Pretend You're Mine(58)
“That is not ‘end of story’ and you know it.”
He spun her around sideways on the stool to face him and kept his hands on her thighs. “Look. You want something that I can’t give you. I think you’re getting in too deep here. You’re trying to establish a relationship where there can’t be one. I don’t share. I don’t open up and talk about my feelings or what I’m thinking. And even if I did, I’m leaving. For six months. There isn’t going to be an ‘us’ when I come back. And I’m starting to think that maybe there shouldn’t be an us now.”
“Do you want me to leave?” She leveled a look at him, daring him to say what he didn’t mean.
He sighed. “No, I don’t want you to leave.” There. How was that for honesty? “I like having you around. I even like having the dogs around. I think our working relationship is great. But maybe it’s time we back off of the more ... intimate area.”
“Sex?”
The waitress paused wide-eyed as she put the coffee mug down in front of him.
Luke waited until she wandered down the counter to the next patron. “Yes. Sex,” he said quietly. “It’s starting to confuse the situation. Let’s just go back to the way things were for the rest of the month. Stick with the plan. You’re saving money and doing a job search. Thanks to you, I’m getting caught up at the office and getting things organized for when I’m gone. We can make this work, Harper. But not by complicating things.”
“So I explain to you that it hurts me when you withhold things from me and your solution is to further reduce our relationship to boss-employee?”
Why did women always make things so difficult? He was protecting her. Why couldn’t she see that?
“Harper, this is in your best interest.”
“So you’re saying you’re protecting me from my own feelings by taking sex off the table.”
She didn’t sound impressed, but Luke was committed. Maybe it wasn’t only her feelings he wanted to protect. There was something about the rawness between them that scared the crap out of him. He didn’t want it to go any farther. Any deeper.
“I’m saying we’re complicating a situation that doesn’t need to be complicated. Let’s just go back to the plan.”
“Fine.”
He gripped her legs. “Fine?” He had expected more of an argument.
“It’s your life. Your decision.”
Luke had the distinct feeling he was being played. “You’re fine with going back to the plan?”
“Yep.” She stared pointedly at his hands on her legs until he removed them. Harper turned her attention back to her menu. “I’ll see you back at work.”
“How about I buy you lunch?” he offered. The club special looked pretty good.
“No thanks. I’d rather eat by myself.” She snapped her menu shut. “But I’ll put your coffee on my tab. You can go.”
And just like that, Luke was dismissed.
***
He took the moratorium seriously and slept on the couch for two nights, thankful that it was a million times more comfortable than his grandmother’s. Yet it still paled in comparison to his bed and Harper.
What he thought was a move to simplify only turned out to be a complication. A rock hard one. The weekend turned into a two-day erection. Now that her body was off limits he wanted it even more. Those sweet curves called to him, demanding his attention, his hands.
He started avoiding her like the drunk uncle no one wants to talk to at a reunion after he found her bent over the kitchen island reading a magazine in freaking boy shorts and a tank top. He turned around so fast he rammed straight into the refrigerator.
And damned if he didn’t see the smirk on her face before he hustled out of the room. She had to be playing him. It seemed like her skirts were getting shorter, her shirts tighter, and his dick harder.
He was pissed off all the time. A fact that Frank was currently pointing out.
“What the hell crawled up your ass today?”
“I’m just not in the mood to hear how another client pissed you off.”
Frank snorted and tossed the scrap wood in the back of his truck. “I was going to tell you that the doc called today about that addition she’s been talking about. She’s ready for the expansion. But since you’re being a whiny little bitch, I guess I’ll have Harper put the consult on the calendar.”
Luke slammed the lid of his truck toolbox. When someone like Frank called him out on it, he knew he had to be acting like an ass.
“Sorry, Frank. I’m just ...” What was he? Hard, frustrated, agitated, distracted beyond belief by a certain curvy blonde who looked through him rather than at him in the kitchen this morning. “Stressed,” he finished lamely.