For Better or Worse

She grabbed her wineglass and stormed toward his kitchen sink. She couldn’t quite bring herself to dump it, but neither was she going to sit there and try to make small talk with a guy who ran hot and cold every time she tried to connect with him on a remotely human level.

“Don’t get pissed,” he muttered, coming up behind her.

“Well, I am, a little,” she said, grabbing her iPad. “Sometimes it’s like you want to have a conversation, you start it, then decide you don’t want to talk after all, and you blame me.”

He rubbed at his forehead. “And this is why I don’t have a girlfriend.”

Ouch.

Her mouth dropped open. “Seriously? You don’t have a girlfriend because you’re an ass.”

“Heather.”

But she was done. He wanted to keep things light, fine, but she was not going to sit around and serve as his emotional punching bag.

“This goes both ways, you know.” She threw the words out at him as she headed for the door. “­Conversations—sorry, non-conversations—like this one are exactly why I don’t have a boyfriend.”

“Hey, would you hold up a minute?” he asked, coming after her.

Heather spun around. “Why, so you can sit here and dangle all sorts of conversation starters and then get pissy when I respond? You’re selling your drum set, but don’t want to tell me why. You’re dismantling the band, but don’t want to talk about that, either. And God forbid we talk about what you might want to do instead of the band, because you totally lose your shit.”

His nostrils flared in irritation, his eyes turned flat and cold, and she suddenly had a very good sense of what the old Josh might have looked like before he decided to be all devil-may-care. The aura he must have given off when he was striding around in expensively tailored suits, barking orders at lowly peons, and going out for $400 power lunches.

But although it was becoming increasingly clear that while there was an old Josh and a new Josh, nowhere to be seen was the real Josh.

“Can we just hold on a second?” he said.

“How about you come up with a list of safe topics, and then we’ll talk,” she snapped, reaching for the door handle and jerking it open. “I’m not in the mood to walk on eggshells tonight. I’ve got work to do.”

“You always have work to do,” he muttered.

“Well, that makes one of us,” she shot back, stepping out into the hallway and slamming the door behind her. She didn’t wait to see if he’d follow her before she stormed into her apartment and slammed that door, too.

It felt . . . good.

A little petty, sure, maybe a touch immature. But sometimes a good old door slam was exactly what one needed.

She threw herself on the couch, determined to get some work done. Because that’s what adults did. They worked.

You always have work to do.

Heather scowled as she thought back over Josh’s words. She didn’t always have work to do. Well, she did. The wedding-planner business wasn’t exactly nine-to-five. But she didn’t let it rule her life.

Did she?

Sure, she brought her work home with her sometimes. Often.

But she also loved it.

Maybe it had been a touch unfair to make him look at color schemes tonight—she hadn’t really needed his opinion. But talking about Danica’s wedding gave her an excuse to see him without seeming clingy, and—

Heather sat up straighter. Well, crap.

Her mind flitted back to the week that had just passed in a flurry of sex and laughter, realizing that almost always, it had been her seeking him out. He’d always seemed amenable to hanging out, sure, but wasn’t it her who usually called first?

In fact, after they’d first slept together on Thanksgiving night, he hadn’t been to her place once. It was always the other way around. He hadn’t used his key, hadn’t so much as knocked on the door.

Heather groaned and slumped back on the couch, tossing her iPad aside.

Had she been that girl? The one who wouldn’t go away? He hadn’t seemed to mind. He’d always smiled when she’d knocked at the door, never seemed to be trying to get rid of her, and yet that was what Josh did. He was polite to the women he slept with. Hell, how many women had she watched him say good-bye to with a smile and a wink and a flirt?