“I didn’t see you! I didn’t see you!”
“Well, I was there.”
Apparently the table no longer provided enough support because she fumbled a chair away from it and dropped into it like a stone, staring at him with glittering wet eyes. “You came back,” she whispered brokenly.
“Yes, Maria, I came back.”
His story told at last, he fell silent. There was nothing else to say, nothing else he wanted to say. They stared at each other in the absolute quiet of the kitchen, neither blinking, neither looking away. Finally, Maria raised a trembling hand and wiped her eyes.
“Every time I think there’s nothing else you can possibly do to hurt me,” she said faintly, “you come up with something worse than before.”
David opened his mouth to say something sarcastic, but then he faltered. For the first time some of his righteous anger receded, giving way to a deep feeling of unease. The troubling thought that he didn’t know the whole story and a shoe was about to drop occurred to him. Wary, he watched as she took a deep breath, wiped her eyes a second time and stood.
“Well,” she said, her voice strong again, “now that we know what happened to you, why don’t we talk about what happened to me? Just to round out our evening.”
His dry throat tightened and his stomach knotted. No,he wanted to say, but he couldn’t say anything at all. He’d waited too long, and too desperately, for this explanation. He had to hear it.
“I was twenty three years old. I lovedyou,” she said, her hypnotic brown gaze glued to his face. “I worshippedyou. I would have married you. I would have followed you to Philadelphia to live with you if you’d wanted. I’d’ve walked barefoot across hot coals just to see you smile at me. I’d’ve done anythingyou asked me to do.”
David watched her, trying hard not to fall under her spell. “You lovedme? You’ve got a funny way of showing it, don’t you?”
“I told you I loved you. Did you ever say it to me? Uh-uh. You couldn’t even manage to say ditto.Is any of this ringing a bell?”
He snorted.
“What you didtell me was that you couldn’t be in a serious relationship and you weren’t willing to try the long-distance thing. Remember?”
Yeah, he remembered. Uncomfortable now, he looked away, shifting on his feet.
She paused, still calm but vibrating with indignation. “Right out there—” she jabbed at the front of the house with an index finger “—in my father’s foyer, I gave you my heart and my soul. I offered you everythingI had to give, and you said no, thanks.”
Why did it all sound so different when she said it? How could she take the same set of facts and twist them around and make himsound like the bad guy? “No,” he tried, “I told you I’d come—”
Rage mangled her face. “Iam talking now,” she shrieked.
He snapped his jaw shut. Mollified, she glared at him for another few seconds, as if to make sure he didn’t dare utter one more syllable before she spoke again.
“You left town. For four years you made zero effortto contact me. You want to know what I did? I got in my bed and stayed there because I couldn’t find the energy to get outof bed.”
David gaped. He couldn’t believe it. Didn’t want to believe it.
“I couldn’t eat. I lost twenty pounds in a month. And when I dideat, I couldn’t keep it down.”
Too stunned for words, he could only shake his head. It was impossible. Things couldn’t possibly have happened like this. She would not have become depressed over him. She would not have wasted away because of him. “No,” he said helplessly.
“But guess what? George came back, and my father wanted me to see him. So I did. And George brought me flowers and candy and jewelry, and told me how beautiful he thought I was, and how he wanted to marry me and treat me like a queen.”
David could just imagine. All the long muscles up and down his body tightened like piano wire, and even now his fists clenched with the frustrated desire to pummel George Harper to smithereens. But most of his anger was directed at himself, the idiot who’d opened the door for Harper and created the hole in Maria’s life for another man to fill. David simply could not have been that stupid, that foolish.
“No,” he said again.
“After you walked out on me, it felt pretty good to feel desirable again.” She paused, glowering defiantly as if daring him to say a single word.
Try though he did, he couldn’t stop a low growl from escaping his lips.
“George asked me to marry him, and I said no,and my father pressured me a little, and George asked me again, and I said no,and my father pressured me a little more.”
“Right.”
“And then it dawned on me. Why was I saying no?If the man I loved didn’t want me, then it didn’t matter who I married, did it? George was as good as anyone else. At least I knew what I was getting with him.”
Shuddering with fury, David resisted the strong urge to smash his fist through the nearest window. Her clear-eyed, detached recitation of the events leading up to the implosion of life as he’d known it—as if she’d cared once, millennia ago, but didn’t care now and would never care again—made everything exponentially worse. She sidled closer, and this time when she spoke he heard the core of steel in her voice, felt the lingering hard feelings and the bottomless pain.
“But even after I said yes,” she said softly, those eyes flashing behind a sheen of tears he knew she’d never let fall in front of him, “I prayed you’d come back for me. I cursed you, but I prayed for you to come back. And if I’d known you were there at the rehearsal dinner, I’d have called off the wedding. If you’d come to the wedding, I’d have stopped the wedding. If you’d come the day after the wedding, I’d have asked for a divorce.”
Maria stopped talking and some of her words sank in. Not all, but enough for the realization to creep over him: things could have been different.
If only he’d insisted on talking to her the night of the rehearsal dinner. If only he’d called or e-mailed her, one time, when he went back to school. If only he’d swallowed his pride and fear, reached out to her and taken a chance.A thousand swirling if-onlystaunted him, making him crazy. What would his life have been like these past four years if only one of those if-onlyshad come true? Thunderstruck, the room swam out of focus, and when Maria spoke again, he couldn’t quite see her face through all his blurred thoughts and regrets.
“You know what, though, David?” she said, creeping nearer as though she knew being close to her now was the worst possible punishment she could devise for him. “You’ve done me a favor tonight.”
He must have made a noise or funny face or something, because she laughed through her tears, a startling burst of sunshine through the clouds. But then the smile faded and the clouds came back.
“It’s true,” she said. “Because I’ve always wondered if you loved me, but just couldn’t say it. Maybe because your parents had a bad relationship, or it’s too hard for you to talk about your feelings, or something like that. But now I know.”
No,he thought, knowing he wouldn’t like what she said next even before he heard what it was. No.His head moved slowly back and forth in a denial. This was wrong. This was all wrong. He had his explanations, but they were the wrong ones. Nothing about this night had gone the way he’d thought, and he didn’t have the first idea what he should do now, or how things could ever be right again.
“You didn’t love me,” she said.
David froze. Her faint, tired smile—as if she’d accepted this disappointing truth years ago, along with the knowledge that Christmas only came once a year—somehow hurt him worse than anything else had tonight.
“You know how I know?” That sweet, sad smile faded, to be replaced by something hard and bitter. “Because if you’d loved me—really loved me—you’d never have stood by and let me marry someone else without trying to stop me.”
Of its own accord, David’s head shook again, issuing another denial. But her face was dow
n as she wiped another tear, and she didn’t seem to notice. When she looked up again, it was with a new resolve that chilled him down to the marrow of his bone, and he doubted he’d ever be warm again.
She took a deep breath, as though preparing herself, but David knew he wasn’t prepared and could never be prepared. “Now I know you never loved me,” she said, “and you know what? It’s almost easier this way. Now I can say goodbye to you, and I can really mean it.”
No. No, no, no.
She paused, her gaze level and sure, and he wanted to stop time or, even better, to roll it back to the first day he’d laid eyes on Maria and do it all again. They stared at each other for a long time, without malice or hard feelings. Just looked, and remembered. Finally that faint, sad, half smile drifted across her face again.
“Goodbye, David.”
With that, she turned and walked out, and he watched her go, too stupefied to do anything else. His head was still shaking noas the door flapped shut behind her.
Maria’s composure and energy leached away with every step she took; climbing the steps felt like picking her way through the snow and ice up the side of the Matterhorn. The second she made it into her room, her wobbly, jelly-kneed legs gave out and she collapsed to the bed. Great, racking, silent sobs shook her, and she wept into her pillow until her exhausted body ran out of water for tears.
Finally she had absolute confirmation of her worst fear, and it was so clear that even she could no longer stick her head in the sand and pray that the obvious wasn’t true: David had never loved her. He’d let her marry someone else when he could have stopped her. He’d rejected her love, walked out on her, and wished her well as she became another man’s wife.
And she, fool that she still was, had allowed herself a tiny flicker of hope ever since he came back yesterday. Maybe everything isn’t lost, that naive voice inside her heart had said. Maybe he came back for you. Maybe he did love you, after all. The depths of her ongoing stupidity boggled her mind. Maybe she should be institutionalized and locked away where her misguided thinking couldn’t pose a danger to herself, ever again.
Though she’d tried to give up her feelings for David before, she absolutely had to do so now. All the other times were just for practice; this time she’d really do it. She had to give up on her pathetic, girlish dreams and let David go. Face the terrible truth and get on with her life. And she would.
Tomorrow.
But tonight…tonight,for one last time, she would pull out her most treasured memory, dust it off, and remember that glorious day when she and David made love for the first time.
Chapter 11
Chapter 11
One morning three weeks after they’d started seeing each other, Maria decided that today was the day. The idea of more waiting was intolerable. David was four years older and therefore determined to take things slowly and be a gentleman. She was equally determined to make love with him as soon as possible, and today she was going to get what she wanted.
She couldn’t get all worked up about the fact that he was Ellis’s employee, although she certainly understood that he needed Ellis’s recommendation for any future jobs he might seek and was therefore in a precarious position. Nor was she concerned about the slight age difference or the fact that he lived in Philly and she in Cincinnati. To Maria, nothing mattered except the way they felt about each other. Period. Everything else could be worked out.
They’d spent every available moment together, which was pretty much any time that he wasn’t at work, and they talked on the phone the rest of the time. Though there was much about him she had yet to discover—how he felt about sausage versus bacon as a breakfast meat, for example—she knew everything she needed to know for right now. He was strong, kind, and wickedly funny. Smarter than anyone she knew. Hardworking. Loving. Ashamed of his broken home, about which he’d never spoken except for one oblique reference, and about his poverty relative to the Johnsons’ wealth. Sexy enough to keep her awake at night and daydreaming during the day with wanting him.
Spending time with him these past three weeks had only confirmed what she’d somehow known that first night she laid eyes on him: she loved him.
Doubt had begun to set in. Not about whether she would sleep with him—shewould—but about what he’d think of her seducing him. She felt nervous, but not so much so that she’d let it keep her from going after what she wanted.
And so, her body on fire as it had never burned before, she put on her sexiest red sundress, skipped the bra, which she devoutly hoped she wouldn’t need, and drove for the first time to David’s apartment. He’d never invited her here, and she’d felt his shame that he couldn’t afford a nicer place, not that she cared about his accommodations, but now she could see why he was a little embarrassed. He lived in an older building that’d seen its best days about forty years ago, and its shabbiness showed. Hoping he wouldn’t be too upset with her for stepping outside the boundary he’d set for her, she climbed the three stories to his floor and knocked.
The door swung open and there he was, wide-eyed, wet and bare-chested, a thick white towel around his waist. He stared, openmouthed, at her for several long beats while heat pulsed between them and a flush crept up from his neck and high over his cheeks. After a minute he seemed to recover a little and moved to stand in the doorway, as if he meant to block her from coming inside or even seeing into the apartment.
“Maria.”
Wrenching her gaze away from his hot, glittering eyes, she stared openly at the acres of brown skin and slabs of sculpted muscle that covered his chest, his arms…her gaze drifted lower…his abdomen, his calves. Maybe she was being too bold, but she didn’t care. They both knew this day—thismoment—between them was inevitable.
She meant to look back at his face, but as her gaze shifted upward, it snagged and remained on the bulge in the front of the fluffy towel. Her mouth went dry and she felt her cheeks flame with a delicious heat. A little subtlety would probably be a good idea right about now, but she just couldn’t manage it.
“Maria,” he said, his voice sounding strangled now. “What are you doing here?”
Swallowing hard, she looked up to discover him watching her with a strained expression and feverishly bright eyes. “You know what I’m doing here.”
Poor David didn’t seem to know what to do. In the space of two seconds she saw so many emotions flash across his face—desire, joy, excitement, worry, and something darker, maybe fear—that she wondered if he didn’t feel schizophrenic. He looked off over her shoulder, blinking furiously, and ran his hand over the back of his head, treating her to a spectacular display of gleaming skin and rippling muscles. Apparently he made up his mind about something, because his gaze swung back to her and the light in his eyes was dimmer now, and she saw a new resolve.
“We should talk a little,” he said firmly, adjusting the towel’s knot low on his square hipbones. “I’ll get dressed and we can go—”
“David,” she said, stepping closer, drawn into his gravitational pull as though she were a wayward asteroid passing the earth. “I didn’t come here to talk, I don’t want you to get dressed—”
“God, Maria,” he groaned.
“—and I’m not going anywhere. Now can I please come in?”
They stared at each other, each assessing their positions. His hands went to his hips and he drew himself up, his chest inflating. So what? It was all meaningless posturing, and if he thought he’d get rid of her, he was sadly mistaken. She squared her jaw, preparing to argue.
“You sure you want to come in here?” he said in his most defiant, insulting tone, mocking her, but mocking himself even worse. “This ain’t Buckingham Palace like your father’s spread, Princess—”
“Oh, it ain’t?” she said, thoroughly pissed off that he could possibly think she cared about his lack of money and tired of standing out here in the hall.
“—and I ain’t rich like your father, either.”
“Wonderful,” she snapped.
“Well, I’ve got all that straight now, thanks. Anything else you ain’t?”
His rigid shoulders told her he wasn’t amused. Again they stared at each other, equally determined not to give an inch, and after a while the defiant flash in his eyes faded. Something naked and vulnerable replaced it, touching a place deep in her heart that belonged only to him.
“Do you think I care where you live or whether you have money?” she asked.
“You don’t belong somewhere like this,” he said, his wounded pride making his voice hoarse.
“I belong wherever you are.”
One silent beat passed, and then someone cried out. Probably it was her, but it could’ve been him. And then somehow they came together, clinging and grappling.
“Maria.”
Kicking the door shut, he lowered his head and branded her lips with his hot, greedy mouth. If she’d ever been kissed before this, she couldn’t remember it, and she knew that if she lived for a million years, she’d never be kissed like this again.
Maria wanted to soak up each precious moment of this morning, but her senses weren’t equipped for a man like David Hunt. Her nose couldn’t smell enough of his scent, which was fresh and vaguely soapy from his shower and shampoo. Her taste buds couldn’t handle the minty-sweet flavor deep inside his mouth. His earthy, primal growls drove her wild until some other sound drowned him out, and she belatedly realized that she was the source of all that breathy mewling and whispering. She had no idea what she was saying.
Her poor, frantic hands didn’t know what to do. They ran over the wiry silk of his hair and across his smooth, square jaw. Clung to his sculpted shoulders and ran back up his neck and over his cheeks. Ending the kiss, she stared dazedly into his glittering eyes. And when she rubbed her thumb over his full, delicious lower lip, he sucked it, hard, into his mouth, and her wet sex throbbed in response. Dazed with lust, they froze and stared at each other for an arrested moment.
Joyous laughter bubbled out of her throat, refusing to stay contained. He laughed, too, looking boyish and happy and not at all like the man who wouldn’t let her in a few minutes ago. “Did you really think you were going to keep me out?” she asked him.
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