Out of Hours...Boardroom Seductions: One-Night Mistress...Convenient Wife / Innocent in the Italian's Possession / Hot Boss, Wicked Nights

She’d assured herself that knowing what Christo wanted was enough, that she was a big girl now, that she could cope with the limitations he imposed on their relationship.

Well, not quite.

Their relationship—or whatever you called it—was fine as far as it went. Heavens, being loved—in a physical sense—by Christo was amazing.

But it didn’t go to the heart.

Natalie, dreamer that apparently she still was, had dared to hope it would. She couldn’t imagine that she wouldn’t be able to convince him that what she felt for him was strong enough, stable enough, mature enough to stand up to whatever disillusionment he’d endured in the past.

Which just went to show, she supposed, how immature her love really was.

Or maybe not. But it wasn’t enough. She knew that. She loved him—and he was pulling back.

The desire was still there. He still said every morning, “Will I see you tonight?” He was still an eager, generous lover in bed. He could make her twist and writhe and shudder with her need of him.

But he didn’t hold her in his arms.

Not anymore. When she woke in the night now, she was alone. He was in the bed, yes, but removed. Distant. Only if he fell asleep still holding her did they share that closeness. If he was awake, he had pulled away.

At first she thought it might having nothing to do with their relationship. It could be his work, she thought. He had a lot of difficult, painful cases.

“Is something wrong?” Natalie asked the first morning after she’d experienced the distance. They were sitting in the kitchen. She’d made breakfast for the two of them before she went back to her mother’s to dress for work.

Christo, who had come in silently, poured a cup of coffee and was staring at the front page of the paper, didn’t answer at first.

When she repeated the question, he looked startled, then edgy. He’d shaken his head. “No.”

It was all the answer she got out loud. His silence said much more.

He started running in the mornings. She’d wake up and find he had already left her. He never invited her to go with him. Never talked about why he was going now when he hadn’t gone before.

And Natalie didn’t ask because she sensed instinctively that there were questions now he wouldn’t answer.

Was this the way it always happened? she wondered. Was this how he ended all his affairs? Or did she dare still hope?

“I’ve made a reservation for Friday.” Laura’s voice was so bright and cheerful in the face of her own grim mood that Natalie had to take a deep breath before answering.

“Everything well, then?” she asked. It would be some comfort to know that things were going well somewhere.

“We haven’t killed each other,” Laura said drily. “So all things considered, it’s going fine.” She sighed. “It’s an adjustment,” she said. “Gran wants to dance polkas. She has no patience. But she’s making progress.”

“Is she all right alone?”

“Yes. And I’ll come back and stay with her for a while in a month or two. But right now I need to get back to my life and she needs to adjust here.”

“Sounds good.”

“It will be a good time,” Laura said, “with Christo leaving, I’ll have a chance to catch up on office paperwork without him underfoot.”

“Leaving?” Natalie dropped the spoon in the pot of oatmeal she was stirring for their breakfast. “Christo?”

“He didn’t tell you? Well, no, I suppose he wouldn’t since you’re not working with him now.” Laura sounded completely unconcerned. She, of course, was also unaware that Natalie was at that moment in Christo’s kitchen.

No, I’m not working with him. I’m sleeping with him, Natalie thought with just a hint of hysteria. Why should he tell her? She was the woman in his bed for the moment. Nothing more. Nothing less.

“He’s delivering a paper at a conference in Sacramento,” Laura told her. “The conference runs over the weekend. So it will be perfect. Provided I survive the next few days.” Laura laughed.

Natalie did, too, albeit a bit hollowly. “Shall I pick you up at the airport then?”

“That would be fantastic.” Her mother rattled off the details of the flight and Natalie wrote them down with one hand and kept stirring with the other. She had just hung up the phone when Christo appeared in the doorway.

“Morning.” He poured himself a cup of coffee and flashed her a smile.

It was friendly but, looking closely, she could see that there was nothing particularly personal about it. It was almost as if he had built a wall between them.

There was certainly nothing to indicate they had just spent hours in each other’s arms, that they had touched and tasted and known each other in the most intimate of ways.

“Good morning,” she said evenly. “My mother just rang. She’s coming home on Friday.”

He nodded, then paused reflectively, as if something had occurred to him, but he didn’t say anything, just sat down in front the bowl of oatmeal she put at his place on the table and began to eat.

“She and Grandma are ready to be done with each other for the time being,” she went on. “And she said it was a good time to come because you’d be away.” She looked at him expectantly.

He nodded. Didn’t say a word.

“In Sacramento delivering a paper,” she said casually, pleased with how disinterested she sounded as she wiped down the countertop and turned to run water in the empty oatmeal pot.

It wasn’t even as if she cared that he was going. It was that he hadn’t thought enough of their relationship to bother telling her.

Christo nodded. “That’s right.” But he offered no further comment, no explanation, made no attempt to engage her interest.

Because he obviously didn’t want her interest, Natalie thought.

She heard him set down the coffee mug and turned to see him steeple his fingers in front of his face. He stared at them wordlessly, as if she weren’t even in the room.

Natalie turned back to the pot and began scrubbing it with a vengeance under the running water. “So I’ll be going home then, too, obviously,” she said, barely glancing over her shoulder, focusing instead on the pot.

There was a long silence. The only sound was the running water and the furious action of the scouring pad in Natalie’s hand.

Then Christo said, “So it would probably be a good time for us to end things, too.”

Natalie didn’t even look around. She kept right on scrubbing the pot until it shone. Then she rinsed it and shut off the water before she finally turned around to face him as she picked up a dish towel and began to dry the pot.

Only then, when she could say it with equanimity and just the faintest tightness in her throat, did she speak. “If that’s what you want.”

For an instant he hesitated. Then he nodded almost curtly and stood up. “I think that would be best.”

That afternoon there was no message on her voice mail saying, “I’ll see you tonight.” There was no brisk single knock on the door.