Chapter 14

Keeping watch outside someone’s apartment made you slime, just like that Peeping Tom Peggy had arrested on Valentine’s Day. With the temperature in her car hovering only a few degrees above the temperature outside, Jill was cold, hurting slime. She’d come over to have it out with Brian, but when his French ex had arrived, she’d decided to hide and wait her out.

The minutes ticked by. She slumped in her seat when Simca came sailing out of the building, a smug grin on her face.

Oh God, had this been a bootie call?

Jill wrapped her hands around the car keys. Should she leave? Her body was vibrating from head to toe. No, she needed answers—now more than ever. If he’d slept with her, then he’d made his decision.

As the Corvette purred away, she uncurled her stiff, cold frame and strode inside. She pounded on the door. When it swung open, Brian froze.

“Jill.” His expression was a combination of horror and panic that seemed straight out of a slasher movie.

“She was here! What was she doing here?” The hurt exploded inside her like a bomb. Before she realized what she was doing, she slung her purse off, rushed inside, and smacked him.

“Hey! Stop it,” Brian cried, fending off the attack while trying to slam the door behind her.

“No!” she huffed out. “Tell me the truth. Did you actually invite her over?” Her voice held a tinge of the venom that had done in Cleopatra, so not her.

“No! Christ almighty! Were you spying on me?”

“I wouldn’t have to if I trusted you, but you’ve blown that to bits. Again.”

“Jesus, she looked up my address. Will you calm down?”

“No, I won’t calm down. She had this smug smile on her face.” Her voice hitched. “Tell me you didn’t have a quickie with her.”

“Dammit, of course not. Is that what you think of me? Why even come over then?” He grabbed her purse and tossed it on the loveseat. Mutt trudged closer.

She started stroking the anxious dog without even thinking about it. “I was coming to talk. To make you tell me the truth, but after this…” Her stomach radiated with pain, so she curled her arm around it.

“Jill, you’re jumping to conclusions. Nothing happened!”

All the evidence suggested otherwise. “How am I supposed to trust you when you won’t tell me the truth?” She pressed her hands to her temple. “Do you have any idea how much it hurt to know she was in here? After ten o’clock? That’s when people come over for bootie calls.”

“It wasn’t a fucking bootie call.” He rocked on his heels, taking a few deep breaths. “I’m sorry it hurt you. She came over to give me something perishable. A French cheese I enjoy, okay? Do you want me to get it out of the fridge?”

His explanation made her want to bawl. God, they were in a bad place. Her deepest fear clawed at her throat, demanding release. “I’m afraid you’re going to choose her over me—like you did with Kelly. I’m afraid you already have.”

“Jesus.” He strode over and gripped her shoulders. “Don’t think like that.”

How could anger and comfort exist in the same moment? “Nothing happened, I promise.”

She edged back against the couch, shaking. The tense muscles around his mouth and eyes told her he was just as upset as she was. She’d seen that earnest look before. Mutt crawled to the edge of the rug with a high-pitched whine. “I want to believe you.”

He sat down beside her and took her hand. His eyes held hers. “Then do.”

How many times had he held her hand and stared straight into her eyes that way? Thousands. Yet she could only look away. “God, I can’t do this. I thought I wanted to talk, but every time I get near you I feel like I’m a rocket coming back into the airspace with its tail on fire.”

His mouth twitched. “Well, it is a nice tail.”

“Humor won’t work.”

He leaned closer. “Then I have another idea. You know what they say about not being able to hide the truth in a kiss. Kiss me.”

Her mouth salivated just at the prospect, even though it was ridiculous after what had happened. “You’ve got to be kidding.”

“Look, I know you. Remember how I used to give you a cookie when you were upset. Words don’t work, Red.” He held out his hand again, eyes as calm as the sea. “Come here.”

She sat in front of him. He cupped her face and slowly moved his head, watching her the whole time. His lips brushed hers like a feather. The gentleness undid her, and her eyes welled with tears.

“When I saw her, I thought…” Jill broke away as the truth bubbled up from her tight diaphragm. Her forehead rested against his. “I don’t want to lose you.”

“Oh, Jill,” he whispered and fitted his mouth to hers again, taking the kiss deeper, infusing each stroke of his tongue and press of his lips with an emotion so pure her head throbbed. “Close your eyes and listen.”

His mouth settled over hers without demand. He stroked. He caressed. He wanted her.

Everything opened.

Her heart uttered a soul-anguished cry, the force echoing up her chest, clawing at her throat. Desperation. Wanting. Love. Confusion. Fear.

She could taste them all.

He was right. There was truth in a kiss. And the power of it was more than she could deny. This was what she’d always wanted. His lips. His heat. His body. Him.

She grabbed the back of his head and fed the starved part of her who’d always wanted him, was terrified of losing him, and didn’t think she could love anyone but him.

It was like setting a match to gasoline. His mouth devoured her. He pressed her into the couch, the leather sighing with her, covering her with his long, powerful frame. She opened her legs to take his weight and groaned at his hardness. Her arousal spiked like a thermometer plunged into boiling water. She fisted her hands in his hair and thrust her tongue into his mouth. He responded with force, grinding against her pelvis with an urgent roll of his hips.

She gave a long moan as his hands pressed under her sweater and tugged at her bra, freeing her breasts. Her back arched when he twisted and pulled on her nipples.

Teeth scraped. Lips swelled. Tongues laved.

Jill clenched her legs around him, thinking, Take me. All of me. Devour me.

“God,” she cried aloud when his mouth pressed against her neck and bit gently.

Passion took on superhero speed. She shoved him back blindly and tugged off her coat, her sweater, her dangling bra. His hands fisted around her ribcage as she pulled off her jeans.

“Wait…are you sure?” he rasped.

She yanked his mouth back to hers, not wanting to hear reason. The compulsion to be with him blew every thought out of her mind. She had to have him or die. Years of wanting burned her to ash. She wanted to rise like the Phoenix in his arms.

She ripped at his shirt, buttons flying, her hands digging into the tight skin of his corded abdomen.

“Jesus, God,” he uttered in a voice she didn’t recognize.

He helped her drag his shirt off. She struggled with his zipper, and then she had her hand on him in seconds, his heat and hardness pulsing in her palm.

He threw back his head, thrusting against her. “Okay, we need to slow down.”

His texture was new and hot and incredible. Jill gave him a few feather strokes and then increased the pressure. “No,” she hissed back and fitted her mouth to his again as he rolled her under him.

The deep thrusting of his tongue, the feel of his furnace-hot body against hers, and the perfect suction of his mouth had the sexual energy flying north, south, east, and west. Brian flipped her onto her back, his hand cupping the V of her thighs. She opened her legs wider, giving him access, and uttered an anguished moan when his fingers rubbed her core and thrust inside. Her pelvis shot up, seeking more contact. Jill became a mindless fiend of sexual desperation.

She had only one desire. To be filled. Entered. Penetrated. By him. Finally. Her mind nudged her about the need for a condom, but she didn’t want to interrupt things. The odds of her getting pregnant their first time seemed miniscule. She fell back into the moment.

Freeing her mouth, she panted. “Now! Right now.”

His neck arched. “God, let me get—”

“No, it’s fine.” She yanked him close.

He surged into her with a deep thrust, lifting her off the couch. Given her near-virgin status, the fit was tight, and her senses were flooded with a mixture of pleasure and pain. Her legs wrapped around him. He sank deeper and pumped, hands pulling her hips to him, sealing them together. She met his rapid thrusts. Mindless, she was nothing but sensation, rhythm, movement.

Their mouths fused, deepening the connection, breaking for a breath every few thrusts. The energy built until the crown of her head tingled along with her hands, fisted at his waist to anchor him to her. She felt the urge to bear down and tighten all her muscles around him. She arched as he drove straight to her heart.

Her body became a long sweep of electricity from loins to head, and then she exploded. She pulled her mouth back to breathe shallowly, crying out as she pulsed with pleasure.

“Jesus,” Brian shouted.

He tunneled his head against her neck and surged into her with three deep thrusts, lifting her from the couch. He growled as he came, his whole frame shaking against her. She took him deeper into her body as the sensations built again, taking her higher.

“Brian,” she murmured, somewhere between rapture and bliss.

Quiet moans sang from her throat with the shallow, rapid breaths. Ecstasy filled every pore as their chests rose against each other, their hearts beating in time. Deep inside, she knew this was where she belonged, a destination she’d been traveling toward all her life. A white light spread through her, uncurling a new ladder of love into her existence.

She drew it all inside her. His shallow breath. His earthy smell. His perfectly-made body.

Her Brian.

Her ankles went lax around his waist, and her hands fell open in total surrender. To him. To herself. To what they were together, whatever it meant. She leaned her head closer, wanting a deeper connection with him as her awareness returned. His shallow pants on her neck tickled, but she didn’t care. Couldn’t move. Didn’t want to.

When he lifted his head, his hair was mussed, a sheen of sweat tinting his ruddy face. His eyes shone like bright stars, piercing light into the recesses of her soul. “Jesus, Jillie,” he uttered with a trace of awe.

Then, slowly, like he was awakening from a dream, his face tensed, his eyes narrowed.

In that instant, she knew he was more afraid than she’d ever seen him. And all because of what they’d done, how right it had felt while they were doing it, and how wrong it felt now.

He lowered his forehead to hers. Mutt barked, drawing her attention. Drool pooled from the dog’s mouth as he stared at them. Something inside her cracked. Oh God, this wasn’t how it was supposed to happen.

She closed her eyes, shaken and exposed.

He wasn’t ready, and they’d done it in front of his dog. Where were the candles? The quiet murmurs? The slowness? The soft professions of love?

This was madness.

Pleasure faded like raindrops down a windowpane after an intense storm, leaving regret in its wake. The words I love you surfaced, but she knew she couldn’t say them now—not when he wouldn’t be able to say them back. She’d allowed herself to be swept away. After all this time, they’d come together without a clear vision for a shared future. Right after his ex-whatever had visited.

Stark vulnerability cast a dark cloak over her. A tear slid out of the corner of her eye. She tried to wipe it away before it fell on his skin. When he lifted his head, she was more emotionally naked that she’d ever been with him.

After all this time, this was what was between them. As if they were two symbiotic organisms, she read his thoughts. Pleasure, yes—even ecstasy—but laced with the combustibles of fear and uncertainty. They’d traveled far beyond anywhere she’d known, like the far edges of the Dark Continent on maps of old.

How could he still not know this was love?

“Don’t cry, Jillie,” he whispered in a hoarse voice, rubbing her tears away. “Please, baby.” He stared at her, his fear as plain as day.

He knew it. She could see it in the mistiness of his eyes. They had reached the farthest boundaries of their souls and nudged the door open to a whole new realm…but he wasn’t ready to live there with her. He didn’t think it could last because nothing else in his life had.

She turned her head away and closed her eyes. Why was she surprised? The hurt crawling through her wasn’t rational. She had to get away. Shield herself. Grow some new armor.

“Would you please get off me?” She coughed to clear her throat.

His fingers traced her cheek without the sureness of his usual touch. “I know this isn’t how we both imagined it, but don’t ask me to leave you now, Jillie.”

The howl inside her started to build. She pushed at him. “Please, Bri, let me up.”

The slickness of their skin, the wetness between her thighs, and him pulling out only made her more aware of how monumental this mistake had been.

She picked up her clothes and struggled to the bathroom. When she slammed the door, she used a towel to clean herself up, her hands shaking. She scrubbed her eyes with cold water as sobs trickled out of her mouth. God, she had to get a grip. This emotional monsoon was a bunch of shit.

When she emerged, he was sitting on the floor by the bathroom, wearing only his jeans. His Adam’s apple bobbed.

“I heard you crying. You aren’t the only one affected by this, Jill.”

She took a deep breath and strode away, aware of the tenderness rubbing against her jeans. “No, I’m not.”

“We didn’t use anything.”

His words made her squirm, but she needed to face the truth. She pressed her hand to her forehead. “I know,” she whispered.

She didn’t think his face could have fallen more, but the grooves cut deeper around his mouth. “We’ll deal with whatever comes.”

She crossed her arms around herself. God, they’d made an enormous mistake. Now she understood in the heat of the moment. “I don’t—”

“Would you please let me hold you?” he nearly shouted, pushing up off the floor. “Goddammit, Jill. We finally made love, and you’re further away from me than you’ve ever been.”

“I’m not the only one,” she whispered, making him look away. “It was a mistake. You weren’t ready.”

He was in her face before she even blinked. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” His hands cupped her cheeks. “Jillie, it was intense and passionate, and the strength of what I feel for you tears me in fucking two.”

Why couldn’t he admit how afraid it made him? Did he think it would make him less of a man like his father used to say?

She tucked her hands behind her back so she wouldn’t smooth down his hair, caress his skin.

“I came over to get you to talk, so talk.”

He stepped away and firmed his shoulders, his posture rigid, drawing back into himself. “Jesus, you’re shivering,” he observed, helping her to the couch. He tucked a green fleece throw around her, tearing her heart a little more with his gentleness.

When she didn’t respond, he dropped his hand and reached for his shirt.

“All right,” he said with resignation. “I’ll tell you what you want to know, but we have to talk about this, Jill.”

The blanket took the edge off her chattering teeth, but her body seemed to have sucked in all the winter wind from outside. “Start talking.”

He sat across from her at the coffee table, their knees bumping. He took a long breath and rested his elbows on his thighs. “We worked together and became involved. It went on for six months until…”

She stared at the top of his head when he lowered it. Silence stretched out taut between them.

“The other owner got jealous and fired me. Then his secret recipe box disappeared—or so he said—and he accused me of the theft. He couldn’t prove anything, but it didn’t matter. He’s super powerful in the culinary world, and he trashed me to everyone.” His sigh was long and deep. “People won’t give a potential thief a job. I didn’t want to work anywhere but a Michelin place, so I came home for a while to build up my professional credentials and let the talk die down.”

God, that must have destroyed him after working so hard to achieve his dream.

His hand rested against her knee. “I also missed Dare and felt like there were some things I needed to resolve before I could move on. You topped the list.”

The hurt spread. Hadn’t she suspected this was only a stopover? Brian didn’t believe in forevers, and being a chef here would never be the same as it was in a big city.

“So, you wanted to ‘resolve’ me?”

His breath rushed out like a leaking tire. “I didn’t want to go through life with this rift between us, Jill. You’re a part of all my good childhood memories. Playing in the sandbox. Swimming at the quarry. Hanging out after school. You were my family.”

Instead of responding to that, Jill said, “Why didn’t Simca stand up for you? If she was part-owner, she could have stopped you getting fired.”

He toyed with the hem of the blanket for so long she wasn’t sure he would answer. Finally, he said, “She didn’t want to endanger her…partnership over us.”

“So what’s changed?”

His hand gripped the cloth, his knuckles white. “The partnership dissolved over it. She says she told the police I was with her when the recipes were stolen. It was probably why the charges were dropped.”

There was something more. She could feel it. “What else?”

“There’s nothing else.”

When his eyes flicked away for a second, she was sure he was holding back. “I don’t believe you.”

He clenched her hand, hard. “Look, this is difficult for me. Talking about this after we’ve just made love for the first time. Jesus. It’s like hammering another stake between us. Can’t you understand that?”

Her stomach quivered, but she nodded.

“I don’t know if I was in love with her. We had food in common…and other things. She was older, confident. It’s what I wanted at the time. I didn’t want to be with someone who wanted to get married.”

“Of course you felt that way after your parents divorced the way they did.” Their sudden split had even scared her for a while, but she had her parents’ marriage as a role model, so that fear had eventually faded.

He cleared his throat and rubbed his hands over his face. “Do we have to keep talking about this? I want to talk about what happened between us.”

She firmed her lip to keep from being swayed. “So how much older is she?”

He gave her the look.

They engaged in a no-blinking contest.

“She’s forty-four,” he hissed. “Satisfied?”

He’d turned twenty-seven last month. “Seventeen years. Aren’t you the child prodigy?”

“Look, I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want any other shit standing between us. We had enough to sift through when I came home. I would have understood about…other guys. I don’t have the right to be jealous.”

She pushed off the couch. “Well, good for you, but it wasn’t so easy for me when you left. I was in love with you, and I couldn’t seem to move on. I tried to date other guys. I even found someone to sleep with—someone who I thought would make it good for me. It was horribly uncomfortable and short. Sex wasn’t what I’d expected.”

Still wasn’t after tonight, she realized.

“Afterwards, I wished it had been you with all my heart.”

He flinched.

“He dumped me the next day, saying he didn’t want to get too serious. I hadn’t told him I was a virgin. He freaked out.” The shaking started again. “I went out with other guys after that, but never got serious with anyone. I couldn’t. And I didn’t sleep with anyone else because I didn’t want to be disappointed again. It was always you, and I couldn’t seem to make myself want anyone else.”

He rose slowly and approached her with an outstretched hand, like he was worried she was about to bolt. Poised on the balls of her feet, she thought about running for the door.

“I’m sorry. More than you can know.” He stepped closer, but didn’t touch her.

His voice’s rough sandpaper quality held her in place.

“You need to decide what you want.”

“I know that. Christ.”

She swallowed over the thickness in her throat. “I think we should give each other some space.”

He pinched the bridge of his nose. “I know you were hurt when I didn’t say I love you back. Jillie, love isn’t clear and straightforward for me. My parents said they loved me, but then my own mother left me for someone she barely knew, with a father who despised what I’d become. I don’t know what the fuck love is anymore, but I do love you. There’s friendship, laughter, and passion all mixed in with hundreds of happy memories.”

“That was then, this is now.” She brought his hand to her heart. It thumped against her ribs as a vicious pressure manacled her chest. “Let me show you. Love is clear and straightforward. Can’t you feel it when you touch me?”

His face fell when his hand did. “Jill…”

She stepped back. “I hear what you’re saying. I do. I’m not sure it’s enough. Her offer is…she can help you with your career, which I know is everything you’ve ever wanted—and on a bigger stage than Dare.” It was one of the hardest things she’d ever said. “Even if you decide to stay, I’m not sure we should work together. Especially if you think you might want to move on in a few years.”

“Where does that leave us?”

Good question. “I don’t know.”

He reached for her, but she edged away again. His fist punched the air. “We just made love for the first time, and you won’t even soften enough to let me hold you. I’m afraid I’ve already lost you. How do I fight for you, Jill? And why am I sounding like the girl all the sudden?”

“You’re not sounding like a girl, Bri. You’re sounding like a friend.” She reached for her coat and zipped it up. “I want more than that.”

“Fuck that! I’m more than your friend, and if you’ll stay here with me instead of running away, I’ll take you to bed and banish any doubts you have.”

But would he feel as swept away as she did? Or would he still be holding back, uncertain about her and what she meant to him?

“I don’t think I could handle that.” She walked to the door. “I need to think. You need to think. About us.”

He pushed the door shut after she cracked it open. “And if by some chance you’re pregnant?”

Her insides vibrated like an out-of-tune violin, creating disharmony with every note. “I wouldn’t tie myself to you just because there’s a baby in the picture. I’d never know if you stayed for me—or it.” The words killed something inside her.

“Damn you, Jill.” His hand fell from the door.

The quiet words made her lip quiver. “You have to choose me on your own, Bri.”

Since there was nothing else to say, she left his apartment and raced down the hall.