by Lexi Eddings
“Yeah,” Seth said with a dopey half smile on his handsome face. He clearly had no idea how steamed she was. “We got Lucky at the pound. He was a big hairy mutt, kind of old to start with, all white around his eyes and muzzle. But he needed a home and my mom wanted a dog that was already house trained. Anyway, Lucky was a great dog. He followed me around all day and slept on the foot of my bed every night.”
Her cheeks cooled a bit. Against her better judgment, she was beginning to be sucked in by his dog story. “Sounds like you were never lonely.”
“Nope, not with Lucky around. But like I said, he was an old dog when we got him. After only two years, he died.” His voice cracked with emotion. He wasn’t being flippant. The dog really had meant something to him. “It broke me up something terrible.”
She nodded. “How old were you?”
“Nine. Lucky was my best friend and he left me,” Seth said. “My dad offered to get me a puppy that summer, but I didn’t want one. I knew it was just a heartache with feet waiting to happen.”
“Then you do understand.” This time, she put her hand on his arm and it felt right. “If you don’t let anyone or anything in, they can’t hurt you.”
Effie meowed.
“Maybe that’s what happened to Effie, too,” Seth suggested. “I heard she was abandoned by the people who had this apartment before my cousin Lacy.”
“I never thought of that.”
“Of course, she’s only a cat. They don’t get attached to much except their supper bowls.”
“That’s not true. Cats can be very affectionate.”
“Ever catch Effie being that way?”
“No, but if she’s been abandoned so often, maybe she does suffer from attachment disorder. I wonder if I can help her get over it.”
“Yeah, Effie needs help. That’s for dang sure, but you haven’t let me finish my dog story yet.” He took her hand in his. This time, she didn’t feel the need to pull away. “After a while, I started thinking that I was being selfish by not wanting another dog.”
“Selfish? How do you figure?”
“There are lots of dogs out there that need homes. My folks were okay with me having one. And as it turned out, I needed one,” Seth said.
“I get that you like dogs, but they aren’t exactly a need.”
“They are for a kid. Even if you’ve got family and friends, who doesn’t need a little more unconditional love?”
Unconditional love sounded good. Something soft and sure that you could love and that something would return the feeling no matter what. Angie had no idea what that must be like.
But her childhood wouldn’t have been helped by having a dog. It would have been one more thing to lose each time she was yanked to a different home. She’d have worried about a dog if she’d had to leave one. Cats tended to land on their feet.
Just like she always did.
More or less . . .
“So we got a puppy and this one was with me till I graduated from high school,” Seth went on. If he noticed she’d been silent for a while, he gave no sign of it. “And yeah, I buried that one too, and I was just as sad about losing him as I was about Lucky. But being sad when a relationship is over is the price you pay for the joy that you had together.”
“So, are you trying to tell me that relationships with people are like the ones you had with your dogs?”
“When you put it like that, it sounds stupid. I’m not explaining this very well.” He sighed and shook his head. “I guess I’m trying to say you can’t judge the future by the past.”
“But every single time you take in a dog, eventually, it ends the same. The dog dies and leaves you.”
“Yeah, but that’s not what I was getting at.”
“What are you trying to say, then?”
“You. And that Manning guy. It ended badly, but it doesn’t always have to,” he said. Angie knew he was seriously trying to explain something since he hadn’t purposely mangled Peter’s name. “You took a risk with him, but he hurt you and it sucks. I’d be happy to deck him for you if I ever see him again.”
“You won’t.” Trust a guy to think everything can be settled with his fists.
“Here’s hoping. Not that I’d mind laying him out good and proper,” he added quickly, “but you don’t deserve to have to be reminded of the past.”
Angie sighed. “I still don’t get your metaphor. How is my relationship with Peter like your dog story?”
“I guess it’s not.” His broad shoulders slumped a bit.
“Then what do you mean, Seth?”
He met her gaze with his clear-eyed one. He looked so intent, so earnest, she’d believe anything that came out of his mouth. “Just that I’m not like Peter. If you take a chance on me, I won’t hurt you.”
Her breath caught in her throat. She reached up a tentative hand and pressed her palm on his cheek for a second or two. Then she jerked it away.
“I believe you wouldn’t mean to, but you can’t be sure you wouldn’t.”
“I can be sure I’d do my best not to,” Seth said. “Do you wish you’d never known Peter?”
Now he wasn’t even calling him Manning. This was obviously a serious discussion.
“Sometimes.”
“You know why you don’t regret it all the time?”
She shook her head.
“Because, it wasn’t all bad with the guy,” he said, gritting his teeth as if it half killed him to force the words out. “You must have had some good times.”
“We did,” Angie admitted.
“And you were able to ‘attach’ with him, right?”
She nodded. “He was the first. The only, really. I trusted him. I took a risk with him, and . . . he threw me away.”
A muscle twitched along Seth’s jaw. He looked like he wanted to pound Peter Manning into next week.
“If you took a chance once, that tells me you could do it again,” he said.
“It tells me I may not want to,” Angie said. “You only have to smash your thumb once to become leery of hammers.”
“As someone who’s had his share of smashed thumbs, I can tell you, Angie, you can’t protect yourself out of life. Even folks who don’t have your . . . issues, get hurt sometimes.”
“Have you ever been hurt?”
* * *
The girls he thought he’d loved and lost traipsed through his mind. It was a short parade. “I was hurt a time or two,” he admitted. “You know how teenage boys are.”
“Not so much.” She shook her head, but she hadn’t taken her hand from his. It gave him hope. “I never understood how guys think. It’s like you’re from another planet.”
“They’ve pretty much debunked that men are from Mars, women are from Venus thing. Everybody comes into this world with the same wants and needs.”
She pulled her hand away from his and folded it with the other in her lap. “And sometimes we just need to be left alone.”
Dang! We’re going backward. “Okay, answer me this. What did Peter Manning do to convince you to take a chance on him?”
She put a hand to her forehead and sighed. “He noticed me.”
“That’s it?”
“That was a lot at the time,” she admitted. “I’d been pretty much invisible for years, but then suddenly this guy started bumping into me on campus every day. First, it was just a nod and a smile. Then one day, he saw me coming off the track—I ran cross-country back then—and he called out, ‘How you doing, Legs?’ ”
“Legs?”
There was that blush again. “Yeah, I wore pretty short shorts when I ran.”
“That’s it? A guy compliments your legs and you fall for him?” Heck, he’d call her “Legs” all day long if that was all it took.
“No, that was just the beginning. He hung around and when I came out of the locker room, he had a cold Gatorade waiting for me. It was . . . unexpectedly kind.”
But not unplanned. Seth could see the pattern in Manning’s siege on An
gie’s heart. He’d bet any amount of money the guy had researched her and knew a lot more about her than the fact that she had great legs. It smacked of covert activities almost, an Operation Angie Holloway. Manning must have discovered her vulnerabilities and taken advantage of them.
All it took for her to think Peter unexpectedly kind was a Gatorade. She must not have experienced much kindness in her life. Something inside Seth ached for the lost child she’d been. “Nobody ever brought you a cold drink before?”
“Nobody ever thought about the fact that I needed one. Peter anticipated everything.”
“Of course, he did,” Seth said flatly. As rare as attention had been for Angie, she must have been an easy mark.
“Anyway, we became a couple the first semester of my freshman year. I won’t lie to you. I fell hard.”
Manning had undoubtedly counted on that.
“When did it fall apart?” he asked.
“A week before Peter graduated. He told me he was headed east for law school.”
“Did he ask you to go with him?”
She shook her head. “He said he needed to make a clean break so he could concentrate on his studies. But it was more than that,” she admitted. “He knew me well enough to know I’d be lost in DC. Big cities freak me out.”
“Which is why you’re here in Coldwater.”
“It’s one of the reasons.”
“What are the others?” Seth asked.
“Fewer people, fewer risks, I guess. That’s the main one,” Angie said.
“People are a risk. Every single time. But they’re worth it, mostly.” Seth leaned toward her a little and she didn’t lean away. “At least the ones that promise they mean you well. I do, you know.”
She nodded. “I’m beginning to believe you.”
Then, to his great surprise, she closed the distance between them and gave him a peck on the cheek.
“What was that for?”
“Because I’ve been kind of terrible to you since we first met. No, don’t deny it.” She waved away his objections. “I know I have. It’s like I can’t help myself. There’s this ball of something inside me that lashes out once in a while and you’ve been catching the brunt of it lately.”
“And you thought a quick kiss would make up for it?”
“Well, no . . . maybe?”
“Look, Angie, a kiss shouldn’t be a consolation prize.”
“What should it be?”
“You want me to show you?”
She swallowed hard. “Yes.”
Chapter 18
A kiss is the gateway to the soul. When your lips touch someone else’s, you discover who they are. Once you kiss them, you can’t ever un-know them. That’s the glory and the terror of a kiss.
—Angela Holloway, who’s only kissed one other man in her whole life
What would Colonel Brandon do? Seth wondered for half a heartbeat before telling himself, He’d kiss the lady, you fool.
But he was still wary about scaring her off. If he kissed Angie the way he wanted to, he probably would. So he bridled himself and moved in to just brush his lips across hers.
At the last second, she tipped her head in the same direction as his and their foreheads came together with a resounding smack.
“Well, that wasn’t very good,” he said, rubbing his noggin.
“No, it wasn’t,” she said with a giggle. “In fact, it was amazingly awful.”
“Give me another shot. I can do better than amazingly awful.”
“All right,” she said with a laugh that sounded suspiciously like a snort. “Just so you don’t have to worry about a moving target, I’ll hold still this time.”
Not if I have anything to say about it. He wanted to feel her move, pressing her lips against his, snugging her body up to his, but this wasn’t the time for that kind of kiss.
True to her word, she didn’t move. He decided he could risk touching her cheek. It was soft and smooth and surprisingly warm. Probably on account of the way her skin bloomed bright pink under his palm.
He loved it when she blushed.
Seth ran the pad of his thumb over her lips. She didn’t pull away. Instead her eyes closed.
He wanted to tell her to keep them open. He needed her to know who she was kissing. There was always the risk that she’d be thinking about Manning while she was kissing him, but this wasn’t the time to make demands on her.
This was his time to give.
Seth leaned in, pausing for just a moment about an inch from his goal. Her warm breath feathered softly across his mouth. Then he closed the distance between them and covered her lips with his.
Seth was no expert, but he’d kissed his share of girls. He thought he knew what to expect. He could read the signs, like when a spring storm came up out on the prairie. When he saw lightning in the distance, he knew he’d hear thunder in a few seconds.
Nothing in his past prepared him for this kiss.
His heart thudded so hard, he could hear it pounding in his ears. Surely she must hear it, too. But if she did, she gave no sign.
Instead, Angie raised her hands and draped her arms around his shoulders while the kiss went on and on.
It hit him suddenly that he and this woman were sharing a breath. Almost like they were exchanging souls if he wanted to go all new age touchy-feely about it, and yet, he had no idea what she was really thinking. Or feeling.
Maybe because he was swamped by his own emotions.
He was engulfed by a heady mix of tenderness and longing, of protectiveness tangled up with lust. Her lips were sweet as honey, but there was also a sting of pain in her kiss. It was as if he could feel her past hurts, her aloneness. The bone-deep sadness in her nearly suffocated him, but he wouldn’t have broken off their kiss for worlds.
If it killed him, he wouldn’t abandon Angie. Not ever. She’d had enough of that in her life already.
He wasn’t sure how long the kiss lasted. Time sort of expanded and contracted around them. The only thing he was certain of was that she was the first to pull away. Not far though. In fact, she was still near enough to rest her forehead against his.
“That was . . .” she whispered, and he realized she was struggling for breath as much as he.
“Better?” He hoped so. “Amazingly awful” was a terrible black mark for a guy to have on his record.
“The best,” she assured him.
He started to kiss her again, but she put a couple of fingers to his lips.
“I don’t think we should do that again.”
“Why the heck not?” After all, it was the best. Her words.
“Because I think it’s time you went home.”
“Why?”
“Because . . . I want you to stay,” she admitted. “And you shouldn’t.”
Seth wanted to argue the point, but he could hear his uncle George in his head. Discretion is the better part of valor, the old man had told Seth often enough. He’d never really understood what it meant until now.
Seth could press on and Angie might let him stay. Anything could happen if he did, and while part of him cheered this line of thinking with great enthusiasm, a wiser part whispered the truth to him. If he pushed Angie now, he’d be violating her trust.
He didn’t want her for just a night, he realized with a jolt. He wanted her for a whole lifetime of nights. The revelation hit him with the force of a Mack truck.
Angie was the one. The only. He didn’t know why for sure, only that it was so. Just as his aunt Shirley had told him, Angie “would do.”
The bumps and wrinkles in her soul fitted perfectly with the ones in his. They were both better when they were together. They’d do for each other for the rest of their lives.
But Angie, like her Jane Austen heroine, thought she was stronger alone. Seth would have to disabuse her of that notion.
It wouldn’t be easy.
“Okay,” he said, and pressed a quick kiss to her forehead. “I’ll go for now. But I’m coming back tomor
row.”
“I’m counting on it.”
A smile bloomed across her face. It lifted her cheeks and made her eyes dance. It was the smile he’d been wanting to see since the first time they met.
* * *
“That was exactly what I needed.” Stretched out on the bed, Sabine raised her arms above her head, pointed her toes, and arched her back, catlike. “You always get all the kinks out.”
“I’d like to get some kinks in. I’ve wanted us to try something kinky for months.” Peter was already seated on the edge of the bed, pulling on his pants. That was the good thing about his deal with Sabine. She didn’t expect him to hang around after their marathon in her big four-poster bed was over. It was a simple, effective arrangement that suited them both.
Most of the time.
“I could bring some toys next week,” he suggested.
“We don’t need them,” Sabine said. “Really, Peter, all I want is a horizontal aerobics session and I’m good. You must be, too, or you wouldn’t keep coming back every Thursday.”
When they first realized they could fool around with each other without forming an emotional attachment, they’d agreed on Thursday as their standing night. That way they were each free to see other people on Friday and Saturday.
Not that either of them were into the idea of a real relationship with someone else. They didn’t have the time. Billing a ridiculous number of hours each week didn’t leave much for anything else.
To be honest, Peter didn’t have the emotional energy to sink into another person. Why should he put himself out, knowing he might have to someday cut that tie? A small part of his heart he’d never admit existed still smarted over the way he’d had to push Ange out of his life.
Of course, it had been the right thing to do. He never doubted that. Being laser focused while he earned his law degree at Georgetown was the only way to get through the rigorous course of study. Being close to Angela Holloway had made him sloppy. He’d caught himself putting time with her ahead of studying more than once. To make it in the DC law game, he’d needed more than a summa cum laude asterisk on his degree. He had to network like crazy. During his time at Georgetown, he spent every waking moment he wasn’t with his study group making connections that would serve him well once he graduated. He made it a point to suck up to his Ivy League classmates, who stood to inherit businesses or prestigious firms in the hope that they’d throw him cases later. Since Peter didn’t come from money, he’d always had to try harder.
