Chapter 96 96
Couldn’t she feel how much he needed her…needed this? He’d taken her like a wild man, over and over again this weekend. And as soon as they finished one round, he wanted her again.
Lightly, he mapped her body with his fingertips. She was slender, but not skinny. No ribs protruding, no hollowed-out collarbone. Everything about her was the epitome of life and health. When he cupped her breast, she turned her head away.
He took her chin and made her look at him. “What are you afraid I’ll see in your eyes?” he asked quietly.
“Nothing,” she said. Long lashes at half-mast cloaked her secrets.
“Tell me, Sherry,” he said gently. “We’re the ones writing the rules here. I won’t make fun of anything you say, I swear.”
She moved restlessly, dislodging his hand and sitting up with the sheet pulled to her armpits. Grief darkened her eyes even further as she finally stared straight at him. “You know too much about me,” she said, her voice ragged. “And it scares me that when we’re together…sexually…I feel exposed.”
“Surely you’ve been intimate with a number of men.”
“Not as many as you think. And besides…”
This time he waited in silence, not prompting her. The honest, unvarnished truth was something he had wanted badly. Now that she was giving it, he had to struggle to sort out his feelings.
Sherry lifted her chin. “I am not an easy woman, Justin. I know that. I have baggage. Both in general, and where you are concerned.”
He shrugged. “All of us have baggage.”
She frowned. “I don’t want to get close to you.”
He absorbed the shot, felt it pierce his heart. “I see.”
“I don’t think you do. Maybe it’s just the difference between men and women, or maybe it’s my own neuroses. But when we’re naked… intimate…it feels as if you take more than I want to give.”
“I’m not your enemy,” he said, his fists clenched beneath the blanket where she couldn’t see. He’d forced himself to remain in a seemingly relaxed position, reclining on his side. But the pretense was wearing thin.
“You’re not my anything. That’s the problem. We’ve succumbed to the urge to scratch an itch, probably because we’re snowed in and we’re both reasonably attractive people, but that’s as far as it goes.”
He felt the ground shift beneath his feet. “What if it could be more?”
Something flickered in her eyes, a lightning flash of deep emotion that was gone before he could analyze it. He hadn’t meant to say the words. They had surprised him as much as her, but he wanted her… Needed her in his life, and not just as a way to get to BenTel. Not anymore. A lot had changed in just one weekend.
“What do you mean?” She was prevaricating…buying time.
“What if we started over? A future wide open. Maybe we’ve both been wrong about what we want. Are you willing to take a chance that we’ve been too blind to see the truth?”
For a few shimmering seconds, a door into her soul opened. He recognized it without question. He’d stake his life on it. In her eyes he saw the hope and the fear. The dawning realization that things could be different. He was pretty sure he even saw a laughing baby with her eyes and his chin.
He didn’t want to push. Not with the chance that she might actually come to him on her own. But he was so damn close to something momentous, it made him ache. “Talk to me, honey,” he urged. “Please.”
He shouldn’t have asked. She wasn’t ready. And when she did what he begged of her, the truth hurt more than he could have thought possible.
“You’re not making sense, Justin,” she said flatly. “I’ve never known a man more sure of himself, and I told you from the beginning that the weekend was all I was offering.”
“God, you’re impossible,” he shouted. It took a lot, as a rule, for him to lose his temper, but with Sherry, the fuse stayed lit half the time. “How can you be such a coward?”
She went white, and at that exact instant, his phone rang, echoing into the room. Her eyes widened as Justin cursed.
“I have to take that. It's Mark,”
____________
“I have something I want to show you in the garage.” Justin said to Sherry.
The garage? “Okay. Sure.” she said and followed him.
It was Monday, and they were supposed to meet Mark in an hour to discuss Sunny side. Justin had kept his word to introduce her to Mark no matter what she decided concerning a relationship between them, and he was doing just that. Even the previous night's conversation had not been brought up again. Maybe because they both decided that it didn't matter anyway. It was their last day together in Kilbrough. Or maybe deep down she knew he was right. She was a coward.
Justin flipped a succession of switches and the lights flickered on, one by one, across the massive room. Sherry gasped.
It was an homage to motorized travel—seven or eight very expensive-looking cars, all black, and a dozen motorcycles. The entire room was spotless— polished concrete floors, not a speck of dust or dirt anywhere. Chrome gleamed. The aroma of motor oil and tooled leather swirled around her, a smell she’d never anticipated could be so appealing.
She’d had men show off collections before—art, autographed baseballs.
One guy owned what she’d thought was a dizzying array of antique chess sets. Talk about dizzying—Justin's display of testosterone-fueled fascination was enough to make her head swim.
“Justin, wow. I can’t even...” Sherry paced ahead slowly, Justin right behind her. “They’re incredible.”
They stood before a bike with a worn but polished brown leather seat. “This is one of my hobbies. Everything is vintage. Some of them I’ve bought from other collectors, but quite a few were falling apart when I got them. They were a lot of work, but I love it. I wanted to show you before but it was no use because of the snow.”
She folded her hands. Justin loomed behind her, so close. She could feel the measured rhythm of his breaths even when she couldn’t see him. “You do the actual repairs?”
“Is that hard to believe?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m just surprised you know how to do it, that’s all.”