He didn’t move, and with the last glimpse of his face, Mazey could see he wanted to argue some more, but really, what would be the point. They both needed to get ready for work. At least she did. Rylan had already showered and dressed in his uniform before leaving his house five minutes ago.
She didn’t need him waiting for her like a boyfriend. That’s not what they were, and they’d made the decision to keep their friends-with-benefits relationship a secret, arriving at work together wouldn’t help that.
Plus, she was feeling a little off, her stomach not in the best of shape after a weekend of indulging. She wanted to take her time getting ready. She had an hour, and she planned to spend most of it in the shower making sure she removed every sticky trace of pie from her hair and body. The rest of it, she would spend eating some plain toast in the hope of settling her roiling stomach.
In general, she didn’t eat much sugar, and she’d eaten far too much in the last twenty-four hours. She shivered at the reminder of what she’d done with Rylan since yesterday.
Last night after they climbed out of the bath and dried off, he’d dressed her in one of his old army shirts and led her downstairs for dinner. Neither of them had been all that hungry after their pie feast, so they had ended up pulling together a platter of leftover vegetables and meat, with cookies for dessert.
They’d eaten out on his deck under the stars and talked for hours. She couldn’t remember what exactly they had talked about. It seemed as though they could ramble on and on about nothing and everything, and yet she couldn’t pinpoint one of the topics they’d discussed.
She was comfortable with him. In and out of bed. The conversations she had with Stuart, she remembered most of them word for word, a lot of them not pleasant in the least. Usually it was him pointing out one or more of her inadequacies and suggesting—telling her—ways to fix them.
Frowning, she wondered how she could have possibly thought she was happy.
How did a man who found fault with everything about her become so important?
Had he always been so critical?
Had she been so in awe of him as a doctor, she had ignored his faults?
Because let’s be real. He had loads of them. And that didn’t include the fact he was a liar and a cheat.
Something she hadn’t discovered until the disastrous end of their engagement.
Why on earth had she agreed to marry a man who obviously hadn’t liked anything about her?
Had it been a gradual eroding of her self-esteem or had he always picked at her with his snide little comments and digs?
Shaking her head, Mazey made her way to the bathroom.
She knew why she’d accepted Stuart’s ring. A pregnancy scare had shaken her to the core, and while she’d been relieved to not be pregnant at the time, she’d also been disappointed.
The incident had prompted a discussion about their future, and he’d agreed with her about where they were heading, what they wanted—marriage, children, forever. So, when he’d produced the small diamond solitaire, she had been thrilled to be taking that next step in her life.
And yet she hadn’t been able to bring herself to suggest a date for the wedding.
Or even suggest one of them move so they resided in the same city.
Ninety percent of their lives had been spent apart, living in different states, and she hadn’t seen a thing wrong with that.
She’d either had a sixth sense or she was the dumbest, most undemanding, gullible woman on the planet.
Who accepted so little from the man they had agreed to marry?
Sighing, she stripped out of Rylan’s shirt and tossed it on her bed.
Ry.
Would she have settled for so little if it had been him instead of Stuart she had been engaged to?
Would she have been happy spending so much time apart?
“Enough!” Shaking her head, she made her way into the bathroom and turned on the shower.
Stuart was her past. And Rylan was definitelynother future.
He was a work colleague, a guy she was friends with. One who knew his way around her body and was happy to oblige her needs—and his—when they wanted sex with no strings, no complicated feelings involved. No expectations or promises.
