long moments there was nothing but the silence between them. “What happened with the guy?” he asked. “The one where it was messy and distracting?”
Viv sighed. “He thought I’d change my mind and want to stick around after the six months. Even though I’d been very clear about that not being the case. He’d seemed fine with the arrangement until I left and he made a bit of a nuisance of himself for a little while afterward. It was my first store, too, so I’ve been very careful ever since.”
“And you’ve never changed your mind? Never been tempted to stay?”
“Nope.” Viv shook her head. She could put her hand on her heart and swear to that and if he hadn’t taken her seriously before, she hoped he’d get the message loud and clear now. “I love my job. I love the variety.”
It was exactly the type of life she’d craved when she’d been a kid growing up in Kearney, Nebraska, with a bunch of siblings and parents who, even if they had been able to afford it, rarely got the chance to take a break away from running their small, barely-turning-a-profit motel. But the people who stayed in the motel—they got to leave. They got to hand over their keys and go somewhere else. The next place.
The where of it hadn’t mattered to Viv; she’d just envied them that freedom, that choice, and had been determined to emulate it—to keep on going down the road, wherever it led. And if that meant shutting herself off to people that was fine.
“It’s not really suited to long-term relationships I know but, to be frank, there’s been nobody who’s made me think twice about my career.”
No one in her present either. Definitely not.
Ruben was fun and sexy and what he could do to her body was astonishing but it would be stupid of her to confuse great sex with anything else.
And Viv was not stupid.
Her career was busier than ever with a handful more rural stores to launch over the next few years. It was going to be a time of amazing growth for the company and she was proud to be part of the team. Missouri beckoned.
Sure, some people might not have exactly considered Missouri a highlight of their career but it wouldn’t really matter where it was—it was the next place. She was living the life she’d dreamed about as a kid.
“I suppose that makes me some kind of unfeeling bitch,” she said when he’d been quiet for longer than felt comfortable.
“What?” He glanced down at her. “No, of course not. It makes you decisive. You know what you want and how to go after it. That’s a good thing.”
His quick-fire response bolstered Viv’s life philosophy. She did know what she wanted and how to get it. And it was a good thing.
“What about you?” she asked. “How come you’ve never settled down?”
“I don’t know…” His voice was low as his fingers absently stroked down her arm. “I guess, like you, I haven’t met that special someone everyone talks about. I moved away from Montana for about eight years. Did my police training in Seattle and I’ve worked in Philadelphia and Chicago and Colorado. I’ve had a few short-term girlfriends over the years but I always knew I wanted to return to Montana so I guess I didn’t really allow myself to get too attached.”
Yeah, Viv totally got that. “How long were you and Clem together?”
“Three years.”
Three years? When he’d said a while she’d assumed he’d meant six months, maybe a year. “That’s a long time.” A long-ass time.
“I guess…I’ve just known her all my life. We were in school together, in church together, our parents socialized together… And then not long after I got back, we were out at a party together one night in Bozeman and we ended up in bed together and that happened on and off for a few months before we decided to make it a permanent, monogamous kind of arrangement. Be each other’s plus-ones at events et cetera.”
“You didn’t live together?”
“No. I mean, we often slept at each other’s places if we’d been out somewhere. Or maybe I’d go to Marietta for the weekend if I wasn’t working or she might come to Bozeman. But she lives in Marietta because her librarian job is here and I live in Bozeman and neither of us ever suggested that we change that arrangement. It’s like I was saying…we weren’t that hot and heavy. We were never one