Impossible To Resist (BWWM Romance Book 1)(77)

He lowered his head down into his hands and rested himself on his desk. He didn’t know how in the world he had let her talk him into dating her again. She was the last woman in the world that he wanted, and he had a suspicion that she would be no substitute at all for the woman he wanted most in the world.

***

The next night, when he went to dinner at Deborah’s, she answered the door in a dress that might have been a sheer nightgown, or might have been a sheer dress, but it left very little to his imagination and he knew before he stepped into the house that it was entirely possible that he had bitten off more than he could chew.

He followed her to the dining room and they sat together at the table. He gave her a bottle of wine to thank her for dinner and she smiled and went to the kitchen to open it. Connor looked around her home and easily saw her family’s wealth in every corner of it. There was no question that they all had money, but he knew for certain that Deborah Hargrove had gotten her job at the college simply because her uncle was the dean there, and Dean Hargrove was not a man to cross.

Deborah returned with the opened bottle of wine and poured it for them both. “Here we go.” She picked up her glass to toast him. “To all the sweet days and hot nights to come,” she said pointedly, and he touched his glass to hers and willed himself not be sick on her dining room table.

They ate a three course meal and she offered him dessert, but he turned it down. Connor talked with her briefly about some staffing changes that the college had recently seen, and then he stood up to bid her a good night.

She frowned at him and her worn face grew stoic as her eyes narrowed at him. She stood up to face him and lifted her chin slightly, reached her hand toward the front of his jeans, pulling him by the waist toward her.

“Darling, you just got here. How can you even think of leaving so soon?” she tilted her head and asked him as if it was a rhetorical question. He knew as he looked at her that he had made a monumental mistake. He knew he should never have agreed to date her, because he realized that he was using her to displace his need for Catalina, and there was no way that she was ever going to be able to do that successfully; he had less than no attraction toward her, and there was nothing that was going to change that.

If anything, she made him want Catalina more, not less. He reached his hand to hers at his waist and pulled her hand from the grasp she had on the front of his jeans.

“Deborah, I’m sorry but I think I made a mistake. I don’t really think that we should get back together. We’re not a good couple. We’re far too different, and we want different things…” he began, knowing that what he really wanted deep down, more than anything, was a dark woman with blue gray eyes and a dimple that appeared when she smiled.

The woman standing before him looking at him in frustration was never going to come close to Catalina. He had been kidding himself when he let himself believe that there could ever be a chance that Deborah could distract him from what he really wanted. What he needed with Catalina.

She narrowed her eyes at him and her voice grew deep. “You are not breaking up with me, do you understand? You are not going to play games with me, young man. I want you, and I always get what I want.” She started toward him, but he backed away and turned toward the hallway where the front door was.

“Well, it doesn’t seem like you will this time, Deborah, because it takes two to tango, and I’m leaving the dance.” He turned and walked away from her and he heard her grow angry behind him, but he wasn’t about to stop and give her a chance to catch up with him and try to change his mind.

He walked right out of her door and heard her shriek as he closed it behind him. He sighed and felt a little guilty for a minute, but then he got into his car and drove home, thinking all the way of the perfect few days that he had shared himself and his love with a woman he would only be dreaming of for the rest of his life.





Chapter5



Catalina went home the day that they got back from Springfield and the first thing she did was go to sleep. Partly because she was exhausted from the trip, and partly because she didn’t want to be awake in a world where she wouldn’t be able to be with Connor James.

She woke up the next morning and knew that she had to get to class. She feigned her way through most of the morning as she tried to get herself back into her regular routine, though she had no real interest in it. She had texted Reggie when she’d woken up that morning and he had pleaded with her to meet him in their spot, so during her midday break, she went to the bench beneath the old oak, and she waited for him to show up.

He was a little late, as per his usual, and she smiled and stood up to hug him and greet him when she saw him. He wrapped his arms around her tightly and held her close to him, resting his cheek against her and breathing her in. She knew he was breathing her in; he always did it, and when she had asked him why once, he said that he loved the way she smelled. He left it at that, so she left it at that, and neither of them talked about it again.

He finally let her go and they sat down together and faced one another. She gave him a warm smile and tilted her head, looking at him with genuine care.

“How’ve you been the last few days?” she asked him curiously.

He let out a big breath of air that he had apparently been holding in. “I’ve been… uh… well, I’ll tell you the truth, I’ve been miserable. I hated it that you were gone. I missed you like crazy.” He reached for her hand and she let him hold it, though she wasn’t thrilled about the way that he held it so firmly and so close to him, like he wasn’t going to let her go ever again.