by Cari Quinn
“I spent one week with you and ended up jobless and in a severe depression.” She said it lightly but even in the candlelight he could see the pinched lines of her face. “What makes you think I’d entertain your proposition for longer than the time it takes to rip up your contract?”
He almost argued that everything wasn’t his fault but he caught himself just in time. Learning to take your lumps was harder than it looked. “Because you’re smart. You’ll see it makes sense. All of it. And us.”
“She had a nice date with a fellow the other night,” Cathy said cheerfully. “He wasn’t as handsome as you, but in my experience the good-looking ones are more trouble. So what are you offering her that the guy from the other night doesn’t have?”
“I love her.” Out of the corner of his eye he saw Kelly set down her wineglass but he didn’t divert his attention from her mother. “And I intend to prove it. No matter how long it takes.”
Kelly didn’t comment and her mother didn’t get mushy-eyed.His mother would have, but apparently hippies were made out of sterner stuff. “Love’s all well and good, but if you’re not there when someone needs you,” she reached out to hold Kelly’s hand, “then you might as well not bother. Love isn’t just a word, Spencer. It’s something you commit to every day. It means sticking around for the long haul.”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
John clapped his back. “That’s the spirit.”
Afterward Kelly walked out with him to his car but she didn’t bring up what he’d said. He fully expected her to say good night and leave him to wonder if he’d lost his only chance to be a part of her life.
They stopped by his car and stared at each other in the moonlight. The gentle September breeze stirred her hair. He loved it longer. So pretty. He wanted to run his fingers through it, feel its weight on his skin. But this dance was one he’d have to let her lead.
“Your parents are nice. Are they back permanently from Sedona?”
“Yeah. They’ve been home for a couple months. They’ve been great, surprisingly enough. They stuck close when I needed them, backed off when I didn’t. Who knows how long they’ll stay. The traveling bug hits them pretty often.”
“It never hit you.”
“No. Vacations are one thing but I need a home base. Someplace I can belong to.”
“And someone?” he asked quietly, wishing to every deity there was she’d let it be him.
She leaned up on her tiptoes and brushed her mouth over his. Suspecting it was a test, he didn’t react when she did it again. By the third time, he groaned and wrapped his hands around her upper arms, hauling her against him. She didn’t melt or fall into his embrace. She kissed him back but it was restrained, the opposite of every other kiss they’d ever shared.
That, more than anything else, broke him.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered, and there was no denying the huskiness of his voice. “You’ll never know how much.”
“I don’t want you to be sorry. I want to know why. You didn’t suddenly discover you loved me after you left.”
“No.” He rubbed his thumb over her damp lower lip, amazed he could even speak with his heart lodged in his throat. “I knew it that night in my office. I probably knew it even before then. How could anyone not love you?”
She laughed hoarsely and tilted her head back to look at the starry night sky. “I’m loud and brash and say way too much without thinking. I’m impulsive and rebellious and refuse to listen to what anyone tells me—”
“You’re perfect. Perfect for me,” he added when she shook her head.
“So perfect that you slept with another woman hours after you were with me. Or you wanted me to think you did. I don’t know which is worse.”
He glanced around, thankful that at least they were in a secluded part of the parking lot. “I didn’t sleep with Diana that night. But I agreed to. I tried.”
“You tried,” she repeated.
“Yeah.” He rubbed his eyes. He’d prefer to skip right over this part, but there was no avoiding it. “She blackmailed me over my job. She’d given it to me in the first place, five years ago. She was married, we had an affair. She got pregnant.”
“You should’ve been a journalist. That was the most dispassionate retelling of a story I’ve ever heard.”
“I’ve had a lot of time to distill it to the bare bones in my head.” And he had, during the myriad nights he couldn’t sleep, both before and after Kelly.
“She had your baby.” Now she was the dispassionate one, her expression cool.
“I didn’t know if it was mine, but she lost it. By that time she’d given me her position as regional manager so she could go home to patch things up with her husband. She wanted to save her marriage.”
“So you were collateral damage.”
“I was a willing participant. I got what I wanted.”
“You wanted your baby to be raised by another man?”
He clenched his jaw. Leave it to Kelly to get right to the heart of the matter. “No. I would have wanted my child.”
“Even if it was inconvenient.”
“Hell yes. The timing didn’t matter.”
“But you didn’t push for a paternity test.”
He shrugged. “I wanted her job.”
She turned away and pulled her keys out of her purse. “When you can be honest, give me a call.”
“Kelly, wait.” She let him grab her arm but she didn’t look at him. “No, I didn’t push. She begged me to give her a chance with her husband.“
“And you loved her so you let her go.”
He shoved his hands in his pockets. “They had a good home. They were settled, stable. He or she would’ve had a brother and sister. What the hell did I have to give a kid?”
“Their father.”
“I didn’t know for sure,” he said, closing his eyes.
That, more than anything, was what haunted his nights. Had he really traded the possibility of his child for a fucking job? He almost wished he could say he had, because the alternative was that he’d loved Diana enough to want her happy at his own expense. And look at the kind of woman she’d turned out to be.
Clearly his judgment sucked.
Kelly came back to him and wrapped her arms around his waist, pressing her face against his neck. “You could have told me. I wouldn’t have asked you for anything more than the truth.”
Except those rare times he lucked into judging someone exactly right.
“The truth’s too much sometimes.” He gave in to his urge to thread his fingers through the ends of her long hair. “I didn’t feel as if I deserved you. For God’s sake, I made you suck off another guy at a sex club. Two guys, actually.”
“Made me?” She shook her head. “I know you haven’t been sleeping much so maybe you’ve forgotten some of the finer points of those particular nights.”
“I haven’t forgotten anything.” Spencer stroked her cheek. “Not one minute, Kelly.”
“Me either.” She turned her head and kissed the tips of his fingers. “I liked going to Kink. It took me time to warm up, but when I did…” She grinned. “It worked for me. I’m not saying I want to go there every weekend. But I definitely want to go back.”
“With me?”
She reached up and brushed his hair out of his eyes, drawing her hand down to cup his jaw. Her touch held the tenderness only she could offer him. “I want to do everything with you. Don’t you get that yet?”
“If the situation was reversed, if you were standing here asking for my forgiveness…I don’t know if I could do it.”
“Tell me what happened that night. With Diana.”
“My job was on the line. My own fault. I’d gotten it through dubious means so it made sense I’d lose it that way too. She wanted me to sleep with her, to see if we still had anything left between us. One night.” He wouldn’t allow himself to look away, as much as he wanted to. “If I’d walked, Marcia wouldn’t have gotten my job. I wanted you to
have Marcia’s. And it turned out neither of you took those positions anyway.”
“Apparently Marcia wasn’t too keen on working for Diana.”
“Because of me.” He still couldn’t believe that. His sister had bailed on the store shortly after Kelly and had been looking for a new job for the last two months. “Marcia was in line for a promotion way before me, but I wasn’t content to wait. I owed her. Or at least I felt I did. I busted my ass to prove to everyone I was the best person to run those stores. And in the end, I didn’t even care anymore.”
“What do you mean, you didn’t care?” she asked. “The store was your whole world.”
“Just like it was yours,” he reminded her gently. “But the world stops turning eventually.”
“That sounds like a bad soap opera.”
“If the suds fit…” He slid his fingertip around her hoop earring, beyond grateful she was listening. That was more than he’d had any right to wish for. “Part of me hoped I could just sleep with her and nothing would have to change. I told myself you might never have to know, that we could just go on.”
“Yeah, this is the part where your murky motives poison the waters,” she muttered, making him laugh despite himself.
“I’m no saint. I never claimed to be. But I couldn’t do it.”
Her head lifted. “You couldn’t sleep with her? What did you do, back out at the last second?”
“Not exactly.” He winced. “I sort of, ah, couldn’t perform.”
“What?”
“Please don’t make me repeat that. My ego’s shriveling even as we speak.”
She covered her face with her hands, shoulders shaking with suppressed laughter. “No fucking way. You couldn’t get it up?”
“Oh I got it up. It was the staying up that was an issue.” He cleared his throat and tried to chase the memory from his mind. “She wasn’t too happy.”
“Did you explain that sort of thing sometimes happens to older men?”
“I’m glad you find this so amusing.”
She doubled over, tears of mirth streaming from her eyes. “Oh my God. I never thought I’d enjoy almost being cheated on so much.”
Spencer crossed his arms over his chest. “Let me know when you’re finished.”
“I’m done.” But she kept going, snorting and giggling. “Oh wow. That’s great.”
“Not so much from over here.”
“Sorry. I know it’s a, um, sensitive issue. But I think it’s so funny.”
“I got that. Truly.”
“Not because you couldn’t. But you never had any problem with me. I mean, I had to practically beat you off most of the time.” She glanced down. “Should I expect it to be an ongoing problem now too?”
“No. I can assure you I have zero interest in sleeping with you at the moment.”
She giggled again and clapped a hand over her mouth. “Do you know how long it’s been since I’ve really laughed?”
“Probably about as long since I have. But I’m thinking this is more fun for you than me.”
“She’s beautiful,” she murmured, finally quieting. “Diana. She’s a gorgeous woman.”
“Yeah.”
“So what happened?”
He shrugged. “As much as I tried to convince myself what I was doing didn’t matter, I couldn’t follow through. It did matter and I couldn’t do it. Turns out my body’s not as stupid as my head sometimes.”
“She must’ve been pissed.”
“I’d say that’s a good bet. Probably why she didn’t break her agreement with me and let me hold on to my job. She just wanted to forget the whole night ever happened. She wasn’t the only one, believe me.”
“How mortifying.”
“It wasn’t one of my proudest moments. Not just not getting it up. Trying to get it up in the first place for a woman I couldn’t stand. Knowing I’d hurt you and hating myself for it. And it didn’t stop that night. Afterward, wishing I could take back what I said in my office. Dismissing you that way…” He blew out a breath. “I wanted to make you leave as quickly as possible for your sake, not mine. If I hadn’t had that little burst of conscience, I would’ve slept with you and done whatever I could to make you stay. But that wasn’t fair.”
“It also wasn’t fair to start something with me when you had one foot out the door.”
“No. But I’d agreed to the Sinclairs’ timetable of revealing the new positions.”
“Sounds like you got fucked as much as you did the fucking. If not more.” She held up a hand. “Don’t tell me you deserved it. Spencer, you’re seriously the most contrite bad guy I’ve ever seen.”
“What?”
“You want me to think that you’re such a heartless jerk but you’ve spent all this time in knots. Let me clue you in to something.” She leaned closer and whispered in his ear, “Real bad guys don’t feel guilty.”
“That doesn’t excuse my behavior.”
“Who said it did?”
“I knew you’d walk. I didn’t want you to. So add that to the examples that prove Spencer Galvin’s an asshole.”
“So wait. Now you expect me to be mad because you didn’t want me to leave you? Which I wouldn’t have done, by the way.” She rolled her eyes. “Fine. Your priorities could’ve used some work. So could mine. I kept a running list of guys I wanted to sleep with, even though it wasn’t really about sex. Not just sex,” she acknowledged when he raised a brow. “But I didn’t have the guts to admit what I needed. Then I dumped all my years of emotional angst at your doorstep, even though you were lucky enough not to be privy to most of it. We were together one week. Hardly long enough for me to build us up into some sort of twisted version of Scarlett and Rhett.”
“That week was the best of my life,” he said softly.
“Mine too. But we never got to know each other beyond work and sex. I don’t even know your favorite color.”
“Gray. Yours?”
“Purple. And you didn’t even laugh at that question.”
“Because I get what you mean. It would be smarter to start at the beginning. Go on a few dates, drink coffee, talk. Take it slow.” He cupped her shoulder, stroking his palm over supple leather and wishing it were her skin under his hand instead. “I can’t go slow with you, Kelly.”
“Who’s asking you to?” She reached up to cover his hand with hers. “What happened worked for me. All of it. Not the breakup part, but everything else. Sure, I’d like you to tell me things. I’d appreciate you sharing parts of yourself with me before I have to go for a crowbar or threaten to withhold sex. But we were a work in progress. I was willing to wait to see what developed.”
“I want you in my life.” He kissed her forehead, drawing her so close that her heart beat rapidly against his. “I’m prepared to do whatever it takes to make that happen.”
“Including spilling your secrets in a restaurant parking lot.” Her grin came through loud and clear in her voice.
“Yes. And admitting to my many, many faults. Like being too secretive and closed off. And too obsessed with work. And too fixated on getting you naked.”
“That’s one of your best qualities actually.”
“Agreed.” He grinned. “Can I stop now?”
“No, keep going.” She tipped her head sideways and gave him a sexy smile he knew he’d never forget. “I’m liking this conversation.”
“Uh huh.” Another laugh escaped him. “You know, I think this is the longest we’ve actually had a conversation outside of work. Every other time we ended up in bed.”
She ran her hands up his chest, feathered her fingertips over his neck above his suddenly constricting collar. “I’m kind of talked out,” she murmured.
He didn’t dare hope. But he also couldn’t stop his body’s immediate and irrefutable response to her nearness. His cock strained against his trousers, pressing insistently against her soft belly.
She glanced down and then up again, grinning. “Feels like a green light to me.”
“For me too.”
“You’ll notice I’m not asking if there’s been anyone else.”
“You don’t have a right to.”
“No.” He paused. “So has there been?”
“You first.”
“Are you kidding me? You’re the only one I’d dare go near after that fiasco. I think you retrained my cock.”
Again she laughed, so long and low that every nerve ending in his body came awake from hibernation. “If I haven’t, I will. Starting tonight.” She flashed him one of her saucy grins and he thought he’d died and gone to heaven. “Because this is all well and good but if we’re not still compatible in other important ways, no deal.”
The cool wind that blew over his skin did nothing to diffuse the blast of heat her words had caused. “I thrive under pressure.”
“Mmm, I remember. So I have a question.
His soft groan made her laugh. “Shoot.”
“That video…from your office.”
“You’re not getting it. It’s mine.”
She grinned. “So have you been watching it?”
He didn’t want to ruin the lighthearted mood but he had to be honest. Hiding things wouldn’t work anymore. “I couldn’t for a long time.”
“No?”
“No.” He stroked a fingertip along her temple. “I missed you too much. Then it became a lifeline, my only link to you. And it also helped in other particular ways,” he said, glad to see her smile return.
“You haven’t been to the club?”
He shook his head. “Not without you.” He shrugged at her smirk. “Hey, some couples have a special restaurant. We have a sentimental sex club. Works for me.”
“Me too.” She gave him a quick kiss then turned and walked to her car, dangling her car keys over her shoulder. “Race you to my place.”
“Your place?”
“Got a problem with that, Galvin?”
He yanked open his car door. “Absolutely not. Better drive fast, Ms. Crossman.”
She was taking him home to her apartment. If that didn’t speak of trust, Kelly didn’t know what did.
