Chasing Mrs. Right by Katee Robert Page B

as well run with it while the opportunity presented itself. “Yeah. You have your entire family freaked. They thought they were getting their golden boy back.” Though after spending one night with him, she could have told them Ian was damaged goods. Whatever nightmares he’d seen in the last ten years had made sure of that.
    His mouth twisted. “I’m not the same person anymore.”
    “Obviously.” The shadows were back in his eyes. How black eyes could have shadows was a mystery for another day—all she knew was that something haunted this man. It made sense. Plenty of men came back from war with more scars than they left with, and some of those scars weren’t physical.
    Logical.
    But her response was anything but logical. She wanted to hug him…or something. Which was crazy. Roxanne didn’t know how to comfort people. While growing up with her parents, the house hadn’t exactly been the epitome of emotional hand-holding. Her mother wasn’t the type to kiss “owies” better or rock her to sleep after she had a nightmare. She’d been so wrapped up in first one dissolving marriage and then the next and the next, that she hadn’t had time for her daughter—except to voice precious little tidbits of relationship advice.
    She shook her head. Do not look at the nearly naked man. Just don’t do it. “Eventually you’re going to have to deal with them, you know.”
    “I’m aware.”
    He sounded so miserable she couldn’t stop herself from reaching out to touch his arm. As soon as she realized what she was doing, she snatched her hand back, but the damage was done.
    …
    Ian nearly groaned when her fingers brushed his skin, comforting him even though he should know better by now. The serenity this woman offered knew no reason, though. It was beyond comprehension.
    He hadn’t expected Roxanne to show up, but here she was. Not that she wanted to be. She couldn’t make her reluctance any more obvious with the careful distance she kept between them. She’d refused to look directly at him since she walked in, her eyes flitting around the loft even as she asked him questions he didn’t want to answer.
    She dropped into a nearby chair, making herself at home the same way she’d done at the bar last night. Did she walk into every room as if she owned it? The only time in their admittedly short acquaintance that she’d seemed less than sure of herself was in the coffee shop bathroom. That hadn’t lasted, though. The second she realized he was there with her, she’d been all attitude and bravado.
    “You haven’t told them, have you?”
    He blinked. “Told them what?”
    “Whatever it is that happened to you over there.” Roxanne held up a hand when he started to speak. “Don’t try to play it off. If you don’t want to talk about it, that’s fine. We all have things we don’t want to talk about.”
    What were the things she didn’t want to talk about? What dark thing could she possibly have in her past? He shook his head. He knew better than to judge a book by its cover. Yes, Roxanne was gorgeous and possessed with the kind of self-assurance that took some people a lifetime to accomplish, but that didn’t mean shit.
    Reluctantly, he sank into the couch across from her. “I don’t want to talk about it.” Would never want to talk about it. Even if she had skeletons in her closet, she couldn’t understand what he’d gone through any more than the therapist he’d seen before. She’d pat his hand and tell him she understood, or worse, that it’d get better. He couldn’t deal with that, not from Roxanne.
    “I’m not really sure where to go from here.” She pressed her lips together and frowned. “You’re not making this easy on me.”
    “Should I be? Because, last time I checked, you’re the one who set the tone of our interactions.”
    “That hurts. Really, it does.” She pressed a hand to her chest, drawing his attention to the dress she wore. Though he’d registered it at the coffee