Free Waiting for a Girl Like You by Christa Maurice Page B

looking thin, he needed a good woman to take care of him. Too bad she wasn’t that good woman. Nobody was going to be calling her a good woman anytime soon. Alex fished her tips out of her apron pockets before tossing it in the hamper inside the back door.
    “What did he say?”
    “He asked if I was going to eat with him.”
    Paul’s lips curled into a Cheshire smile. “Excellent.”
    “Hey, Alex,” Tina said, walking in the out door from the outside seating area. Twice already this summer, she’d done that, and Drew had ended up with a face full of food both times. “There’s a guy out here who asked to talk to you.”
    “Tina, you have to mind the doors,” Paul snapped.
    “Oh, sorry.” Tina frowned at the doors like they were at fault.
    “Is it a customer?” Alex asked.
    “Is what a customer?”
    “The guy who wants to talk to me.”
    “I’ve never seen him before.”
    That didn’t narrow the field much. If he wasn’t a townie, Tina didn’t know him. Otherwise he could have been anyone from the President of the United States to the postmaster two towns over. That field included Roger. Crap. “What does he look like?”
    “Chubby, dark hair. He’s right over there by the bench at the sidewalk.” Tina pointed out the door.
    Alex’s hands went cold. Roger. That nice warm feeling that had been pooling in her belly at the thought of going home with Marc froze solid. She threw open the out door hard enough that it banged on the wall and raced across the concrete as fast as walking would allow.
    Roger had been seated on the far edge of Tina’s section, almost on the sidewalk. He smiled and reached for her when she skidded to a stop in front of him.
    Alex put her hands behind her back and laced her fingers together for good measure. “What are you doing here?”
    “I missed you, my darling.”
    “Did you now?”
    “Alex, don’t be like this.”
    Alex raised an eyebrow.
    Roger nodded. “I understand. You’re angry. I can make it up to you.”
    “You can make it up to me by going back to your wife.”
    “You know I don’t love her. I just can’t leave her now. Not with the new baby.”
    Alex clenched her fingers together. “I don’t want you to leave your wife for me.”
    “But I don’t love her. I love you.”
    Alex forced herself to take even breaths. This is why she had needed to get off campus for the summer. His arguments made sense when he made them in person. She needed the distance to let logic work. She took a step backward. “So you keep telling me, but whether you love me or not is immaterial. I’m not going to be responsible for destroying your family anymore than I already have.”
    “Carla has destroyed my family. I am doing my best for my children.”
    “You don’t need me to do the best for your children.”
    “But I do. I love you. You give me the strength to go on. I can’t live without you.”
    Her battle plan of even breathing faltered. “You wouldn’t do anything irrevocable, would you?” Him dying for her had to be worse than him leaving his wife for her. That’s what she’d been telling herself for the last three years, every time she had told him they were done, and he’d made his veiled threats.
    “I can’t survive without you. My life is a barren wasteland.” He held out a manila envelope. “This is for you.”
    “What is it?”
    “Your master’s thesis. I can turn it in now and make sure it gets approved before fall semester starts. There’s still time to get a freshman English class.”
    Alex stared at the envelope. Her thesis. She’d planned on spending most, if not all, of next semester working on it so she could get a teaching post, maybe next year. Then she’d have her toe in the door for a real faculty position. Working side by side with Roger. Somehow that didn’t have the same draw it used to. “You finished my thesis?”
    “No, this was an unfinished one that I found.”
    Someone misplaced a master’s thesis and didn’t check