They both felt it—that strange certainty that, if they entered the room, they could never go back. Jonathan seemed unwilling to lead her there. Cara, unwilling to press for what he might not—just as the thought entered her mind, she smiled. No matter what self-conscious feelings she might have, there was no doubt that he wanted this as much or possibly more than she did.
~*~*~*~
Her smile sent a wave of relief over Jonathan. From the moment they’d stepped from the cab, doubts had slowly formed. They’d regret it. He knew they would, and yet he couldn’t bring himself to stop the storm from building around them. At the moment, he felt as though they were in the eye of a hurricane. Every movement calm, deliberate, and almost projected from outside himself. However, the second he saw her smile, all doubts vanished.
They stepped inside the room, the two queen sized beds mocking them. Cara leaned against the door, a sudden hesitation washing over her. Jonathan saw his desire mirrored in her eyes, but her body language screamed for him to wait. “Oh, Cara mia…”
He stepped closer, as though to kiss her. Her eyes told him she’d waited for that kiss for a lifetime. Just as his hand reached out to cup her face, conscience overrode desire and he pressed his palm against the door. The tension on her face relaxed the slightest bit. He pressed his other hand against the door, using it to support him as he gazed down into her eyes. Simultaneously, in nearly anguish-filled tones, they whispered, “We can’t.”
“Cara, I’m sorry. I—”
“I asked. Remember, Jonathan. I asked you.” Risking everything, she laid her hand on his shoulder, her index finger tracing a tiny mole on his neck. “I wanted—want it—badly.”
“It’s wrong.”
“I know. I even asked the Lord to forgive us.”
Pushing himself away from the door, Jonathan strode across the room and grabbed the remote. He flipped channels until a cop show blasted onto the TV screen. The next time he dared look at her, one of her heels slipped from Cara’s fingers and she reached for another. He swallowed hard. This would be a very long night.
Cara watched him for a moment and then grabbed the bag he’d dropped as they’d entered the room. “Mind if I sleep in your shirt?” She pulled the polo he’d been wearing in Rockland from the bag and dangled it from her finger, completely unaware of how provocative she looked to him.
“Sure.”
“I’m going to take a shower. I’m starting to get the whole ‘cold shower’ thing.” Her joke fell flat.
He lay on the bed for several minutes, until he heard the water spraying in the bathroom. Just the mental image of her standing less than four feet away, separated by only a thin wall, nearly drove him insane. He couldn’t tear his mind away from the image of water pouring over—
“Oh, man. I’ve gotta get out of here. Now.” Without thinking twice, he rushed to the desk, pulled the hotel stationary from it, and scribbled a note.
Unwilling to risk the temptation, he left the card key for the room on the desk and laid the note on the pillow before slipping through the door. At a near run, he hurried to the elevator, punched the down arrow, and nearly went wild with the wait. What if she came out and read the note? What if she looked out the door? If he saw her peek out, her hair dripping—he knew he’d have no fight left in him.
The elevator dinged, he stepped in, and the door closed, effectively closing the chapter on this night for him. He tried to remain as nonchalant as possible as he strolled back to the front desk and requested another room. The look on the woman’s face would have been hysterical, had he not been struggling so fiercely.
“Is something wrong with your room?”
“The room is perfect, but we truly need another one.”
Confusion covered her face as her fingers flew over the keys. “I thought I gave you a room with two beds…” she said under her breath as she verified their room.
“You did.”
“Is the woman you were with okay?” Suspicion replaced confusion and hovered almost menacingly.
“She’s fine, but we’ll both be much better off if you can give me another room—preferably on another floor.”
She accepted his credit card and slid new card keys across the counter. The woman seemed to struggle within herself before she gave him a sympathetic look. “Fights are always so terrible, but making up makes it worthwhile.”
As he turned, he muttered something under his breath. She stood watching as he strolled down the corridor to a room near the side entrance. “Did he really just say that making up would be the problem and not the solution?”
~*~*~*~
“Cara mia,” she read his note aloud, reveling in the greeting as she always did when she heard it. Cara Laas knew she’d never grow tired of hearing it.
I can’t do it. Lying here listening to the shower, knowing you’re on the other side— If I stay, any resolve we’ve found will be lost. I’ve gone to get another room. I’ll call you in the morning. I love you. It’s because I do that I’m not here.
Jonathan
“Oh, Lord, what did we almost do?”
Curling in a ball on the bed, Cara sobbed. She cried for treasures she’d almost lost, desires she’d denied, and in gratitude for a man who would put their future ahead of their lust. The moment the word appeared in her thoughts, she felt sullied. The most sickening thought for her was the realization that she wouldn’t have regretted it as much as she knew she should have. She had irrevocably given Jonathan a small part of her heart. That small part left no room for anyone, even Jesus. She’d have to fix that, and soon.
Meanwhile, she prayed. Between sobs of relief, longing, and fear at what she’d been willing—was still willing—to do, Cara prayed, begging the Lord to help them continue growing in their relationship. She feared an awkwardness or change that could damage what had become so important to her. An hour later, she slept. The light glowed, tears stained her cheeks, an occasional sob shuddered throughout her body, but she slept. And as she slept, the Lord worked His magic in her heart as requested. Ask and it shall be given.
~*~*~*~
Jonathan collapsed on the king-sized bed, closed his eyes, and fought to steady his nerves as he begged the Lord to restore his relationship. So close, Lord. Don’t let her call me—please don’t. I know my limits, and today, a two floor difference isn’t enough. If she calls, I’ll go. I want to say I won’t. I want the confidence that if she calls, I can resist, but we both know I won’t. Perhaps I can, but I won’t.
His heart raced, beating—struggling to free itself from his chest as his phone rang. He didn’t even look at it. He refused to answer it. Feeling utterly betrayed by his emotions, his desires, Jonathan’s hands shook as he forced himself not to touch the phone. “The Sound of Silence” stilled. The irony choked him. “Oh, Lord, I can’t take much more. Please don’t let her call again.”
Silence hovered in the room—oppressive, suffocating him with every second that passed, filling his lungs with the absence of anything audible to break the emptiness. He fumbled for the remote. Gone. The drawer, the desk, behind the TV, under the table—nowhere. Jonathan’s throat constricted. “Really, Lord? Can’t you help a guy out here?”
The memory of Cara holding his shirt, dangling it from her finger, exploded in his mind. Her joke—the cold shower—how had it just entered his consciousness? “That’s what I need. Okay, Lord. I get it.”
It didn’t work—not as he’d hoped it would. As he redressed, he tried again to redirect his thoughts. Prayer. Try prayer.
Desperate for anything that would help, Jonathan began to pray for everyone and everything he could imagine. Friends, family, antagonistic clients, neighbors with disputes over stupid things like grass height and barking dogs—one by one he poured out his heart for each person he could think of. Each person except for Cara. She he avoided with a steadfastness that he wished he had possessed before the concert ended.
It didn’t help—not enough. Anxious to avoid the return of tempta
tions he knew he didn’t have the strength to resist, Jonathan started on world events, political situations, business proposals, company troubles, financial decisions—
His phone rang again. As Simon and Garfunkel destroyed the silence in his room once more, Jonathan begged the Lord for mercy and stared at the phone. Cara. I can’t do it. If I answer it— Even as the thought entered his mind, his shaking hand reached for the phone. “Cara, I—”
“Verna wants you to call. Bryson—”
“Okay. Got to go.” He started to disconnect, but her voice stopped him.
“Jonathan?”
“Yeah?”
Silence. Just as he sprang from the bed and reached for his pants, her voice stopped him. “Thank you. I needed you to do that for me.”
“It’s killing me. I have to go.” He took a deep breath. “I love you.” The phone disconnected before she had a chance to reply. Jonathan stared at it, hating himself for his rudeness but grateful that the Lord had given him the strength to do it.
The phone informed him of one missed call. Verna’s. “Lord, why didn’t I answer it?”
“‘Flee immorality.’” The scripture mocked him. They hadn’t fled when the temptation hit—just when no true temptation existed.
He slid his finger across his contact list. Verna answered on the first ring. “Who do you think you are, not answerin’ my call?”
“I thought you were Cara.”
“So you’re avoidin’ her now? That’s not very encouragin’ news.”
He didn’t answer her. Second after second passed and he still tried to steady his nerves. “It’s called fleeing temptation, okay? What’s up?”
“Bryson wanted to talk to you and Cara. I let him talk to her while I had her on the phone, tryin’ to find you. He’s waitin’ for you.”
“It’s after midnight.” Way to state the obvious, Jonathan. “Let me talk to him.”
His son’s voice nearly deafened him. “Daddy!”
“Hey, son. What’s up?”
“I got a birthday present from Miss Cara.”
“You did?” Jonathan’s eyebrows drew together. She hadn’t mentioned anything about a present. “What’d you get?”
“Two things.” Bryson whispered, “Gramby is sending pictures of the first one. She’s fiddling with the cellphone. It’s funny. She’s not fast like you.”
“Well, she doesn’t use it much. She can do it, though. I get pictures from her all the time.” Jonathan sighed. “But she has a new phone, doesn’t she. I forgot that I upgraded and didn’t show her. Tell her I’m sorry.”
Bryson’s voice blasted through the phone, contributing to Jonathan’s increasing hearing loss as he shouted to his nanny, “Daddy says sorry!”
“So I get a picture of that. What else did she send? You said two things.”
“She did. It’s so cool. It’s Playmobil—that set with the pirate ship and the treasure cove and everything in one!” Bryson sighed. “I never thought I’d have it. It’s so big, and you never buy the big sets.”
“I thought you said you liked the little ones.”
“I do!”
“Then,” Jonathan insisted, “why didn’t you tell me you wanted a big one?”
“You didn’t ask about the big ones. You just asked if I liked the little ones.”
Though he couldn’t argue with the logic, something still felt off. Understanding dawned slowly and with it, discouragement. “Son, your job isn’t to decide what I can and cannot afford to buy for you. Your job isn’t to decide if I’m spoiling you guys too much or if you ‘deserve’ something or not. Your job is to answer what I mean as well as what I ask when I ask a question. Do you understand the difference?”
“Aunt Jeannie told Gramma that you try to—” The boy paused, stuck on the word. “Well, I can’t remember what it’s called but Gramma said it meant to try to make up for Mommy’s death.”
“Over-compensate.”
“That’s it.” Bryson sighed. “It’s a birthday present, so we don’t have to take it back, right?”
“It’s a gift that I would have bought myself if I’d known you really wanted it. You leave the decisions to me and ignore what anyone else says about what is and isn’t right for you. They don’t live our lives. They don’t know what it’s really like in our home. They make assumptions based upon what they see happen in—” Jonathan could almost hear his son’s eyes glaze over. “Anyway—”
“I get to keep it. Good. And…” the familiar impishness that filled his son’s voice anytime Bryson felt a desperate desire for something—usually ice cream—appeared next. “—next time we’re at the mall, I can show you the cool island that goes with it? It has a volcano and everything!”
Jonathan made a mental note to bring said volcano home with him. The poor kid. “Bry?”
“Yeah…” The word sounded more like a sigh than a response.
“Aunt Jeannie didn’t say that because she thinks you’re a bad kid. You know that, right? She said that because she wants to keep you the great kid you are.”
“I know. Grammy said that too.”
A chime told him he’d received Verna’s picture. “Okay, hug Verna for me and get some sleep. I’m going to go check out your other present and then you can tell me all about it tomorrow.”
The first picture filled the screen on his phone choking him and squeezing the air from his lungs. A single calla lily stood in an empty Coke bottle on the counter, Bryson’s face beaming. She remembered, Lord. She remembered. Sobs threatened to overtake him, but he stuffed them back down again, an exercise in futility. He opened the next picture and pinched the bridge of his nose. In great gulps, he tried to take in air—tried to fill his lungs and failed. His shoulders shook as watery eyes watched the picture of one lone calla lily lying on Lily’s grave fade as his screen shut off.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Their flight arrived in Rockland at one ten. By the time their car arrived at the valet kiosk, and they entered the nightmare of traffic otherwise known as the transportation hub, it was a quarter till two. Cara’s panic grew by the second. It was a twenty-minute drive to her hair salon. Jonathan seemed unconcerned and wove in and out of traffic as though a car in a video game.
Two and a half minutes late, he pulled up in front of the salon and let her out. “Call me when you’re done, and I’ll pick you up. I’m going to run a few errands.”
They’d been a little awkward with each other all morning. Cara hardly smiled, Jonathan talked too much, and the air between them held a completely different charge. Cara was ready to scream with frustration that she hadn’t prevented the cause. She felt, although a bit unreasonably, that it was her fault. She had opened the Pandora’s Box that surrounded them for so long, and now their relationship seemed irrevocably damaged.
Before he drove away, Jonathan called her back to the car. “Cara?”
She leaned in the window expectantly. “Hmm?”
“Are we okay, Cara mia?”
The first genuine smile of the day flashed across her face. “We’re wonderful, Jonathan. As of this moment, we are perfectly wonderful.”
Without another word, she fairly skipped into the salon, and Jonathan drove down the street. The sight of a deli sent him careening across lanes and into a parking lot, earning him a few obscene gestures and what looked like a stream of foul language. He didn’t care. He hurried inside and waited for his turn at the counter.
“I have an odd request. I need a couple of hard-boiled eggs—sliced or cubed. Some turkey breast and ham cubed, fruit—”
“Cubed?” The elderly man behind the counter laughed at Jonathan’s sheepish look.
“My girlfriend is getting her hair cut, something waxed, and her toenails polished. She needs food that she can eat easily.”
The man pointed to a cold case. “Drinks are there.” As he chopped and arranged, the man talked. “So, what kind of man comes in and orders protein—hey, do you want some cheese?”
“
Please.”
“And fruit—how about some celery and carrots? Broccoli maybe?”
Jonathan nodded. “Can you add a little thing of ranch dressing?”
“Sure. So most guys would come in here, if they thought of it at all, and order a muffin or bagel and cream cheese.”
“She needs nutrition, not filler.”
“Does she know what a catch she has in you?”
Jonathan almost beamed. “Sir, I’m the one with the catch. Trust me, I couldn’t ask for a better woman.”
“They don’t make those very often anymore. I’d get her while I could.”
Taking the bag from the man’s hand, with almost a boyish earnestness, Jonathan nodded. “I intend to, sir. I definitely intend to.” It was the second time since his arrival in Rockland that he’d assured someone he knew how blessed he was to have found Cara, and now that he had, he wasn’t going to let her go.
He tried to avoid showing the dismay he felt seeing a man cutting Cara’s hair. Pulling the clear plastic containers from the bag, he popped off the lids and sat them in a row on the counter in front of the chair. “I thought you might need food.”
“And do you see why I can’t stop talking about how great he is?” Cara’s eyes thanked him more than her lips ever could have.
“Call me.”
Without another word, he strolled to the door. Before it shut behind him, he overheard one woman squeal, “Girl, get thee to the altar yesterday. He is one fine piece of manhood!”
~*~*~*~
Faint strains of Celtic Woman’s “Innisfree” hovered around Cara’s door that evening. It was the one song Jonathan liked from the previous evening’s concert, and instead of knocking, he leaned against the doorjamb and listened. The faint tones of the harp mingled with the exceptional range of the vocalist, swirled from within Cara’s townhome and into his heart. “But dreams don’t last; tho dreams are not forgotten…”
He knocked as the last few notes drifted into the momentary silence between songs. Cara’s voice called for him to come in, and Jonathan frowned. Had she already grown careless with her safety? Before he could articulate something to demonstrate his concern, Cara appeared from down the hallway.
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