by Ren Benton
This would be so much easier if he was a jerk. “It is well after seven, you know.”
“Can anyone verify the expiration of your charm at that hour? I’m beginning to think you made it up to avoid hurting my feelings with the truth that you don’t like me, have never liked me, and will never like me.”
Like the wife who thought he might be good enough if he changed everything about himself.
There was nothing wrong with Ben. He was perfectly lovable exactly the way he was. He always had been. “I do like you. I’ve always liked you.”
She would not say I’ll like you long after you’re gone and make him feel guilty about escaping.
But she was going to have to offer an alternate explanation. Her chilliness toward him didn’t align with her claim of affection.
She picked at a rough cuticle, creating a physical discomfort to balance the mental one. What did it matter if he knew the truth? There was no future to ruin, and the night had been shot to hell as soon as she choked up in the bar. Might as well give him the truth he thought he wanted so he didn’t have to wonder anymore if he was somehow to blame for her irrational behavior. “It’s one thing to be called the town whore when I’m living like a nun and I know they’re wrong. It’s something else when the whole town knows who and when and where I’m having sex.”
The men in the bar were on the phone with their wives right now. Guess who Tallywhacker’s fucking now.
They’d still be wrong about whatever they speculated she was doing to Ben tonight. Nobody would put money on having an excruciating conversation.
He parked the car in her driveway and turned sideways to face her, as if settling in for more of the same. “In the past five days, I’ve encountered astonishment that we remember each other and been astonished to be told that you’ve hated me almost as long as I’ve known you.”
Her throat constricted, strangling her voice. “I told you that’s not true.”
“And I’ve never been so glad to hear anything in my life, but nobody knows about us. Nobody has a clue you were the most important person in my life. Everybody in this town knows everything about everyone. How can they not know that?”
Consistent avoidance of detection. “You were very discreet about keeping our relationship hidden.”
“I wasn’t hiding you.”
“You just didn’t want to be seen in public with me.”
“Is that really what you thought?” He raked a hand through his hair, making it stand on end. “I just wanted to be alone with you.”
“Obviously.”
He scowled at her. “Not so I could grope your tits. Do you have any idea how hard it is to get a real smile out of you? I didn’t want some bystander stealing any of that shine from me or turning what we had into something ugly.”
It was pathetic how badly she wanted that to be true. So pathetic, she had to make light of something to keep the mangled mess of her need from leaving stains on his shirt. “If I’d known my reputation meant so much to you, I’d have taken better care of it.”
“I don’t give a damn what any of these idiots think about you. Every slur against you is ridiculous.”
“I’ve had your dick in me. It’s not that ridiculous.”
His jaw clenched. “Show me one person in this town over the age of seventeen who hasn’t engaged in some form of sexual interaction, and then we’ll talk about how reasonable the puritanical standards of chastity they’re applying to you are. Gossip flows both ways. We know who’s sleeping with who, who’s cheating, who gets porn delivered to their P.O. box. It’s a really slow week if us being seen together is the most scandalous thing going on.”
His expression went blank, and he stared past her, clearly traumatized. “Or if the big excitement for the week is my car being stolen and you get dragged into the spotlight against your will. Shit. Literally anywhere but the bar would have been better, wouldn’t it?”
“So you took me there because...” She didn’t want to fill in the blank for him in case her interpretation was wholly wishful thinking.
“Because I wanted everyone to know we’re together.” He rubbed his eyes. “And as always, everything is about what I want. I’m sorry, Tally.”
He wasn’t embarrassed to be seen with her. He wanted to be seen with her by a good chunk of the population, who would make sure the rest heard about it. He hadn’t considered the trouble it would cause because he didn’t think of her as the town slut. He hadn’t expected backlash because he didn’t think of her like everyone else did, even after she told him how she’d earned her notoriety.
She pried his hand away from his eyes and cupped his face in her palms. “No, Ben. I took it entirely the wrong way. Again. I’m sorry.”
He covered one of her hands with his. “What do I have to do so you’ll know, without having to ask, that I would never do anything with the intent of hurting you?”
The person who was supposed to be closest to her and never hurt her had done so like it was a job and she wanted to be employee of the month every month. Tally had no expectation of decency from anyone else.
Ben had never hurt her when they were together. Even before that, when he’d bruised her heart or embarrassed her, it hadn’t been malice, just the same careless exuberance with which he always hurled himself at life, with the misfortune of banging against her easily shattered feelings. It was unfair to treat him as if he meant her harm.
Couldn’t she be good to him for a day or two, just until he left her?
Even if she had to fake the trust he deserved.
“I believe you.”
Chapter 31
She laid her lips against his in the kind of soft, warm, sweet caress that begged for folding her in his arms and holding her for hours.
The gearshift and cupholders enforced physical distance that mimicked the other echoing void between them.
I believe you. Lying came so easily easy to her. Maybe that had something to do with her inability to recognize the truth even when he spelled it out in simple terms.
But she lied this time because she wanted him to believe it, even if she didn’t — trying to give him a gift she couldn’t afford to give. If he never took the pretty ribbon off the box, if he never shook it, he’d never know it was empty. It was the thought she put into doing something nice for him that mattered, right?
She pulled back and smiled a little, bleak and brave and beautiful in the shadows. “Want to come inside and be good to each other?”
I would be so good to you if you’d only let me.
He fingered a tendril of hair that had come loose behind her ear, letting it curl around him, still hoping her heart would do the same. Every time he’d done what he wanted or guessed what she wanted, one of them ended up getting hurt. Time to try a more direct approach. “What do you want?”
She slipped out of his hands and opened the car door. “I want you to come in the house. If you get that far, we’ll see what happens next.”
Chapter 32
Tally wouldn’t have been surprised if he peeled out of the driveway and launched the car at the horizon. He could be forgiven for thinking her invitation would lead to his murder and being carved into stew meat.
Instead of the engine turning over and tires spitting gravel, she heard the thunk of the car door and his footsteps behind her.
She crossed the porch and unlocked the door. Ben held it open so she could precede him inside. She left the porch light on for her dad and turned on a lamp, banishing darkness to the corners of the living room.
Ben watched her with wary eyes, hands in his pockets, shoulders humped, waiting for the hatchet to swing.
But he had cooperated thus far. Maybe there was still a chance to make his last memory of her something other than toxic. “You look tired.”
“I’ve been up since four.”
A long day for someone who wasn’t used to it. Hell, it was a long day for someone who’d been doing it for two years. “You’re on vacation, remember? You
could have gone home and slept until noon.”
He sank onto the couch and sighed as if deflating. “I had to go to Marion to get some cash from the bank and get into my email to find the phone numbers for all the credit cards I had to report compromised.”
The numbers would have been on the cards, if he had them. “You didn’t get your wallet back?”
“I don’t carry every card, so I don’t know what’s missing and what’s at home, and there’s only so much I’m willing to trust the word of the thieves. A scorched-earth policy seemed safest. Then I had to follow up with Officer Beaver about a temporary ID so I can get on the plane. They definitely chucked my license out the window.”
She sat next to him and tucked her feet under her butt. The heels of her shoes dug into the backs of her thighs. “Lousy vacation.”
“Even without mentioning scooping three years of decomposed sludge out of the gutters and shouting at my mother.”
And being treated like crap by a stripper. “You should have stayed home and worked an eighty-hour week so you could relax.”
That irrepressible smile broke through the gloom. “It hasn’t been all bad. This girl I’ve always been crazy about let me have some of the time she would have rather spent sleeping.”
I can sleep after you get on the plane. “You’re better than sleep.”
“I know that’s the sleep deprivation talking, but it’s still the nicest thing a woman has ever said to me.”
He set the bar at the perfect height to slither over. “You have awful taste in women.” Granted, it would be difficult to find one as good as he was, but he could do better than his hateful ex-wife, Miss Wrecking Ball 2010, and her.
“A wise friend thinks I make poor choices on purpose to avoid commitment because I couldn’t hold onto the only one I really wanted.”
A boulder rolled over her stomach. The wife who got away. The woman he’d chosen to spend the rest of his life with. The one who thought he wasn’t good enough.
Jules had been right. It was bad luck to talk about one man while waiting for another, and the consequence was having to listen to him talk about another woman.
It’s not penance if it doesn’t hurt.
Might as well use her flogging to help him get his wife off his chest. “What’s she like?”
He gave her a sidelong glance and a half-smile. “Smart. Hardworking. Generous. Sexy. Unbelievably goddamn strong. With a way of looking at me that cuts straight through all the bullshit so I have to be stupidly, horribly honest — or, some might say, tactless. She, on the other hand, has always been a mystery to me.”
Huge red flag. People who didn’t share were hiding things, and not cute, fluffy things, either. “She’s not honest with you?”
“Blatantly, transparently dishonest.”
“Ben. That’s... terrible. You have to know that.”
“She’s protecting herself.” His voice was gentle, his defense of this woman who’d broken his heart still resonating with love. “It’s hard for her to trust.”
She should have thought about that before she married him. “How do you promise to spend the rest of your life with someone you don’t trust?”
“I have to earn it.”
She sucked in a sharp breath. Jesus, he was planning to go back to the ex? After a few days with an abusive lunatic, she must not seem so bad to him, but mistakes were to be learned from, not repeated. “It’s not your fault she doesn’t trust you. How long do you have to be the good guy before she decides you’ve earned her precious trust?”
Like it was a fucking gift, like if he passed her test, the angels would sing and open the rope to the VIP lounge, and if he was left standing in line out in the cold, it was some deficit on his part.
His brows tilted quizzically. “You tell me.”
Of course he’d turn to her for advice. She was, after all, an authority on awful women. What she hadn’t learned from her mother, she was innovating in the field on her own.
She knew from experience there were no right answers on tests like that. You could never prove your worth to someone who looked at you and saw none. “You won’t want to hear this, but you’re lucky to be rid of her. You can find a million smart, sexy women who don’t have a ton of baggage to dump on you.”
A frown lined his forehead. He curled his fingers around the back of her neck. “Who do you think I’m talking about?”
“Your wife.”
“Ex,” he corrected. “And wrong. Try again.”
A guy with lousy taste and self-confessed commitment issues could go through a lot of women in thirty years. It could be anyone.
“Since you’re obviously struggling with it, I’ll give you a hint. I’m going to kiss her when I finish this sentence.”
Chapter 33
He made good on his word.
He’d rather talk. There were infinite things to talk about. Tell me what else was I clueless about when we were kids. Tell me everything you’ve been doing for the past twelve years. Come back to Seattle with me and we’ll have the rest of our lives to make love. Talk to me tonight.
But he always said the wrong thing with her. She believed his mouth only when he used it like this. She understood exactly what his tongue was getting at. She didn’t recognize herself when he spoke of her, but she never thought he was kissing or touching or making love to another woman.
And there would be a brief window of opportunity afterward, when she was soft, when he could slip an idea past her defenses fast enough to get it to take root so when he repeated it later, it wouldn’t be new and suspect.
He dragged his mouth away from the cling of hers. He did not deserve a treat for planning to soften her up with sex to make her easier to emotionally manipulate. He deserved a punch in the dick.
Unaware she was in the presence of an asshole, she threw one long leg over him and straddled his thighs, pressing him back into the sofa cushions.
He denied himself the lips seeking his — not that he was more deserving of soft kisses on his chin, cheek, or sipping at his earlobe. “Tally.”
Her reply consisted of squeezing his hips with her knees.
He glanced down and nearly disgraced himself. Her dress had ridden up. His zipper made a line pointing to a peek of black lace where silky thighs met over him. Didn’t she know she was supposed to motivate him to be a better man, not reward him for bad behavior?
He’d never seen her in the light, not like this. She wasn’t a grub, sexy or otherwise. Her skin was the color of a sugar cookie, all butter and sweetness and warmth, decorated with sparse dots of dark chocolate. She had those on her arms, too. Where else?
She pressed her thumbs under his jaw and made him look up. She had another little mole on her throat, in the valley where her pulse would beat close to the surface if he pressed his lips there. “Tell me what you want.”
He wanted more light. He wanted her bare and he wanted hours to find every little speckle and he wanted to connect the dots with his tongue. He wanted her to talk to him. He wanted her trust. He wanted her heart.
He wanted the perfect thing to say so she wouldn’t shut him out even while his hands were on her. “I want to wake up next to you.”
Her fingers rubbed hypnotic circles on his neck. “At four in the morning again?”
Four in the morning. Tomorrow. When they were ninety. Every night he didn’t have to leave her gave him a few more hours to convince the guard to let him into The Fortress. “Any time.”
“Okay.”
She wasn’t agreeing to the next sixty years, but one night when she wasn’t blackout exhausted was more than he’d ever had from her before. Baby steps. “Your turn.”
One side of her lower lip retreated to be abused by her teeth, a sure sign he’d struck an anxious nerve.
He had always been hers to do with as she pleased. What did she have to be hesitant and unsure of? “I’m never going to say no to you.”
She smoothed her hands over his chest, awakening nerve endi
ngs that radiated sensation, spreading her touch — and the itch of mosquito bites — around his ribs to his spine. “I want you to stay. Tonight.”
It shouldn’t be that hard to ask for what she knew he wanted, too, but not everyone had been so eager to give her what she needed. It would take time for her to learn he would give her anything he had and never rest until he could give her everything else she asked for.
He would give her the time, too. “You can’t steal my wish. Something else.”
She rested her forehead against his and was quiet long enough for it to occur to him she didn’t know how to say she didn’t want anything he had to give now, either, and how many times did a woman have to smash his heart with a nine iron before he figured it out?
“Just take me to bed.”
He was so relieved she wanted something, anything, he buried his regret that it wasn’t something more challenging — like dragonslaying — so he could prove there was no limit, no task too great. “Hold on tight.”
She wrapped around him, arms looped over his shoulders, legs circling his waist, fusing to him so his balance wasn’t thrown off when he stood. He kept one hand at her back and the other under her ass and pretended her death grip on him meant she never wanted to let him go rather than she expected him to drop her, let her down, fail her.
He carried her to her bedroom and hit the light switch with his elbow, turning on the lone, miserably dim lamp. Was he going to have to make love to her outdoors at noon to see her in decent light? He was willing, but persuading her to take a lunch break halfway through her grueling day might prove more difficult than slaying dragons.
He deposited her on the edge of the bed and knelt at her feet. His fingers stroked up and down one delicately turned calf while he tried to figure out the labyrinth of straps imprisoning her feet.
Jules didn’t know what the hell she was talking about. Those pale, knobby toes were beautiful, especially the crooked one on the right with the callus where the wonky joint rubbed against the inside of her shoe every day. That one got extra attention last night while he rubbed lotion into her feet.
