Rebound - Marie Johnston Page 0,14
He never gave up.
Just like another man in her life. Olivia refused to think about Kane. He was done, they were over. No, there was no them to be over with in the first place. And Kane wasn’t nearly the nuisance David had been. His messages were short and weren’t pushy. His e-mails were charming and she’d read and reread them a million times. She’d even hit reply once, or five, times but words escaped her. Everything in her head sounded like inane dribble.
Speaking of inane dribble. Olivia brought her attention back to David and realized she had missed absolutely nothing. He was still talking about himself and work.
“David,” she interrupted.
He stopped and looked expectantly at her. “What is it Olivia? And have I told you that you look good tonight?”
Wow. She compared his compliment to when Kane had given her a similar one. David had no heat in his eyes, and his voice didn’t have a wistful quality as if she took his breath away by just being her.
David had been so persistent that she finally decided she couldn’t ignore him anymore. She had to put on her big girl panties and deal with him. Honestly, he probably kept trying because he found it too tedious to find and court another woman. It’d interfere with his work.
So she answered a call from him and arranged to meet him for dinner.
“David, I agreed to meet so we could talk about what happened.”
“I know and I’m so sorry. I was late and took you for granted, and it won’t happen again. I was on time tonight.” He looked as if she should congratulate him.
“It won’t happen again, because we are over. I was serious that night, David. You’d been taking me for granted much more than just that night.”
“But you never mentioned anything.” David looked genuinely confused.
Only a million times! “Didn’t you ever feel like we lacked passion?”
“I thought we were solid.” He was clueless.
“For a long time I thought something was wrong in our relationship. And the night you left me sitting alone at the restaurant, I met someone and I figured out what was missing.”
“You met someone else?” His voice was incredulous, like it was impossible to think she could’ve moved on.
“I did. And what you and I had was more like a business arrangement than an exciting, passionate relationship.” She stopped to let that all sink in.
“Did you have sex with him?” David was sounding pissed and that made Olivia angry.
“It’s none of your business.” Olivia clenched her jaw to prevent herself from telling him exactly what had happened between her and Kane, to rub it in and let David stew.
“Well,” he sputtered, “are you still with him?”
Well shit. How should she answer that? “He’s gone for work right now.”
David sat back, straightening his suit coat around him. “So, what? You’re leaving me for him?”
How dare he make it sound like she was a cheating hussy. “I wasn’t the one who left, David. I was the one who kept showing up while you dropped me for work, over and over again. Don’t turn this around on me.” She flung down her napkin and threw down some money. “Here’s for my dinner. Now don’t call me again.”
Olivia stormed off feeling freer than she had in years.
Chapter Five
“Hey Olivia. Just seeing if I could catch you.”
*****
Olivia,
I have three more months left on my tour, the end’s in sight. We took port in Italy for three days and it was nice to get off the ship. I got matching Italian leather slippers for Jeff and Kate’s wedding present. Think they’ll like them? It doesn’t matter, they’re from Italy.
Take care,
Kane
*****
Olivia hit reply and hovered over the “H” to type hi. She’d missed all of his calls. She chickened out of replying to his first e-mail. Would be she be brave enough to type a message in return?
Italy. There were beautiful women in Italy. Yet, he still e-mailed her. He really was serious about giving this whole thing a shot. She could at least have the courtesy to reply. Typing a few words, she crafted something extremely short and probably not sweet at all. It was really kinda lame.
Looking it over at least ten times, and mentally rewriting it a hundred times before she sent it exactly the way she had initially written it, she sat back and stared at her laptop. Ridiculous. Kane had better things to do than babysit his e-mail at sea, there was no point waiting for a reply.