Page 25 of It Must Be Love

He pulled away and stuffed his hands in his pocket. "I apologize for touching you. That was inappropriate."

"Thank you again for the dinner." I wanted him gone before my emotions took over.

It used to happen from time to time with Darren in the beginning. I was always surprised that he was nice to me. Now, we were friends, and I accepted it, I appreciated it and him, but in the early days of our relationship the fact that someone cared about me besides my father was an emotional shock. I'd gotten used to being on my own. I was an introvert with few friends. After the accident and spending months in a burn unit, I'd become even more isolated. In college, I stayed a loner. I had acquaintances but no friends. Darren had been the exception as he'd known me since the accident and had never ever judged me or made me feel weak—he always allowed me to be myself.

"You should go home before it starts to sleet in earnest." He turned his back to me and walked out of the cubicle.

I sat down and took calming breaths.

Chapter 10

Amias

Ialmost kissed her. I wanted to. When she looked down at the floor and I touched her to raise her face to me, I'd wanted to her close, feel her body against mine.

I was losing my mind. There was no other explanation for it.

"Maybe you've always been a little attracted to her and since she's not your type, you've been hostile," Hayes suggested when we met for a drink at the City Bar in Back Bay, and I told him that I almost kissed Nolan's kid sister.

"Bullshit."

"Okay. Explain your animosity toward her."

I shrugged, taking a sip of Scotch. "I can't."

Had I always been attracted to Naya? Did I watch her while she watched me? Did I hide how flattered I was by her attention with nonchalance and cruelty? Was I no better than Ann?

"And I think Ann notices," Hayes continued.

"What the fuck?"

"Yep. Why else do her claws come out whenever Naya is around?"

None of this made sense, especially how I was feeling about Naya.

"Do you think I'm so fucking shallow that I saw her that day in workout gear and finally admitted my attraction to her?" I wondered aloud.

"Yeah, you are that shallow," Hayes said seriously.

"With friends like you…." I flipped him a finger.

"Okay, tell me what do you like best about Ann?"

"I like how self-assured she is and how she carries herself. I like how good she is in bed. I like…what? Why are you looking at me like that?"

Hayes rolled his eyes and groaned.

"You like how she looks on your arm. You always liked it when people said, Ann's hot. At MIT you liked how everyone wanted to get into her pants and she was yours. You liked that she was from your social circle and when you took her home, your parents were fine with her. Unlike what happened to—"

"Leander."

My older brother had married his high school sweetheart, a girl from the wrong-side of the tracks. Thanks to how my family treated Phoebe, the marriage didn't last. Now Phoebe was happily married, and Leander saw his twin boys a weekend or so every few months. He was now married to a woman my parents did like. Calista was the daughter of one of my father's friends, a former Senator. They had a daughter who was now nine and a son who was eleven.

We weren't a family that spilled our guts to each other but once when Leander was drunk he told me how he still missed Phoebe and that she'd been the love of his life. He hated that he hardly saw his kids with her and that they were closer to Phoebe's new husband who treated them like his own.

"Why can't you see them more often if you miss them?" I asked.

"Calista will throw a fit. Apparently, I'm supposed to focus on our children. And in any case the twins are in university now and the times I've tried to reach out…they've been polite but it's obvious there is no relationship."

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