by Leanne Davis
And she wasn’t a one-night stand. To his surprise, he now believed that about her.
But he sure as hell wasn’t a relationship type.
She was suddenly looking at him differently. He wasn’t in the league of physical beauty for his gender, as she was for hers, but she seemed to like what she saw in him. Her eyes widened as she stared at his lips.
He didn’t know what to do with that.
Nothing? Everything? He hadn’t felt this way since Shelly died. Three years was a long time not to feel anything.
He cupped the perfection of Kelly’s face, feeling her cheek, warm and soft in his hand, and far better than any picture ever taken of her. She didn’t blink. She stared at him, confused, as if waiting to see what he did next before she reacted. So he kissed her.
At first, just a meeting of the lips, innocent and soft. He touched only her face, and their bodies were feet apart. He hadn’t touched a woman in a long time. It was a mistake. He hadn’t been with anyone since his wife, and suddenly, now it was Kelly whom he wanted? It made no sense. It was a terrible idea.
And yet even with all those warnings in his head, he kissed her. He matched their mouths together, rubbed a hand down her long neck, over her delicate collar bone and down her back until he could haul her closer. Her arms crept around his neck in a chaste embrace, so at odds with her centerfold body.
Her tongue responded to his, and suddenly, the kiss exploded. She was against him, every soft spot of hers pressed tightly to every hard spot of his. They started making out like he hadn’t since he was a teenager. It was intoxicating to kiss someone new. Someone different. Someone who wasn’t his wife. He sat up straight. It jarred him, sending a flash of pain through his heart. God damn, would there ever be a time when Shelly wasn’t at the forefront of everything he did? Including when he was about to have sex with someone else?
Chapter Nine
Kelly suddenly jerked her mouth off his and pushed his hand away. He let go of her as if she’d suddenly gone radioactive. Warning bells instantly went off in his head. Of course, she was reacting. The things Cassie had told him filled his brain.
Kelly got up after the sudden silence that seemed to douse both of them in cold water. She slammed the sliding door open and stepped out onto the terrace.
Awkward didn’t even begin to cover this. He remembered exactly now why he hadn’t pursued anything close to dating since his wife died. Who needed it? It was complicated no matter how hard a person tried to keep it simple. What it usually involved was messy emotions. Sex wasn’t just sex, unless you truly found a stranger who could never find you again, which in this case, Kelly most definitely was not. Luke’s heart was lead in his chest. In the past, he had no problem dating or dealing with women. He always understood sex took a certain amount of talking and listening to a woman. He and Shelly had worked through many problems to be together. But this wasn’t Shelly. And suddenly, it seemed like too much for him to deal with. Kelly wasn’t Shelly. There was no past, no closeness, no intimacy. And he didn’t want to create any either.
Why had he started something that would lead to this? Messy emotions he didn’t have any will to deal with? He was sorry for what happened to Kelly as a child. Hell, at one time, he’d have slain her dragons. But that was ten years ago, before the light of his life was extinguished. The death of Shelly had taken most of the ambition out of his life, including striving to be close to someone, intimate, involved. He craved being numb toward others, he embraced that state of being, in fact. And until tonight, it was working.
Kelly got to him. But what good was that? They had no future. He wasn’t ready for any kind of relationship, even friendship was a stretch.
However, there was no ducking out of the condo and pretending this all away. He sighed then as he followed Kelly out and leaned on the railing next to her. She stared intently out toward the beach. A breeze ruffled her long hair, stirring it softly around her. She lifted a hand up and tugged the hair off her face.
“I’m not going to have sex with you,” she said finally.
“I know. But still I…”
Her entire body shifted, straightened, turned toward him. “What do you mean you know that? How could you?”
“I just know.”
“You just know? How? And why were you about to take responsibility for what happened in there? You probably think I jump into bed with different men on a daily basis.”
“Didn’t we just establish you’re every opposite of what you portray?”
“Yes, but it’s more than that. You changed your opinion of me because of something Cassie told you, didn’t you? It wasn’t just because you had a sudden epiphany that I wasn’t such a bitch. What did Cassie say to you?”
He really wished he’d kept his mouth shut, both out here and back on the couch. He wasn’t up for trying to tell Kelly that she’d been molested, but was still in such denial that she blocked it out of her memory. Kelly probably didn’t understand her own reaction to sex, how could he explain it to her?
“What did Cassie tell you?”
“Just some stuff from your childhood.”
“That I was raped?” Kelly asked bluntly.
“Yes.”
“And you think that’s why I won’t have sex with you? Why I stopped it?”
“Isn’t it?”
“Cassie had no right to tell you that.”
“In her defense, she only told me because I was being an ass. I was so drunk after their wedding, I didn’t know if you and I had slept together.”
“So you asked my sister?”
“No. I apologized to your sister for it.”
“You apologized to my sister for having sex with me?” Her eyes bugged out of her head, her shrill screech was fingernails on a chalkboard.
“Yes, I did. And you can imagine how that went over. But in the course of her explaining to me that I hadn’t slept with you, well, I kind of picked up on something deeper going on.”
“That I was raped.”
He nodded.
“It really wasn’t Cassie’s place to tell you.”
“Don’t be angry at her. I don’t think she’s making that up,” he said gently.
“I know that,” Kelly snapped. Luke took a step back at her vehemence.
“You do?”
“I’m not an idiot. I was thirteen, after all. I know what happened to me.”
“But…why doesn’t Cassie know that? I don’t get it? You tell Cassie everything, but not this? Why would you be so cruel as to let your sister think you’ve repressed this memory?”
Kelly’s shoulders hunched, and she turned back toward the beach. “It’s not like that.”
“Then what?”
“That night, I wasn’t raped by one of my mother’s one-night stands, it was one of my sister’s. Cassie came home with some guy, and once she passed out, he came and found me. When Cassie came to and caught the man with me, she didn’t recognize him. She thought it was one of Heather’s men, not the man she’d just picked up and had sex with an hour earlier. Actually, it’s lucky she came, too. She stopped the man from full on raping me. Still, he did traumatize me enough that it stuck with me for a long time.”
Luke blinked. His mouth dropped open. “Why did you lie? Why the hell do you still?”
“I was afraid she’d leave me.”
“She’d never leave you.”
“She might have back then, and where would I be? I made a split-second decision and have stuck by it as the best thing I could do to this day.”
“I don’t get it.”
“If Cassie ever realized she dragged home the man who hurt me, she’d leave. She’d think I was better off without her bad influence. Don’t you see? Cassie would never have been able to live with herself. She’d take herself away from me as her way of protecting me.”
“So you blamed your mother?”
“Yes. I blamed my mother. And that’s one of the major reasons my mother and Cassie don’t get along. Heath
er denied Cassie’s allegations because Heather was telling the truth. She didn’t have a man over that night. But I had to pick the lesser of two evils. My mom and Cassie don’t get along, but I couldn’t live without Cassie. So I had to lie.”
“Why do you still?”
Kelly shrugged. “It’s been so many years. How could I suddenly change my story? Sure, Cassie wants me to remember, but it’s better than her blaming herself, which she will. Then what will she do?”
“You think Cassie would revert back to her old ways, don’t you?”
“For a long time she would have. Then once she had Tim, it seemed inconsequential to me to look back, when all I wanted was to look forward. Cassie finally straightened out when she got pregnant, and that’s all I ever wanted. I waited for years for her to stop all the destructive stuff she did. When it was finally over, how could I ever put that into jeopardy? Because it would have. That’s how Cassie is when it comes to me. She thinks she’s responsible for everything I am, or am not, which, in a way, she is, but it shouldn’t have been her responsibility. It should have been my mother’s. Go ahead, judge me, but I did what was best for us.”
“You were thirteen years old, how could you think I’d judge you for whatever you did?”
“I was so focused on making sure Cassie didn’t know what really happened, that I didn’t give much thought that I needed her to deal with it.”
“So did you ever? Deal with it?”
“Yes. I read books.”
“Books?”
“Sure.”
“Like Consumer Reports? You did your research on dealing with childhood molestation?”
“Don’t laugh. Those books made me feel less alone, and less weird.”
“Have you ever talked about it?”
“Yes. I eventually went to a counselor once I had enough money. So you see, I don’t possess deep, dark, subconscious memories that are jumping out to bite me when I least expect it.”
“But now? You should tell Cassie the truth.”
“What Cassie doesn’t know isn’t hurting her, and knowing this will hurt her more than you could ever realize. There is nothing to be gained by telling Cassie.”
“Except the truth. You could show Cassie you trust her. That is, if you actually do trust her.”
“Of course, I trust her. No one has worked as hard as Cassie has to turn her life around.”
“Then consider giving her the credit that she can handle this without falling apart. At least, tell her the truth so she knows what to be upset about.”
Kelly was quiet, and then said, “I’ll consider it.”
He looked at her profile. “What about what happened between us?”
“It’s not what you’re thinking. I don’t freak out about sex because I was hurt as a child.”
“All right. Then why did you freak out about sex?”
“Expectations.”
“Expectations?”
“Yes.” She turned to him and looked him in the eye. “Men have expectations of me because of what I do for living. They’ve seen pictures of me, pictures they’ve used to turn themselves on. So when they have me in person, they seem to expect some fantasy that I’m not, and they are always disappointed.”
Luke considered her explanation, and then asked gently, “This happened more than once?”
“Enough so that I don’t feel like being told I’m better on paper.”
She turned and glared at the darkened beach. The waves roared around them. He lifted an arm and nudged her forward against him. She was such a damn contradiction. It came across loud and clear she had sex issues, but he’d been wrong about the cause. It wasn’t repressed rape issues, but someone humiliating her.
“You can’t think every guy would be like that.”
“It happened enough for me to figure out that I can’t ever live up to my own reputation.”
“Because you’re not that girl, are you? That was your sister, wasn’t it?”
“It’s not like that with Cassie.”
“My point is that you are not your sister, and you should trust yourself to do what you want to do, not automatically do the opposite of your sister.”
“Maybe that’s a good point. But we should never have kissed.”
“I like you, and if things had been different, I’d have moved heaven and earth to be involved with you.”
“But things aren’t different, are they?”
“No. Ten years ago, things would have been different. But…”
“I know. You were married and your wife died. And that’s it for you.”
“Yeah, that’s it for me. I’m sorry.”
“For the record, I’m sorry, too.”
“I think we’d best go home.”
“Aren’t you home?”
“Soon. But for tonight, let’s just go to the house, and I’ll sleep in Tim’s bed.”
“Why? Is it still too painful to move?”
“No, actually, I didn’t think you’d want to go home at eleven o’clock at night to a dark house that isn’t yours.”
“Oh. You’re right. You’re a very nice man, Luke Tyler.”
“I’d say I was a few years ago. But now? All I am is an invitation to hurt you.”
“Is that a warning?”
“No, it’s a sad fact of my life.”
Chapter Ten
Kelly finished the last items on her list the next day while Luke was at work. She hoped he wouldn’t think she’d overstepped again, but she had a few last touches. She took out the box she’d packed and spread out all the pictures Luke kept hidden in his bottom dresser drawer. She then framed the ones that were thrown loosely about. They were treasures of his last memories, certainly not meant to be lying around, forgotten in a drawer. And surely he’d see that, once she was finished.
She stepped back to judge her work. She hung Luke and Shelly’s wedding picture centered over the couch. Around that, she tastefully placed several of the snapshots that were now framed to match the wedding picture. Throughout the rest of the condo, she set a picture here or there of Luke’s previous life. Just soft reminders of what once was. A little breath of fresh air added to Luke’s otherwise sterile world. She hoped he’d leave the pictures up, or at the very least, not throw them in his bottom drawer again.
She also hoped he wouldn’t react in anger. But at some point, he needed to quit hiding from his past and the sadness. So if a little nudge from her cost his much sought-after friendship, well, she supposed it was worth it. He should acknowledge Shelly, embrace his grief as part of his life, since it already was part of him. What use was there in hiding it? It wasn’t like it made him forget or feel any better.
She also found some prints to hang around the white walls of the condo. She wasn’t decorating as much as livening up his otherwise blah, nondescript, motel-like home. They were prints she hoped he’d find manly enough, mostly photographs taken of the beach, and surrounding scenery. They were cheap and in bulk around the gift shops. Kelly didn’t think that Luke would care in the least what was put on his walls, still his decor needed some color. His bedding was solid brown, his couches, though luxurious leather, were solid beige. Even his tables were light wood, without even a lamp to warm them up. So she fixed that, too. She was finishing up the accessories to the master bedroom when shuffling downstairs in the living room caught her attention. She quickly ran down the steps, surprised that Luke was home.
She stopped dead in her tracks when she almost ran into Nancy Tyler, Luke’s mother, standing in the middle of the living room, looking around, almost as if in a daze. She physically turned around in a circle as she took in the finished and decorated condo.
Nancy intimidated Kelly. She was everything kind and motherly in the world, yet to Kelly, she was like a foreign president invading their midst. Kelly was respectful. She couldn’t help but feel respectful toward Nancy; however, the type of woman and mother Nancy embodied was as foreign to Kelly as any language besides English.
&n
bsp; Tears glistened in Nancy’s eyes. She stopped moving when she spotted Kelly on the staircase. Confusion clouded her expression.
“Kelly?”
The disdain at finding Kelly here in her son’s condo was evident in Nancy’s tone. Kelly snapped her shoulder’s back. They were two cats circling the same spot for domination.
“Mrs. Tyler. What are you doing here?”
“I should ask the same of you, but I fear the answer.”
Nancy naturally assumed the worse since she had emerged from the master bedroom. Kelly was a little offended at the look of horror on Nancy’s face. Was Luke sleeping with her so horrible? It wasn’t like they were sixteen anymore. He was a grown man.
“I helped Luke move.”
Nancy’s eyes bugged. “You two hate each other.”
“We did. Our opinions changed.”
“I see.”
No, you don’t see. Nancy didn’t see Kelly at all. She was just like her son in her unfounded prejudice. But somehow, Luke’s disdain didn’t hurt as much as Nancy’s. How could Nancy ignore her motherly instinct and not look past some of the rumors surrounding Kelly? After all, Nancy and Cassie were extremely close. Didn’t Nancy believe anything that Cassie had to say about Kelly? Apparently not, judging by her attitude.
“And this? You did this?” Nancy pointed at the pictures of Shelly. The pictures of her son’s dead wife. That’s what Nancy was welling up over. “I thought he’d never look at Shelly again. He’s had these pictures tucked away for years. I was starting to believe…”
“He hasn’t seen them yet.”
Nancy was choked up. Did she think that Luke hanging the collage of pictures meant he was healing?
Nancy froze. Her face fell. “Oh, well then, you’d better take them down. He’ll have a fit, and any progress you’ve made with him, ah, in the way of liking you will be done.”
“I don’t think so. I think he needs to quit making Shelly the elephant in the room. I think he needs to let her be part of him again.”
