It felt like a lifetime ago. Like it was someone else who had done that.

Not her.

Not Kelly.

He turned around as she entered, and she closed the door behind her.

He looked older, somehow, and tired, but he was as handsome and controlled as he’d always been—with the exception of that one terrible night. He wore one of his expensive business suits, and his gaze was utterly cool.

“I’ve been standing here,” he said, not waiting for her to make the first move, “in the time it took you to come up, trying to figure out what you could possibly want from me.”

She swallowed so hard it hurt her throat. No niceties here. She shouldn’t have expected them. “I just wanted to talk, and I thought there was a better chance you would see me here, in your office, than if I’d shown up at your place in the evening.”

“I haven’t been staying at the house lately anyway. I wouldn’t have been there.”

“Oh. Okay.”

They stared at each other, and she saw his eyes lower to scan the length of her body—in her flowing skirt and lace top, the slightly bohemian style she always wore for her work—before his gaze traveled back up to her face.

Finally he asked calmly, “So what did you want to talk about?”

She sucked in a slow breath and gave a little shrug. “I didn’t like how we’d left things. It’s been nagging at me. So I thought it was worth trying to…”

He gave her a bitter little smile. “To make peace? To become friends?”

For some reason the words and the smile hurt her chest more than the coolness in his manner. “I never expected to be friends. No. We were never really friends. Were we?”

“No. We weren’t.”

“We were…” She paused but then made herself say it. “We were more.”

“What we were was a lie. You know it as well as I do.”

“Some of it was. You lied to me just like I lied to you. But I don’t think all of it was a lie. There was something…real.”

“But even real things don’t survive something like this.”

He was rejecting her. Obviously. He wasn’t even leaving open the possibility of there being any future between them. He wasn’t even letting her ask.

But she was here, and she could sense something fragile and wounded beneath Caleb’s coldness, and she hated it. She hated that she’d done it to him. She hated to leave it like that. So she said, “I don’t know if that’s true.”

He walked over closer to her, and he gave a dry, humorless laugh. “Seriously? You think we’re going to fall into each other’s arms now? Everything forgiven? After what you did?” Before she could respond, he added, “After what I did too?”

At least he was acknowledging that. He’d had as long to think things through as she had. They were both guilty in this. They’d both torn apart what had been real between them.

But in some ways it was better, since it meant they were in the same boat.

“Relationships have survived worse.”

“Have they?” He shook his head. “I don’t know if that’s true. But I can at least speak for myself.”

She stared at him for a full minute, trying to figure out what to say, what to do, whether to even keep trying when he was clearly slamming the door in her face.

Then, suddenly, she was so tired that her legs didn’t want to keep holding her up. She slumped to the leather couch against the wall.

To her surprise, Caleb came over and lowered himself to sit beside her, leaning back as if he were as tired as she was. They didn’t look at each other. They both stared out at the view of DC through the wall of windows.

“I can’t believe you came here,” he said at last, not sounding quite as bitter as before.

“Honestly, I can’t believe it either. I knew there wasn’t much chance. But I just can’t…”

When she didn’t finish, Caleb turned his head to look at her. “You can’t what?”

“I can’t breathe. All the way. Leaving it like that with you, it just didn’t feel like I could breathe.”

Caleb let out his own breath in an audible gust. “Yeah. Me either.”

She sat up straighter, feeling a little hope at this admission. “So maybe we don’t leave it like we did.”

“Then what do you suggest? If it’s not broken but there’s no rosy future waiting for us, what’s left?”

“I don’t know. I really don’t know.” Without thinking, she reached out and put a hand on his knee. When he didn’t pull away, she stroked it slowly, wanting to touch him, needing to feel the solid warmth of his body beneath his clothes.

He still didn’t pull away, and it made her feel better, so she kept it up—the touch intimate but intentionally not sexual.

After a minute of silence, Caleb murmured, “I guess I should thank you—for not making what you know public. At least not yet.”

“You don’t have to thank me.”

“You could have told the world what you know.”

“Yeah. And that would have accomplished absolutely nothing. I’m working on…”

“On what?”

“Letting go,” she admitted.

“How are you doing with that?”

“It’s not my natural inclination, but it’s…it’s helped. Some.”

“That’s good.” Caleb’s brown eyes had been focused on her face, but now they shifted down to watch her hand as it still stroked his thigh.

Something about the adjustment in focus made her suddenly conscious of his body. Not just his presence but his body. His strong, lean, virile body.

A body she’d always loved.

Her eyes drifted down to her hand too, and she realized it was farther up his thigh than she’d intended. Then she saw Caleb’s response to her touch in the bulge she could see in his trousers.

Her own body responded to seeing how he’d responded to her.

“I guess that doesn’t go away,” Caleb murmured in a thick voice she well remembered.

“What doesn’t go away?” Of its own accord, her hand had slid a little closer to his groin.

“How much I want you.”

Kelly gulped and flushed hotly. He hadn’t moved, hadn’t touched her. All he’d done was say those words and give her that intense look.

But it was enough to cause her pussy to clench in excitement. “I still want you too,” she admitted. “I don’t think it’s ever going to go away.”

The words were true, and she realized how true they were as she said them. She dropped her head, suddenly pained at how hard it would be to go through the rest of her life wanting Caleb and never being able to have him.

He leaned over and pushed her hair back over her shoulder so he could see all of her face. “I haven’t been able to sleep. I stay awake all night thinking about you, and no matter how futile I know it is, my body just won’t stop wanting you.”

“My body wants you too,” she whispered, her breath quickening as she raised her hand from his thigh to his chest. This felt right. This felt like them.

This felt real—in a way it hadn’t when they were together before.

Like she knew who Caleb really was now—in all of his strength and weakness and light and shadow. And like he knew who she really was too.

Her hand rested on his chest, the soft texture of his suit oddly sensual, particularly when paired with the solid strength of the chest beneath it. She fisted her hand unconsciously, her fingers clenching around a handful of fabric.

“I’d convinced myself this would never happen again,” Caleb murmured.

“It can. If you want to.” She slid her hand down his chest toward his belly.

His abdomen was hard too. All of him was hard. And tight. And masculine.

And exactly as she’d known it would be.

“I do want to.” He reached out and slowly stroked down the long fall of her hair. “But this isn’t a happy ending. If we do this, you can’t be hoping for that.”

A tiny part of her had been hoping for that, but it wasn’t the deepest or most important part.

She could have this with Caleb now, and it would be good. It would be so much better than the way they’d parted before.

That alone would be worth it.