Page 39 of Rocky Mountain Devil

“Hmmm? Oh, right. Jeff.” Rafe wiped the corners of his mouth and licked his fingertips before continuing. “It seemed he figured six a.m. was a good time to share that you two were once an item.”

“No. I’m so sorr—”

“—and that he’d like that to be true again.”

She sputtered before snapping out the words, “No fucking way.”

Rafe blinked in surprise. “Excuse me, Sitko, did you justswear?”

“Trust me, Jeff Lawson is worthy of a few prime words that I wouldn’t usually utter.”

Rafe waited.

“Yes, we dated.” She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “It’s not like when I left here I was looking to find someone to spend time with—”

“Hey,” he interrupted. “We’d said we weren’t going to wait for each other, Laurel. Don’t go apologizing for something you weren’t supposed to do.”

It was easier to say that since he’d had a warning. He wasn’t sure how he would have responded finding out without this morning’s heads-up.

Gee, he should be thankful to Jeff. Maybe he’d send flowers. A vase full of thistles popped to mind.

Laurel nodded at his words, but it was clear she still felt uncomfortable. “It was strange at first, but it seemed like the right thing to do.” Her eyes were glued to his face, as if hoping she wasn’t going to hurt him. “I was starting first year and he was in the middle of his four-year program, but we hit it off. He was charming and polite, and he made me laugh.” She looked down at her fingers. “This is going to sound really stupid, but in some ways, he reminded me of you.”

Rafe wasn’t sure if that was a compliment or not. “Considering you can barely look at the man, I hope that’s not true anymore.”

“No. But we dated, and I thought it was pretty serious, or potentially going to be serious. Then he broke it off with me.”

“Idiot,” Rafe muttered, catching her fingers in his hand and squeezing them. “You seem a little more choked up about it than just that. Although I’m sure that it hurt, him being your first real boyfriend.”

“Yeah, there’s more,” she said. “He broke up with me right before leaving on a mission trip for a month. When he returned he made a couple of half-assed attempts at getting back together. When I said no, he turned around and started up with someone else. Someone whose father just happened to head an important missionary organization.”

“Idiotandasshole. Got it.” Rafe squeezed her fingers. “Is there more?”

She hesitated.

Huh. “Trust me, sweetheart, while I’d love to take the man apart for upsetting you, I won’t go off half-cocked. I want to know how to help make things easier for you.”

Laurel avoided meeting his eyes, obviously embarrassed. “To be fair to Jeff, he’s guilty of being an ass, but I don’t think he meant to be deliberately cruel when he called it off. I had to deal with uncomfortable questions from people asking if he’d called, or been in touch while he wasn’t around, but it wasn’t terrible. Just…really awkward considering I hadn’t expected it in the first place. He straight up told me ‘I need time away from you’ which made me feel as if I’d done something wrong, or been too smothering or something.” She seemed about to say something else, then shook her head as a derisive laugh escaped. “And the fact I can rememberexactlywhat he said is pathetic.”

“It’s not pathetic,” Rafe insisted. “You were hurt. It was big and important.”

“This is why my parents should have let me start dating earlier, so I could have gotten all this melodrama out of the way back then.”

“Hey, dating at any age is no guarantee of losing the crazies. I still get private Facebook requests from Toni Faulk, hoping we can get together.”

“Toni?” Laurel blinked. “She moved away in grade nine.”

“Yeah, I know, but I guess she’s got a job where she travels lots, and she’d love to”—he made air quotes—“‘reconnect’ anytime I feel like driving to the Edmonton airport for a booty call.”

She snorted. “You win. I don’t have people DMing me for sex.”

“No, you just have them showing up unwelcome in your backyard, potentially working with your father.

“There is that.” Misery stole over her expression. “I can’t… I don’t know what to tell my parents. “

Wait.What?

“Oh, shit.” Suddenly the awkward tension before dinner made more sense. “They don’t know, do they? Because I can’t imagine your father willingly inviting around someone who broke your heart.”