Complicated (7 page)

She’d just fucked the man beside her. His
finger had been in her ass. And now his teenaged daughter had come home.

Victoria gathered the sheet and pulled it up
around her shoulders in an instinctive gesture she would have found silly at
any other time.

“Fuck,” Greg muttered, heaving himself out of
bed and looking around blindly. “Fuck!”

Victoria saw the sweat pants he’d been
wearing earlier tucked under the comforter and she tossed them over to him.

As he pulled them on, his daughter’s voice
sounded again—this time closer than before. “Dad? What’s going on? Whose car is
that out there?”

Victoria felt her vision blurring with an impending
knowledge. Her mouth was dry, and she felt sick to her stomach.

Greg made a grab for a gray t-shirt thrown
across the chair and pulled it over his head as he took four long steps toward
the bedroom door. His dark hair was tousled—sticking out in all directions—and
the one-day’s growth of beard made him look even more unkempt.

He was a mess, and he looked adorable. But
that was the last thing on Victoria’s mind at the moment.

She couldn’t stop thinking about how they’d
been fucking just a few minutes earlier.

And that his nineteen-year-old daughter was
in the hall.

Darting one last anxious look back at
Victoria, Greg left the bedroom, closing the door behind him.

“Carrie,” she heard him say. “You’re back a
day early.”

“What’s going on? What are you doing?”

“Carrie,” Greg tried again, his voice barely
muffled through the closed door.

“Is someone in there with you?” Carrie’s
voice grew shriller and louder. “She’s in there, isn’t she? As soon as I leave
town, you bring that slut to—”

“Don’t!” Greg’s voice snapped out like a
whip. “She’s not a slut. I know you’re upset but you can’t—”

“I can’t believe you brought her to the
house!”

Victoria was still sitting in the bed,
shaking and squeezing her eyes shut. It sounded like Greg was trying to get
Carrie back down the hallway and toward a more distant part of the house, so
they wouldn’t have this conversation only a door away from Victoria.

But Carrie was shouting so loudly Victoria
could still hear her.

She put her hands over her ears, trying to
block out the sound.

A buzzing started to grow in her head as she
pretended this wasn’t happening.

It was just supposed to be sex. Great sex
with an attractive, experienced man.

It was supposed to be free of complications.

It was never supposed to lead to a screaming
teenaged daughter, calling Victoria a slut.

When she couldn’t stand it anymore, Victoria
forced herself out of bed. As she hurried into the bathroom, she could hear
Carrie saying, “She’s like fifteen years younger than you! Is she after your
money?”

Victoria felt like she might choke as she
closed and locked the bathroom door. Then she turned on the shower as hot as
she could stand and stepped under the spray.

She sobbed a few times into her hands,
unable to resist the involuntary emotion.

Her life had always been lived with a certain
degree of peace and sanity, and this incident had disturbed the very fabric of
her identity. This kind of thing didn’t happen to her.

She’d never been this woman.

By the time she’d finished scrubbing down
her body, she’d regained her typical quiet composure.

And she knew what she needed to do.

The screaming had stopped when she turned
the shower off and toweled dry. As she went into the bedroom to pull out her
overnight bag, she heard the front door slam and then the squeal of tires.

Carrie must have stormed off in a full-fledged
temper-fit.

Victoria had put on jeans and a button-up
shirt and was braiding her long, wet hair when Greg reentered the bedroom.

He was rubbing his face. When he lowered his
hands, his expression was torn and exhausted.

Victoria understood how he must feel, but
she didn’t let herself dwell on the pang of sympathy.

“What are you doing?” Greg asked at last,
after he’d watched her grab her little pajama set and stuff them back into the
bag.

“I’m leaving.” Her voice was cool and
natural. She’d made her decision, and she was certain of it now.

“You don’t have to leave. I’m sorry you had
to hear that, but she’s not going to—”

“It doesn’t matter.” Victoria found the bra
she’d been wearing the day before flung over the chair beside the bed.

Greg seemed to recognize the finality in her
voice because he froze, standing in the middle of the floor. “Victoria? What’s
going on?”

With a sigh, she said what she’d
unconsciously known she would need to say—ever since his daughter had entered
the picture. “It’s not worth it, Greg. We’ve had a good time. But I think it’s
time to end this.”

His face closed down in a strange
way—becoming completely unreadable. “Why?” The one word was bit out.

Victoria sat down on the bed when her legs
would no longer hold her up. She was so tired. She just wanted to go to sleep
and not wake up until all of this was over. “I know you both have had a hard
time, and she’s obviously not ready for you to be…to be moving on like this.”

“She’s not a child. She needs to adjust. I
can’t let her make decisions for me by that kind of behavior.”

Victoria looked him in the eye. “I know. But
are you going to stand there and tell me that she’ll just need a few days to
get used to the idea and then everything will be fine again?”

He stared at her for a long time, his lips
pressed tightly together. Then he broke the gaze and looked to the side. “No.
We have a lot of work to do.”

“And this thing with me will only get in the
way. You should concentrate on your daughter right now.”

“Victoria.” Greg’s voice cracked on the
word. He cleared his throat and walked over to her, putting his strong hand on
her shoulder. “I don’t know why they need to be mutually exclusive.”

She shook his head—feeling a poignant kind
of loss and a strange numbness at the same time. “We can’t always have
everything.”

She’d never had everything with Greg. She
hadn’t even had close to everything.

“It’s always just been sex between us,
right?” she asked. She couldn’t help feeling a desperate kind of hope on the
last word.

There was a chance—the tiniest chance—that
he’d changed his mind.

That he wanted more than sex with her.

His gaze was quiet and infinitely sober.
“Right.”

The stupid, tiny hope crushed in her chest,
but she didn’t even wince. Just said coolly, “Are you actually going to tell me
that sex—
just sex
—is more important than your daughter?”

Greg closed his eyes very briefly. “No,” he
admitted. “It’s not.”

“Then it’s pointless to keep this up. It’s
only going to complicate things with Carrie. And this would have ended
eventually anyway. Casual sex has a pretty short shelf-life. We might as well
end it now. Before things get any messier.”

She waited for just a moment—to see if he’d
object any further.

He didn’t.

He took a deep breath and released it,
looking out the window as he did. “All right.”

And so all that was left was for Victoria to
finish gathering her stuff together. She didn’t have all that much stuff over
here anyway so it didn’t take very long. When she closed her bag, Greg was
still standing a few feet away, watching her.

He looked just as scruffy and disheveled as
he had before, but now he looked older, more tired.

“So,” she said, not sure what there was to
say.

“So.” His mouth twisted slightly. “Is there
anything I can do? You’re all right getting back?”

She gave an amused huff that was only
slightly bitter. It was so like him—considerate and courteous to the end. “I’m
fine. I’m a big girl. I…” Her voice cracked and she had to start over. “I’ll
miss you. I really enjoyed this. It was the best sex I’ve ever had.”

The expression in his eyes was too distant
to pin down, and he almost swallowed his response. “Me too.”

That admission—and everything it
implied—almost did Victoria in. She had to turn away to hide her expression
before she was able to compose herself.

“All right then.” There was no sense in
stretching this out. It would get better as soon as they’d made a clean break.
“I’ll take off. I hope things work out all right with your daughter.”

“We have our difficulties, but we love each
other. We’ll be all right.”

“Good.” She walked over to the door with her
bag. Turned back to look at him one more time. “Bye.”

He looked so handsome, masculine, and
human—standing barefoot in his sweats and t-shirt—that she had the almost
irresistible urge to hug him.

She didn’t.

“Bye,” he said, his eyes never leaving her
face.

She left the room. Shut the door behind her.
Made it out of the house and to her car.

She drove back to the city.

And didn’t cry until she got home.

“So are you ever going to tell me about it?”

“What?” Victoria gave a startled jerk and
turned in her desk chair to face the door.

Jeanie was standing in the doorway of her
office. Her hair was a pinkish shade this week, and she was wearing all black—a
turtleneck and stretch pants like a beatnik poet. “You’ve been moping around
for the last three weeks. I was wondering if you were ever going to tell me
why.”

“I haven’t been moping.” But then she
snapped her mouth closed at Jeanie’s knowing, sympathetic gaze. “I didn’t think
it had been that obvious.”

She
had
been depressed for the last
three weeks, far more affected by her breakup with Greg than she’d expected to
be. She’d known it wouldn’t be easy—she would miss him, miss the sex, and miss
having such an exhilarating aspect to her life—but she’d thought she would be
able to talk herself out of her low mood fairly quickly.

She was a smart, realistic, matter-of-fact
kind of person. She was used to not getting everything she wanted, and she’d
always managed to be satisfied even when life didn’t go the way she wished.

In the past, she’d been able to make the
most out of circumstances.

Which was why she wasn’t prepared to still
be brooding about Greg almost a month after she’d broken up with him.

She couldn’t stop thinking about him.
Couldn’t stop wishing things had happened differently. Couldn’t stop hoping he
was all right and hoping he missed her a little bit too.

She hadn’t seen or heard from him since
she’d left his house that afternoon. She hadn’t expected to.

But that didn’t mean she wasn’t crushed.

She was the one who had ended it, and she
was still certain she hadn’t made a mistake. Obviously her emotions had gotten
more involved than she’d intended—otherwise she wouldn’t be so upset about
losing him. If they’d stayed together for meaningless sex, she would have had
her heart broken eventually.

It was better this way.

It just felt like her heart was broken
anyway.

“You hide it pretty well,” Jeanie said,
coming into the office and shutting the door. “But I know you. Did your fling
with that guy fall apart?”

Victoria let out a shaky breath. “Yeah. It
fell apart.”

“And it wasn’t as casual as you thought?”

“No. I guess I just fooled myself into thinking
it could remain casual indefinitely. It was bound to end badly, one way or
another.”

Jeanie perched on the end of a chair next to
Victoria’s desk. Her face was compassionate. “Did he decide to move on?”

“No. I ended it. It was getting too
complicated.”

“If you ended it, why don’t you just tell
him you changed your mind?”

“I can’t. It needed to end. Even if this
particular complication could be resolved, there’s no way I could go back to
meaningless sex with him now.” Victoria rubbed her forehead with her finger and
thumb, trying to rub away the faint headache she’d had for the last few weeks.

“It wouldn’t be meaningless anymore?”

Victoria groaned and lowered her head into
her hands. “No. I’m such an idiot. I thought I was being mature and
realistic—taking a risk but still keeping everything under control. We had it
all worked out from the beginning. Just sex and nothing else. How the hell did
this happen?”

Jeanie was quiet for a moment. Then she
murmured, “You’ve got it bad.”

“Tell me about it.” Victoria indulged in
pure despair for a minute—feeling a wave of deep emotion overwhelming her at
the thought of Greg. At what she wanted from him. At what she could never have.
He was out of her reach in so many ways, and she would be a fool to hold out
any hope for a miraculous fairytale ending.

Life didn’t work that way.
Her
life
never did, anyway.

Then she shook herself off. Things didn’t
always happen the way she wanted them to, but she wasn’t going to sink into
real depression.

She needed to get on with her life. She
would get over Greg.

It would just take longer than she’d
expected.

“Maybe he’s been moping all this time too.”

Victoria snorted. “Right. That’s likely.”

“Well,” Jeanie insisted, getting up and
moving toward the door. “You also wouldn’t have thought it likely that he would
want a wild, hot fling with you in the first place. He did. And you wouldn’t
have thought it likely that it would last three months. It did. Why shouldn’t
it be just as likely that the feelings you developed might be returned by him?”

Victoria had no answer to that question, but
she couldn’t let herself hope.

There would be no moving on if she did.

Greg had a successful, complex, full life. A
life she’d never been a part of. He might miss the willing sex partner, but if
he wanted more he wouldn’t have accepted the end of their relationship the way
he had.

Victoria wasn’t going to pretend anything
else was even possible.

“Thanks for the pep talk,” she said, smiling
at Jeanie. “I’m determined not to mope for much longer.”

Jeanie laughed. “All right. Give me a call
this weekend if you need a distraction. My cats can only provide so much
entertainment for me.”

Victoria agreed and actually felt better
when Jeanie left.

Her world wasn’t decimated just because she’d
lost the man of her dreams.

The truth was—she’d never really had him.

***

Victoria was walking back from the bathroom
that afternoon when she saw Greg.

He was there. Standing right in the middle
of the lobby of the university library. He was facing the opposite direction,
but she recognized him easily. Even from the back.

His broad shoulders, lean hips, tight ass,
and long legs were distinctive in the well-tailored dark business suit. And his
thick hair was slightly ruffled—probably from the wind—the gray flecks just
faintly visible in the dark brown.

Victoria’s heart froze in her chest at the
sight of him. Then it began to hammer frantically as she made herself keep
moving toward her office.

He hadn’t seen her yet, and she cowardly
hoped she could get away before he knew she was there.

She was wearing a new pair of designer
heels—a far too expensive extravagance she’d allowed herself last week to help
pull her out of her slump. The heels clicked on the polished floor of the lobby
despite her attempt to remain discreet.

Greg turned around, just as she’d passed
him. “Victoria.”

She froze, staring straight ahead and trying
to focus her fuzzy mind on something intelligent to say.

“Hi,” she said stupidly.

His mouth twitched very slightly. “Hi. I
thought I recognized the sound of your footsteps.”

Frowning, she demanded, “What do my
footsteps sound like? I walk just like everyone else.”

“No, you don’t.”

“Yes, I do. What do they sound like?” It was
a ridiculous conversation, but she felt compelled to find out how her footsteps
differed from everyone else’s. She tended to walk fairly quickly, but surely
that wasn’t enough to make her stride recognizable.

“I don’t think I’ll tell you.” His smile was
easy, warm but just slightly poignant. And it crinkled the corners of his mouth
and his eyes.

She didn’t understand his expression at all.

Victoria experienced a sudden wave of
annoyance. What was he doing here, anyway? She had just determined to get over
him, and he showed up out of the blue, being obnoxiously smug and smiling at
her like that.

Kind of possessive. Kind of tender.

The implications terrified her, and her
reaction to fear was always resentment.

She
hated
being afraid.

So she scowled at him. “What are you doing
here?”

“I’m here to see you. I thought that should
have been obvious. Believe it or not, I don’t hang out at university libraries
just for fun.”

His glibness irritated her even more, and
her scowl tightened into a cold glare. “Why did you want to see me?”

She wished she looked better. She hadn’t
spent much time on her appearance lately. Her hair was pulled back in a chignon
that was more severe than she usually wore, with no loose strands to soften the
look. She was wearing her glasses, and she had on a dark blue suit. The jacket
was fitted and the skirt reached mid-calf but it wasn’t as distinctive or flattering
as most of her other outfits.

She must look like the spinster librarian
everyone tried to stereotype her as.

Everyone but Greg.

“I thought maybe we could talk,” he said,
his forehead wrinkling as if he were confused. “Is there somewhere we could
go?”

They could go to her office, but she didn’t
want him there. She was supposed to be getting over him, and this would already
set her back a full two weeks. “Not really. And I don’t know what we need to
talk about anyway.”

“Are you angry with me for some reason?” He
took a step closer to her, his brown eyes scrutinizing her face.

“No.” She had to look away from his
familiar, observant expression. She used to feel a secret thrill when he looked
at her like that—thrilled at the idea that someone cared enough about how she
felt to try to understand what she was thinking.

Now it just made her belly clench with
anxiety. She was disoriented and confused, and she wanted to lash out at Greg
for making her feel this way. “I just don’t like personal stuff interfering
with work.”

“Oh.” He frowned slightly. “I could stop by
your apartment after work, if you’d rather.”

“No!” The word came out too sharply, and a
few people glanced over at her in curiosity.

Flushing with embarrassment, Victoria was
slammed with another wave of annoyance. “Why do we need to talk at all? I
thought things were settled between us.”

She couldn’t stand to look at him anymore so
she walked distractedly over to a cart of books that needed to be reshelved.
She fiddled with them, pretending to put them in order just so she could do
something with her hands.

Greg stepped over until he was beside her,
and he tilted his head to study her tense face. “You
are
angry with me.”

“I’m not angry,” she bit out.

Why, oh why, wouldn’t he just go away? He
would just make everything worse.

Just make her tangibly recognize everything
she could never have.

“Victoria,” he murmured, his voice huskier
than before. He gently put his hand on her forearm, “Tell me why you’re angry.”

She couldn’t tell him—couldn’t tell him
anger was the only way she could defend herself from the flood of emotions she
felt when she saw him.

She couldn’t tell him anything.

So she started to push the cart of books
toward the elevator. “I need to work,” she muttered.

It wasn’t her job to shelve books. Workstudy
students usually took care of that. But she needed to do something, and this
was the only thing available.

Greg didn’t object. He just went with her,
getting onto the elevator after her before she could stop him.

Since a student got on with them, they
didn’t speak until they’d gotten off on the fifth floor.

The floor was nearly empty, with only one
graduate student studying in a carrel and one older man browsing the British
literature shelves.

Victoria headed back toward the theology
books in the far corner of the floor, since those were the first call numbers
she saw on the books in the cart.

“Victoria,” Greg began, following her toward
the isolated corner of the library. They were as private here as they would
have been anywhere. “Victoria, why won’t you at least talk to me?”

Her eyes were glazed over now, and her hand
trembled as she pushed one of the books into its place on a high shelf.

Before she could bring her hand back down to
the cart, Greg took it, surrounding her small, cold hand with both of his big,
warm ones.

She sucked in a harsh gasp at the touch and
at how it affected the ache in her chest. “We have nothing to talk about.”

“Yes, we do,” Greg insisted, his voice
sounding rough again. He took a step forward until he’d pressed her back
against the wall of bookshelves.

He hadn’t let go of her hand.

Victoria stared up at him. His eyes were
dark and intense, and he had just a hint of a five-o’clock shadow.

She wanted to touch him. Hold him. Have him
bury himself inside her.

She wanted to feel him in every possible
way.

“I missed you,” Greg went on, pressing
forward even more. His body wasn’t touching hers, but she could almost feel the
heat of his presence radiating off him. “Didn’t you miss me even a little?”

“What does it matter? We decided it was
over. And this isn’t going to help anything.”

“What isn’t?”

“This,” she tried to explain, gesturing with
her head down toward their bodies and joined hands. “Yes, the sex was great.
But one last…last fling—because you suddenly decide you miss me—will only make
it worse. A clean break is the best way to move on. Nothing has changed.”

Greg lowered his face toward hers and
reached up with his free hand to hold the back of her head. “Hasn’t it?”

She didn’t understand any of this, but she
could barely breathe through the pressure in her chest. It felt like she was
drowning in the intense expression in his eyes.

He smelled like Greg—warm, masculine,
faintly expensive, the most delicious thing she’d ever breathed in.

Her body was already reacting to his
closeness, her nipples tightening and skin flushing with warmth.

“Greg,” she tried once more, “I don’t—”

“You don’t what?” He hadn’t made another
move, but he hadn’t pulled back either.

He seemed to be waiting. For her.

And Victoria could no longer resist. He was
right here—everything she’d ever wanted. And she was going to take it when it
was offered, even if it was only offered for the afternoon.