Hard As Stone

by K. M. Scott

  Why were we so awkward around one another suddenly? There wasn’t an inch of her body I hadn’t seen and enjoyed with more pleasure than I’d ever experienced with any other woman, yet now we stood like two strangers who didn’t know what to say to one another.

  “Oh, it’s stocked. I just didn’t feel right drinking any of the liquor,” she explained as she held out a can of soda for me.

  Jesus. Our first encounter in that Richmont hotel bar in Australia had been smoother than this. I needed to change things up or before I knew it, we’d be standing there talking about the unseasonably warm weather we’d been having this month, and that was the last thing I wanted to do with her.

  “I’m sorry you lost your place. I really liked that apartment. I wish I knew. I would have done something.”

  Summer narrowed her eyes to squints. “Like what? Stand on the sidewalk and watch me cry as my stuff was loaded into a moving van and driven away to my parents’ house?” she snapped.

  Her anger stunned me for a moment, and I stepped back into the couch in the middle of the room. She put her hand up and shook her head sadly. “I’m sorry. You didn’t deserve that, Ethan. I didn’t lose my job because of you. I was just as much at fault as you were. Maybe if I didn’t feel like I had everything taken away from me right after the holidays like some horrible reverse Christmas gift I would have handled it better.”

  The image of Summer standing at the bottom of her apartment building’s front steps crying as all her belongings were hauled away made me want to say something other than sorry. That just didn’t seem like enough.

  “I’ve missed talking to you. Even more, I’ve missed laughing with you,” I said quietly. “Lately, I’ve been thinking about that a lot.”

  “Don’t, Ethan. Just don’t.”

  The anguish in her voice hurt me more than any yelling or cruel words she could snap at me with. She had her head lowered so I couldn’t see her face, but I didn’t need to. I knew the expression she wore was just like the one that last night we were together as a couple.

  And still I couldn’t help but move toward where she stood so far away from me.

  “It wasn’t all bad. I don’t think it was. We had some good times, didn’t we?”

  My question made her head snap up, and I saw all too clearly how hurt she still was about what happened. The sadness when her eyes met mine made me stop dead a few feet away from her.

  “Why are you doing this? No models to spend time with tonight, so you thought you’d while the hours away with me here in my sad hotel room? Is that it?”

  I shook my head and confessed the truth to her. “There’s been no one since you.”

  “Don’t lie. You know how I hate that,” she answered sharply.

  “It’s not a lie. I haven’t been with anyone. I have no interest in anyone else.”

  Her blue eyes filled with pain stared up at me. “You wouldn’t even acknowledge my presence in the elevator this afternoon. Do you know how that feels to know someone you spent time with doing the most intimate things you’ve ever done can be standing right next to you and not even acknowledge you’re there. It hurts. It hurts a lot, Ethan.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t know what to say. I know that’s no excuse, but I am sorry.”

  “No, it’s no excuse. We had one fight, and then the next thing I knew, you acted like I didn’t exist in the world anymore. You made me disappear from your life. And then the very next time I see you, I don’t even get a hello or anything. You just stared straight ahead in your father’s office like I wasn’t there. And then in the elevator you did the same thing. How are you able to just ignore someone you spent hour after hour with? I mean, I know it was just a month, but you’re able to act like it meant nothing to you.”

  Her voice faltered on the word nothing, and she lowered her head again. Taking a step closer, I touched her shoulder and saw her wince like my hand on her caused her pain.

  “It didn’t mean nothing to me. I’m sorry. I didn’t know what to say in my father’s office. I never expected to see you standing there when I walked in. As for the elevator, I didn’t know what to say there either. I just didn’t have the right words.”

  She looked up at me, squinting again as she searched my face. “Why couldn’t you just talk to me like we did before? For that matter, why didn’t you just tell me the truth that there was someone else and there had been the whole long time? Does she know you’re here tonight? Or do you two just have some kind of open arrangement that allows you to visit any woman’s hotel room you like?”

  “There is no one else. I didn’t lie then, and I’m not lying now.”

  The confusion I knew she felt was written all over her face. “The text, Ethan. I know what you sound like when you truly care about someone.”

  She stopped talking and pushed past me. “Well, at least I think I do. Maybe I was just fooling myself.”

  “You weren’t fooling yourself. I did care about you. Still do.”

  “And still you won’t tell me the truth about that message. We’re in the same place we were the night we broke up.”

  “The night you broke up with me.”

  Summer’s eyes opened wide. “I didn’t break up with you! I just needed you to admit that there was someone else. You walked out the door, and then I never heard from you again until right now.”

  “And I told you I wasn’t with anyone else. Fuck, Summer! Why couldn’t you just believe me?”

  Shaking her head wildly, she turned her back on me. “I don’t want to do this anymore. I can’t do this. It hurts too much. You should leave.”

  “Summer, I didn’t come here to fight. Look at me.”

  She refused to face me and continued to shake her head. “I can’t do this with you. Ethan. I don’t know what kind of woman you’re used to with those models and whoever else you spend your time with, but I’m not like that. I feel too much for someone like you.”

  I slid my arms around her and pulled her to me. Instantly, my body reacted, like it knew it had found what it had been seeking ever since that night I walked out.

  “There was no one else. There is no one else. Please believe me,” I whispered in her ear. “I swear.”

  She turned in my arms to face me and looked up into my eyes with tears in hers. “Why are you here, Ethan? Honestly, why?”

  Swallowing hard, I took a deep breath and admitted the truth to the one person who deserved as much of it I could give. “Because I miss being happy. I miss smiling and laughing. I miss that with you.”

  Softly, she said, “You never had to lose it. All you had to do was tell me the truth.”

  And that was the only thing I couldn’t do for her.

  “I can’t. I can just swear to God on anything you want me to swear on that it isn’t someone else I’m sleeping with. It’s no one I’ve ever been with. Can’t you just believe that I’m telling you the truth?”

  “None of that makes sense. You know that and still you say that just like you did that night.”

  I hung my head, feeling the same exhaustion come over me as the night I lost her. “It’s the truth. Everything I’ve said tonight is the truth too.”

  “Why should I believe any of this?” she quietly asked, and I heard hope in her words I seized upon.

  Pulling her into me, I cradled her face in my hands and kissed her like I’d wanted to ever since that night. Her mouth quickly surrendered to mine, and for the first time in far too long, I felt truly happy. When I looked down at her, I saw she’d missed me too.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Summer

  My head felt like it was swimming as Ethan’s lips pressed against mine in a kiss that made me feel like I was melting away in his arms. None of the questions I had about that text message had been answered, and yet there I stood willingly kissing him back like his mouth held the very breath I needed to exist.

  So much for my promises to myself that I’d never fall for him again.

  Was it possible that
the text message wasn’t for another woman? If not, then who was it meant for? Maybe a friend? Had I blown up our relationship because he had been a good friend to someone when they needed him?

  My brain sifted through the memories of those words he’d written to whoever the recipient was as I tried to believe he hadn’t been seeing another woman the whole time we were together. I wanted to accept what he said. The way he made my body react just by a single kiss made me want that so badly.

  “God, I’ve wanted to kiss you like that every day since we broke up,” he said softly against my lips.

  I closed my eyes and tried to calm my emotions that threatened to unravel all over the place. Ethan had a way of saying things that made me want to give him everything he could ever want without the slightest fight.

  But I couldn’t let myself fall for him again so easily.

  Stepping back, I opened my eyes and saw that familiar look in his that told me he wasn’t ready to let me go quite yet. His hand slid down to the small of my back and pulled me back into him.

  “Stay here with me,” he whispered in a husky voice.

  “I don’t know. You have a way of making me feel things I’m not sure I should,” I said looking away.

  But I wanted things to be like they were before, so I turned back to face him and saw the man I’d fallen in love with. His deep brown eyes stared down at me in that way that always made me feel like he was studying me, like nothing in the world was more important than me in that moment. I ran my finger along his jawline, feeling the first signs of stubble for the day that he always had by the time I saw him each night. He was the same Ethan as before.

  He smiled that sexy grin that never failed to make me feel weak in the knees. “I can say the same thing for you, except I want to feel those things.”

  God, I so much wanted to let myself go with him. Maybe if we took things slower than the first time. We had started out going a hundred miles an hour and then got to know one another.

  If we were going to take things slowly, I needed to remove myself from right next to his body because from what I was feeling press against my hip, he was already raring to go. Backing up, I held my hand up to stop him as he followed me.

  “Let’s take this one step at a time. Remember, you couldn’t even bring yourself to talk to me this afternoon. Why don’t we sit down and talk?”

  “Because that’s only going to get us back to fighting,” he said with a wicked grin. “If we aren’t talking, we can’t fight, and I have the perfect thing to do that doesn’t involve much talking at all.”

  Oh, God, this was going to be challenging. He never failed to charm, and tonight was no exception.

  “Then if I agree not to bring up the singular subject that results in us fighting, can we just talk?” I asked as he stepped back in front of me so close that I could feel how much he didn’t want to talk anymore.

  He seemed to consider my offer and then nodded. “Okay. As long as we don’t discuss that one topic, I’m up for talking.”

  Surprised he relented so quickly, I smiled and said, “I thought I’d have to push a little harder on that point.”

  “I always loved talking to you, Summer. I couldn’t have missed laughing with you if it was all about the sex.”

  “Well, I certainly hope not. As a basic rule, if a man is laughing at you during sex, you’re doing something horribly wrong,” I joked as we sat down on the couch.

  Folding my legs under me, I made sure there was enough room between us so all we’d be doing was talking. Ethan leaned back against the corner of the couch and spread his arm out across the back of it, looking as comfortable as ever.

  “So what should we talk about? I think I should warn you that anything to do with Tressa will probably end up bringing out the worst in me. In fact, any subject having to do with Stone Worldwide is one I’d like to avoid.”

  Nodding, I filed those details away, happy to not have to talk about work anyway. As much as I wanted to spend time with Ethan, I didn’t like to admit even to myself that I was on the payroll at Stone Worldwide to get back with him and convince him to return to photography.

  Well, officially, I was only tasked with guiding him back to his former career. That I hadn’t figured out how I’d do that made me question why Tressa had hired me at all, but now that I’d gotten the romantic part out of the deal, I felt better about my job. I just didn’t know how to bring up that life he lost without creating a dark cloud over our first real conversation in months.

  Stymied by what to discuss, I went with an old tried and true conversational tactic. The weather.

  “It’s been a very warm winter, don’t you think?” I asked with all the sincerity I could muster.

  Ethan rewarded my efforts with a full laugh that seemed to come from deep inside. “That reminds me of the first time we talked at the Richmont hotel bar after that photo shoot.”

  “Did we talk about the weather? Wow, you must have thought I was the most boring person in the world,” I said as that night flashed in my mind and I blushed.

  My memories of that night involved not a single word about the weather. All I remembered was incredible sex, followed by more incredible sex, and then falling asleep with my head on Ethan’s muscular chest and waking up too late to make my plane. So not a lot of words at all, in fact.

  “I actually was the one who brought it up, so if anyone was boring, it was me.”

  His attempt at being self-effacing made me chuckle. “I doubt there’s a single person on this planet who thinks you’re boring. Trust me on that.”

  Whatever all those women who wanted to sleep with him and the women he’d already taken to bed thought of him, I couldn’t imagine they ever considered him boring.

  A look of sadness darkened his expression, and I had a feeling he forced his smile since it didn’t go all the way up to his eyes. “Maybe in the past, but now with my nine-to-five life, I wonder.”

  “I had a feeling you weren’t happy with your new job. You know, working like the rest of us folks in the world doesn’t mean you can’t take pictures on your off time. You have a gift you can use whenever you want. I mean, if your talent was throwing pottery, well that would be different.”

  Ethan narrowed his eyes like he didn’t understand where I was going with all this, so I quickly added, “Then again, maybe that wasn’t the best comparison. You know what I mean, though. Just because you’re stuck in an office for a few hours of the day doesn’t mean you can’t still be a photographer. It wasn’t like taking pictures of gorgeous women in tropical locales was what made you a photographer, right?”

  He raised his eyebrows at my attempts to make him feel better and chuckled. “You have a hell of a way of making me think my life is a whole lot worse than I thought.”

  “I’m sorry. Everything is coming out wrong. All I meant was you’re a photographer, so why aren’t you still taking pictures?”

  “Because it just reminds me of what I lost,” he answered in a low voice full of sadness.

  “Well, you can lose it forever, or you can make your talent mean something else then. I think those are your only choices.”

  He winced at my matter-of-fact assessment of his life and then gave me another forced smile. “Well, I think I better go. It’s getting late and the grind starts pretty early in the morning,” he said as he stood to leave.

  Everything in me wanted him to stay, but I couldn’t do that again. Not yet anyway.

  “Stop by again. Next time I’ll try not to be so serious. Maybe I’ll even have something funny to bring back your smile for real,” I said as I followed him to the door.

  “I’m glad I came here tonight, Summer. I promise if I see you in the elevator that I’ll be my usual charming self from now on.”

  He lowered his head and kissed me softly on the lips before leaving me standing there watching him walk down the hallway wishing for so much more. The problem was I didn’t know how much I could handle of Ethan’s usual charming self before I c
ompletely succumbed to his charms.

  I sat staring at the TV screen in front of me but a million miles away in my mind. More like a couple miles away at Ethan’s apartment. Was he there thinking of me too? I had no idea, but I couldn’t help but feel a real sense of regret that we’d gotten off track that night. Things might have still fallen apart for both of us professionally since I was a notoriously bad liar and probably would have told Julia the truth, but at least we could have been there for one another when everything happened.

  A familiar sound stirred me from my daydreaming about what could have been, and I reached for my phone sitting beside me on the couch to see my sister Dawn calling me. Yes, my parents named me Summer and my younger sister Dawn. Such was our fate as children of new age hippies.

  I swiped her smiling face on my screen and said, “Hey, you! Don’t you usually work late on Thursday nights? I didn’t think I’d hear from you until tomorrow night since we both live such exciting lives.”

  “I am working, but I had a great idea, I think, and I’m hoping you can help me with it.”

  “Okay. Shoot!”

  “The shelter is overrun with animals and needs adoptions before we can take any more rescue pets in. I had an idea that I think might help since other shelters have done it and it’s worked. Do you know anyone from the magazine business who would be willing to do a story on the shelter to get the word out?”

  The embarrassment over losing my job in that very business washed over me once more. Since I had to send my things to my parents to be stored, I’d had to tell them, but I’d begged them not to tell anyone else. I hadn’t gotten around to telling my sister yet, mainly because I didn’t know how to and still be the cooler older sister. Her asking me to help with her idea meant this was as good a time as any to be honest with her.

  “I lost my job, Dawn. I don’t work in the magazine publishing business anymore,” I admitted quietly.

  “Oh, Summer. I didn’t know. I’m sorry. Why didn’t you tell me?” my sister asked.