I have seen some horrendous haircuts in our town.”
“I understand where you’re coming from. When I was in California, a bad haircut was grounds for calling in sick and hiding away in your ridiculously tiny cockroach-infested apartment.”
The two laughed as they began comparing stories of her time in California and his in Seattle. Sage was thinking that she’d been the one who’d gotten the bad end of the deal. Though Seattle was much colder and rainier than Stanford, at least he hadn’t had to deal with the mind-blowing bug population she’d put up with for the last four years.
“Will you go back when you’re done?” Suddenly, he was serious, all traces of a smile disappearing from his face.
Sage thought about it. When she’d first arrived in California, she’d been convinced it was where she’d live the rest of her life. And yet now, after being back home for a mere five months, she knew she was a small-town girl.
The saddest part was that the place she’d been living for four years had been more than easy to walk away from. She’d been able to fit her minuscule amount of possessions in her car, and it had taken only a couple of phone calls to change her address.
There were no connections, no friends she’d ever call again. She’d gone out a few times, but the faces would soon fade away. They were temporary friends in a shallow world. That wasn’t who she was, wasn’t who she wanted to be.
“I would go to the beaches on the coast, but I could never live in California again. It was fun, and I’m glad I got out of Sterling for as long as I did—I hope to take a great job somewhere else eventually, but not in a huge city. It’s just too impersonal, too hard to make friends. Everyone seems to be so focused on their own lives and their futures that there isn’t time to build real relationships. Living here, I know that if I disappeared tomorrow, a search party would begin almost immediately. It’s not like that in big cities, I didn’t even tell my roommates I was leaving; I just left them a note with the final month’s rent. Not one of them has bothered to call to see if it was legit. That’s how much my leaving was noticed.” She winced almost imperceptibly.
“Well, it’s their loss, Sage, and our gain,” Spence said as he reached across the table and took her hand.
For a moment, she was unable to speak, unable to look away from his beguiling gaze as his thumb rubbed across her knuckles. Every moment she was in this man’s presence another chink in her armor was chipped away. If she believed this was all real, she would gladly climb into his lap and beg him to take her. But how could it be real? All the rumors spoke of him being nothing more than a playboy, that he liked the conquest and then lost interest. With how intensely she already felt about him, she didn’t think she would be able to emotionally handle being one of his castoffs.
“I’m not worried,” she finally said, firmly tugging on her hand as she tried to regain her equilibrium. She couldn’t keep having these intense moments with Spence. If she continued to get lost in his eyes, he’d never take her word that she wasn’t interested in him. His next words proved that.
“Why fight so hard against it, Sage? It’s obvious we’re attracted to each other. We can keep it professional at work and . . . not so professional afterward. I think we have just the right amount of chemistry to set off some explosions.”
She was melting slightly at his words until he finished his last sentence. Then she was fighting a grin. “Explosions? Really, Spence?” It was exactly what she’d needed to hear to clear her head.
“What?” He looked confused.
She finally got her hand free and felt slightly superior. “I have to admit that you were pulling me in there with your suave talk—just a little—and then you said ‘explosions.’ If that hadn’t been such a cheesy line, with little to no imagination, you might have just had my heart racing,” she said with a saucy smile.
“I wasn’t being cheesy.”
“Oh come on, Spence. You’re a surgeon, for goodness’ sake. Your ego is the size of a small country—no, scratch that, we’re talking Russia. I’m amazed you manage to fit through doorways with such a big head. To top that