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Her phone suddenly rang from inside her purse, and it was the ringtone she’d programmed for her father. She cringed at the interruption.
Luke glared at her bag. “That him?” he asked.
Alexa nodded. Unable to help herself, she reached for the purse and pulled out the ringing phone. At least half a dozen missed calls, all from her father. “I didn’t tell him I was taking off today.” She glanced at Luke but found no understanding in his gaze.
“How long are you gonna let him run your life?” he asked.
“He doesn’t—”
Luke pinned her with a knowing gaze. “Give me more credit than that. He does.”
The annoying ringing stopped, and another missed call and voicemail message popped up on the screen. Disgusted, she tossed the phone onto the bed.
“Get dressed,” he said more gently than she’d have expected. “I’ll toss the sheets into the washer. Cole said someone comes in and does laundry, so she’ll finish what I start.”
Nodding, she rose, feeling self-conscious that she was naked and he wasn’t. In silence, she looked for the clothes she’d shed and realized her jeans were still damp. She pulled on her underwear and shirt, her back to him.
“Do I have time to toss these in the dryer for a little while before I put them back on?” She turned to find him right there, in her personal space, and she sucked in a shallow breath.
He braced his hands on her forearms, his thumbs rubbing lazy circles over her shirt. “I don’t want to end this with an argument.” He met her gaze, those warm eyes communicating real regret.
Her stomach twisted nervously. “Me neither.” She didn’t want to end it at all, but he’d made the gesture, and she’d turned him down.
Alexa knew she had a lot to process, but she couldn’t upend her life in a heartbeat. She’d always been a thinker who processed first and acted later. During this time with Luke, she’d enjoyed spontaneity, but a lifetime’s worth of habit wouldn’t be broken quickly.
“Give me your jeans. I’ll toss ’em in for a bit,” he said.
“Thanks.” She handed him the damp denim, then helped him strip the linen off the bed and pillows.
They worked in somewhat comfortable silence, but the atmosphere between them had changed. No longer sexually charged or light and playful, a pall had fallen over them because they both knew they’d reached the end of this.
Whatever this was.
And Luke was right. It had been fucking spectacular.
Luke drove Alexa home. He walked her to her front door, wrapped his arms around her, and kissed her. She knew it was goodbye, even if he didn’t say the words. Even if he’d programmed his phone number and address into her phone, she sensed the finality in the kiss.
Alexa entered her house, wanting nothing more than to be alone. She didn’t return her father’s calls. He could damn well wait until she returned to work on Friday before she dealt with his anger. Instead, she gave herself time to grieve. As insane as it sounded, that was what she did. She grieved for a relationship she’d walked away from before it began. For a man who’d given her more in two days than anyone else had given her in a lifetime. And she grieved for the lonely years she’d spent growing up, and the frustrating time she’d spent trying to please a man who couldn’t be satisfied.
Suffice it to say, Alexa held a pity party complete with ice cream and phone calls to her best friend. By the time she fell into a fitful sleep, she did so with the knowledge that this time tomorrow, Luke would be gone.
And she had some harsh decisions and choices to make about herself, her life, and her future.
* * *
Alexa dressed in her navy power suit, the outfit she saved for board meetings and arguments about changing the status quo with the so-called powers that be. The same board headed by her father. She slipped on a pair of high heels, not her usual choice for the hospital, but these made her feel in control. Like she could handle anyone and anything—the way she felt when she was around Luke.
Makeup in place, she climbed into her car and drove to University Hospital, parked and entered the building that had been home since she was a little girl. She listened to the click of her heels as she made her way down the halls to her father’s office and realized there was a lot wrong with that bit of truth. But truth it was—and she was finally ready to confront it—along with the man who’d created her reality.
She knocked on her father’s office door.
“Come in!”
She poked her head in. “Dad? I need a word.”
“I’m busy,” he said, not looking up from his paperwork. The one thing she’d always dreaded about the chief of staff job was the massive amounts of paperwork and the lack of interaction with the patients.
