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“A reaction that proves you don’t trust me.”
“That’s not true, Dana. I do trust you.”
She cocked an eyebrow. “If you trusted me you wouldn’t have immediately assumed I’d do the same thing as I did last time. I’m not that young and thoughtless anymore.”
“I don’t know what to tell you other than I’m sorry.”
“It’s partly my fault. I never explained to you why I took that job and why I didn’t tell you until I’d accepted.”
“No, you didn’t.”
“We never talked about Craig, did we?”
“Who’s Craig?”
“He was my college boyfriend. We got engaged my junior year.”
“No, you never told me.”
She laughed without humor. “It was an episode I was trying to forget. Even to this day I can’t believe I was so gullible.”
“What does he have to do with us?”
“You’ll understand when I tell you. Nothing, directly. But my experience with him impacted how I handled things later.” She got up and went to the refrigerator to get out a bottle of water. “Want one?” she asked Levi.
“Sure.”
She brought a bottle back for him and sat down. “I had applied to graduate school at the University of Pennsylvania. It’s one of the top graduate schools for architecture. I applied to several but that was my number one choice. To my absolute shock, I got in. I was so excited, I couldn’t wait to share the news with Craig. We’d just gotten engaged. I was happy. I was in love.” She drank some water.
“I was a fool. Craig didn’t want me to go. He said if I wanted to marry him I’d have to turn it down. I could go to school another place. Somewhere closer. I suggested we do the long-distance thing but he wouldn’t hear of it. So I turned it down.”
“What happened after that?”
“Two months later he called off the engagement. He’d met someone else he thought would ‘be a better match.’ That’s what he said. Not that he’d fallen in love. Just that she would be a better match.” She made a sound of disgust. “He never loved me. I did it for nothing. I didn’t go after my dream because Craig didn’t want me to. After that I vowed I wouldn’t ever do that again. I wouldn’t ever turn down an opportunity I really wanted for a man.”
“I can understand that. What I didn’t understand and still don’t is why you accepted that job before you even talked to me.”
“I don’t know, Levi. I shouldn’t have. But I couldn’t imagine why you wouldn’t go with me. I thought you could do your work anywhere.”
“No, you didn’t think about my work at all.”
She hated to admit it but he was absolutely right. “You’re right, I wasn’t thinking of you. I’m sorry. I was wrong.”
“Did you think it didn’t matter? Because I’d already made a fortune that meant I didn’t want to work? That I didn’t need my work?”
“No, that’s not what I thought. But I believed you loved me enough that you would go with me and once you did I thought you’d like it.”
“You didn’t know me at all, did you?”
“Apparently not. Asher said you told him you could never live in the city. He was shocked you moved to Florida at all. But you never told me that. You never told me why you left. All you said was you couldn’t do it anymore. You couldn’t live in Miami. To me that meant you couldn’t live with me.”
“Did you know I didn’t make a single new thing during the three months I lived there? I didn’t have a single new idea. I couldn’t even work on projects I’d begun working on before I moved. It was as if Miami zapped any creativity that I had.”
“No, I didn’t realize that. But you were awfully closemouthed about your work. I never knew what you were working on.”
“That’s true.” He looked at her with a half smile. “We really didn’t talk a lot, did we?”
“We didn’t, no. Mostly we had sex.”
