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Chapter 7
Mikayla went to work the next day and hid in her office. She hadn't slept; she couldn't concentrate. She didn't cry, but God, she wanted to. She wanted to break down and scream and rage and curse Nik for ripping her heart from her chest. By lunch, Deirdre had obviously had enough. When she walked into the office and closed the door behind her, Mikayla looked up from the accounting she wasn't even trying to focus on.
"I closed the shop for lunch," her friend informed her. "It's time we talk." Mikayla shook her head. She'd told Deirdre that morning what had happened. Mikayla may have omitted details, but Deirdre knew enough to understand just how close Mikayla had come to giving herself to Nik.
A man she hadn't even known. One she still knew so very little about. A man who had deceived her.
"He's leaving this evening?" Deirdre asked when Mikayla said nothing.
"That's what he said." She leaned back in her chair and rubbed her hands over her face, knowing she looked like hell.
What the hell was wrong with her anyway? She couldn't be in love with him, but she was close to feeling something. . . . All she knew was that it was a good thing he was leaving; otherwise, she would end up begging him to take her.
"You're going to tell him good-bye," Deirdre stated, her voice fierce. Mikayla sat forward slowly. "Have you lost your mind?" Deirdre had to be crazy. The man's touch was like a drug. She couldn't resist. And her best friend thought she was going to tempt that danger further?
"If you don't, you'll always be watching for him, Mikayla," Deirdre stated firmly.
"If you don't say good-bye, if you don't watch him leave, then you'll never let go of him, not really. He'll always be the one that got away. You don't want that. I watched my mother go through this with Dad. She wouldn't watch him leave and she never stopped watching for him to return."
Mikayla shook her head. "I'm not married to him," she retorted defiantly. "I'm not even in love with him."
"Doesn't matter." Deirdre propped her hands on her hips and glared back at Mikayla. "Listen, I know what I'm talking about here. Go home, shower, put on some makeup, and dress pretty. And tell that son of a bitch good-bye with a smile, even if it's killing you. I promise you, you'll sleep better for it tonight." Would she? Or would it only hurt more?
Mikayla blew out a hard breath as she crossed her arms on top of the desk and laid her head heavily on them.
"I don't want to say good-bye," she muttered, her tone mutinous. "I might cry again."
How humiliating. She hadn't had the strength to simply tell him no; she had cried instead. Because she knew he was going to leave. She knew he had lied to her, that he 73
didn't love her, that he was going to walk away from her whether she allowed him to become her lover or not.
And honestly, it was better that way. She had known from the beginning that he was a heartbreaker. All bad boys were. They broke hearts from the cradle, and if they ever gave their own then it was rare.
She had known that the moment she laid on eyes on him riding down Gina Foreman's street. The ultimate bad boy. Dangerous, hard-core, sexual, almost illegal.
"Come on, Mikayla, you don't want to fixate on him after he's gone, and you don't want to regret him." Deirdre sighed. "Go home, get ready, and when he leaves smile and tell him good-bye. Do this for yourself, or you'll always regret it." Sitting up, she stared back at Deirdre, knowing how her father's desertion of her and her mother had affected her. She and Mikayla had been friends forever. They shared a passion for clothes and a passion for business. They had their separate dreams and their separate lives, and they were each other's support network.
And Deirdre was probably right. She and her on-again, off-again boyfriend, Drake, had had more than a tumultuous relationship. Drake had broken Deirdre's heart more times than Mikayla could count. If anyone knew how bad it hurt to be unable to walk away, then it was Deirdre.
"Think about it," she urged her friend. "Don't let him hurt you more than he already has, sweetie."
With that, Deirdre opened the door and returned to the front of the shop. Likely to her lunch as well.
Mikayla just wished she had an appetite. Her stomach protested at the very idea of food at this point. She didn't want to tell Nik good-bye. She didn't want him to leave. She wanted to return to the evening past, before she had ever known why he was there and what he was doing.
To the time when, in the back of her mind, she had wondered if she was enough to tame a bad boy.
The thought caused her to pause. God, she had known better than that; she had to have known better. She had never allowed herself to be interested in the bad boys, the charmers, the heartbreakers. She had focused on the nice, steady guys instead. Only to learn that many of them weren't so steady after all.
She was twenty-six and still living that child's dream of giving her virginity, that gift that she could give only once, to the man she would share the rest of her life with. Unrealistic. No one could accuse Mikayla Martin of being a hard-nosed realist, could they?
Shaking her head, she rose to her feet as she heard the low, melodic sound of the bell over the door tinkling delicately. Deirdre had reopened the shop rather than waiting for the lunch hour to end.
It didn't matter. Mikayla was going home. She was going to take her best friend's advice and hope she knew what she was talking about.
After Mikayla gathered her papers together and refiled them, she turned to grab her purse and leave. The office door opened, and she stepped back in surprise as Deirdre followed the familiar male into the office.
"Talk about freakin' childish," Deirdre sneered at Luke Nelson as he glared back at her. "He just comes right in like he owns the damned place." 74
