Page 12 of Paging Dr. Breakup
“Exactly.”
“So.”
“Um.”
“Pretend to be together.” His storm-cloud gray gaze pinned her in place.
He had said the words she couldn’t.
Her heart kicked an extra beat, and it didn’t have to do with the caffeine. Could she do this? Could she survive being closer to Calvin but pretending? For how long? So many details swirled in her mind.
Still, the chance of a reprieve from the kindhearted, relentless prying tempted her.
Calvin planted both feet on the floor and leaned forward. He peered at Deirdre long enough for her to memorize the fine lines bracketing the set of his mouth. “Cards on the table,” he said.
Deirdre’s cards were way too complicated when it came to Calvin. Her past and their past and her feelings and whatever his feelings were all obscured the water like glacier melt in a slow-moving river. So much existed beneath the surface that she couldn’t see.
Wouldn’t examine.
Deirdre swallowed again. True, the last several years of grief and immersion into work as her go-to avoidance technique had gotten old. Everyone in town and in the hospital knew her story. Everyone had decided it was time for her to move on with her life.
Except Deirdre.
Her life was a well-oiled machine, efficient and productive. Fulfilling. Her daily job contained enough uncertainty and change. She wasn’t prepared to bring that level of uncertainty and change to her personal life.
What she and Calvin proposed might get everyone off her back for a while. Relieve the social pressure.
Tempting.
Almost as tempting as the tall, lean frame of the man she had known for years. Yet, here he sat, so much about him now unfamiliar due to physical distance and the passage of time.
What she did truly know about this present-day Calvin? Not much, except that he was still her friend.
Deirdre’s therapist would have a heyday with this elaborate decision to avoid addressing her issues.
Avoidance sounded darn good to Deirdre.
She took a fortifying sip of black gold and mirrored his forward posture, resting one arm on the table next to her. “Okay. I have a few cards I can lay out for you. Here’s the deal. I don’t have time or energy for a relationship. However, like you said, it’s exhausting having everyone poke around in my personal life. Frankly, I can’t handle the poking right now. If I hear one more comment about taking a date to the Breakup Festival, I will jump out the window right behind you.
“All of my spare time is taken up by work or helping Mav with the lodge. Or, here recently, defending against those idiots who want to access to claims in this area.”
A land speculator, Randy Nelson, had posed as a guest at the lodge over a month ago in early February. He had faked an accident to try to financially ruin Deirdre and Mav so he could purchase the property along with newly discovered valuable mineral rights. They had squashed Randy’s threats to their family home and land but were determined to get the property legally squared away so nothing like this could surprise them again.
“I’m too busy for anything actually resembling a real relationship.” She wrapped up her rant.
A tiny inkling niggled at her. If she did have a quality partner, she wouldmaketime. But as of now, that idea continued to be a nonstarter. There was a saying that work expanded to fit the time available, and her life was a prime example. Her life was full of professionally satisfying activities that wouldn’t hurt her.
Calvin laced his long, tapered fingers together, making tendons move on the back of his hands and his hair-dusted forearms. “Then we are in complete agreement. I think the only way we can get folks off our backs is to start dating. At least until after the Breakup Festival.”
“Break up after the breakup?”
“The irony is not lost on me.” His boyish grin caught her off guard for a split second, transporting her back to her senior year in high school when two men held special places in her heart. That was then.
Thendidn’t matter.
In the present, she and Calvin were two totally different people in a totally different situation with very different needs. “We’ll have to continue working together. Can you separate your professional relationship from a pretend relationship?” she asked.
“Pretending is one of my best skills.”
