Total pages in book: 166
Estimated words: 156145 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 781(@200wpm)___ 625(@250wpm)___ 520(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 156145 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 781(@200wpm)___ 625(@250wpm)___ 520(@300wpm)
It won’t sustain us.
He didn’t mean anything by it—of that, Lucy was sure—but it served as yet another reminder that this was temporary and any effort to make it permanent would backfire spectacularly. She put on her best smile. “What’s the plan, then?”
Gideon’s grin dropped away and he studied her for a long moment, seeming to see through her façade. Finally he nodded, almost to himself. “Lunch. Then we’ll head back to your place to finish what we started.”
Not a brush-off, then, but a detour. She kept her shoulders from sagging through sheer stubbornness. “I could eat.”
“Good.” He touched the small of her back and ushered her out of the building. He didn’t say anything as they walked down the street, and she was too twisted up inside her own head to try for conversation. Nothing she said right now would change the truth, and the weight of it threatened to send her scurrying back to her place to barricade herself in with Garfunkel and the work files she still had to find time for this weekend.
Their destination was a little restaurant on the second floor of a converted apartment building. They’d left most of the interior walls up and designed low lighting so that even in the middle of the afternoon, it gave the illusion of a night tucked away. The hostess led them to a room that might have been a closet at one point, though it had two doorways now and space for a little booth for two.
Gideon waited for her to slide in and then took the spot next to her. The hostess left and Lucy became aware of a low jazz song playing in the background. She ran her finger over the rough tabletop. “I didn’t even know this place existed.”
“It’s new. A friend of mine bought the building a couple years back and construction just wrapped up a few months ago. The bottom floor is split into a clothing boutique and shoe store, and the third floor is privately owned.”
She’d definitely come down here to check out the shoe store in the future. She twisted to face him, but he spoke before she could. “What happened back there?”
“Excuse me?”
“You know exactly what I’m talking about. You were fine in the dressing room, and when you walked out, you’d put a wall up between us.”
She desperately didn’t want to talk about this, but his jaw was set in an all-too-familiar way. There would be no getting out of this conversation, short of crawling over the table and making a run for it. Since that was beneath Lucy’s dignity—and she didn’t know for certain that Gideon wouldn’t just chase her down—she sighed. “We have clear boundaries.”
“Mmm-hmm.”
That response gave her no indication of what he thought of that, so she hedged. “Very clear boundaries.”
Gideon drummed his fingers on the table. “Is the problem that you feel that I’m threatening the boundaries or that the boundaries themselves are the problem?”
Trust the man to just lay it out there with no qualms. She fought not to fidget. “I value our friendship. I know it may not seem like that after not speaking for two years, but I missed you terribly during that time and I feel like we’re almost starting to reclaim that lost ground.”
The guarded look on his face cleared. “You don’t want to jeopardize our friendship.”
“Exactly.” She didn’t mention the theoretical pending marriage or what their friendship might look like once she’d picked a man and followed through on that. The marriage might have sex included in the bargain, but it would still be a marriage without love. Having Gideon in her life, even on the outskirts, wasn’t something she was willing to give up.
Not now that she’d just gotten him back.
The waiter brought their waters and took their drink orders. Once the man disappeared through the doorway, Gideon turned back to her. “That gap in communication was as much my fault as it was yours. I let guilt get the better of me and figured that you didn’t want to see my face any more than you wanted to see Jeff’s.”
“You...weren’t wrong—at least, not at first.” She’d been so hurt and angry and embarrassed that she hadn’t wanted to see anyone for months after she’d broken off her engagement. The only person who’d ignored that was Becka, and even she’d had to come to Lucy. If Gideon had tried during that time, she would have slammed the door in his face.
By the time she’d gathered the strength to get back out into the world again, it was to find that her former friends had moved on without her. It made sense, in a way. She’d lost most of her good friends when she and Jeff had started dating—a sign she should have paid more attention to. He hadn’t missed a beat after their breakup, and most of their friends had been his first, so they’d moved along with him.