Need you Now (Top Shelf Romance Book 2)

by Laurelin Paige

  But I could tell how this would go. I could feel it in the energy vibrating off his body. As soon as I admitted it to him, he would either have to embrace me or end things, and there was no way he was embracing me. Humiliation was the only thing to be gained by that admission.

  So, jutting my chin forward, I gave him the easiest answer for both of us. “Nope. There is no ‘us’. That’s the right impression, isn’t it?”

  He held his offense posture a moment longer. “It is.”

  “Then we’re good.” My hands were shaky as I turned back to my coffee and my yogurt, but my appetite was gone. “I’m actually not hungry. And I’m just going to shower at home. You can get back to whatever it is that your life is.”

  Five minutes later I was changed. Thankfully my coat covered the tear in my dress. But even with my hair thrown up in a knot and my coat wrapped tightly around me, I would be making a very obvious walk of shame through his lobby.

  Though we weren’t really speaking, he saw me to the door. “My driver is waiting for you downstairs,” he said.

  “Thank you,” I mumbled.

  He stayed at his door and watched from across the hall, so when I got in the elevator and turned around, my eyes locked on his. The last thing I saw before the elevator doors closed between us was his expression wrinkle with regret.

  I just couldn’t tell if he regretted letting me leave or that he’d ever let me in in the first place.

  Chapter 30

  I threw myself into work the rest of the day. Getting caught up on Weston’s lengthy, redundant opportunity analysis reports was an excuse to ignore thinking about Donovan.

  Even with my mind busy, I couldn’t stop from feeling. And my feelings were like a swarm of bumblebees buzzing inside of me. I felt so much for him. So much about him. And all of it stung when I examined it too closely.

  Maybe I wasn’t cut out for this.

  When I’d first let Donovan into my bed, I hadn’t thought it would be more than a one-night stand. I hadn’t realized that I’d fall so hard, so quickly. I hadn’t imagined that he might show feelings for me and that every time he turned cold afterward, I’d be shattered.

  It was better not examining any of it. If I did, I’d have to make a decision about what to do. So, instead, I kept my head in my laptop and focused on revenue pipelines and investment costs.

  By Sunday afternoon, I’d knocked out a significant amount of work and had managed to distract myself from random crying jags with a marathon of Community playing on the TV in the background. My Chinese delivery had just arrived, and I was about to sit back and enjoy my Kung Pao chicken when my phone alerted me that I had a text.

  I want dessert. When can I pick you up?

  The bees took flight in my belly, fluttering in that way that made me want to respond with Now as fast as I could type it. But their stingers were out, needling along my ribs and heart and everywhere, everywhere, wounding me with even the thought of being in Donovan’s presence while having to pretend that he didn’t mean as much to me as he did. How could I lie beneath him, how could I be naked in front of him, how could I let him move inside me and not fall even deeper than I already had?

  But what was my other option? I wasn’t ready to end things with him either. That likely made me a masochist, something Donovan probably already knew about me, but it wasn’t a label I could live with for long. I was too strong. Too ambitious. Too willing to go after what I wanted.

  Which meant that eventually I’d have to confront this.

  Just.

  I wasn’t ready yet.

  Without responding, I turned my phone on silent and tossed it on my coffee table. He’d blown me off for an entire week. I could ignore him for at least one night.

  Four hours later, I emerged from a shower to the sound of pounding on my door.

  I already knew who it was. A hot rush swept through me while goose bumps pebbled along my skin.

  He’d shown up at my apartment!

  Fuck. He’d shown up at my apartment.

  With a sigh, I wrapped my plain, fluffy terrycloth bathrobe around me and headed to answer it.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked when, as suspected, I found Donovan on the other side of the door.

  He was wearing tan khaki pants, a dark gray pullover, and a scowl that made my heart race and my toes curl with trepidation. “You didn’t answer my texts.”

  “Texts” as in plural. He must have sent more.

  This was the part of my plan that I hadn’t thought through. He’d already proven my secretary wasn’t a barrier. I should have expected this.

  I leaned my face against the doorjamb. “It’s not fair that I can’t avoid you as efficiently as you can avoid me. I’m pretty sure your doorman would never let me up without your clearance.”

  His jaw ticked. “You’re avoiding me?”

  Obviously not anymore.

  Resigned, I opened the door wide enough for him to enter. “Come on in.”

  As he had last time he’d shown up at my apartment, he walked in as if he owned the place, which, of course, he did. Openly he surveyed the workspace I’d made for myself on the couch, my leftover Chinese still sitting next to my open laptop.

  I closed the door and made my way over to the coffee table to pick up my phone, which I hadn’t looked at since I’d silenced it earlier. There were a total of seven texts from him.

  I hated how that made me feel special somehow.

  “Why are you avoiding me?” he asked, reminding me that he was here in the flesh.

  “If I wanted to talk about it, I wouldn’t be avoiding you.” I threw the phone down and headed to the kitchen to pour a glass of merlot. I’d had one earlier, but the buzz had worn off, and I definitely needed something now.

  Donovan leaned against the back of my couch and watched me, shaking his head when I offered him a glass of his own.

  “Well, I’m here,” he said, hands curled into the sofa, “and I’m not leaving until you explain. Or until I’ve emptied my cock down your throat. The choice is yours.”

  My knees buckled at the sight of his devilish grin. I quickly threw back half my glass to help steady my resolve. “I cannot have sex with you, Donovan.”

  He seemed about to argue until I shot him a glare from hell.

  “Fine. Sex is off the table,” he conceded. “For now.”

  Thank god he’d agreed to that. Because I was already wavering. I felt warm everywhere, from my shower, from the merlot, from the way he looked at me—like he wanted to nibble every inch of my skin.

  God, how I wanted to feel those nibbles turn into bites…

  No, I couldn’t think about that. I couldn’t think at all with him in my house. I needed him to leave.

  “I’m not talking about this with you, Donovan. You don’t want to talk about this with me either. I promise you don’t.” With my glass in hand, I stormed past him and gestured toward the door. “So you might as well just go.”

  He didn’t move except to tilt his head in my direction. “You can’t possibly know that.”

  Except, I could know that. I was sure of it.

  “Donovan…” I pled.

  “Talk, Sabrina. Talk or I’ll find a way to make you talk, I swear to god.” Both his tone and expression were serious. The kind of serious that scared the shit out of me and made my pussy clench and drip.

  I didn’t want to do this. I didn’t want to say this.

  But it came hurling out of me like bad food that had sat in my stomach too long. “How can you be sleeping with only me and say we aren’t in a relationship?”

  “What?”

  I circled around in front of the sofa and started pacing. “You aren’t fucking anyone else. And I’m not fucking anyone else.”

  He turned around so he was facing me. “Do you want me to fuck other women?”

  “No.” I stopped mid-step, panic bubbling in my chest. “Do you want to fuck other women?”

  His face told me nothing. “Not at the m
oment.”

  That was a relief, at least. “Then how can you say we aren’t in a relationship? We’ve stopped using condoms.”

  He shook his head slightly as though he thought the conversation was ridiculous.

  Then, meeting my eyes, he came around the couch toward me. “We’re in a sexual relationship, then. Are you happier with that definition?” He grabbed the glass from my hand and took a swallow. “It’s just semantics, Sabrina.” He held the wine toward me, but I ignored it.

  “What about the rest? What about the things you say?” I was happier with the word relationship, but this was so much more than just semantics.

  “Like what do I say?”

  I began pacing again. “Like when you tell me that you can’t work because you can’t stop thinking about me. Or when you go behind my back and tell Tom Burns to stick up for me at the job.”

  “That was about keeping things running smoothly at the office. He could have caused a whole hell of a lot of trouble that we didn’t need.”

  I stopped pacing and studied him. “I can’t tell if you’re only lying to me or if you’re also lying to yourself.”

  “Oh, please. I’m not lying to anyone. I’ve been very truthful and forthright about what this is with you.” He took another swallow from the glass and set it down on the coffee table. Then he rested his hands on his hips and stared at me as though willing me to deny what he’d said.

  Pulling my damp hair over to one shoulder, I tugged on it nervously. “You have. I won’t disagree.” He’d been forthright, if not always polite.

  I just wasn’t convinced that he was facing the truth himself, which was most of the problem.

  I dropped my hands to my sides. “But see, after you say that there’s nothing between us, you contradict it with actions that suggest exactly the opposite. You showed up uninvited at my apartment tonight when I didn’t answer a few texts! That’s not the behavior of someone who thinks this is just sex. It’s confusing and not fair, and I don’t know what I’m supposed to do or believe anymore.”

  We were face-to-face, both of us frustrated, and so far the conversation hadn’t gotten us anywhere at all.

  With his eyes never leaving mine, Donovan sat on the arm of my sofa and seemed to let everything I’d said so far sit or settle or stir. The charge between us was a thick wall, and there was room to stand between his legs. I wanted to go there and lean against him. Wanted to smell him and touch him and fall into him like I had so many times before.

  But I stayed where I was, my feet planted in the firm realization that it wouldn’t be enough anymore.

  After what felt like forever, he asked the most important question of the night. “Sabrina, what is it you want?”

  I closed my eyes briefly. It felt like déjà vu, but of course it wasn’t. He’d actually asked me that question before and then the answer had been so easy. I hadn’t known that the need and desire I had for him could take root inside me, could sprout into something bigger.

  So I’d been honest when I’d told him then that I wanted him to touch me. And I was honest now. “I want what we already have.”

  His shoulders relaxed visibly, and he reached out, grabbed my hand, and pulled me unexpectedly in between his legs. “Then I don’t understand what we’re arguing about.” He slipped a hand inside my robe and found my bare breast. Rubbing my nipple between his thumb and finger, he said, “Now is there anything else that you need to say?”

  I gasped, arching with the pleasure. Another couple seconds of this and I was a goner. I had to fight to stay focused. “Yes. I want you to acknowledge that what we have is more than what you say it is.”

  His hand dropped immediately, and he mumbled something incomprehensible under his breath.

  He stared at me for several long seconds. “Acknowledge that it’s what exactly? We have a committed sexual relationship. Is that what you want to hear?”

  “It’s a start.” Hope began to bud in my chest. He was listening, at least. He was talking. He was trying.

  “And what else?”

  I swallowed. “The ability to let it grow into more.”

  “No,” he said adamantly. He pushed me away so he could stand and pace toward the fireplace and back. “Absolutely not. It can’t grow.”

  I could feel the pain of his words between each of my ribs. How could he say that? It had already grown so much.

  I tightened the belt of my robe around my waist and pretended that my eyes weren’t pricking. “I don’t believe that.”

  He put a fist on his hip and stepped toward me. “You mean love? Is that what you’re asking for?” He said the word love like it was a disease or a piece of garbage to be held as far away as possible.

  “If that’s where it goes,” I said meekly.

  He scoffed. “This is not going there.”

  I took a slow shuddering breath in, hoping he didn’t see how much his words hurt. Years of buried fears and insecurities came easily to the surface. A lifetime of not being enough.

  If that’s what it was, he was going to have to tell me to my face.

  “Why?” My throat sounded tight. “Just say it. Because I’m not good enough? Because I’m not the right girl? Because you could never love someone like me? Just say it. I need to hear it.”

  His hand fell to his side, his posture softening. “Because I can’t love anyone, Sabrina.” His voice was softer, too. “I can’t fall in love.”

  “You can’t?” I challenged with a trembling lip. “Or you won’t?”

  “Both.” His intensity began to escalate again. “I can’t. I won’t. I don’t. I live my life so that it’s an impossibility. So that there is no chance that someone will get that close, and I’m not changing that for anyone. Not even for you.” He pointed an aggressive finger in my direction. “Especially not for you.”

  It was another series of stings. This time, instead of just making me want to cry, it made me want to sting back. He might not be willing to say it was because I wasn’t good enough, but I was willing to say that it was because she was too good. “Because of Amanda?”

  He shook his head, vehemently. “We’re not talking about Amanda.”

  I’d honored his wishes regarding his dead fiancée for the most part and asked very little about her.

  But those were his rules. Under his rules, I was automatically set up to lose. If I wanted a chance to win, I was going to have to challenge them.

  Refusing to back down, I took a step in his direction. “You loved her, and you lost her so you won’t love anyone else now. Is that it?”

  “I said we aren’t talking about Amanda.” He walked away, circling my sofa, seemingly going nowhere except to escape.

  I followed right on his heels. “Are you just so afraid that if you love you might get hurt again? Is that what it is? It is, isn’t it?”

  “Stop, Sabrina,” he warned. He wouldn’t turn around. Wouldn’t look at me.

  I pressed on. “We lose people sometimes, Donovan. We can’t stop living when we do. Just because she died—”

  He spun around suddenly to face me. “She’s dead because of me!”

  His words echoed through my apartment, sounding ominous yet somehow hollow without context. How could he possibly say that Amanda was dead because of him?

  I quickly went through what I knew about her death. She’d died in an accident the year before I’d met him. Another driver hadn’t checked his blind spot when he’d moved to her lane, forcing her into oncoming traffic.

  That’s what Weston had told me. He hadn’t said Donovan had been involved at all. Which meant Donovan was just trying to scare me. And succeeding. But he hadn’t said anything I could truly grasp onto. “I don’t know what you’re trying to tell me.”

  “Amanda’s car accident happened because of me, Sabrina,” he said, struggling for his usual control and failing. “That’s what I’m trying to tell you.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense. Were you driving with her? Were you on the road too?�
��

  “No. It’s not like that.” He ran his hand along the back of his neck. “When I fall in love, I become so consumed, so preoccupied with the person I’m in love with that I do things I shouldn’t. I get involved. I intervene.”

  “I don’t understand.” But I wanted to. The way he talked about being consumed—I wanted to be the one he talked about like that.

  “I was so obsessed with her that I hired a private detective to follow her. I needed to know where she was—always. She found out, and we fought. She told me she’d call off the wedding if I didn’t stop. But I couldn’t stop. For no other reason except that I was addicted to her. I was addicted to knowing everything about her.”

  His eyes were wide and alight, like he was rabid. Like he was alive.

  But wasn’t that what young love was? Feeling that passion? That preoccupation with another human?

  “I told him to keep on her. Her death wasn’t an accident. She swerved into the opposite lane of traffic because she was trying to lose her tail.”

  My hand flew up to my mouth. “Oh my god.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Does anyone else know about this?” I asked tentatively.

  “The P.I. does.”

  I nodded, taking it all in. Tugging on my hair, I made my way to the couch and sat down, trying to process. So the cops had called the incident an accident. The way Donovan spoke, he sounded like he believed he was culpable of murder.

  And was he? What he described was…well, it wasn’t normal. It certainly wasn’t healthy. But who was I to be the therapist? I liked to play rape with the guy who’d saved me from being raped myself.

  But hiring a P.I. wasn’t a crime. Whatever they’d fought over, whatever his jealousies had been or his insecurities were that had driven him to feel like he needed one—those belonged to a different Donovan. He’d been so young.