“It’s not too late. There’s plenty of time to find someone and fall in love. And if that doesn’t happen as quickly as you want, there are other options.”
Her nose crinkled up in that annoyingly cute way I remembered. Damn it. I had to stop finding her cute.
“Egg baster?”
Laughter burst out of me, defusing some of the tension.
“I don’t think that’s how sperm donors work, but that’s only one option.”
“I’m not discounting it. Like everybody, I wanted the dream of a happy marriage and happy family, you know?”
“Yeah, I know.”
Heart aching, we exited my truck. While I didn’t want this conversation to end, I also needed it to. It hurt so fucking much that the woman who claimed my heart more than twenty years ago wanted the same things I did, but not with me.
But I’d already gone a decade without her in my life at all, which reinforced that I’d rather be friends than a memory.
“Thank you,” she said. “Thank you for everything you’d done for me this week.”
“Nothing I wouldn’t do for any friend.”
I wasn’t excited about going home alone to my empty house, but I had plenty of projects to keep me busy. If I kept up this pace, I’d be able to fill my house with furniture in a week or two. That’d be a good time to get a dog. Maybe then this emptiness would fade.
Chapter 12
DANI
Step away from the window, Dani. Stop perving on your friend. The fact that he never wears a shirt at home isn’t license to stare. If he were a man creeping on a woman, you’d think he was horrible. Itishorrible. Stop it. Step away.
I didn’t. My feet were rooted to the spot. From my old bedroom, I had a straight view into the room where Jake stripped wallpaper in nothing but a pair of shorts. There were no curtains or blinds on the windows, and I saw straight into the room. The light from the bulb loved his muscular back.As did I.
My cat demanded attention with an indignant meow. She had her own little cat cave in the corner of the room, but I’d kept her awake with all my moving around.
“Miss Priss, your mommy is a bad person. The last thing I need now is for someone to call the police on me for being a peeping Tom.”
I didn’t intend to spy. In fact, I was so exhausted when I got in that I responded to some work emails and immediately got ready for bed, fully expecting to pass out. But then I lay there in the dark, unable to sleep. After I stared at the ceiling for a while, I went to the window to clear my head.
Imagine my shock when I got my own personal peep show instead of the moon. The lights were out in my room, so I saw everything. There was nothing sexual in what he was doing, but I was mesmerized by the way his body moved.
Miss Priss, disgruntled that I was still out of bed, padded over to me. To her annoyance, I scooped her up and cuddled her to my chest.
“I have to get over this attraction, Miss Priss. It’s inappropriate and frankly unfair to him. My life is an utter disaster. No, that might be too generous. After all the pain he’s gone through, he doesn’t need my garbage fire bringing him down. I probably just need an orgasm. I can’t remember the last time I had one.”
The cat squirmed in my clutches, so I set her down. Annoyed, she pranced back to her cat cave and leaped inside, giving me her back.
Perfect. She didn’t need to see this.
I closed myself in the closet before I turned on the light switch. A year ago, Beau and I had a big fight, and I was really stressed about it. In Vanessa’s opinion, if I dusted off the cobwebs, it’d clear my brain, and I wouldn’t need him anymore. She gifted me a vibrator.
I didn’t want to accept it. She meant well, but I was too embarrassed to admit I seldom orgasmed anymore. I also didn’t own any vibrators ordildos because he thought they were degenerate. In hindsight, he probably didn’t want me to realize I’d be better on my own.
With shaking fingers, I released the bright pink terror from its impenetrable packaging and willed my heart to calm down.
This shouldn’t be terrifying. I used to do extreme sports, camped in the desert, moved to a strange city, competed for and won a coveted internship, got a high-paying job right out of college, and then started my own business.
I was also a tattooed, smart-ass bartender who routinely broke up fights between groups of rough-and-tumble ranchers and farmhands larger than myself.
Yet I was intimidated by a hot pink vibrator.
