“How can you tell?” she asked.
“Oh, I can tell,” Connor assured her. “Rita doesn’t stand on ceremony. She’ll tell you exactly what she thinks. She feels that at her age, she’s earned the right to show her displeasure—without any reservations—if that’s what she’s feeling.”
The second he walked into the kitchen he was confronted with the enticing, very pleasing aroma of what Rita had prepared for dinner: roasted pork loin, plus baby red potatoes and green beans. The combined scent hung in the air, creating its own seductive perfume.
“How could you not have given in and had dinner?” he asked.
“I told you, I was waiting for you.” Amy pointed toward the table. “Sit. I’ll bring the food over to the table.”
Connor did as she asked and sank down in the closest chair. He was pretty tired. Maybe that was why he was giving in so easily.
“You know,” he stressed one last time, “you didn’t have to wait for me to come in.” He definitely didn’t want her to feel that she was obligated to wait until he could join her at the table before eating. “You could have had your dinner when it was ready.”
“It’s no fun eating alone,” she told him. For a second, a glimmer of sadness crossed her face as she thought back over the last five years. “I’ve had too many meals alone.”
Moving quickly, she set out the pork loin then got serving bowls for both the baby red potatoes and the serving of breadcrumb-covered green beans.
“What would you like to drink?” she asked, opening the refrigerator. Looking, she zeroed in on the first beverage she saw. “Do you want beer?”
“That sounds good,” he said, although he would have said the same thing no matter what she would have suggested. He just wanted her taking a seat at the table. “Come sit down,” Connor urged. “You don’t have to wait on me.”
“And you didn’t have to take me into town today,” she pointed out, slipping into the chair opposite his. “Or go through all that trouble to bring that Christmas tree into the house.”
He didn’t want her thanking him. What he did for her he did because he wanted to do it. Because he wanted to do something for her.
“Well, full disclosure,” he said, clearing his throat as he began to help himself to dinner. “I do get a tree every year.”
She knew that, but she also knew something else. “Yes, but Cole said that you don’t usually get one this early. And he also told me that you were thinking of not getting one this year.” She put a serving of pork, as well as a large spoonful of potatoes and one of the green beans, onto her own plate.
Connor waved away her report of his brother’s words. “Cole just likes to hear himself talk. Don’t pay attention to anything he says—he’s been known to make things up as he goes along.”
Amy watched him for a long moment. Connor seemed like he was protesting too much.
“So, you didn’t get that Christmas tree early because Jamie and I were here?” she asked.
Connor shifted in his chair, making eye contact with his green beans and not her. “Well, I wouldn’t exactly say that,” he qualified, casting about for a safe way to get out of this conversation and shift it in another direction.
Amy saw right through him and grinned. “I would,” she told him. “And I’d also say that that was very sweet of you.”
Connor shrugged, still uncomfortable with the altruistic light she was shining on him. “I don’t know about ‘sweet,’ but I do know that you deserve to have something nice done for you.”
He paused for a moment, pretending to focus on his dinner when he was trying to find a way to properly frame his question without hurting her feelings—or her pride.
At a loss as to how to proceed, he finally just plunged in and said, “Do you mind if I ask you a question?”
Her automatic response was to say yes, she did mind. Questions usually just brought her failings front and center. But she knew that the only way she and Connor were ever going to get permanently back to the level of easy friendship they had once enjoyed was if she didn’t keep withdrawing into the protective shell she had built up around herself. This was Connor talking to her, not Clay. He wasn’t trying to trap her and there was no reason for her to be leery.
“Go ahead,” she told Connor. “Ask.”
His eyes held hers. “Why did you stay with Clay so long?” He wanted to word his question differently, more sharply, but he didn’t want to take a chance on accidentally inflicting any more pain on Amy than she’d already suffered through.
Amy shrugged, lowering her eyes and looking at what was left of her dinner. “I kept hoping it would get better.”
“And when it didn’t?” he gently prodded, instinctively knowing that it hadn’t. That there hadn’t been any good days to offset the bad ones, as in normal relationships. Clay Patton was a raging narcissist. A narcissist didn’t see anyone or anything beyond his own boundaries. His world was comprised of a population of one: himself.
Clay was the only one who mattered to Clay and it killed Connor that she had been drawn into this self-esteem-stifling world where Clay had done everything in his power to rob her of her individuality—and that winsome smile he’d come to love so much.
“And when it didn’t,” Amy repeated quietly, “I was too embarrassed to admit it. Besides, my dad was dead and my mother was starting a new life with my stepfather in another state. I tried to stick it out with Clay because I didn’t have anywhere else to go.”
“You always had somewhere to go,” Connor told her pointedly. “And you did. You came here.”
She had, but that was out of a sense of desperation. “But I didn’t want to,” she confessed. When he looked at her sharply, she explained, “I didn’t want to admit, even silently, that I’d failed.”
She had the wrong take on the situation, Connor thought. “You didn’t fail, Amy,” he told her with feeling. “Clay did.”
Of course he’d say that. That was the kind of person Connor was. “You’re just being very kind, Connor,” she said.
“No,” he contradicted. “I’m just seeing it the way it really is. I know you,” he emphasized. “You did your best in this situation. Clay didn’t have a ‘best’ to bring to the game.”
Finished eating, Connor pushed his plate back on the table as he looked at her. Thinking of the way Clay had treated Amy had gotten him so angry, he’d forgotten to hold his tongue, and consequently, he’d overstepped his bounds.
“Look, I’m sorry, Amy,” he apologized. “I didn’t mean to open up old wounds.”
“Don’t be sorry, Connor,” she said. She didn’t want him to feel he had to censor himself when he talked to her. She appreciated his passion—and that he was on her side. Picking up the empty dinner plates and utensils, she brought them over to the sink and began filling it with hot, sudsy water. “You took me in and quite possibly saved my life. You saved Jamie’s. You can ask me anything you want.”
“Okay,” Connor said, taking her up on what she had just said. “Then can I ask you not to do the dishes?” he said, nodding toward the sink.
Amy laughed. She should have known he’d say something like that.
“There is no way I’m leaving dirty dishes in the sink for Rita to find in the morning. I do that and she’ll have my head gift-boxed and sent off to the dead letter office.”
He pretended to take her protest seriously. “I don’t think they have that anymore.”
She had no idea if they did or not; she just remembered hearing about it a long time ago.
“In Rita’s case, they’d resurrect it for her,” she laughed. “Besides, this is no big deal.” Amy scrubbed a dish, then rinsed it before setting it on the rack to dry. “See? One down already. This’ll only take a few minutes.”
There was no talking her out of it and he knew it. So Connor
got up and joined her at the sink.
“It’ll take less time if there’re two of us doing it,” he said.
He’d brought his bottle of beer with him and now took a short swig before putting the bottle down on the counter. He intended to sink his hands into the sudsy water but Amy’s next move prevented him from doing that.
She’d turned abruptly to argue with him, wanting to get him to go sit back down again. At the very least, doing the dishes was her small attempt to pay him back in some way. To her thinking, keeping the peace with Rita was a good way to start.
But when she turned to make her point and get him to sit down again, she found that he was standing a little too close to avoid her bumping up against him. The sudden, unexpected contact was jolting and she sucked in her breath in surprise.
“I need a bigger kitchen,” Connor quipped, grabbing hold of her shoulders to keep her from falling. And then he looked down into her face. “On second thought,” he quietly murmured as an impulse took hold of him, “maybe the kitchen is just the right size.”
The next moment, as he continued to hold on to her shoulders, the impulse that had come over him won.
He brought his mouth down to hers and kissed her.
He knew he should stop. Knew a great many things logically. But emotionally, well, emotionally, given this time and this place, it was the right thing to do.
The only thing to do because the moment he kissed her, the hunger in his soul flowered and took over every corner of his being, declaring that it wouldn’t be satisfied until he did this.
Before he could stop himself, the kiss continued. Continued and wove itself into the very fiber of his being, going on to weave itself into every part of him. And making him crave more.
It took every ounce of his strength to put the skids on what was almost happening. What he couldn’t allow to happen, much as he wanted it to.
* * *
WHEN HE DREW BACK, Amy looked up at him, dazed and stunned. Was he rejecting her? Had he suddenly realized that he didn’t want what she had to offer?
She knew she should just accept what was happening and withdraw, but she felt so hurt, she couldn’t retreat meekly. Clay had rejected her time and again, pushing her physically away, but this was Connor. Connor wouldn’t do that.
Would he?
“Did I do something wrong?” she asked him.
“What?” For a moment, he thought he hadn’t heard her correctly. And then he answered, “No, no, you didn’t. But I almost did.”
She kept telling herself to back away, but somehow, she just couldn’t. She had to know why he was rejecting her. “By making love with me?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“Do you find me that off-putting?” she asked, fighting back tears.
He looked at her as if she had suddenly lost her mind. “No, of course not.”
“Then why did you just pull away from me as if I had some kind of awful disease? Because I don’t,” she quickly assured him, wondering if she’d suddenly stumbled across the reason he was treating her as if she had leprosy or something equally as awful.
“I didn’t pull away from you because of something I thought you had,” he told her, moving away from her.
“Oh. Then you’re just not attracted to me.”
“Oh God, no. Just the opposite. I’m too attracted to you,” he said.
The frustration he was experiencing made him start to pace around the kitchen.
She stared at him, thoroughly confused. “You’re not making any sense, Connor.”
“Try looking at it from my perspective,” he said with a disparaging laugh.
“Okay. Then explain it to me,” she said. “Make me understand why, if you’re attracted to me like you just said you are, why you don’t want to kiss me.”
“I do.”
She took a deep breath, plunging in. “Or make love with me.”
“That’s just it,” he told her almost helplessly. “I do.”
“Then what’s the problem?” she cried, totally at a loss as to why they were at an impasse.
“The problem is that you’re vulnerable and hurt, and if I pressure you into making love with me, you might never forgive me. And then any chance we might have for something to develop between us will die.”
Amy stared at him, trying to absorb what Connor was saying. “You’re serious?”
“Yes,” Connor replied even though this was killing him.
“Connor, you would never pressure me,” she said. “And what makes you think I don’t want this?”
“You don’t want this,” he insisted. “You’re not thinking clearly.”
“You might be smarter than I am,” she allowed, remembering how well Connor had always done in high school. “But you are dead wrong. I am thinking very clearly and I have never wanted anything more in my whole life.”
He looked at her, his heart all but stopping. “You’re sure?”
“Very, very sure,” she told him in a low, soft whisper.
“Good enough for me,” he replied, sweeping her up into his arms the next moment. He began to walk to the stairs.
She linked her arms around his neck. “Where are we going?”
“I’d love to take you someplace exotic,” he said, “but you’ll have to settle for my room.”
She smiled up into his eyes. “What makes you think that’s not exotic?”
He kissed her then. Kissed her long and hard, causing time to temporarily stand still. “Exotic enough for you?” he asked as he began to walk up the stairs.
There was mischief in her eyes as she replied, “It’s a start.”
“Brace yourself for act two,” he whispered.
Her heart was pounding madly as her imagination took flight. It was finally happening.
“Braced and ready to go,” she told him in a hushed whisper.
Connor picked up his pace.
Chapter Sixteen
Connor’s room was only two doors down from Jamie’s bedroom. As he brought Amy to his bedroom, Connor sincerely hoped that the baby would continue sleeping, at least for the next hour. With all his heart, he wanted to make love with Amy.
But if the baby started to cry, Connor was certain that he would be able to hear him. He was not about to put his own needs, demanding though they were, above Jamie’s, or those of Jamie’s mother—and she would always be Jamie’s mother first and foremost.
Connor mentally crossed his fingers.
The moment Connor was inside his room, he pushed the door closed with the back of his elbow. There was no need to lock the door. The closed door afforded him all the privacy he needed. There was no one else in the ranch house, other than his housekeeper, and she was in her room downstairs.
Rita would never walk into his room if she needed something. At the very most, the woman would knock on his door. So for all intents and purposes, he and Amy were alone. And now that he had Amy’s full consent, he intended to act on his feelings, the feelings he had been harboring inside himself for such a very long time.
Lips still sealed to Amy’s, Connor set her down, letting her feet touch the floor.
As he slowly slid her down out of his arms, he held her close to him. So close that their heartbeats seemed to strike a rhythm, beating almost as if they were one.
Feeling her heart against his aroused Connor even more. He wanted her so much that it literally hurt, but even so, he held himself in check. Instinct told him that Clay had been a rough, demanding lover, and he did not want to do anything that would even vaguely remind Amy of the man she had run away from.
So Connor made love to her slowly, lyrically, causing every part of her to hum with anticipation. He made sure that every part of her would feel cherished and adored because she deserved that.
>
That and so much more.
Kissing Amy with reverence, his lips slowly moved from hers, lingering on her cheeks, her eyes, then the hollow of her throat.
Her sharp intake of breath made him go even slower to make sure that he left an imprint on her soul.
* * *
CONNOR CAUSED HER blood to rush the instant his lips traced a path from one side of her neck to the other. Her breath became shorter and shorter as her anticipation steadily grew, blossoming to huge proportions.
Though she couldn’t remember just how, Amy suddenly found herself with her back pressed against his bed as zippers and buttons were being parted and her clothes were slowly being peeled away, one inch at a time, until they eventually ceased to be barriers between them.
Her desire grew more and more intense as her anticipation continued to increase, reaching tremendous proportions. For the first time, Amy understood what lovemaking—and the hunger associated with it—was all about.
She had never felt like this before, never had eagerness seize her like this, gripping her and holding her fast as she desperately ached for, and sought, fulfillment...that final starburst of energy that she had only heard about but never experienced.
Impatient in her enthusiasm, she almost ripped Connor’s shirt and pulled frantically at his jeans until they were no longer in the way.
Her zeal seemed to completely overwhelm him as she sought to find a way to make Connor feel at least a little of the wondrous sensation that she was experiencing right then.
She was confident that he was well versed in lovemaking, but she felt like a complete novice, coming to the table with no real notion of what it felt like to be wanted for who and what she was.
With Clay, she had quickly been made to feel that she had only been an interchangeable entity and anyone could have been in her place instead of her.
Connor made her feel precious.
And desired.
* * *
AMY BECAME ALMOST FRENZIED. Catching her wrist to anchor her to the moment, Connor looked at her, stunned by this insatiable, incredible creature in his arms.
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