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“Amanda?”
It was Tom’s voice. My head snapped up, and I stared at him coming through the door into the office. What the hell?
“Can we talk?” Tom asked.
“What are you doing here?” I asked. “Why aren’t you in Astoria?”
He glanced around. “Because I’m here.
“I need to talk with you,” he said.
I turned back to the email responses I was typing, flicking my eyes between the screen and the calendar beside me to make sure I was keeping up the schedule properly. “Right now isn’t a very good time. I am very busy with work. Landon did a fine job, but there were a lot of things that needed to be put back together, and I’m still catching up and fixing a few things.”
“That’s fine,” he said. “We’ll talk at lunch.”
“I can’t,” I said almost before the sentence was all the way out of his mouth. “I mean, I’m too busy to take a lunch today.”
“That’s not acceptable,” he said.
I looked at him in shock. “Excuse me?”
Tom shrugged. “Legally, you have to take a lunch break. It’s a requirement. I’m just stating facts.”
A hint of a smile teased at his lips like he was trying to break the ice between us and find some common ground again. It only made me feel worse. I didn’t want him to be adorable and charming. I didn’t want him to be sexy and fun. I didn’t want him to be there.
“Then I’m taking my lunch at my desk,” I said.
“Amanda, we need to talk. You have to take a lunch. We’ll do them at the same time,” he said.
One of our coworkers walked past, and I met eyes with her as she took very specific note of how Tom was leaned against my desk talking to me. Unsurprisingly, there were rumors waiting for me when I got back to the office. It was to be expected. After all, we were both gone for so long, and I’d made a very sudden return. It was the stuff water-cooler dreams were made out of.
I had been very careful to steer clear of those rumors and not entertain any questions or leading comments. This confrontation with Tom wasn’t doing great things for perpetuating that. I let out a reluctant sigh.
“Fine,” I said. “We’ll go to lunch and talk.”
“Good,” Tom said. “I’m going to go into my office and do some work. I’ll meet you out here in a couple of hours.”
“I think we should go separately,” I said. “I’ll meet you at the diner.”
He looked a little stung by the statement but didn’t argue. With a nod, he turned and headed into his office.
When it came time for lunch, I purposely waited until several minutes after Tom left the office to get up and walk out. I didn’t want anybody noticing us leaving together or me leaving too soon after him. It was aggravating having to make the concessions and feel like I was sneaking around without even having anything to show for it.
Tom already had a couple of appetizers sitting in the middle of the table when I got to the diner and sat across from him. Nervousness had been tossing around in my stomach since he first asked me to talk with him over lunch. The sight of the food just made my stomach turn even more.
Being here alone with him underscored the awkwardness and discomfort of the situation between us. It had been a few weeks since the first time we’d tumbled into bed together, and the time had given me the chance to get a fresh perspective on it. And that fresh perspective had me feeling incredibly foolish for thinking things could have worked out between us.
Now that I was at a bit of a distance from him, I wasn’t so wrapped up in our chemistry or my attraction to him. I wasn’t so distracted and dreamy-eyed. It made me realize how irrational it was of me to ever think that we could have been anything more than a fling away from home.
“Help yourself,” he said, gesturing at the platters of food in front of me.
I shook my head and held up my hand. “No, thank you. Why don’t you just tell me what you need to talk about so I can get back to work.”
“Alright,” he said, tossing a half-eaten fry down onto his plate next to a pool of ketchup. “Why did you leave the hotel the way you did?”
It was blunt and starkly to the point, but I had walked right into it.
“I wanted to give you space,” I said.
“What do you mean space?” he asked.
“Everything going on with the bar and your brothers was just getting messier and more complicated. You needed to be able to focus on that and get it sorted. I decided to give you space to let you get everything figured out without the stress of the company… or of me,” I said.
