Voyeur - Lacey Alexander [110]
He couldn’t believe he was still missing her. He’d been sure that would fade after he came home to L.A. And then he’d been sure it would go away once he got back involved in his work. But concentration had become difficult ever since his hot vacation with Laura in the mountains.
Don’t freak out about it, man. When he looked at it logically, there were reasons. Laura was the only woman he’d ever done such extreme things with. And the only woman he’d ever spent longer than a weekend with in one stretch. So it made sense that he’d grown accustomed to seeing her face beside his in bed. It made sense that he missed her body. It made sense that he missed her smile.
So it was a month later and he found himself in the same rut Tommy had been in back in Vail. He’d talked to Tommy just yesterday, and his buddy sounded fine now—he was dating again. “A cute girl from over in Avon who works at the Christie Lodge, and damn, dude, she looks hot in her little pink ski pants,” he’d said. He’d gone on to explain that it was nothing serious, but that he thought he was done with one-night stands. “Just getting too old for it, I guess.”
Braden hadn’t asked what that meant, but now he wondered if this was the first sign of a guy getting ready to settle down, a notion that made his stomach pinch. Not that he begrudged his friend happiness, but if Tommy got married at some point, it would change things—frankly, it would make Braden a little less likely to try to get away to Vail several times a year. He’d never thought of the Vail house as lonely, but after Laura’s departure it had seemed that way. If he didn’t even have Tommy to hang with whenever he wanted, it would definitely feel lonely.
Either way, though, he’d been glad to hear his buddy sounding happy.
Now . . . he just wished he was, too.
The fact was, he hadn’t slept with anyone since Laura.
He’d tried. He’d even once got so far as bringing a girl home with him. But for some reason, in the end, he hadn’t gotten into it.
Maybe Laura had made him realize that what Tommy had said when they’d been discussing Marianne was true—maybe Braden, too, wanted a girl with some substance. Even if it was just for fooling around, he suddenly didn’t feel satisfied by the same old shallow chicks.
Only, he had the weird feeling that even if he found a less-than-shallow chick strolling up the beach right now, he probably wouldn’t really want to fool around with her, either. He just kept thinking about Laura.
Six months later, autumn had arrived, Dirty Little Secrets had just made the USA Today list, and Laura’s life had become a drudgery.
She’d tried to date Mr. Starbucks back in the spring, and they’d had a nice enough meal at El Camino, her favorite Mexican restaurant over in funky, artsy Fremont. But when he’d asked her back to his place, she’d claimed she was tired, and when he’d tried to kiss her at her door, she’d actually turned away. She’d felt both mean and as if she were behaving like a bit of a freak, and the parting had been utterly awkward.
Since then, she hadn’t even thought about trying to date anyone. Monica had spent most of their time together lecturing her, so even her “girlfriend time” had been less than appealing lately. Which had led to much wearing of joggers and renting of sad movies. She couldn’t even remember the last time she’d actually put on a pair of real pants.
And if that wasn’t bad enough, as she’d sat down to start on her next Riley Wainscott Mystery this morning, she’d encountered her old nemesis—writer’s block. Actually, she’d been encountering it every morning for the last few months—but at the moment, it felt even worse than usual, overshadowing her current book’s success.
“God, Riley,” she murmured in frustration toward the computer screen, “you’re supposed to be a whole new woman this time around, ready for new adventures, new relationships,