“I’d do more for that than buy you a cup of coffee.” Shit. That didn’t come out right. Cat felt her face flare with heat. “What I meant was, I’m so grateful for your help that I—”
His gaze flickered over her, starting low with her heels, up her legs to where her skirt had slid up a little over her thigh. It was the look of a man who unabashedly liked what he saw. She swallowed hard. Words failed her.
A slow crocodile grin spread over his face. “I’d certainly take you up on that offer.” Did he just— How dare he—
He calmly slid on his aviators. “What I mean is, you might have to buy me another cup of coffee tomorrow.”
Cat focused on the road. This is what she got for being friendly. He was toying with her. Toying! Just when she vowed to keep her guard up and not even try to make polite small talk, he turned to her and said, “By the way, you look very…nice today.” His gaze drifting over her was wolfish, not nice at all. “You’re going to knock ’em dead in that interview.”
Oh, hell. When he said things like that, her steely resolve threatened to melt just like that into a big blob of Jell-O. If things were different, she’d tell him he looked as hot as always, with his navy polo stretched across his broad chest, the tail of that dragon tattoo curling dangerously just below his elbow. The fact that his brace was visible under the bottom of his khaki shorts gave him an edge of humanity that made him even more appealing. He was an intriguing combination of tough and vulnerable, venture capitalist and Army guy, that pushed his sexy quotient through the roof.
She might not be able to control her body’s reaction to him, but she sure as hell could control her mind. “Why the briefcase?” she asked, directing herself to safe ground.
“I’ve got tons of work to do, and I know I’ll be waiting for a long time in the doctor’s office. Are you sure you’re okay spending most of your day with me?”
There was a time when that question would have lit up her world. “My interview will last until one or two. Finn’s covering the kindergarten all day, so I’m in no rush to get back. I thought we could maybe meet up for a late lunch and hit a few antique stores to get some ideas for Maddie and Nick’s wedding gift before we head back.”
“Sounds fun.”
She wasn’t sure if he was being sarcastic or not. She hated herself for thinking it, but part of her fantasized what it would be like to spend the entire day with him. They’d have lunch at a cute little outdoor café and stroll along the streets holding hands and…
No. This was business. There would be none of that daydreaming that had sustained her during their months apart when they’d both so looked forward to being together. When the anticipation of finally being together, touching each other, making love to each other, had been all she wanted and all she thought about. And she’d known that he felt the same.
Trouble was, a good part of her still wanted him. Somehow, she had to squelch that. Remain objective, be friendly, and whatever she did, do not cross the line.
She needed coffee more than she’d thought. Cat pulled up to the Bean’s drive-thru menu sign.
“Hey, Cat,” her friend Sarah’s voice came through the speaker, and she waved from the drive-thru window. One benefit of living in a small town—people knew who you were by your car. “Your usual? Tall dark roast?”
“Thanks, Sarah.” Cat looked over at Preston. “And for you?”
“I’ll have a raspberry white chocolate mocha,” he said, leaning over Cat a little to order. “No fun.”
She tried to ignore his nearness as she drove up a little in the line, then stared at him. “That is the girliest drink I’ve ever heard a man order. And what’s ‘no fun’?”
“First of all, a guy should be allowed to order whatever kind of drink he wants without getting judged. I thought you were a little more open-minded than that, Catherine. And ‘no fun’ is skinny. You know, no whip, skim milk, that kind of thing.”
“The fact that you ordered all that then want it low-fat is a huge disappointment.”
“I’m not as active as I’d like to be.” He patted his rock-hard stomach. “Have to watch my calories.”
“Right, Mr. Washboard Abs. I mean, if you’re going to go for it, why not go all the way? It’s like someone ordering cake on their birthday and then asking for it to be diet.”
“What about you? Don’t you ever order anything except plain coffee?”
“I don’t ever want anything else. I know what I like.”
“You know what you like,” he repeated, drumming his fingers against the dashboard. “Or is it more like you’re afraid to try anything else?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Somehow, she had the feeling they weren’t talking about coffee anymore.
“I’m talking about your fiancé.”
“That’s awfully personal.” She glanced at the door, fighting a sudden impulse to bolt. Oh, hell, she could take him. She wasn’t trying to impress him, and she didn’t care what he thought of her.
Mostly.
“Well, maybe I need to know some personal details in order to find you the right match.”
“I’d rather not.” Yeah, she would really rather not. That was a can of worms she did not want opened.
“The guy was an actuary. His life revolved around predictions. Risk calculations. You couldn’t have chosen anyone safer.”
“Robert had a great job.” In retrospect, that was about all he had going for him. “Why would you criticize it?”
“I’m not talking about the guy’s job. I’m talking about his personality.”
Preston insisted on paying. She passed him his coffee, took a sip of hers, and got back on the road. Yeah, she knew what he was getting at. Robert was as exacting and meticulous in his life as in work. He left no room for spontaneity or fun. Everything came down to ratios of right and wrong. And she’d come up in the red.
She shrugged. “I’m not a risk taker. What’s wrong with that?” Preston sipped his coffee, his arm muscles flexing against the sleeves of his shirt. He had big muscles, even bigger than she remembered. She wondered if, since his leg troubles, he was working his arms out double time.
The tail of that dragon tattoo curled around his biceps as he held his cup. She knew now that it spread across his torso, its tail crawling across his shoulders and down his left arm. It was dark and dangerous, just as he was. He’d always been a bad boy. A risk taker to the max. It made no sense that someone like her who never colored outside the lines would be so attracted to someone like him. But she was. Oh my, judging by the way she’d just cranked up the air-conditioning, she certainly was.
He was sitting back, assessing her carefully. “Maybe you are but you just don’t know it.”
She snorted.
“Taking risks can be very…freeing.”
Her knuckles turned ice white on the wheel. His words excited her against her will.
“Life is about more than risks,” she said. “It’s about faithfulness and staying the course. Those are things that make for a real relationship. But then, you wouldn’t know about any of that.”
“You’re right. I don’t come from squeaky-clean genes like you do.”
“Don’t insult my family.”
“I’m not insulting them. I’m only pointing out that someone like me doesn’t do long-term relationships. Yet I think I understand enough about people to be of some guidance to you.”
“I don’t need your guidance.”
“Maybe you do, Cat. I think there’s a part of you that enjoys risk.”
He was such a puzzle, like his drink order. How for months he’d seemed to want her so badly, how sometimes he could still flash her the most smoldering of looks, yet act like there was never anything between them. Like it was all a fantasy she’d made up in her mind.
“All I want is to survive this next week,” Cat said. “I promised to play along with dating you, but I really don’t need your help finding someone to date. So you can keep your editorials to yourself
.”
A smart-ass smile curved the corner of his too-full mouth. “All I’m saying is that maybe there’s a part of you, deep down inside, that not only wants to play with risk, but craves it.”
The way he looked at her, with a slow burn in those Siberian husky eyes, made her shudder. “W-what are you talking about?”
“Or you never would have shown up at my place like you did.”
She stared at him openmouthed. His eyes flashed with amusement. She was not about to sit here and take that.
“You may have been a brave soldier, but relationships scare you shitless, don’t they? It’s a shame, because whatever you’re going through might be easier to handle if you let people in.”
There, take that. He was so know-it-all, she wanted to shake him. Break through the concrete wall he’d built around his heart. She had no idea if what she’d said had penetrated, because all he did was narrow his eyes and stare at her for a long second.
“I didn’t sleep so great last night,” he said. “Think I’ll close my eyes for a while. Wake me when we get there?”
Maybe. That is, if she didn’t decide to abandon him somewhere on the side of the road first.
…
Cat was a half hour early when she pulled into the medical office building’s parking lot and turned off the ignition to wait for Preston to be done with his appointments. Her hands were shaky, and she couldn’t focus on checking email on her phone. She was sweating in her suit, and her feet were sticking to the bottoms of her heels.
Calm down, calm down, she told herself. It was only a job interview. One she’d walked out on. One she’d needed. Hell, she needed any job at this point. She couldn’t afford to be picky, especially when there’d been nothing wrong with the job they were offering. She simply couldn’t shake the feeling that she was in the wrong place, leading the wrong life. Everything had felt wrong. Her heart had started racing, and she’d started hyperventilating. Next thing she knew, she’d walked right out of the building and into her car.
She’d never done anything so unprofessional. What if word got back somehow to her family? Shit, what had she done?
Restless and hot in the car, her blouse sticking to the skin of her back, she walked into the office building. Preston had said he’d text her when he was finished, but surely he wouldn’t mind if she sat in the waiting room. Maybe by the time he came out, she’d calm down.
She walked into a bright, sunny room painted a cool tone of blue with a small tabletop fountain near a window surrounded by plants. That seemed very Zen, so she headed to a nearby seat and flipped mindlessly though a magazine. Her stomach grumbled loudly. She hadn’t eaten much breakfast due to her nerves, and it was close to one o’clock. Despite being upset, she was suddenly very hungry.
The receptionist station was shuttered. A door opened and a kindly looking woman holding some paperwork called back the one other person in the waiting room. What kind of office was this with only one patient and a shuttered desk? She wandered up to the counter in front of the receptionist’s window and took a business card off a pile. It said Anita Garandi, M.D., Psychiatry.
She froze. Preston was seeing a shrink? Oh. Well, she’d definitely go back out in the car and wait, protect his privacy. Not for the first time, she wondered what was really going on with him. Somehow, she sensed from the beginning that it involved much more than his wounded leg. What the hell had happened to him over there, and was it the reason he’d pushed her away?
Despite her resolve to get over Preston, she felt a faint glimmer of hope. She still couldn’t stop indulging the fantasy that he’d pushed her away for reasons that had more to do with what was going on inside him than outside.
There she went again. Dreaming things were different. Grow up, Cat, she scolded herself. Being dumped has made you pathetic. It seemed, surprisingly, to make her cling even more ferociously to her belief that true love conquers all. But sooner or later, she would have to stop fantasizing about a fairy-tale ending and get on with real life.
Her phone suddenly dinged with a text. Where are you? From Preston. She immediately ran to the door and pushed it open. Maybe she could make it back to her car before he saw her.
She ran right into the hard wall of muscle that was his chest. He reflexively placed his hands on her shoulders to steady her, and for just a moment, a desperate desire hit her to stay right there, rest her head against his solid body, feel the comfort of being in his arms like she’d dreamed so many times during the time when he was away. Tell him everything that was on her mind, like they’d done last fall. Tell him how much she’d missed him—missed what they had—and make his barriers come down.
For the thousandth time, she had to remind herself that he had thrown their relationship away. Had thrown her away. She had to move on for her own self-respect.
“What were you doing in there?” His voice was a low growl.
“Waiting for you. What are you doing out here?”
“I left through the separate exit. You shouldn’t have gone in there.”
“I—I’m sorry. I was getting sweaty waiting in the car, so I thought I’d come inside.” She’d keep the details of her shitty day to herself.
They walked in silence to the car. He limped around to the passenger side and got in, his shoulders set in a rigid line. She started the car and let it idle, let the air-conditioning flood in.
It offered little relief. Cat didn’t know what to do. It was too late to pretend that she didn’t know what kind of doctor he was seeing. He was a proud man, and he’d always hated to show any sign of weakness. She wondered how hard this must be for him, a strong warrior who thought he was infallible, dealing with his leg injury and God only knew what else.
Yet they’d been close once, not so long ago. He’d confided things about his past to her that he said he’d never told anyone, stories about his abusive father and his difficult childhood. She was not going to sweep this under the rug if there was a chance she could help him.
“Preston, I didn’t mean to invade your privacy, but it’s not a crime to see a psychiatrist.”
He squeezed his eyes shut as though she’d delivered a blow. His jaw was tight, set in stone. “I didn’t ask your permission, and I don’t need your approval.”
His words stung. “I had no idea. Or I never would have—” To her embarrassment, she felt the sting of tears, but she blinked them back. It was just the emotional morning, the constant ache she felt being with him but not ever able to get through. Damn these stupid wedding weeks anyway. Damn their ridiculous deception. Damn her stupid heart for still wanting him so badly.
He sighed heavily. “I’m sorry. I was out of line. You didn’t know.”
“If you ever need to talk—”
“Please start driving.”
He was staring straight ahead. “Okay. I’ll drive. But we’ve known each other for a long time. You don’t have to shut me out. You might be surprised at how well I listen. Maybe you need someone to listen.”
The car was silent, except for the blowing fan. At that moment, she would have done anything to help him for the sheer reason that he was in pain. But she had no idea how to get through to him. So she put the car in gear and drove away.
Chapter Seven
Preston would have rather swallowed a box of nails than get into the car with Cat. First he’d had to deal with the bad news about his leg. He’d endured two doctors poking and prodding, discussing and planning. The PT was helping, they’d said, although there was no avoiding another surgery if he ever had hope of functioning semi-normally.
Unfortunately, despite all his hours of intensive therapy, he was nowhere near rehabbed enough to even schedule the surgery. A disappointment he didn’t want to hear. The word “normal” had never sounded so wonderful or so unreachable.
Then he endured an hour and a half session with a shrink, who’d asked him every personal question under the sun. He’d rather suffer a bleeding wound. That had been painful enough, but all of it
paled in comparison to Cat seeing him like this. He felt as defenseless and weak as a baby. He hadn’t wanted anyone to know about the psychiatrist. Why her of all people?
He’d snapped at her, and she hadn’t deserved that. She’d done nothing but be on his side, and he’d done nothing since last fall but hurt her. They were driving along in silence when her stomach rumbled loudly. “That’s loud enough to wake a baby,” he finally said.
“We’ll be home in an hour,” she said in a detached, neutral voice. He couldn’t stand to have her feel hurt. None of this was her fault.
In their youth, they’d never really been friends. Derrick was his best friend growing up, and she’d been off-limits as his sister. Not to mention she deserved better than the likes of Preston, who pretended in front of the Kingstons everything was normal despite his home life being something out of a horror movie. Yet, despite a thousand reasons not to get involved with her, there had always been something indefinable between them.
They’d only begun to explore it last fall, before his deployment. Maybe it had been the relief he’d felt at her engagement falling through, but he’d been able to talk to her about anything and everything, unlike any other woman he’d met.
Too bad he’d had to shut the best thing in his life down. He’d had no choice. It wouldn’t be fair to drag her into this mess with him. He didn’t dare encourage her now, but he couldn’t stand to be cruel to her again, either.
“Listen, Cat. I—” Shit, what was he doing? He had to avoid the temptation to explain to her about himself. That would lead to her having sympathy for him, which would make keeping her away even harder. So he stayed on safe ground. “I—never asked you, how’d your interview go?”
“It went fine. Everything’s okay.” She flashed him a bit of a smile, but he saw through it and her falsely pleasant tone. She’d wanted to help him, yet she kept her own troubles to herself. But he could tell something wasn’t right.
“Pull over for a minute.”
She shot him a confused look. “Please,” he said. They were approaching a rest stop, so she pulled off the highway and into one of a long line of parking spaces. He got out of the car and put a couple dollar bills into a soda machine and brought back a plastic bottle of Coke, opened it, and handed it to her.
A Man of Honor Page 6
