“No one else’s name crossed my lips.”
She let her breath out in a slow exhale. “Yeah. Okay. We both made mistakes, but I’ve long known you’re not perfect.”
He sat down. “Glad we came to a positive conclusion.”
Nadine got the sense he wasn’t finished and waited.
“Did you mean what you said?” Wes finally asked in a low voice.
“Which part in particular?” she asked cautiously.
“Not trusting me.”
Her hands went cold. Wes was looking over at her, and it didn’t take a genius to see however they handled this would be the beginning or the end of what they could be. She was grateful for the night shading her, feeling skittish at the idea of having to talk about her feelings. Maybe that was part of the problem. She put walls up at work to protect herself, but she’d have to build a door that fit him. It was scary that Wes was no longer only part of her professional life. He had become personal, and not only when they started sleeping together. It had started far earlier than that, with the seeds planted before they’d begun work with Dot.
She crossed her legs and pulled the blanket tighter, wanting the comfort even if she didn’t need the warmth. “We’ve known each other a long time,” she said slowly. “After we had that talk, we didn’t stop competing. What if this is another contest for you? What if you want to win, and then when you have that, you lose interest?”
“In the story?” he asked. “Or us?”
“Us.” It was hard to say it.
***
Wes wanted to believe he was the kind of man who could put aside all his anger and negative feelings to think rationally. He was not. He was still mad at Nadine.
No, he wasn’t mad. He was hurt. What made it worse was the same mistrustful thoughts had floated through his own mind before he’d dismissed them as being unworthy of her.
Yet she didn’t feel the same.
“Do you believe that?”
“You like to win.”
“So do you,” he pointed out. “This seems more than a little hypocritical.”
“It’s not the same!” she exclaimed.
“It kind of is.” He leaned forward. “I thought we’d sorted this out and agreed to let our past go.”
“It’s not our past,” she said. “That’s the problem. It’s how we are.”
“We like to compete, but it doesn’t mean I want to hurt you or I don’t respect you. I thought we were having fun. Weren’t we?”
His eyes had adjusted to the darker interior of the pagoda, and he saw her duck her head. “We were,” she admitted. “It is fun. I love beating you.”
“Nadine.”
“I like when we compete,” she amended, “and I know it’s not spiteful. It just fed into everything I was feeling.”
“Tonight wasn’t great, but we make a good team, competition or not.”
She clasped her hands on her lap. “We still don’t know each other. Not really.”
“I disagree. I think we do know a lot.” He moved over to sit near her, careful to keep some space between them. Her head tilted down, but he could tell she was listening, so he kept going. “I know you only use salted butter despite sweet butter’s superiority.”
Her guarded expression faded a bit. “I know you like to start each morning saying hello to the cats, even though you say you don’t like them.”
“They’re growing on me. I know you like to lie down when you’re reading.”