One-Click Buy: September 2010 Harlequin Blaze

by Lori Wilde

  She deleted the travelogue, assured Violet that she’d write more soon and sent the e-mail. Then she called up a search engine and typed in post-traumatic stress. She hit enter and waited to see what Google would offer her.

  Lots, was the answer. More than she could ever take in in a lifetime. She read for over three hours about the various symptoms and treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder. By the time she pushed the chair away from the desk she had as many questions as she did answers. Nate’s drinking, his reliance on distraction, his avoidance of his business partner and retreat from his former life…it seemed to her that he must be suffering from a broad range of classic PTSD symptoms: reexperiencing the event in the form of flashbacks; avoiding places and events that might trigger one; hyperarousal or being on edge; problems with sleep and angry outbursts. But it was impossible for her to know without talking to him.

  She made note of a few book titles and went to the bookstore five doors up to see what they had to offer. There was one self-help title that didn’t look very promising, but she had more luck at the local library. By the end of the day she felt reasonably well-informed.

  Well-informed enough to understand what she was getting into if she tried to pursue this thing with Nate.

  It was clear that recovery was going to be long and slow, if it occurred at all. Some people never fully healed from the trauma that tore their lives apart. Like Nate, they retreated into a corner and survived as best they could. Many of them turned to alcohol and drugs.

  It was a lot to take on. Which meant she had a decision to make. A big one.

  She’d known Nathan Jones for five days, give or take a few hours either way. She didn’t know what school he’d gone to or his parents’ names or what his favorite color was or the name of his first pet. She didn’t know which way he leaned politically or whether he gave to charity or which five people, living or dead, he’d invite to dinner.

  What she did know was that he needed her. She knew that when he touched her she felt beautiful and sexy and brave. She knew he was kind and generous, despite the fact that his own life was overshadowed by tragedy and trauma.

  And she knew that when he’d pressed his head to her chest and sobbed out his pain she’d wanted to take his burden away from him with a fierce, bone-deep urgency that defied logic and common sense.

  So, it really wasn’t a decision at all, when it came down to it.

  Maybe she was crazy to feel this way after only five days. But she was sure stranger things had happened in the world. And at the end of the day, it was what it was. And what it was was this: she was invested. Heavily.

  So.

  Armed with her new knowledge, self and otherwise, she went searching for Nate.

  NATE AVOIDED MAIN STREET for the next few days. Every time he thought about what he’d done—running crying to Elizabeth like a little kid and dumping all his ugly, messed-up shit on her in one foul swoop—he got angry with himself and life and fate all over again.

  Apparently it wasn’t enough that he’d lost his sister and his business and everything that had once made him feel complete and successful and alive. Apparently he had to throw the last remnants of his pride and self-respect on the table, too, and barter them away for a few moments of comfort and succor.

  It was freaking humiliating. And what scared him the most was how much he wanted to do it all over again. Talking to Lizzy, having her hold him and listen and understand, had been the most difficult and yet comforting few hours he’d experienced in months. For a short time, the constant tension binding his chest and shoulders had eased.

  Which was why he had to stay away from Main Street and the Isle of Wight Hotel and anywhere Lizzy might be. They’d had sex a handful of times. He’d helped her out with her father, given her a sailing lesson and her first experience of oral sex. None of those things gave him the right to impose on her the way he had. He’d stepped over the line, way over the line. She’d been incredibly generous, listening to him, soothing him, but he already knew she was a good person. No way was he going to impose on her goodwill again and take advantage of her good nature. No. Way.

  It didn’t stop him from thinking about her all the time, of course. About the crisp, cool sound of her voice and the warm light in her eyes and the way she frowned when she didn’t quite understand if he was joking or not.

  Amazing that you could miss someone who had barely arrived in your life, and yet that was the way he felt. Just as well he was never going to see her again.

  He killed the days with beer and surfing and sailing, and when that still left the night hours to fill he walked the beach, following the sand around the island until the rising tide forced him to turn back.

  On the third day of his self-imposed Elizabeth ban, he looked up from rigging the main sail on the Ducky to find her walking across the beach toward him. She was wearing a pair of bright pink board shorts and a long-sleeved aqua lycra rash vest. White zinc covered her nose and cheeks and a floppy hat shaded her face.

  She should have looked ridiculous but she didn’t. Lust and need and want hit him in the solar plexus and he fixed his gaze on the shackle he was tightening and hoped he didn’t look as goddamned desperate as he felt.

  “You’re a hard man to track down,” she said when she came to a halt beside the catamaran.

  “I’ve been busy.”

  He fed the headboard into the mast and began pulling on the halyard to hoist the sail. “I see.”

  He concentrated on the sail, making sure it was locked in place before wrapping the halyard around the mast cleat.

  Maybe if he simply ignored her, she would go away. Then he wouldn’t have to look at her and want her and remind himself of all the good reasons why whatever had been happening between them was done and why it had never had a future in the first place.

  It was such a childish notion that he immediately rejected it. At the very least he owed her an apology for the other night and for leaving the way he had.

  He cleared his throat and forced himself to look at her. “Listen. About the other night. I’m sorry for barging in on you like I did. I was out of line and too pissed to make much sense and it shouldn’t have happened.”

  He waited for her to respond, but she simply stared at him for a long moment before reaching for one of the coils of rope on the trampoline.

  “This is the one we thread through the pulleys on the boom, right?” she asked.

  He didn’t understand why she was here. What she wanted. Then the penny dropped and he got it: she felt sorry for him. Poor old Nate, crying out his pain and fear. Boo freaking hoo.

  He reached out and tugged the coil of rope from her hands.

  “You should go,” he said tersely.

  “Should I?” She snatched the rope back.

  He frowned. “I said I was sorry, okay? There’s nothing more to say and I don’t need a social worker.”

  “If I was your social worker, Nathan Jones, I would be up in front of an ethics committee in a flash. Now, where does this rope go?”

  When he didn’t do anything except continue to frown at her, she began uncoiling the rope.

  “Fine. I’ll do it my way and you can fix it later.”

  She moved to where one of the clam cleats was fixed on the starboard hull and started feeding the rope through it. A strand of hair slid out of her hat as she worked, grazing her cheek before coming to rest in a curl over her breast.

  He told himself to tell her to go away again. He didn’t want her pity. He wasn’t sure what he did want from her, but it certainly wasn’t that.

  She glanced up then and he looked straight into the deep blue of her eyes.

  “You owe me another sailing lesson,” she said.

  It wasn’t as simple as that, and they both knew it. But he didn’t have the resolve to push her away a third time, which probably made him a weak bastard. But then that was nothing new, was it?

  NATE BARELY SPOKE A word as they prepared the Ducky for sailing. He gave her
instructions and took care to avoid touching her and only made eye contact when necessary. She took her cue from him and worked in silence until they were ready to co-opt some of the other club members into helping them carry the Ducky to the water. This time she lent her might to the effort, even though it was mostly token might since there was a man at each corner. Still, it was symbolic. She was here to participate.

  She moved to the opposite side of the cat as Nate once they were in the shallows, guiding the boat into deeper water.

  “Up you get,” Nate said, and she scrambled onto the trampoline, water streaming from her legs.

  He joined her a few seconds later and they concentrated on getting the boat out. She ducked when he told her to and shuffled from side to side as he tacked first one way then another. She took the tiller when he raised the jib, then followed his instructions to reset it each time they tacked.

  Slowly, over first one hour then two, the taut, distant expression left his face. Then and only then did she stretch out full length on the trampoline and rest her head on his thigh as he sat at the tiller, closing her eyes and crossing her ankles. She felt him look down at her but she didn’t open her eyes. The tense thigh beneath her head slowly relaxed. After a few minutes, she turned her head and pressed a kiss against his skin.

  “Lizzy…” he said. His voice was very low.

  “Yes?”

  “This isn’t going to happen.”

  “Why not?”

  He swore under his breath. “You know why not.”

  “No, Nathan, I don’t.” She sat up and turned to face him.

  He was frowning again, and the taut look was back on his face.

  “I don’t want your pity, Elizabeth.”

  Amazing how unfriendly her own name sounded coming from him when she’d gotten so used to the way he called her Lizzy.

  “Just as well, because you don’t have my pity. You are the least pitiful person I know, as a matter of fact. I empathize with you. I feel for you. I regret your pain. But I don’t pity you, Nathan. And if you don’t understand the difference then maybe you should think about cutting back on all that beer you drink.”

  “I don’t want your empathy, either.” He sounded as sulky and out of sorts as a child but she understood that his weakness the other night struck at the heart of how he saw himself in the world.

  “What do you want? My vagina? My breasts? My mouth? Am I leaving out any other useful body parts?”

  He glared at her. “You came looking for me. Remember?”

  “And you came looking for me the other night,” she countered.

  He looked away. “That was a mistake.”

  “Nathan…”

  Because she didn’t know what else to do, how to get through to him, she grabbed a fistful of his hair and pressed her mouth to his. He resisted her kiss at first, then his mouth opened beneath hers and his tongue slid into her mouth. She kissed him until they were both breathless. When they drew apart, he stared straight into her eyes and she saw so much desperation and need in him it made her chest ache.

  “You don’t understand,” he said. “The other night—that’s just the tip of the iceberg.”

  She nodded and raised her hand, counting off the points she’d researched. “Let me guess—flashbacks, night sweats, anxiety attacks, insomnia, quick to anger. How am I doing?”

  A muscle tensed in his jaw. “I can’t drive.”

  It was her turn to frown as she thought over all their time together. Sure enough, they’d walked everywhere.

  “I take it you’ve tried?” she asked after a brief silence.

  “Yes.”

  “Do you mind being in a car when someone else is driving?” she asked.

  He brushed a hand over his hair and squinted toward the horizon. He clearly hated talking about this stuff, was about as comfortable as a cat having its fur stroked the wrong way.

  “I tolerate it,” he said. “It’s not my favorite thing in the world, but I can do it. But I don’t like driving at night.”

  She nodded. “Okay.”

  He glanced across at her. “That’s it?”

  She shrugged. “It’s good to know these things.”

  “Lizzy.”

  “You keep saying that,” she said. Then she leaned close and laid her cheek against his. “I like you, Nathan Jones. You make me laugh and you challenge me and you’re very, very good in bed. I want to keep spending time with you. What’s so hard about any of that?”

  “I’m a basket case, Lizzy.”

  “I’m not exactly a bargain myself, you know. I’ve spent my entire adult life pleasing other people. I’m fresh out of an engagement I never should have agreed to in the first place. Before I met you I’d never had sex in any position other than missionary.”

  His gaze searched hers and she held his gaze un flinchingly.

  “You should be running for the hills,” he said.

  “But I’m not.”

  He reached out and framed her face with his hands. “If I was a better person, I’d make you run.”

  “You could try. There’s no guarantee you’d succeed, though. I’ve discovered a stubborn streak lately.”

  “Lizzy.”

  “There you go again with the Lizzying.” Then, because she could see how much this small moment of connection meant to him, how much he needed it, and she was very afraid that any minute the emotion welling up inside her was going to translate into waterworks, she leaned close and kissed him again.

  THAT NIGHT, NATE TURNED away from rinsing the last of their dinner plates at the sink to find Elizabeth absorbed in the local paper at the kitchen table.

  The overhead light shone in her pale blond hair and cast shadows beneath her cheekbones. He stood at the counter, folded the tea towel and resisted the urge to go to her and make love to her for the third time that day.

  She was beautiful and funny and generous and prim—and he couldn’t believe she was here. Couldn’t believe that she hadn’t backed off at a million miles an hour after his performance the other night or the revelation that he was still so haunted by the accident that he couldn’t do something as simple and everyday as drive a car.

  But she hadn’t flinched, hadn’t so much as looked away when he’d confessed his weakness. And when they’d come back to his place after sailing, she’d pushed him down onto the bed and left him in no doubt as to whether she still wanted him, despite everything.

  Lying in bed with her in his arms, he’d caught a glimpse of a future that might not be simple, bare-bones, batten-down-the-hatches survival. A future that wasn’t simply about endurance.

  He walked around the counter and rested his hand on the back of her chair.

  “Having a nice time there?” he said.

  She glanced over her shoulder at him. “Did you know they delivered twin wombats at the local wildlife reserve? There’s a picture here but they said they’re not letting anyone in to see them until they’re fully weaned. Look how cute they are.”

  He dutifully scanned the photograph accompanying the story. “Cute.”

  “We don’t have wombats in England,” she said. “The closest we have are the Wombles of Wimbledon Common.”

  She was being funny and he rewarded her with a kiss. “Want to toast marshmallows on what’s left of the fire in the barbecue?” he asked.

  “Why, sir, I thought you’d never ask.”

  They lay on the picnic blanket and made themselves sick and sticky with gooey marshmallows.

  “I never know when to stop,” Elizabeth said as she rubbed her stomach. “My mother used to call me a pelican—eyes too big for my belly-can.”

  “You miss her.”

  She pulled a face. “Stupid, huh? She’s been gone for more than twenty years.”

  “Not stupid,” he said. Impossible to stop his thoughts from going to Olivia. There were so many things he missed about her. The sound of her off-key singing when she danced to her iPod, her shoes cluttering the front hallway thanks to her hab
it of kicking them off the moment she entered the house, the way she’d send him little text messages through the day—their own personal Twitter—keeping him up-to-date on her world.

  “You never mention your parents,” Elizabeth said.

  It took him a moment to change gears, push Olivia deep inside himself.

  “They’re both dead. Dad had a car accident when I was ten. Mum died a few years ago. Cancer.”

  “I’m so sorry.”

  “Yeah. We’re not exactly the lucky Joneses, are we?” he said.

  She shifted beside him, rolling onto her side and propping her head on her bent arm. “It must have made it harder. Losing Olivia, I mean. Because you were her parent for the past few years.”

  For longer than that. His mother had battled for nearly two years before dying. Olivia had come to live with him when she was twelve. He’d had five years of being her everything before she died.

  He’d been silent too long and Elizabeth reached out to touch his chest.

  “You don’t like to talk about it.”

  “Not much to say, is there?”

  She leaned close and kissed him. “No, I guess there isn’t.”

  She settled down beside him again, her head on his shoulder this time, her arm across his chest. She didn’t say anything else, and neither did he.

  He made love to her when they turned in for the night, swallowing her moans as he pushed himself deep inside her. She wrapped her legs around his waist and dug her fingers into his back as she came, her body strung as tight as a bow. He hung on to the pleasure for as long as he could before he succumbed. Then he tucked her body against his own and fell asleep.

  9

  NATE WOKE WITH AN idea fully formed in his mind the next morning. He wanted to give Elizabeth something back, something in return for her thoughtful silences and silken body and warm eyes. Something to make her smile.

  He eased out of bed to find his phone and slipped outside to make a couple of calls.

  Elizabeth was sitting up and blinking by the time he returned.