Turn Me On

by Faye Avalon

  Vital seconds too late, she grabbed the door handle to get out, but he was already in the driver’s seat and threw the door locks.

  “You can’t do this,” she protested. “This is kidnapping.”

  He gave a wry laugh. “Please.”

  “I’ll bring charges. Don’t think I won’t.”

  He turned the ignition and the powerful car hummed to life. “Good luck with that. Last I heard it was perfectly reasonable for a husband to take his wife for a drink.”

  “You’re not my husband,” she felt compelled to remind him, although her heart was busy making annoying little leaps of female pleasure at his caveman tactics. “And I’m not your wife.”

  “Fat lady hasn’t sung yet, princess.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Means that while it’s signed, it has yet to be sealed.”

  “For God’s sake. Stop talking in riddles.”

  “It’s a couple more weeks until our divorce is legal. So until then, protest all you like. Bring charges against me. They’ll mean diddly squat. In the eyes of the law, we’re still husband and wife.”

  Her heart was still leaping like a crazy thing. “You’re insane.”

  He gave a wry grin as he steered the car along the fog-laden road. “It’s my natural state of being since I laid eyes on you.”

  She cast him a glance. “I don’t know why you’re doing this. Why don’t you just leave me alone?”

  “Goes hand in hand with the insane thing.”

  Lissa couldn’t for the life of her work out why he was here. Had he decided he wanted to extend their little bedroom arrangement? Well, she had news for him. She didn’t. Or at least she couldn’t.

  No way was she going to put herself through it again. Eventually he’d tire of the whole thing, or when his head was turned by another woman. She wasn’t going to put herself through the sleepless nights, the lack of appetite, the general feeling of misery she’d been experiencing these past weeks without him. Not again.

  They fell into silence until a few miles along the lonely road, the lights of the inn glowed through the darkness like a beacon leading the way.

  He parked the car in the almost full parking area and Lissa wondered why so many people had ventured out on such a night just to have a drink or meal. Were they also insane?

  Unmoving, she watched him switch off the engine, release his seat belt, and turn to her. “Have you eaten?”

  “What?”

  “Eaten. Food. Simple enough question, princess.”

  “I had lunch,” she snapped. “And will you please stop calling me princess? You know how I hate it.”

  He released her seat belt. “Let’s go inside.”

  She folded her arms, her temper rising. “You just don’t listen to me, do you? You ride roughshod over everything I say.”

  Leaning in, he stretched his arm along the back of her seat. “You don’t tell me anything,” he countered. “You keep things so bloody tight to your chest. Sure, you tell me what you’ll allow me to know, but as for the real stuff, the things that are important to you, that are important in your life? You just push me aside.”

  Because he was right, she turned her head to face out the passenger side window. “We didn’t have that type of relationship.”

  “Well, maybe I want that type of relationship.”

  Her heart banged once, stopped, then set off like a steam train. She turned warily to face him, wondering if she’d slipped into some parallel universe. “What did you say?”

  His throat contracted as he swallowed. “I thought we could give it a try.”

  “Give what a try?”

  Shifting in his seat, he huffed out a breath. “Hell, Lissa. You don’t make things easy.”

  “You mix me up, Reed. I’m never quite sure where I stand with you.”

  “Maybe that was my intention. Once.” Reaching out, he touched his finger to her cheek. “Not anymore.”

  At the brief contact, Lissa’s stomach fluttered, while his words tightened her throat. Was he saying what she thought he was saying? That he wanted to continue their relationship, but on a whole new different level? The very thought thrilled her, warmed her heart. But she still had to protect herself. She couldn’t imagine Reed in a long term, committed relationship. Sooner or later, he’d get bored with her. With them.

  But wasn’t it worth the risk? Pursuing what they could have while it lasted?

  Except she might never recover from the pain of it. If she found it so difficult to live without him now, how would she feel if they grew closer, started to share their lives, and then he finished it between them?

  As she deliberated, he opened his door. “Let’s go inside. Talk.”

  Unable to resist hearing more of what he had to say, Lissa nodded. Maybe she was a fool, but she was powerless to deny the chance of sharing even a little bit more of Reed. It seemed that somewhere along the way she’d regained her common sense where business was concerned, only to lose it completely when it came to matters affecting her heart.

  They chose a seat near the inglenook fireplace which glowed with crackling wood and the scent of the embers on the stone hearth. They ordered coffee, but Lissa refused anything to eat. Right then her stomach was doing a rapid dance and her breath was trapped in her too tight chest.

  Reed leaned back in his chair. “Why don’t you tell me about your aunt?”

  Lissa eyed him warily. “How did you find out about her? About the nursing home? And my cat, come to think of it.”

  He steepled his fingers beneath his chin, a slight smile tugging at his mouth. “You have a very friendly neighbor.”

  “You were at my house?” She shook her head. “Of course you were.”

  “Stop stalling.”

  Perhaps she had been doing exactly that, but she still wasn’t sure of him. He’d said he wanted a different kind of relationship, that he wanted them to share things of a more personal nature. She needed to know if he really meant it.

  “Does this work both ways?” She waved her hand between them. “Are you planning to tell me more about you? About your life?”

  He hesitated for so long, she feared he would refuse to reciprocate. Then he nodded. “Whatever you want to know, princess.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Lissa felt a tension she hadn’t been aware of holding disperse in her chest. If Reed was prepared to share details of his personal life with her, how could she refuse to do the same? If there was to be any sort of chance for them, they had to be honest with each other.

  She took a deep breath. “My parents died in a boating accident while they were on a trip to celebrate their wedding anniversary. Freak storm.”

  Recalling the moment she’d been told of their deaths never failed to make her relive the awful time, and she had to take a moment to steady herself. After taking another breath, she let it out on a long sigh. “I was fourteen. My aunt took me in. There was never any question that she wouldn’t. Although she had never married, she made it clear to me that I was wanted and would always have a home with her.”

  She looked at Reed and saw understanding in the clear blue depths of his eyes. He leaned forward slightly and tilted his body toward hers, as if encouraging her to continue.

  “When Debbie and I set up our own business, she wanted to take out a mortgage on her house to help us with start up fees. She didn’t want us to be in hock to the bank with all the high interest charges that an unsecured loan from them would require. She said it would be cheaper if we did it in her name with the house as collateral. But it didn’t feel right to have her take on such a burden at her age, so I said we’d find another way.

  “Then she went and signed the house over to me. Said that it would be mine eventually anyway, so why not make me the legal owner while she was still around and I needed security for the business loan? I tried to talk her out of it, but she made it seem like I would be doing her a huge favor as I would be taking on responsibility for the house and she wou
ldn’t have the worry of it anymore. Still I argued against it, but she said that she’d made up her mind and I wasn’t going to talk her out of it.”

  Lissa broke off as their coffee arrived and waited until the server left before continuing. “Everything seemed fine for a while. The business was ticking over and we were starting to get good referrals. We even talked about branching out, expanding.

  “I’d been concerned for a while that my aunt was forgetting things and was sometimes a bit vague, but I put it down to her age. Then I noticed that we would be having a conversation and she’d stare vaguely into thin air, as if her mind had gone completely blank. When she looked back at me she’d frown for a moment, as if she didn’t know me or where she was. I didn’t worry too much at first, thinking it was the age thing. But then I came home and found her passed out on the floor and smoke bellowing from the oven. She’d put a cake in there and it had burnt.

  “She had tests. Eventually, the doctors said she would be best cared for in a nursing home. I protested at first. After all she’d done for me, there was no way she was going into a home. But then she burned herself one morning while I was at work. She’d been boiling milk for my cocoa and had forgotten the pan was on the stove. She’d tried to lift the burning pan from the stove but it scalded her and she dropped it. I found her in the chair with blisters on her hands and leg. She kept crying and apologizing that I wouldn’t have any cocoa that night because she’d spilled it all over the floor.”

  Her throat tight, Lissa reached for her cup and took a fortifying sip of caffeine. “After that I knew I couldn’t look after her properly, so I agreed to the home. I felt guilty, still do, that she signed over her home to me and a short while later she’s turned out of it.”

  “You had no choice.”

  His firm but soothing tone wrapped around her like a comforting cloak. “I know, and she seems happy enough. To be honest I don’t think she knows where she is half the time, but I still feel like I failed her. Not only by sending her to a nursing home, but by allowing Debbie to embezzle from the business and ultimately putting her home in danger of repossession.”

  Lissa pushed her hand through her hair. “Debbie left me with huge debts. In retrospect, I know we were both guilty of trying to take the business too high before we even got a secure footing beneath it.”

  “You didn’t steal money from it.”

  His fierce scowl made her want to smile. It had been a long time since it felt like someone was on her side.

  “No I didn’t steal money from it,” she agreed. “But as you know, I wasn’t exactly savvy in my dealings with my business partner.”

  “You’ve learned your lesson.”

  Now she did smile. “Certainly have. There’s no way I’ll let anything like it happen again.”

  While she was laying everything on the line, she knew she had to bring one more thing into the open so there were no lies, no deception, and no misunderstanding between them.

  “After Debbie took off, I met with the accountant and found out the real depth of my financial problems. I didn’t know what to do or how I was going to cope.” She held his gaze. “That was the night I went to Marco’s bar, intent on drowning my sorrows. I wanted an escape, a release for just a few hours before I started working out how I was going to deal with everything.”

  Reed’s jaw went tight, a muscle jerking in his cheek. He said nothing as he looked at her with an impenetrable expression. Her stomach trembled, but she wasn’t about to back down now. He had to know, and hopefully accept, her reasons for indulging in that ménage.

  “I had a couple of drinks, got hit on a few times, but I wasn’t interested in anything other than blurring things around the edges, dulling the reality with the help of several glasses of house white. Then Ethan came over.”

  Almost imperceptibly, Reed’s shoulders drew back. But she ignored the fierce look on his face and, with a glance around to make sure she couldn’t be overheard, forced herself to continue. “Marco joined in the conversation and, well, after a while they were joking about which one of them should back off and which one of them I’d choose.”

  “Maybe we ought to discuss this another time.”

  She shook her head at Reed’s low tone. “I might not be able to do this another time. I need you to understand, Reed.”

  He said nothing, but his nostrils flared.

  Lissa sucked in a breath and let it out slowly through her mouth, giving herself time to get the words right in her head. “I’m not sure how much I’d had to drink by then, and that’s no excuse I know, but it was a factor. I’d never done anything like it before. Never so much as entered a bar on my own let alone been picked up. But I was attracted to both of them and heard myself telling them they didn’t have to make a choice. And neither did I.”

  She made herself look at Reed. Made herself hold his narrowed gaze. “I could say that my intention was to walk away, to leave them both there and go home, but it wasn’t. After the bar closed, we went up to Marco’s apartment.”

  Reed shifted in his chair, then tugged at the opened collar of his shirt.

  “I’m not making excuses for myself,” Lissa said quickly. “I’m not even going to apologize. It was what I wanted. What I needed.” Still he remained silent. “Reed?”

  His shrug was casual, but a mountain of tension appeared to stiffen his shoulders. “What do you want me to say?”

  Lissa glanced around the bar again. Thankfully, there was too much noise and chatter for anyone to overhear them. She looked back at him. “I want you to accept it for what it was. I’m not even sure we’d need to have this conversation if it wasn’t Ethan and Marco. You can’t tell me you’d feel the same way if it had been two strangers you’d never heard of.”

  His mouth, already a grim line, tightened. “You don’t think I’d care if two random strangers had banged my wife?”

  “I wasn’t your wife then,” Lissa felt obliged to point out. “It’s my past, Reed. I’m damn sure you weren’t a saint.”

  “I sure as hell never needed a third wheel to get me off.” He closed his eyes, sucked in a breath. When he looked at her again, his expression was full of self-deprecation. “You’re right. I wasn’t a saint. And unlike you, I didn’t even have the excuse of losing my business to a lying cheat of a partner to explain my flaws.”

  “Choosing to sleep with Ethan and Marco wasn’t a flaw on my part, Reed. As I told you, I won’t apologize for it.”

  Reed ran his hand over his mouth, but said nothing. He shifted again, then leaned forward. Lissa thought he was about to suggest they leave. End the conversation. Her whole body sagged with relief when he sat back and folded his arms across his chest.

  “Around the time I started my business, I was seeing this woman.” He shrugged, shifted. “We’d been together for a few months and things were going pretty well, despite the fact I wasn’t around much. Then one day she told me it was over. Said I was more interested in business than her.” He raised his eyebrows. “She and Ethan had hooked up.”

  Lissa bit her bottom lip, not daring to move. This was obviously the foundation of his problem with his cousin, and no way did she want him to clam up now that they might be able to work through what stood between them.

  “When I confronted Ethan, he said he’d thought it was over between her and me. Even so I laid the blame squarely at his door.”

  “But he thought you’d broken up.”

  Reed’s eyes narrowed. “A guy doesn’t move in on a woman fresh from another man’s bed until he gets the all clear.”

  “What’s that? Some rule from the Male Book of Bonding?”

  “It’s just how it is.”

  “Did you love her?”

  He looked at her steadily, his eyes so deeply blue. “No.”

  Lissa swallowed, her heart not wanting to risk believing the message his eyes sent her way. That anything he might have felt for that woman had faded to nothing because of his feelings for her. That he cared for her. Really
cared for her. She couldn’t let herself imagine that he was in love with her, but maybe he cared more than he was prepared to admit.

  “I’ve asked myself how I’d feel if it hadn’t been Ethan,” Reed said firmly. “I don’t have an answer.”

  The flimsy hope she’d been harboring trembled beneath his words. Recalling what he’d told her that night in the car park, that every time he saw the two men he would be reminded that she’d let them share her, made her heart sink with the seeming futility of their situation. “We’re never going to get past this, are we?”

  He stared at her for long moments, then hooked his finger in his open collar again. “Shit. It’s stifling in here. Let’s get some air.”

  He pulled money from his wallet and slipped it beneath his glass, then stood and came around to hold Lissa’s chair. Together they moved through the bar and out into the fog that was now so dense it was hard to make out the parked cars.

  Lissa tightened her grip on her bag, her heart so heavy it was a solid weight in her chest. She knew they were over. There was nowhere else for them to go.

  As they passed a covered portico, dimly lit by the lights from the bar, she felt Reed’s hand on her arm as he tugged her into the enclosure. “I don’t want it to be like this,” he grated. “I don’t want this between us.”

  “I won’t live on some precipice, Reed. Knowing that at any time you’d be ready to throw it back in my face.”

  Grimacing, he pushed his hand through his hair. “You don’t get it, do you? You don’t fucking get it.”

  “Get what?”

  His hand went through his hair again. “This. Us.”

  She shook her head, wishing to heaven she could clear it. It felt like she was on a rollercoaster ride, hitting the lows before clambering up to the highs, only to be plunged toward the depths again.

  His nostrils flared as he sucked in a breath, then blew it out slowly through his mouth. “When I heard you were at the hospital, all sorts of stuff went through my mind. I couldn’t think straight wondering if you were ill, hurt. Wondering what the hell had happened to you. Damn near drove me crazy.”