Page 39 of Almost Perfect
She’d just left, and I sat swirling the dregs of coffee in my cheery blue cup, wondering if I’d imagined the heat between me and Calla.
“Deep in thought there, Wy. What’s on your mind?” The door shut behind Warrick, and he slipped into the seat across from me.
“Just wrapped up a date,” I explained.
His eyes widened. “And looks like it was a smashing success.”
I grumbled and set the mug down.
“Second one lined up already?”
“No. Obviously.” I could’ve been teen me talking to a younger Warrick, a hormone-fueled bout of sullen brooding making me entirely incomprehensible to sweet, curious War.
He blew out a breath and settled into the seat, his huge frame dwarfing the chair. “It is pretty obvious.”
I glared at him, feeling a hen-pecking coming on.
“Earth to Wyatt. You like Calla.”
My heart kicked at her name. “She’s nice.”
He barked a laugh. “She’s a lot of things. Nice is one of them, but I definitely do not mean you like her as a friend.”
My thoughts were a tangle, so I didn’t say a word. I already knew this. I didn’t like Calla as a friend, despite all the internal warning signals blazing red, telling me to go back, to ignore the chemistry, to ignore how beautiful she was. And in the last week, I’d realized it was more than just her physical beauty, which made her actually dangerous to me.
Crossing his arms, he leveled me with a look. “When you two are in a room together, it’s like walking into a patch of fog, the tension’s so thick.”
I straightened at this. “It’s not that bad. We have chemistry, sure, but—”
“Seriously, dude. When I came in on Wednesday and you guys were eating oatmeal and talking quietly, I might as well have been walking in on someone’s afterglow. No lie. You were both huddled at the table, almost whispering to each other, and I was in the kitchen for a full three minutes before either one of you even realized I was in the room.”
Heat shot to my cheeks. I remembered it well, because I’d felt the heavy drag of the moment like someone’s fingers across my chest. Just the mention of that sent my pulse racing and slipped me right back into the kitchen back home, into the seat across from her.
She sat there at the table, the one I’d grown up building forts under and eating family dinners at, and she looked so appealing I could hardly swallow. It’d taken practice to eat in front of her the last few weeks. Not because I was dainty about eating in front of a beautiful woman, but because my eyes were the most ravenous thing about me when presented with her. And I had to be careful not to totally freak her out by staring.
I looked forward to this half hour of time with her each morning. Three days in, and I couldn’t wait to hear my alarm and get the day going. I hadn’t felt that eager in months. Since I’d stepped back from work, definitely, but longer than that. Way too long, and it was all her fault.
The day before, we’d talked about random stuff. Warrick had kicked off a conversation about what a neat freak I was, to which she’d looked mildly horrified. She’d then confessed to being a bit of a slob and made me promise not to go into the barn without fair warning.
And that tidbit about her messiness should’ve put me off because I genuinely hated clutter and disorder, but all I could think that minute wasif you invite me, you’ll know I’m coming.
Each detail she dropped, any bit ofhershe shared, I memorized like I’d be grilled about it later. That this was at complete odds with my stated disinterest in her didn’t stop me from doing it.
And so, the beginning of our second week of mornings together, I pressed for a little more.
“So what’s your schedule like? You’re here for a few more weeks, and then what?” I asked, trying to sound casual and not as over-eager to hear about any small aspect of her life she’d share.
Regretfully, this made her frown.
“I’ve been considering extending my time here. I don’t know what’s next, but going back to LA and trying to pretend like that’s a life I want to return to makes me feel… bad.” She nudged a blueberry around the edge of her bowl.
“Do you have friends there?”
Her lips tilted into a small smile. “Jenna’s in and out depending on her schedule. She’s usually single and up for hanging out. Kristoffer, my assistant, is great, and I have other staff who are around a lot for different reasons. But for years, it’s mostly just been me.”
She said this with no hint of bitterness or self-pity in there. Just matter-of-fact, and that made it all the more heartbreaking. This woman was warm and sociable and generally lovely. She should be surrounded by people who care about her, not occasionally spending time with a busy friend.
But she’d lost her mother, and it sounded like that hadn’t been as much of a loss as I might’ve thought before our last conversation on the subject. And her boyfriend had been a fake one. How could she stand it?
