getting too complicated.”

  “If you ended it, why don’t you just tell him you changed your mind?”

  “I can’t. It needed to end. Even if this particular complication could be resolved, there’s no way I could go back to meaningless sex with him now.” Victoria rubbed her forehead with her finger and thumb, trying to rub away the faint headache she’d had for the last few weeks.

  “It wouldn’t be meaningless anymore?”

  Victoria groaned and lowered her head into her hands. “No. I’m such an idiot. I thought I was being mature and realistic—taking a risk but still keeping everything under control. We had it all worked out from the beginning. Just sex and nothing else. How the hell did this happen?”

  Jeanie was quiet for a moment. Then she murmured, “You’ve got it bad.”

  “Tell me about it.” Victoria indulged in pure despair for a minute—feeling a wave of deep emotion overwhelming her at the thought of Greg. At what she wanted from him. At what she could never have. He was out of her reach in so many ways, and she would be a fool to hold out any hope for a miraculous fairytale ending.

  Life didn’t work that way. Her life never did, anyway.

  Then she shook herself off. Things didn’t always happen the way she wanted them to, but she wasn’t going to sink into real depression.

  She needed to get on with her life. She would get over Greg.

  It would just take longer than she’d expected.

  “Maybe he’s been moping all this time too.”

  Victoria snorted. “Right. That’s likely.”

  “Well,” Jeanie insisted, getting up and moving toward the door. “You also wouldn’t have thought it likely that he would want a wild, hot fling with you in the first place. He did. And y
ou wouldn’t have thought it likely that it would last three months. It did. Why shouldn’t it be just as likely that the feelings you developed might be returned by him?”

  Victoria had no answer to that question, but she couldn’t let herself hope.

  There would be no moving on if she did.

  Greg had a successful, complex, full life. A life she’d never been a part of. He might miss the willing sex partner, but if he wanted more he wouldn’t have accepted the end of their relationship the way he had.

  Victoria wasn’t going to pretend anything else was even possible.

  “Thanks for the pep talk,” she said, smiling at Jeanie. “I’m determined not to mope for much longer.”

  Jeanie laughed. “All right. Give me a call this weekend if you need a distraction. My cats can only provide so much entertainment for me.”

  Victoria agreed and actually felt better when Jeanie left.

  Her world wasn’t decimated just because she’d lost the man of her dreams.

  The truth was—she’d never really had him.

  ***

  Victoria was walking back from the bathroom that afternoon when she saw Greg.

  He was there. Standing right in the middle of the lobby of the university library. He was facing the opposite direction, but she recognized him easily. Even from the back.

  His broad shoulders, lean hips, tight ass, and long legs were distinctive in the well-tailored dark business suit. And his thick hair was slightly ruffled—probably from the wind—the gray flecks just faintly visible in the dark brown.

  Victoria’s heart froze in her chest at the sight of him. Then it began to hammer frantically as she made herself keep moving toward her office.

  He hadn’t seen her yet, and she cowardly hoped she could get away before he knew she was there.

  She was wearing a new pair of designer heels—a far too expensive extravagance she’d allowed herself last week to help pull her out of her slump. The heels clicked on the polished floor of the lobby despite her attempt to remain discreet.

  Greg turned around, just as she’d passed him. “Victoria.”

  She froze, staring straight ahead and trying to focus her fuzzy mind on something intelligent to say.

  “Hi,” she said stupidly.

  His mouth twitched very slightly. “Hi. I thought I recognized the sound of your footsteps.”

  Frowning, she demanded, “What do my footsteps sound like? I walk just like everyone else.”

  “No, you don’t.”

  “Yes, I do. What do they sound like?” It was a ridiculous conversation, but she felt compelled to find out how her footsteps differed from everyone else’s. She tended to walk fairly quickly, but surely that wasn’t enough to make her stride recognizable.

  “I don’t think I’ll tell you.” His smile was easy, warm but just slightly poignant. And it crinkled the corners of his mouth and his eyes.

  She didn’t understand his expression at all.

  Victoria experienced a sudden wave of annoyance. What was he doing here, anyway? She had just determined to get over him, and he showed up out of the blue, being obnoxiously smug and smiling at her like that.

  Kind of possessive. Kind of tender.

  The implications terrified her, and her reaction to fear was always resentment.

  She hated being afraid.

  So she scowled at him. “What are you doing here?”

  “I’m here to see you. I thought that should have been obvious. Believe it or not, I don’t hang out at university libraries just for fun.”

  His glibness irritated her even more, and her scowl tightened into a cold glare. “Why did you want to see me?”

  She wished she looked better. She hadn’t spent much time on her appearance lately. Her hair was pulled back in a chignon that was more severe than she usually wore, with no loose strands to soften the look. She was wearing her glasses, and she had on a dark blue suit. The jacket was fitted and the skirt reached mid-calf but it wasn’t as distinctive or flattering as most of her other outfits.

  She must look like the spinster librarian everyone tried to stereotype her as.

  Everyone but Greg.

  “I thought maybe we could talk,” he said, his forehead wrinkling as if he were confused. “Is there somewhere we could go?”

  They could go to her office, but she didn’t want him there. She was supposed to be getting over him, and this would already set her back a full two weeks. “Not really. And I don’t know what we need to talk about anyway.”

  “Are you angry with me for some reason?” He took a step closer to her, his brown eyes scrutinizing her face.

  “No.” She had to look away from his familiar, observant expression. She used to feel a secret thrill when he looked at her like that—thrilled at the idea that someone cared enough about how she felt to try to understand what she was thinking.

  Now it just made her belly clench with anxiety. She was disoriented and confused, and she wanted to lash out at Greg for making her feel this way. “I just don’t like personal stuff interfering with work.”

  “Oh.” He frowned slightly. “I could stop by your apartment after work, if you’d rather.”

  “No!” The word came out too sharply, and a few people glanced over at her in curiosity.

  Flushing with embarrassment, Victoria was slammed with another wave of annoyance. “Why do we need to talk at all? I thought things were settled between us.”

  She couldn’t stand to look at him anymore so she walked distractedly over to a cart of books that needed to be reshelved. She fiddled with them, pretending to put them in order just so she could do something with her hands.

  Greg stepped over until he was beside her, and he tilted his head to study her tense face. “You are angry with me.”

  “I’m not angry,” she bit out.

  Why, oh why, wouldn’t he just go away? He would just make everything worse.

  Just make her tangibly recognize everything she could never have.

  “Victoria,” he murmured, his voice huskier than before. He gently put his hand on her forearm, “Tell me why you’re angry.”

  She couldn’t tell him—couldn’t tell him anger was the only way she could defend herself from the flood of emotions she felt when she saw him.

  She couldn’t tell him anything.

  So she started to push the cart of books toward the elevator. “I need to work,” she muttered.

  It wasn’t her job to shelve books. Workstudy students usually took care of that. But she needed to do something, and this was the only thing available.

  Greg didn’t object. He just went with her, getting onto the elevator after her before she could stop him.

  Since a student got on with them, they didn’t speak until they’d gotten off on the fifth floor.

  The floor was nearly empty, with only one graduate student studying in a carrel and one older man browsing the British literature shelves.

  Victoria headed back toward the theology books in the far corner of the floor, since those were the first call numbers she saw on the books in the cart.

  “Victoria,” Greg began, following her toward the isolated corner of the library. They were as private here as they would have been anywhere. “Victoria, why won’t you at least talk to me?”

  Her eyes were glazed over now, and her hand trembled as she pushed one of the books into its place on a high shelf.

  Before she could bring her hand back down to the cart, Greg took it, surrounding her small, cold hand with both of his big, warm ones.

  She sucked in a harsh gasp at the touch and at how it affected the ache in her chest. “We have nothing to talk about.”

  “Yes, we do,” Greg insisted, his voice sounding rough again. He took a step forward until he’d pressed her back against the wall of bookshelves.

  He hadn’t let go of her hand.

  Victoria stared up at him. His eyes were dark and intense, and he had just a hint of a five-o’clock shadow.

  She
wanted to touch him. Hold him. Have him bury himself inside her.

  She wanted to feel him in every possible way.

  “I missed you,” Greg went on, pressing forward even more. His body wasn’t touching hers, but she could almost feel the heat of his presence radiating off him. “Didn’t you miss me even a little?”

  “What does it matter? We decided it was over. And this isn’t going to help anything.”

  “What isn’t?”

  “This,” she tried to explain, gesturing with her head down toward their bodies and joined hands. “Yes, the sex was great. But one last…last fling—because you suddenly decide you miss me—will only make it worse. A clean break is the best way to move on. Nothing has changed.”

  Greg lowered his face toward hers and reached up with his free hand to hold the back of her head. “Hasn’t it?”

  She didn’t understand any of this, but she could barely breathe through the pressure in her chest. It felt like she was drowning in the intense expression in his eyes.

  He smelled like Greg—warm, masculine, faintly expensive, the most delicious thing she’d ever breathed in.

  Her body was already reacting to his closeness, her nipples tightening and skin flushing with warmth.

  “Greg,” she tried once more, “I don’t—”

  “You don’t what?” He hadn’t made another move, but he hadn’t pulled back either.

  He seemed to be waiting. For her.

  And Victoria could no longer resist. He was right here—everything she’d ever wanted. And she was going to take it when it was offered, even if it was only offered for the afternoon.

  With a stifled groan, she freed her fingers from his grip and grabbed his face in both of her hands. She hauled him down into a kiss, devouring his mouth with a need and urgency that both startled and thrilled her.

  Greg responded immediately. Pushing her back against the solid bookshelves, he opened his mouth against hers and held her head securely in place with the fingers curved around the back of her skull. His other hand went down to cup her bottom possessively, pressing her against the length of his body.

  Her mind a hot, ecstatic whirl, Victoria fisted one of her hands in his hair and caressed his face with the other. His lower jaw was rough with bristles, and it felt exquisite against her hand. She wanted to feel him—all of him, as much of him as she could.