CHAPTER22
LARISA
How stupid can one girl be?I just couldn’t believe that girl had been me. It wasn’t that I never made mistakes. I’d made plenty and I was one hundred percent sure that I still had a lot left to make, but I shouldn’t have made it with Tanner.
I should’ve kept that meeting strictly about business instead of getting sucked in by him again. Angrily flicking the switch on my kettle, I leaned back against my kitchen counter and watched as small bubbles turned into a rolling boil inside the glass appliance.
As much as I loved my coffee, this was a job for tea. I’d been lambasting myself all afternoon since I’d gotten back to my apartment, and now I needed something that would force me to slow down and think.
My mother had always told me that reflection was best achieved while sitting quietly with your fingers wrapped around a cup of tea, not making any decisions until you’ve sipped your way through at least that one cup. The advice seemed pretty solid to me today.
I was livid at myself, and I needed to focus on getting over it so I’d be able to concentrate on doing just about anything else. There were other clients that needed my attention, other projects I needed to work on, but the mere thought of opening my laptop and actually getting to it enraged me even further.
Why couldn’t I just have treated him like any other client? I should have, since that was what he was. A client just like any other. Someone who required my expertise and services and could afford to pay for it.
If I had treated him the same way I treated everyone else, I would’ve been back here now working on putting together my initial proposal for him before moving on to the next item on my to-do list for the day. Instead, I was stomping around my apartment like a majorly pissed off bull and blowing like one, too.
What was I thinking, almost kissing in the park?It had been the single most unprofessional moment of my life, and there had been an audience for it.
I was mortified. While I’d been here this morning, getting ready for my big first time seeing him again and giddy with excitement about it, he’d been waking up with somebody else. I snorted and my head shook violently just at the thought of it.
I just really can’t believe it.
Even so, it wasn’t him I was so pissed off at. He was a single guy with every right to do whoever he wanted to. It was me who had been the idiot in this scenario.
Iwas the one who’d gone there believing that it was some act of fate—or Tanner—that had brought us back together. I was the one who had believed we had some sort of connection even when he hadn’t asked for my number that Sunday before we left. I was the one who’d had the silly, secret fantasies about living in that house with him if things worked out between us.
More than any of those things, I was the one who’d read into him reaching out to me with little stars in my eyes. Meanwhile, he hadn’t even known it was me he’d been in contact with.
It was laughable really. Or at least, it would’ve been if I wasn’t so damn disappointed about it all. That last part was on him. While I couldn’t be angry with him, I could be disappointed and I was. Somewhere inside him, there was a nice guy. A decent guy who missed fishing with his dad as a kid and who wanted a warm, cozy home as a private retreat over weekends.
That was the guy I’d thought I wanted to get to know better, but now that I had gotten to know him just a little bit better, I’d realized that guy didn’t come out to play with just anyone. If he really did exist, it seemed he kept it reserved for his friends and the people he wanted to invite to that home.
Women didn’t seem to get that part of him. That gorgeous redheaded woman certainly hadn’t and neither did I. The part of him we got was the guy who would sleep with anyone who moved and probably had someone new warming his bed every night.
It was so bad that he hadn’t even remembered her name. I didn’t know how I knew, but I just did. As soon as he’d seen her, he’d recognized her but he’d had no idea what her name was. Not even a nickname.
Just last night, he’d been in bed with her, and this morning, he hadn’t even known what to call her. If that wasn’t concrete proof that he wasn’t who I’d thought he might be, I didn’t know what was. It had been obvious that the girl had been as shocked by the situation as I had been, and I felt for her. I definitely didn’t want to be just another face whose name wasn’t even worth remembering.
Not for Tanner Harris, not for anyone.
After my tea had steeped, I carried it to my living room and sat down on the sofa, pulling my knees up and shifting to face the window. From there, I could see past the corner of the building next to mine, all the way to the building across the street.
My apartment was nothing fancy, but it wasn’t bad either. I didn’t have spectacular views or a style of architecture worth naming, but for now, it was mine. One day, I’d also like to have a nice place to call my own.
For just a few short minutes while I’d been touring Tanner’s house with him and kept catching him looking at me like I’d walked straight out of his dreams, I’d wondered if there was any possibility that I’d end up calling that place my home.
It really had been a silly fantasy, but it had been so easy to imagine living there with him. When it had just been the two of us, I’d honestly thought I felt that connection. Being with him felt so damn good, so natural that it was almost impossible to believe he was probably just like that with anyone.
I knew better now, though. He had an effortless charm to him, a charisma that had drawn me in and made me want him to be just a boy from an average household who’d struck it big and hadn’t let it go to his head.
I’d wanted him to be that person so badly, and I really, really liked that person. How am I supposed to keep working with him when I know that he’ll get me back to believing that is who he is?
If he wanted to, if he even tried to at all, I knew I’d fall for it again. That stupid magnetism would suck me right back in, and then where would I be? Probably walking down the street the next morning, happening upon him with some other girl.
I should’ve known that first night when he’d tried to kiss me out of the blue that he wasn’t a guy who attached any meaning to physical acts. As it was, his defense that he’d done it because he’d thought it was what I wanted now spoke volumes about how totally valueless kissing—or anything else—was to him.
He’d been willing to kiss me just because he’d thought it was what I wanted. Not because he’d wanted to, not even because he’d thought he had to. Just because he thought it was what I wanted.