Midnight Kiss (Virgin River #12)(63)

He rolled it in his hand. “That was a lateral move, not a promotion.”

“It was my job.” She leaned forward to glare at him, but her anger only made him smile.

“Obviously it wasn’t.”

“Everyone knew how much I wanted it.”

He shrugged one shoulder. “I didn’t know anything about it. I just knew I needed to get the hell out of D.C.”

She rolled her eyes. “Oh, so it had nothing to do with me?”

His gaze flew up to meet hers, and her breath hitched at the brightness in his pale blue eyes. Hot emotion flamed in their depths, but she couldn’t decipher it. “Nothing at all to do with you,” he murmured.

He was lying. He was lying, but she didn’t know what she’d done to make him so mad he’d interfere with her career. “Damn it, Noah. I don’t know why you did it, but I needed that job.”

“You didn’t need it as much as I did.” His jaw was so tight that his mouth hardly moved when he spoke, and Elise was tumbling through anger and confusion. What had she ever done to him? She was the one who’d left Madison humiliated.

“I needed it,” she said again, “because the rest of my life was going to Colorado. My boyfriend took a job in Boulder in June. Or should I say ex-boyfriend? He broke up with me because I couldn’t move with him!”

Her words rang in the small confines of the booth. She’d raised her voice. Maybe she’d even yelled.

Noah’s eyes narrowed slightly. He cocked his head and studied her face while she tried to control her breathing. “So,” he said thoughtfully. His eyes narrowed further. “Was this the same boyfriend you had when you kissed me two years ago?”

Elise gasped and sat up so quickly that her elbow banged hard into the edge of the table. “Excuse me?”

“Because he didn’t seem that important to you then.”

“You… I can’t believe you’d bring that up. I—”

“And since you were both willing to choose a job over the relationship, I can’t pretend to be prostrate with regret. Sorry, Elise. I guess that relationship wasn’t meant to be.”

Her mind spun like a top, buffeted from all sides. She was outraged and insulted and hurt. But she was also reeling because he was throwing her own lie back in her face and she didn’t know how to respond. She hadn’t had a boyfriend when she’d kissed Noah. She’d made that up to save face, but now it seemed like a juvenile response to an adult situation. Oh, sure, I’m dating someone, too.

So on top of everything else, she now felt stupid and small.

Elise grabbed her purse and slid out of the booth. “Charge it to Room 207,” she growled.

“Elise,” he said, but his tone was half-hearted. She kept moving.

Unbelievable. They’d been having a meaningful conversation, and then he’d pulled that out. Her stomach burned as if he’d stabbed her with a real knife instead of a metaphorical one. He’d dismissed everything she’d built with Evan as if it had been nothing.

Almost the same way Evan had dismissed the life they’d built together. The way he’d so simply proven that work was more important than love to both of them.

Elise was such a failure at love that everyone could see it, from inside and out.

She wiped a tear from her cheek before she stepped out of the dimness of the bar and into the bright hallway that led to the elevator. She was terrible at relationships, but she was good at her job, and she’d be damned if she’d let one of her people see her crying like a little girl.

Her father and her uncles had raised her to be tough. Once she’d turned five, her dad had told her she wasn’t a baby anymore, and she’d agreed. She’d lived for her dad’s pride and approval, and even when she’d broken her arm playing peewee football, she hadn’t cried. But being a woman was so much harder than being a kid. Kids were allowed to throw themselves into situations and fall flat on their faces if they failed. But as an adult…she had no idea how to navigate relationships. Throw yourself in or hold back… She’d tried it both ways and neither had worked.

But she was thirty-one years old. She had to figure it out soon, or she’d live her whole life lonely. That was another reason she’d been so desperate for the Denver job. She needed a big change in the worst way. Most of her Saturday nights over the past year had been spent with her uncles. Elise was turning into an elderly man.

She slipped into the thankfully empty elevator and tipped up her head to keep more tears from falling. God, she didn’t know what was wrong with her. The holidays or the weather or…the tequila.

Elise immediately felt better. The tequila had exposed her maudlin side. She could not fall into the trap of drinking with Noah James again. The man was a menace, sliding past all her defenses like an assassin. Did he have this effect on other women?

She’d never heard a word about an office romance, and she’d damn sure been paying attention. The man drew her eye anytime he was near.

In Madison, she’d been emotional because of the layoffs, and Noah had been right there, solid as granite. But that wasn’t right. Not like granite, because sitting next to him at the bar, she’d been able to feel the warmth coming off him. And—she’d thought—sparks. Sparks like little bits of fire floating through the air and landing on her skin. Sparks that had made her nerves shiver…