Okay, so, uncomfortable day ahead. After I left Aric’s place last night, I’d decided it was for the best that things had stopped where they had.

Yes, there was crazy mutual attraction between us, and we’d given in to it momentarily. But he knew as well as I did—with both of us in this transient business—there was no future for us.

He would be leaving at the end of his contract, and I’d most likely be staying here. It would be stupid to get too attached to each other. And I was already flirting with danger in that department.

Knowing myself, if I did sleep with him, I’d have a hard timenotgetting seriously attached.

I looked over the day’s assignment log—packed for both news and sports. Aric and I still had to work together, so I guessed we’d just pretend last night hadn’t happened.

I took a deep breath, put on a pleasant expression, and went back to the sports office. He was scrolling through the sports feed online.

“We should probably get started,” I said. “We’ve got a lot to cover.”

His eyes didn’t leave the monitor in front of him. “Yeah. I don’t really need a photog for my stuff today—I’ve got to run from town to town grabbing video—no standups. If you have a busy day, you might be better off just going it alone.”

“Oh. Okay. Sure, yeah, that’s fine.”

He still didn’t look at me. I continued speaking to the side of his face. “Okay, well, have a good day then,” I chirped, the sound as forced as my smile.

Aric threw a lazy wave over his shoulder. “See ya.”

So, that was it. He’d finally had enough of my running away and my unexplained hot and cold behavior. He and Colleen would startworking outregularly, while he and I went back to being just co-workers.

And that was good.Good.

If I were to let myself really fall for Aric, if I admitted the extent of my feelings to him, to myself, how would I ever deal with losing him when the time inevitably came?

Better to just avoid the whole thing and go back to life as usual.

* * *

Worst. Day. Ever.

If being pursued by Aric had been nerve-wracking, being ignored by him was excruciating. I’d been basically useless on my shoots, cranky and distracted, picturing the way Colleen had stood so close to him, hanging on his every word, the way he’d looked at her and laughed at some asinine thing she’d said.

And then of course there was the non-stop looping memory reel of last night, the way Aric had touched me, the way he’d tasted.

God, why couldn’t I juststopwanting him?

Back in the newsroom later, we stayed in our separate areas, not speaking except to say “excuse me” when we’d both had to go to the printer room at the same time.

During the newscast, Aric came out onto the set, we did our happy chit-chat for the viewers before the sports segment and more of it at the end of the show.

Fake, fake, fake. At the first notes of the closing music, he simply stood up and walked off the set.

I followed him to the newsroom. “So, any big plans for your days off?”

Other than assisting Colleen as she tones her teeny-tiny glutes?

I made my voice light, trying to somehow break the unbearable impasse between us.

Aric walked back to his desk, grabbed his bag, and turned right back around, heading for the newsroom door in long strides.

“Good night, Heidi,” he said. And then he was gone.

Okay. So, not interested in small talk. He was obviously angry or hurt or both. He wanted some kind of explanation for my bipolar sexual behavior, and I couldn’t blame him.

But what could I do?