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“What do you mean?”
“I’m aware I sort of…dropped away when you needed me. It wasn’t very mature, of course, and I regret that I couldn’t have been a help to you and your family at that time.”
That time. The past. That heavy shroud materialized, hovering like a threat. He mentally shoved it away. “Tina, this isn’t a conversation we need to have.”
“No, I truly need to apologize.” Another squeeze of his fingers. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you.”
Ill-at-ease, he pulled free of her again and slipped his hands into his pockets. “It’s fine. Don’t worry about it.”
“Please. Accept my apology.”
Christ. “All right. Apology accepted. Now if you’ll ex—”
“I thought we could try again.”
He went still. Huh? “Tina…”
“It was good before, wasn’t it? I haven’t forgotten how good. I’d like us to—well, not start over, but carry on, carry forward into a real future.”
Oh, what fresh hell, he thought, grimacing. How best to handle this? She was an old friend. Their parents were still close. But he’d dated her in his mid-twenties and he hadn’t been anywhere close to serious about her then. For her to ambush him now with talk of a “real future” was unthinkable.
Clearing his throat, he tried for diplomacy, despite feeling boxed-in and resenting it like hell. “Tina, that’s a really uh, flattering offer. But it’s not, I’m not…”
“What are you saying?” The note of disbelief in her voice just pissed him off.
“I’m saying no.”
The ensuing silence was loaded. Fuck.
Then she finally sighed. “I worried this might have happened. For the last five years I’ve heard things about you, you know. People have kept me informed.”
Truly puzzled, Alec frowned. “Informed of what?”
“That you have a reputation for…going through women.”
Alec stiffened.
“I hope the way I left you isn’t the reason you turned to that.”
She hadn’t “left” him. Consumed by other matters, he’d quit calling her. End of story. And the women he’d been with since then knew the score. They didn’t consider themselves having been “gone through” or taken advantage of in any way.
“Truly,” Tina continued. “I’d feel terrible if that breakup was the cause of this habit of yours.”
What the hell? “What habit?”
“Your addiction. Your addiction to, um, superficial connections. I hope that wasn’t because of me, of the way I stopped seeing you.”
Addiction? Alec put a tight hold on his temper. And she thought she’d stopped seeing him? The truth was, he’d never once thought of her, not after that devastating phone call that had changed his family’s lives. Not for months and months, anyway, and by then she was part of the before when he and his family were struggling with carrying on into the after.
As bar-goers shifted around them, he shoved a hand through his hair and wondered if there was a graceful way to end this conversation and if he felt like being graceful at all. “Look, Tina…”
A body brushed past him and a familiar, feminine scent tickled his nose. Without thinking, his hand reached out and he snatched the warm arm of someone passing by.
The someone squeaked as he reeled her closer and relief and pleasure twined inside him. “Lilly. I’ve been looking for you.”
From his other side, Tina piped up. “I thought you were looking for Jessie.”
“And Lilly,” he said, lying like a rug. “We have something important to discuss.” Already he was moving away, so that she couldn’t contradict him in front of the other woman.
“As a matter of fact, we do need to talk,” Lilly said, obligingly following him through the crowd. “I was actually looking for you.”
“Yeah?” There was a huge jam at the exit, so he turned around and headed for the rear in hopes of finding another. It was slow going, because they had to wind their way around knots and pairs and the occasional singleton who stood unhelpfully like a boulder in a stream.
