Strong Enough to Love. Victoria Dahl
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its ponytail. Pretty sexy.”
“I’m serious,” Grace insisted. She ran her hand down Eve’s hair. “I’m glad you finally gave in to my coloring skills. You look brighter. Not just your hair, though. I’m glad you’re starting to relax a little.”
Yes, she was finally letting go. She’d fought her life for the past couple of years, white-knuckling it through a sorrow she hadn’t even earned. It wasn’t so hard anymore. It wasn’t so damn lonely. “I need to find Jenny.”
Grace pointed her in the right direction, and Eve set off to give Jenny a hug. She’d been here for thirty minutes. She’d agreed to a date. So she gave herself permission to escape as soon as she’d spoken to the birthday girl. She even gave Mitch a friendly wave as she left.
Maybe the chemistry wasn’t there, but when was it ever? She was thirty-six. She’d had two careers and lived in four states. And in all that time, there’d been only one man, one out of the hundreds she’d met as an adult, who’d wrenched her heart and set every nerve in her body vibrating.
Eve walked slowly down the dark street, shoving her hands into her pockets to pull her jacket closer against the cold.
She couldn’t keep looking for that, wanting that. Hell, maybe even that hadn’t been real. They’d never acted on it. Despite the countless nights she’d spent imagining his hands on her, nothing had ever happened, because he’d been too honorable, or they both had. So maybe all that chemistry would’ve evaporated the same way her mild attraction to Mitch had.
She nodded, lying to herself. It might’ve been awful with Brian. Sure. So why did tears spring to her eyes at the loss?
“Stop it, you idiot,” she muttered, blinking back the stupid emotions. “You gave that up.” She had. On New Year’s Eve, she’d vowed not to spend one more night crying for him. Not one more tear. She didn’t have a right to them.
Brian had been her boss. Her mentor. And her best friend. But what he’d been more than anything else was someone else’s husband.
And while she hated him for having the strength to walk away, she was so thankful for it that it made her stomach hurt. She’d never touched him, and that was her greatest regret and her best truth, all rolled into one.
“Fuck chemistry,” she whispered as she turned off the dark residential street and walked toward the cheerfully lit square that was the center of Jackson. Her studio was one street off the square, but still part of the lively tourist district, and she adored the little apartment overhead. If she hadn’t had that, she’d have holed up in some secluded cabin long ago and lost track of the outside world completely.
But here, even on this cool night in the middle of the off-season, people still walked along the western boardwalks of the town, fading in and out of the light cast by old-fashioned lamps.
Even on her street, a man stood in front of the bright windows of her studio, absorbed in a wall-size photo of the Tetons that she’d taken last year. She loved that picture, even though it wasn’t as vivid as the others behind it. She’d taken it in late fall, when all the color had already fallen from the trees. The whole expanse of land looked dead, but the mountains still rose up, solid and unmoving and dominating the world. She didn’t mind the browns and blacks and greys. She didn’t need the more flagrant shades of autumn to capture the beauty of the place. It stood on its own.
Apparently the man at the window liked it, too.
She was trying to decide if she should speak to him or just sneak past to the narrow staircase beyond when something about the line of his jaw caught her eye. The pace of her boots hitting hollow against the wood slowed. In that moment, she wished she’d worn quieter shoes, because she didn’t want him aware of her. She wanted to sneak past. She wanted time to get a good look at him and see—
“Everything is so different,” he said, then turned slowly, inevitably toward her. And just like that, after two years, Brian was back.
CHAPTER TWO
EVERYTHING IS SO different. But he looked the same. Nothing about him had changed. The same face that had been handsome to her, but could only truly be called rugged. The same brown hair he kept cut short so it didn’t curl. Even the same traces of gray at his temples and the sun-worn creases at the corners of his green eyes.
The same.
And the same awful blow of awareness she always felt near him, though it hit her in a sore spot now, a place that had only just started to heal.
Eve stared, lips parted, the sudden shock to her nerves beginning to turn cold beneath her skin. “Brian?” she whispered, as if every part of her didn’t ache with the knowledge that he was only five feet away.
“I tried to call,” he said. His eyes shifted toward the sky and he shook his head. “I mean, I tried and couldn’t seem to do it. I didn’t know what to say.”
“What are you doing here?” she managed to ask. “Are you...?” But how to finish that sentence? He had a cousin here, but if Brian had come to visit before, she’d never heard. Thank God, because that might have broken her, knowing he was so close and completely unreachable.
But he was close now. And she hadn’t broken. Yet.
She forced her shock away and stood a little straighter, tipping her chin to a haughty angle the way she’d fantasized of doing so many times. For months after he’d gone she’d acted out this meeting in her head, of being cool. Of not showing him her pain and rage. But now...now most of that anger was gone and she didn’t know what to grab on to for support. So she pretended.
“Are you visiting your cousin?” she finally got out.
“I’m not sure.” He shoved his hands in the pockets of his jeans and tipped his head back to blow out a long breath. When he looked at her again, his mouth was serious, his eyes as dark as she’d ever seen. He was a quiet man in public, and his harsh features could lend him a dangerous look, but he’d always been laughing when they were alone, or making her laugh.
“Can we go inside, Eve?”
She inhaled quietly at the way his voice wrapped around her name. One deep syllable that had always made her wish she was called something longer and more complicated. Genevieve or Isabella. Something that would take him full seconds to say so she could feel it rumble over her skin.
“If you’d rather not, we could grab a coffee or a drink.”
He watched her, waiting for an answer, the silence enveloping them. But it felt nothing like her earlier encounter with Mitch. Uncomfortable, yes. And awkward, the awkwardness pushing out from inside her until it hurt to breathe. But this time she didn’t wish for the ground to swallow her. She felt like she could stay here forever as long as he was watching her. As long as he was here.
“We can talk inside,” she murmured, mortified that she even had to say that. After all their easy hours together, all those months of friendship, he had to ask if she’d feel comfortable seeing him in private. How the hell had they come to this?
She walked toward the staircase, so aware of him behind her. She’d always been aware. That he was right there. Nearby. She’d always been able to feel him. Even when she’d been renting the apartment from him, she’d been able to feel him working in the gallery below. The guilt of it had eaten at her, but not enough to overtake that awareness.
Her back tingled, telling her he was about to touch her, that he was reaching for her right now. But she’d learned to ignore that feeling, because it had never happened. And it wouldn’t happen now. It was a lie.
Hands numb and heart pounding, she opened the door, fumbling with the keys and then the doorknob, as if there were something complicated about turning it to the right. But she finally made it in and he followed her inside. He still looked grim, his wide mouth flat and his gaze moving away from her.
Why the hell was he here? She felt suddenly panicked by the thought