Or not, as her mother always reminded her. The competition at that level was fierce, and there was no guarantee that if she’d stuck with it she would have gone all the way.
But no one would ever know, because she’d gotten married instead. Her husband, while theoretically proud of his wife’s athletic achievements, had made it clear that if they were going to have a life together she would need to give all that up.
So she had.
She’d explained her decision once, when Sara was fourteen. “Swimming was a huge question mark. A risk. And even if I went after it, the best I could have hoped for was a few exciting years and a career that would end in my twenties. What your father was offering was a lifetime of love and security.”
Except that it hadn’t worked out that way. Their marriage had been miserable, an endless cycle of neediness from her mother and contempt from her father, and it had finally ended in divorce when Sara was nineteen.
There had never been a chance that Sara would take her mother’s path. She’d devoted herself to ballet, and whenever there’d been a choice between dance and something else, she’d chosen dance. She wouldn’t look to another person to make her feel special or fulfilled. She’d look to the art form she loved, and when it ended, at least she’d have the satisfaction of knowing she’d been true to herself.
But now that her far-off future was actually here, she was left as empty and bereft as her mother had been. It turned out that it didn’t matter what you put your trust in. Everything ended. Everything let you down. It didn’t matter how hard you worked or how deeply you loved. In the end, you were left with nothing.
And despite the fact that without Nick Landry she wouldn’t have eaten much in the past couple of weeks, the sight of him didn’t do her any good. She didn’t blame him for her breakup with Harry or her broken ankle or the fact that she still dreamed about that damn kiss, but the fact was, she couldn’t look at him without remembering all that.
He represented the pain of loss and the ache of unfulfilled desire. Seeing him made her think about everything she wanted to forget, including the future that loomed over her like a dark cloud, uncertain and terrifying.
She should tell him to stop coming. But that would lead to an argument, and she didn’t have the energy for one right now.
“Hey, Sara.”
“Hey.”
He stood in her doorway for a moment, looking at her, while she kept her eyes on the TV. She had no idea what she was watching.
“I was thinking I don’t need your extra key anymore. You can let me in now, right? At least then you’d be forced to get out of bed twice a day.”
For weeks Nick had been calm and cheerful and patient with her. Now he sounded tense, even angry, and she glanced over at him in spite of herself.
“I don’t care if you have a key or not, Nick. I don’t care if you come by, either. I never asked you to.”
“That’s true. You didn’t.”
Emotion threatened to pierce the layers of numbness that had settled over her, and she knew she couldn’t let that happen.
She took a deep breath. “You know what? I think you should go. I don’t really feel like dealing with you and your bad mood right now.”
“You don’t feel like dealing with anything, do you? And I’ve gone along with that. Everyone has. Because we felt sorry for you.”
His words cut like a whip, which must have been his intention. Nick Landry was never careless with words.
“I don’t want your pity. I don’t want anything from you. I want you to leave right now.”
Her voice shook, and her body was shaking, too. He was making her feel things, which at the moment was the very worst thing a person could do to her.
“If you get out of that bed, I will. Otherwise, you’re stuck with me. I’ll stand in your doorway for the next hour and tell you all kinds of things you don’t want to hear.”
She shoved the covers off and swung her legs over the side of the bed. She didn’t bother with her crutches; she just stood up and faced him. “I’m up, damn it. So leave.”
“Come over here and get your dinner.”
“You said if I—”
“It’s your choice, Sara. Come over here, or I’ll start talking.”
“Fine.”
She grabbed her crutches and made her way across the room, awkwardly because she avoided getting out of bed as much as possible and wasn’t very good at this yet. But it still didn’t take her more than a minute to get to him. She grabbed the paper bag from his hand and stood there, a clumsy tripod on one leg and two crutches, looking up at Nick defiantly. Her heart was pounding from the sudden burst of exertion.
She hadn’t been this close to Nick in a while. His brows were drawn together, and she could see end-of-the-day stubble on his skin. His jaw was tight and his blue eyes were narrowed.
He looked like he despised her.
The first time she’d met Nick had been right here. She’d been herself then, not this pathetic, numb, empty person. She despised herself right now, and she didn’t care if Nick hated her too. She didn’t care if he—
He put his hands on her waist and lifted her, and she was so surprised she dropped the paper bag. A second later her crutches clattered to the floor. She clutched at his hard shoulders as her legs came up automatically, wrapping around him.
He took two quick steps with her in his arms. Then her back was against the wall and his mouth was on hers.
Chapter Nine
The explosion of feeling was like the rush of blood to a limb that had fallen asleep. It was so intense it almost hurt, as liquid sensation flooded into all the dry and empty places.
Nick wasn’t gentle. His hands were hard, his mouth was hard, and his body was hard as he molded her to him. His erection ground against her through the layers of their clothing, and something animal rose up inside her. She wanted to rip his clothes off. She wanted that hardness inside her. She wanted—
Suddenly he wrenched his mouth from hers, leaving her lips tingling and her chin burning from the bristles on his jaw. He was breathing raggedly, like her, and the sound of it filled her ears.
After a minute he spoke. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done that.”
He set her down on the floor very carefully, staying close enough that she could keep her hands on his shoulders for balance. She blinked up at him, so tall and strong and male, and he smelled so good she wanted to press her face against his chest and breathe him in.
“Why did you?” she asked, when she could trust herself to speak.
It wasn’t the question she wanted to ask. What she wanted to ask was why he’d stopped.
He grabbed her crutches from the floor and handed them to her, putting a little distance between them. “It was either that or slap you.”
She rebalanced herself on the crutches. “Those were your only two choices?”
He shoved his hands in his pockets, and she wondered if he was trying to stop himself from touching her. She was squeezing her crutches right now in an effort to keep from touching him.
“I can’t stand seeing you like this. And yeah, I blame myself for your fall, which makes it about a thousand times worse. I’m watching a beautiful, talented woman give up on her life, and it’s my fault.”
She started to say something, and he held up a hand. “You know what? Forget that part of it. It’s not important that I think it’s my fault. What matters is that you’re giving up. You’re not going to physical therapy. Emilio says you haven’t returned Mr. Thackeray’s calls. You won’t talk to your friends. You won’t talk to anybody.”
He took a deep breath, and a determined expression came into his eyes. “You can’t be the first dancer something like this has happened to. What if it happened to Emilio? What would you tell him to do? Curl up in fetal position and wait to die? Because that’s what you’re doing.”
Sara felt her cheeks burning. “Why do you do this? Why do you push and push? You pushed me about Harry, and now you�
�re pushing me to—”
“Not give up on your own life?” He threw up his hands. “Yeah, I am. I should have started pushing you two weeks ago, but I told myself we don’t know each other well enough for that. But I want to know you that well. When I watched you on stage that night, all I could think was, I want to stand close to that woman and just…breathe her in.”
Somehow that tipped her over the edge. She felt the tears welling up, and her throat burned as she tried desperately to hold them back. “But I’m not that person anymore. I’ll never be that person again.”
Oh, God—she was going to cry.
She was crying. She was sobbing helplessly, uncontrollably.
Then Nick swept her up into his arms and carried her back to the bed, where he sat down and cradled her in his lap, stroking her hair and holding her tight.
* * *
Nick had always hated tears. He preferred to deal with the world rationally, through point and counterpoint, logic and debate. Once someone started crying, the objective detachment of that process was completely undermined.
In other words, he had no clue how to handle it. Even though he’d learned over the years to meet tears with the appearance of sympathy, inside he usually felt frustrated, tense, and anything but sympathetic.
But he didn’t feel that way now. Now, all he could think about was Sara. There was an absolute rightness to the feel of her in his arms, as though nothing was more important than the need to protect and comfort her. Her tears didn’t embarrass or irritate him or make him want to distance himself. He felt the catharsis happening in her body, the release of fear and grief and anger, and he stroked her back as he murmured things into her hair.
“It’s all right, sweetheart. It’s all right. I’ve got you.”
When he realized what he was saying he shut up, worried that his words revealed more than he wanted them to, but he didn’t let go of her. Her shudders began to subside, and gradually she grew calm in his arms.
But Sara’s stillness made him aware of a tremor deep inside his own body. He’d never been so aware of another human being. Every breath she took seemed to rise and fall in his own lungs.
Her head was on his shoulder, and it seemed to belong there. Everywhere they touched his nerve endings were drenched in pleasure. Her hands were fisted in his shirt, and he wondered if she could feel the beat of his heart.
But as the seconds ticked by, his awareness was pulled to one place in particular.
The place where her hip pressed against his groin.
Shit. In a minute Sara was going to realize that the need to comfort her wasn’t the only urge he felt right now.
The more he tried to stop thinking about it, the more he thought about it. Only it wasn’t really thought. It was pure feeling.
He closed his eyes and tried to tamp down the howling desire in his hardening body. This was no time to give into his baser instincts. Sara needed a friend right now, not a caveman pinning her to the bed and thrusting inside her.
Okay, not helping.
He forced himself to remember that horrible day, and the sight of Sara falling down the stairs. That did the trick. He’d let Sara down once; he wasn’t going to do it again by coming on to her when she was vulnerable.
He took a deep breath and opened his eyes, and then he started to move Sara off his lap as gently as he could. He had to put some distance between them. He’d comforted her, and now it was time to—
Sara’s hands tightened in his shirt front, resisting his efforts to shift her, and he paused with his hands on her hips. She lifted her head to look at him, and her pupils were so dilated the rich brown of her irises looked black.
A shock of awareness went through him. He knew that look. He’d seen it before, although never in the eyes of a woman he wanted this much. He had enough time to think that he shouldn’t let this happen, and then she slid her arms around his neck and pressed her mouth to his.
Oh, God. Kissing Sara was like nothing else he’d ever experienced. Her beauty, her sweetness, the way she held nothing back. She kissed like she danced, with a passion that found perfect expression through her body.
Fierce, primal intent coursed through him, and before he could stop himself he had her on her back under him, and he was nudging her legs apart with an impatient thigh.
Her heat burned him through the layers of their clothing. He rubbed his erection hard against her core, feeling a rush of satisfaction when she moaned. And then, just like he’d dreamed about from the first moment he saw her, her strong, slim legs wrapped around his waist.
God, the fit between them was so perfect. Would it feel like this to be inside her? Like he was coming home?
Home.
The word cut through the lust fogging his brain.
New York wasn’t his home. Sara wasn’t his home.
She was a woman whose life and career had been turned upside down, thanks to him. She needed friends right now. She needed him—and not like this. This would only complicate things. If they crossed this line, someone was going to get hurt.
If the only person to get hurt was him, he could deal with it. But he couldn’t deal with hurting Sara. Not again.
He pushed himself off of her and off the bed in one movement, turning away so he could get himself together. His body was still insisting that there was nothing more important than burying himself inside her, but after a minute he had himself under control again.
He scrubbed his face with his hands and took a long, deep breath. Then he turned back to Sara.
She was sitting up in bed, her arms wrapped around her knees, looking vulnerable and defensive and uncertain. “Why did you stop?” she asked, her voice carefully neutral.
He shoved his hands into his pockets to keep himself from reaching for her. “Because I’m not an asshole. And taking advantage of you right now would be the definition of asshole behavior.”
“You’re not taking advantage of me. I was the one who—“ she paused. “I mean, I kissed you.”
Yeah, and he’d be reliving that moment in his dreams for years to come.
“Can you honestly tell me you’re thinking straight right now? That you’re not emotionally vulnerable? You know I’m not here to stay. Do you really want something to happen between us?”
She opened her mouth and then closed it. For a minute, her eyes searched his. Then she looked down at her clasped hands and frowned.
When she looked up again, he could see she’d accepted what he’d said. And he hated the part of him that wished she hadn’t. That wished she’d try to talk him into acting on the attraction they both felt.
How pathetic could he get?
After a moment she shrugged. “You’re right, I am vulnerable right now. And I’m definitely not thinking straight. Why else would I imagine I’m actually attracted to you?”
He almost said she sure as hell was attracted to him, thank you very much. But then he caught the gleam in her eye and the hint of a smile at the corners of her mouth, and he stopped himself in time.
“Yeah,” was all he said. But he found himself smiling back at her, appreciating her effort to defuse the tension between them.
God, he liked this woman. And he was so damn attracted to her it hurt a little.
Actually, it hurt a lot.
He took another deep breath. “Okay. Well. Now that we’ve established that you’re not attracted to me, I think we need to talk about what you’re going to do next. You can’t go on like this, Sara.”
She leaned back against her pillows and sighed. “Are you going to try to fix me now? Like I’m one of your political campaigns? Good luck with that.”
He shook his head. “No, I’m not going to fix you. I’m just going to talk to you.” He went over to grab the paper bag that held her dinner, which was on the floor by the door. He brought it back, pulled out her soup and salad, and set them on her night table.
“We’ll talk while you eat,” he said, settling himself at the foot of her bed with one foot
planted firmly on the floor. That had been his father’s rule for having a girl in your room, he remembered. If you were sitting on the bed, you had to have one foot on the floor.
If it worked back then, maybe it would work now.
Sara was staring at her food with a frown on her face.
“Is something wrong with the salad?”
She looked up and met his eyes. “You’ve been feeding me for weeks and I haven’t even thanked you.”
“Sure you have.”
She shook her head. “Not really. Maybe I said the words, but I didn’t mean them. I’ve been angry and bitter and depressed, but you came anyway. Every day.”
He shrugged. “Your other friends have been coming, too. Emilio’s here every night.”
“I’ve known Emilio for ten years. I’ve only known you for a few weeks, and most of that time I’ve been a miserable pain in the ass. I’ve given you absolutely no reason to be so good to me. So why are you? Is it because…” she hesitated, and a tickle of fear chased up his backbone. What was she about to suggest? That he had feelings for her? That he couldn’t stop thinking about her? That he—
“Is it because you feel guilty about the fall? You said you still blame yourself for that, even though I’ve told you a hundred times—”
“No,” he said, a rush of relief relaxing his muscles. “Or, well, yes. But that’s not why I’ve been coming. I like you, Sara. I want to be your friend. And it kills me to see you like this. A person doesn’t have to know you for ten years to realize that this isn’t the way you’re meant to be. So talk to me. Where do you go from here? What are your options? I’m not leaving until you give me some kind of game plan.”
She smiled at him slowly. “Is this how you are with your candidates?”
He smiled back at her. “If I need to be, yeah. But quit changing the subject. What’s next for you, Sara? Tell me.”
* * *
Sara looked away for a minute. It actually hurt a little to look at Nick right now, with those blue eyes full of energy and determination. What she really wanted was to pull him on top of her again. She missed the masculine weight of him, the heat of the erection that had pressed between her legs. She craved the feel of his hardness against her softness, the ragged sound of his breath and the wild pounding of his heart.
Into Your Arms (A Contemporary Romance Novel) Page 12
