“Definitely. We should definitely do that. But I have to take care of something first.”
Heat arced between them, and Wes dropped his hands to his sides. It took everything in him not to reach for her. “I’m pretty tall. You want help reaching a vase?”
Her answering smile was slow and naughty. “Not exactly.” She fisted a hand in his T-shirt and tugged him through the doorway. “C’mere, sex antelope. I feel an ambush coming on.”
They never had made it to that movie.
And they’d celebrated every birthday, every anniversary, every just because with tiger lilies and sex for the next two years.
Until it had all shattered under them...
The sound of Vivienne’s heels against the hardwood yanked him out of his reverie in time to see her striding toward him in pristine condition.
Her hair had been smoothed, erasing any hint that he’d had his hands in it, and the whisker burn he’d left on her jaw seemed less red, thanks to her stellar makeup skills, he assumed, taking in her precisely applied lipstick, no longer smeared from his mouth. In seven and a half minutes, she’d managed to erase the past.
He’d do well to follow her lead, he realized, as she stopped in front of him.
Instead, Wes gave in to the perverse urge to reach out and stroke a finger down the cold glass of the vase that contained the six drooping lilies, their orange petals limp and curling as they wilted in the murky, fetid water. Not unlike their relationship.
“Is this symbolism for my benefit?”
Something stark flashed across Vivienne’s face. “It’s been a long time since ‘your benefit’ played any role in my life decisions.”
Wes tried not to let it bother him when she slid the bouquet out of his reach. He shoved his hands into his pockets, but he ignored the warning to drop the subject. “And yet my presence here would suggest the opposite.”
Silence crowded the space between them, so thick that Vivienne had to punch through it. Unlike him, she’d never liked the quiet.
“Are you hungry? I think there’s some leftover takeout in the fridge.”
A slow, mocking smile tilted the corner of his mouth at the dodge, but he followed her as she retreated into the high-end galley kitchen. “So this is how it’s going to be now?”
She lifted her brows, feigning ignorance over her shoulder, but he didn’t buy it for a second. Vivienne was way too smart to play dumb.
“That might work on strangers, but I know you better than anyone.”
She froze with her hand on the refrigerator door, and a wry smile twisted her lips. “And you don’t know me at all. Not anymore.”
The stark truth of that settled around them, like ash. It was all kind of poetic, Wes decided. That they’d end up here, as fun house–mirror versions of themselves. Older and wiser but shoved back into the same constraints—her with some grand plan; him with nothing to his name. The first time they’d been alone together in years had ended up just like the last time they’d been alone together.
When she’d given him the your-business-or-me ultimatum and called him “a money-obsessed workaholic,” and he’d chosen his business over her and told her she was “so goddamn selfish,” and then they’d banged each other’s brains out up against the wall of their cozy apartment one last time. Before he’d walked out of her life. Before she’d hopped a plane out of his.
It had been a long time since he’d let himself think about their spectacular crash and burn, but today, he couldn’t stop thinking about it.
He realized, in that moment, with his body still buzzing from the contact high, what a colossal mistake elevator sex had been. Instead of getting her out of his system, it made him want things he’d thought he’d exorcised ages ago.
“Don’t do that.” Vivienne let her hand drop from the stainless steel handle and stepped away from the fridge. “Don’t reassess how we ended up here. This isn’t one of your security systems. You can’t work backward through the problem and figure out where it all went wrong. You can’t reset this. We were hot for each other, and it flamed out.”
Her shrug was insultingly dispassionate. “The experiment failed. It’s time to accept it and move on. We didn’t even last long enough to get to the part where we got bored with each other.”
“Is that what you think? That if we were this far in, I wouldn’t want you anymore?”
Something raw and painful crossed her face. “Please. By now we’d be scheduling sex. Every second Friday, like clockwork. I’d have to break out the sexy panties.”
Lies. If nothing else, the elevator had proven that. “All your panties are sexy,” he offered, trying to diffuse the uncomfortable tension vibrating between them like an out-of-tune guitar string.
“Life gets in the way.” Her voice was soft. “We’re nothing if not proof of that.”
The philosophical detachment stoked his anger, and his words held more heat than he’d intended. “So that’s it, then? We just pretend like what happened didn’t happen?”
Something almost wistful flitted across her features, but she tamped it down. “We’re not pretending it didn’t happen, Wes.” When she met his eyes, hers were stone-cold. “We’re just not pretending that it meant anything.”
Back to the status quo. Cool politeness. Respectable distance.
He had to remind himself that was how he wanted it.
“Now,” she tucked her hair behind both her ears, “am I your lawyer, or not?”
The challenge was quintessentially Viv. And despite the excuses he’d flung at her in the prison parking lot, he knew there was only one answer for a smart man in immense legal peril. “You are.”
Her nod was almost...relieved? “Then if you’ll excuse me, I have a lot of work to do on your case. There’s bedding in the linen closet beside the bathroom if you want to make up
