“Then I’d better let you go now, because I’m needy enough to want you to do that.”
He gave me another kiss, a slow, chaste meeting of the lips. “You’re not needy, Vivian. You’re a proud, independent woman.”
How I wished.
“And I’ll understand if you meet someone in the meantime. Really, I will,” I lied.
His eyes met mine. “I suspect you’re the kind of woman a man should wait for.”
My stomach did a somersault. “I don’t understand what you see in me.”
“You are beautiful and funny and kind—”
I snorted.
“Okay. Rotten potatoes aside, you are kind. How about you weren’t afraid to help a father who didn’t know how to hem a dress or a young woman who was freaked out by her period or a friend get lice out of her hair.”
“You know about that?”
“Suja told Cassidy.”
“Ah.”
“You take the time you need.”
Something about the patience of a man could make a woman want to rush forward.
But I didn’t.
I wanted nothing more than to cuddle up with Parker on the couch and see where the night might take us. Instead, I took him by the hand and led him to the foyer.
“One for the road?” I asked.
He flashed that devastating grin again and drew me into his arms. He paused just a second, letting the anticipation and attraction crackle between us. I don’t know how long we’d been kissing when my mom walked through the door.
Chapter 30
Either Mom wasn’t awake or she was pretending not to be when my alarm went off the next morning. I put on my best suit and headed for my lawyer’s office. I clutched the photos Abi had given me along with all my “homework” under one arm in, you guessed it, a manila folder.
Should I have to take a job as a secretary somewhere, I was going to have a hard time explaining my aversion to folders. And envelopes. And papers with lots of legal words and numbers on them.
Oh well. We’d cross that bridge when we got there.
Unless you married Parker. You could even sell one of your two houses and stay in the same cul-de-sac and—
Nope. Not jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire. He was cute and he could kiss, but rebound relationships didn’t work.
At least that’s what people said.
Besides, if my time in New York had taught me anything, it was that I needed to learn to take care of myself before I got romantically entangled with anyone else. I’d lost myself with Mitch, and I didn’t plan to ever do that again.
Heck, I wasn’t sure I’d found myself yet, but I thought, perhaps, I could see the true me waving from the other end of the tunnel.
Paloma’s secretary called me in, and I took a seat on the other side of the desk, waiting for my intrepid lawyer to finish up an email. Finally she turned to me with a pleasant smile that didn’t reach all the way up to her eyes. “Are you ready for mediation?”
“I suppose.” I slid the folder toward her, and she thumbed through it. Every now and then, she would murmur, “Good.”
I sat up a little straighter. For some reason I kept hoping for a gold star for my efforts.
