Page 66 of Feels Like the First Time

Just as he’d worn the mask to hide from Zoe’s rejection, he’d found an excuse to hide from giving her a chance to want him for himself.

“You love her.”

Dex shoved his hands in his pockets with a frown. He wanted to deny it. He wanted it not to be true. Love—it sucked. It hurt. But even as miserable as it felt to remember the pain in Zoe’s green eyes when she’d told him to get out of her life, he couldn’t stop his feelings. Hell, he hadn’t been able to after ten years away from her. What made him think that pissing her off, publicly humiliating her and ruining their chances together would stop them?

He was such an ass. Turning, he headed back toward the lobby.

“Where do you think you’re going?”

He stopped and gave his grandmother a sheepish smile.

“I’m going to talk to Zoe. I need to tell her how I feel.”

“No.”

“What?” Shocked, Dex spun around to stare at his grandmother. “Why wouldn’t I tell her? This is important, isn’t it? Women want to hear that kind of thing.”

“If you wanted to tell her, you’d have said it already. Telling her now is just another way of trying to manipulate the situation, Dexter. This isn’t a game you can strategize your way through. You have to let her make her own choices.”

“She needs all of the information to make those choices.” He shifted toward the inn again. He wanted to talk to her. Had to talk to her. Now, before she left. He knew Zoe; she was probably already packed and ready to run.

“Then you should have given her that information up front, shouldn’t you?” came the dry admonishment.

Dex clenched his teeth to hold back the ugly flow of curses. He’d never sworn in front of his grandma and he wasn’t about to start now.

She stared calmly back, looking like a tiny Mrs. Claus who’d just put his name on the naughty list. “Leave her be, Dexter. She needs time and space to sort things out.”

“What if she takes off?”

There, he said it. Voiced his biggest fear—that Zoe would leave him. Again. That she’d use her anger to ignore what they’d had together, to fall back on her mistrust of him—justified or not—and cut him out of her life.

“If she leaves, then it wasn’t meant to be,” his grandma intoned, as sagely as if she’d just flipped the death card across the table.

He thought of that poem his mom used to have on a plaque in the hallway. Something about loving things and letting them go. He’d always thought that was pure crap.

But he couldn’t tell his grandma that. Not when she was giving him the evil eye. Instead, he just shrugged as though he was agreeing.

Instead, he was already figuring his strategy. He had Zoe’s address. He had her brother’s company name. He could track her down. If she left before he could fix things, he’d just have to hunt her down and make her his.

13

“YOU’RE NOT GOING to let them win, are you?”

She’d tried hiding in her room, but pride, hunger and the memories of Dex had finally driven her out. Now, focused on burying her misery with the entire pan of caramel dutch apple pie in front of her, Zoe barely flicked Julie a glance.Until the other woman plopped herself down in the chair across from her.

“What the…?” This friend thing was turning into a pain in the ass.

“Don’t give them the satisfaction,” Julie commanded, her blue eyes concerned, her face set in determined lines.

“I don’t want to talk,” Zoe said, focusing her tear-reddened eyes on the pie.

“Brad lied, you know.”

“I have a brain, don’t I? Of course I know he lied.”

At least about being Gandalf. But the rest? Zoe didn’t know what to think. The guilt on Dex’s face was hard to argue with. Not able to deal with it yet, Zoe stabbed viciously at an apple slice.

“You don’t sound like you believe it, though.” Julie waited for a response, then, apparently giving up the fight, she grabbed the fork on her side of the table and scooped up a bite of Zoe’s pie.

Zoe shrugged. She’d been so devastated to realize Dex had lied to her—not once but twice—about Gandalf, she hadn’t paid much attention to Brad’s assertion. Everyone else apparently had, though.

“Dex didn’t come up with that title,” Zoe stated with a grimace. “But he had something to do with it.”

“Zoe, I was there when Brad first said it,” Julie admitted. “Dex wasn’t anywhere around.”

Zoe frowned at her caramelized apple. She’d seen guilt on his face. Had she been wrong? Did it matter? One lie or two, he’d still deceived her.

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