“They hate me, Greg. I know that for a fact. I just wish I could change it.”
He stood, took hold of the sides of her arms and pulled her up into his embrace. “I wish I could make this better for you. I wish I could make everything better.”
“You did back then and you’re doing it now.” Unfortunately, better did not mean that everything was right. “There’s only so much you can do.”
“And there’s only so much you can do,” he assured her. “Don’t let them, Levins, your parents, that crazy subconscious of yours,” he tapped his finger against her temple, “ruin your life. You’ve done some amazing things. Your career is in order. But a career can’t be your life, Clair. You have to let love in. You have to let people in.”
She heard the pleading tone in his voice. He wanted her to let him in, to open up, to not push him and everybody else away. He was right. She didn’t have “friends;” she had acquaintances. At least that’s how she saw them. She never let anybody get close enough to hurt her. They could disappear from her life tomorrow and she wouldn’t care. But Greg, he was different. He could disappear from her life this second and she’d morn the loss so heavily she feared she wouldn’t recover.
She didn’t want to be that sixteen year old, vulnerable and scared, alone and confused. She didn’t want to be that eighteen year old who felt betrayed and abandoned by everybody in her heart. She didn’t want to be either of those girls and so she made sure that she wouldn’t be. She made sure she never got close to anybody. They would be better without her in their life and her heart would be better without them.
But Greg had always been in her heart. Even though she’d managed to move on without him, she still never stopped loving him. The moment she saw him on her porch she knew those feelings she had before hadn’t gone anywhere. They hid, locked inside her, dormant like a sleeping volcano waiting to be awakened. And when he awakened those feelings it was just as explosive as that awakening volcano, just as powerful, just as life changing, and she was afraid of that alone. In five minutes the man had started to break down the walls it took her ten years to put up.
“Please don’t hate me, Greg.”
“I don’t hate you. I love you. And now that I know you love me too…well I’ll try to wait for you to trust me, completely, with your heart. But God, please don’t make me wait long. I’m near dying here,” he embraced her with one more firm squeeze of his arms before releasing her. “Now, finish trying on your clothes.”
“We’ve been in here too long already. They may not know you’re in here, but they will start to wonder what I’m doing in here that’s taking me so long to try on three outfits.” She picked them up and said, “they all fit I’m sure because they’re my size. I’ll just get them. If I hate them after I get home and try them on then I’ll bring them back.” She smiled at him. “Go silently oh wise one.” If he even remotely close to let anybody see him leave the dressing area she was going to slap him. She wasn’t looking to become the talk of the mall. She shopped here, maybe not often, but often enough not to want to walk around with an invisible sign over hear head that told everybody she was the woman having sex in the New York and Company dressing room. She wasn’t having sex, but gossip had a way of morphing into huge lies.
She paid the clerk for her items. Given the young woman didn’t have a smirk on her face, Clair figured Greg had managed to sneak out of the dressing area unnoticed. Of course the security cameras had probably picked him up coming and going.
They hit a few more of her usual stores for shopping, including a workout attire store. She bought enough to get her by, but nowhere near as many clothes as she had before. She had bought those clothes from all over the world. Every convention she had to attend she made sure she shopped. Some of her shoes were from Italy, so unless they held another fitness convention in Italy anytime soon she didn’t think she’d be replacing things like her favorite boots, which were probably not in vogue at the moment and therefore not on the rack. Some people were just wildly inconsiderate. They couldn’t stop at destroying a person’s life and sense of self…no, they had to take everything. Suddenly she was wondering if her house was still standing.
What she bought would have to do, for now. She would try to get to Aspen when this was all over and then she’d shop some more. She hated shopping really. The idea of taking off clothes and trying on clothes wasn’t her idea of fun, but she tried on everything. There was nothing worse than picking up something that looked cute on the rack, getting it home only to find it did not look cute with her curves. Despite her toned body, she still had her curves and there were just some things that didn’t look good on them. She hoped the stuff she bought at New York and Company would look perfect on her, but if it didn’t she’d bring it back.
“Greg?”
“Yes, baby.” He had wrapped his arm around her waist and they had been walking exceptionally close to each other. With her bags and the close proximity of the hot man she was amazed she was able to walk with grace…maybe not ease, but definitely grace.
“When this is all over…if you can stay off work for a couple days I was thinking maybe we could get away.”
“I was thinking maybe we’d get married,” he said.
“What?” She stopped in her tracks, but he ushered her forward.
“Keep walking and I’ll do the talking. I’m thinking Justice of the Peace, followed by a honeymoon someplace exotic.”
“You haven’t even asked me yet. You’ve got the whole thing planned out. Do I have any say in this?”
“Of course. If you want we can do our honeymoon some place not exotic.”
She laughed. The man was certifiable. Given the dressing room conversation she couldn’t believe he wanted to marry her. “Exotic sounds nice,” she said. Though that was not a commitment to anything like marriage…at least she didn’t think it was. He obviously thought differently.
“Great. We’ll get married as soon as this is over. We’ll head to Hawaii, or maybe Fiji…some place like that, and then we’ll discuss living arrangements.”
“You still haven’t asked me,” she said in a high-pitched controlled yell. “You’re crazy.” Besides what did he mean, after the honeymoon they’d discuss living arrangements? Didn’t people normally do that before the wedding?
“Oh, right…you want me to ask you even though you’ve already agreed to an exotic honeymoon.”
“I did no such thing. I simply said exotic sounds nice.”
“Exactly, that’s agreeing.”
He put her bags in the car, opened the door for her and then jogged around to the other side before getting in himself. Once the doors were locked and the car started he turned to her. “Will you marry me, Clair? I know we have some things to work out between us, but I’d prefer to do them together. I don’t think it’s anything that would prevent us from getting married.”
She laughed nervously. “You just thought of all this?”
“No. I thought about marrying you a few days ago, but I was waiting. When you admitted you love me, well, I knew all I needed to know.”
“You’re crazy, but you’re right…I do love you.” She smiled at him. Her sight blurring from the tears welling up in her eyes. “And yes; yes I will marry you, Gregory Harland. But I am so not taking your last name.”
He laughed. “Maybe I’ll take yours.”
“Well, now that we have that settled what do you want to do?”
“Go home, have celebratory sex, eat dinner, have some more sex, sleep, have more sex…”
She held up her hand. “I get the impression that you’d like to have sex with me,” she grinned. He laughed.
“I’d do it right now, but jail isn’t exactly where I want to spend my night. Home?”
“Home,” she confirmed. The man was a loony as the day was long but she loved him. God, she loved him. She had finally allowed herself to say those words out loud and the world hadn’t ended. Maybe her luck was changing. Maybe things were finally on
her side. Maybe she was going to finally be as happy in love as she was with her work…maybe more so.
She would settle for just a smidge of relationship happiness, but somehow she knew this was going to be more. This, with Greg, was going to be full blown, out of this world, to the moon happiness. She already felt it. She felt it the moment he came through her door, felt it growing and taking over as if it wouldn’t be stopped; it couldn’t be stopped. She could fight it, deny it, but it was there waiting to explode. And right now, for the first time since Levins wrecked her life, she didn’t want to stop the happiness from taking over. She wanted this happiness, this moment with the man she’d loved for what felt like ever. She was going to allow herself this. The moment those nagging feelings of fear entered her mind she was going to push them away. “Don’t stop for fear,” that was her motto with mostly everything else in her life, and she was going to include healthy relationships in that motto too. Her heart could take it, she could take it.
She wasn’t going to stop with Greg. No, she was going to have friends; not just acquaintances, but friends. She was going to have dinner parties, or tea, or whatever people did with the people they called their friends. She was going to have fun, and let go, and she wasn’t going to worry about what would happen one day. She was going to start living her life. She was taking back her life starting today. Starting right now, Clair McPhee’s life was hers, not some damned mistake that happened twelve years ago, not some sense of abandonment that happened ten years ago, not some crazy fear of losing love like she’d lost the love of her parents, people she thought could never stop loving a child…no, she was claiming her life—reclaiming her life and anybody who wanted to stop her could be damned. She wasn’t giving up, not this time.
“What are you thinking about over there?” He turned onto the main street leading to his house.
They were almost home, almost to the place where he promised her they’d have great sex. “I’m thinking about marrying you, sleeping with you, waking up with you, making love to you every night.”
“Hmm…my kind of thoughts.”
“I know. You seem to only have a single thought pattern lately and it involves sex.”
“No, they all involve you and that always leads me back to sex.” He took one hand off the wheel and placed it on her thigh. She slapped it away.
“Concentrate on driving.”
“I can concentrate on more than one thing at a time.”
“I doubt that,” she mumbled. He laughed. He thought it was funny? Well, maybe it was a little. She had never thought of Greg as being focused on sex like some hormonal teen…especially not sex with her. She had done this to him. She felt good about that because she didn’t think she ever could make him want her. But he had wanted her; he wanted her on the level she had always wanted him.
He was also right about one thing. He could concentrate on more than one thing at a time. He was focusing on her protection while aggressively trying to get back into her heart. If only he knew he had never really left her heart she wondered if he would have worked so hard.
She looked over to Greg. Yeah, he would have worked hard. He was that kind of man. He went for what he wanted, hard, and usually fast; he didn’t waste time. She always loved that about him.
Chapter Fourteen
Greg figured he would have to wait months before broaching the topic of marriage with Clair. He had been prepared to wait as long as it took, but when he was walking with her the words just came out. He had been thinking about it, but had he given himself a moment to process that she might say no he might have kept his mouth shut.
She had just confessed something about her feelings to him. That was progress, but it wasn’t by any means an admission to her wanting to marry him. It certainly wasn’t an admission of absolute trust. She had said she loved him and that’s all he needed to know. They could work on everything else as time went on. Love was something he needed to know about up front. Once she had said she did, even if she did admit it during an intense moment, he knew marriage could work.
It wasn’t as if Clair had said she loved him post coatis. He would have a hard time believing an admission of love then. There was something about saying it right after sex that seemed to cloud the issue just a little. No, she had said it while they were enclosed in that tiny dressing room, while he had confronted her about her trust of him. Had she thought about it, had time to think about hiding her words she probably would have left out the “I love you,” part. He was glad she hadn’t.
Still, saying “I love you,” and saying “I do” were two different animals. He had put his heart and his feelings on the line, just put it out there without hesitation. She could have said no, she could have laughed in his face and told him it was too late for that type of relationship, but she hadn’t. She had been nervous, knocked out of her comfort zone by his abrupt and honest statement that he planned to marry her. She had been sure to tell him he hadn’t asked. It was as if she needed to hear him ask, to be sure what she thought she was hearing was the same thing as what he was saying. And then, so sweetly, she had said yes.
Clair McPhee was going to be his wife. He didn’t care if she didn’t want to take his last name, she was going to marry him and none of that other stuff really mattered. When he thought about it, Clair was still the same Clair. He remembered having a conversation with her, she was fifteen at the time, and for some reason they were talking about marriage. Looking back now he understood why she’d brought up the topic, but back then he just thought it was another one of their crazy rabbit trails in the conversation, the kind that usually led to that hole that took them into the realm of strange.
Clair had said she wouldn’t change her name when she got married and he had asked why. “Clair Harland,” she had said. “I mean, it would be a nice name, but I like the one I already have. Why should I have to give up McPhee when it sounds perfectly normal? I mean you could be Greg McPhee, but why should you have to change your name when Harland sounds perfectly normal for you.” She had rambled on about last names and the unfairness of anybody having to give up their name simply because they got married. No, she wasn’t giving up her name and she had been sure to tell him.
What he realized now is that she had also been quietly, or maybe not so quietly, telling him she saw them being married. She had used his name as the example when she could have used any name, maybe even something like Smith, or Donovan, or anything other than Harland, but she’d used Harland. Maybe her intention was to plant the seed in his mind that one day he could marry her, but he never noticed that connection back then. Back then she was just a fifteen year old kid that he was having an insanely strange conversation with about last names and marriage.
They use to talk, run off chasing the rabbit of strange conversations, and end an hour, maybe even two, later on a topic that was so far off in left field he could barely remember what they were talking about when they started. Sometimes he couldn’t remember what had started the conversation, but she always seemed to. She followed her line of thinking without flaw, changed topics so fast it could make his head spin, but she always seemed to have a light in her eyes. She enjoyed talking with him. Looking back he wondered if part of the reason she spent so much time talking to him was because she didn’t have anybody else to talk with.
There was no hiding that Amy was the favorite. The reason seemed obvious to Greg. Clair’s mother had been “passing” for years. Having Clair meant she couldn’t really pass as much as she wanted to. Even an idiot could see the obvious family relations, that is if they looked past skin color. But when Amy came along she had the same coloring as her father. He doubted that being the baby had anything to do with the lavish gifts they adorned her with. Amy got everything she wanted when she wanted it. They’d even given her a seventy dollar porcelain doll. Giving an eight year old porcelain was like putting your finest china in a field of elephants and then starting a stampede. Clair practically had to beg for the old thirty-five millimeter
Nikon at the used camera store, and Amy just had to bat her eyes and she got whatever she wanted.
Amy wasn’t the traditional spoiled brat, not in most ways, but in some ways he guessed she was a little. She was accustomed to getting everything she wanted, materially and attention-wise. Her parents doted on her. Even he noticed that. Clair was fourteen when he met her and at first he thought the difference in attention had something to do with age. A fourteen year old didn’t require as much attention as an eight year old, but the more he observed the more he got the feeling there was something more malicious behind the unbalanced parental love.
Maybe he subconsciously sat on the porch with her for hours talking because he wanted her to have time to say what was on her mind since she obviously didn’t have time to say it with her parents. Maybe he just loved the light in her eyes, that hint of good in an otherwise bad world.
Work had showed him so much evil on varying levels that if it weren’t for her he might have started to believe everybody in the world was just sitting around thinking of crimes to commit. But she was so innocent, so incredibly good that she gave him hope that maybe the world had some good people just waiting to make a difference. Maybe those conversations had been as much for him as they were for her.
Dangerous Obsessions Page 16
