She traced circles on his stomach. “You seem pretty buttery already. Butterfingers.”
Sighing, she spread her hand against his skin. The pressure of it unfolded throughout his body. She sighed again and seemed to get a little heavier. After a moment her breathing evened out.
“Katherine?” he whispered.
No answer.
“Kate?” he whispered again.
Murmuring, she shifted. Her hair fell across his shoulder, tickling him. Her lips brushed his chest.
Asleep. He smirked. Aren’t men supposed to fall asleep afterward? Jack hugged her. “I love you, Katherine.”
She murmured again.
Jack stared at the ceiling savoring the weight of her body. Over the years he’d had what he considered pretty good sex. Sex that until now he would have called great sex. But this was a different thing altogether. Every time before had been more about biological urgency. Two bodies joining for the sole purpose of pleasing themselves. With Katherine it had felt almost spiritual. With Katherine, it felt as if a part of his soul had come home. He could never go back. There had to be a way to keep her. To convince her she needed to tear down that wall blocking the stairs and marry him.
That could wait. Right now she slept with her head fitted to the hollow of his shoulder and his arm stretched under her and around her waist, holding her close. Their bodies fitted together, warm and sated in the afternoon sun. He wanted to roll her over onto her back again and wake her with kisses before sliding back inside her. To be surrounded by her and to surround her again.
However, he didn’t want to interrupt the incredible sweetness of her asleep on his chest. The feathery touch of her breath and the heat of her leg crooked over his. He wanted to sleep this way every night and wake this way every morning.
Closing his eyes, he relishing the sensation of her sleeping in his arms.
She jolted upright with a gasp. “Oh God.”
“What?”His mind seemed to be too relaxed to think. He tried to grab her but she scurried out of reach.
Then he heard it.
The approaching wail of a siren. “Katherine, it’s just a police car.” He tried to sound soothing, but her panic was infectious.
“I can’t believe I did this. I can’t believe I made it worse. I keep making it worse.” She scrambled off the bed on all fours and grabbed her jeans.
“Worse? Katherine, what are you talking about?” He sat up. Cold dread washed over him. Even after all his patience and restraint, he'd been right. Katherine was leaving. “Where are you going?”
She got her jeans over her hips and headed for the bedroom door zipping them. “This is awful. I don’t know what I was thinking. I’m so sorry.”
Jack lunged after her. He almost fell off the foot of the bed, missing her arm by inches. “Wait a minute. Talk to me,” he demanded. The fear in his throat turned it into a plea.
“I can’t.” She sobbed. “I can’t be near you.”
The police car screamed past the house.
“You said you wanted this,” he protested. She had seemed willing. Had she lied? Had she slept with him for some other reason than her own desire? As he heard her run into the living room he got his feet under him.
“I did want this.” She sobbed. “I wanted it too much. I'm so sorry.”
“Kate!” he shouted. “Wait a minute. Talk to me.”
“I knew I would pay for this. I knew I would keep hurting you, and now I’ve made it much, much worse.”
Jack scrambled through the hall and caught her arm as she ran out of the living room buttoning her blouse. The force of her motion spun her against him. “Where are you going?”
“Home. I’m so sorry.” She pulled away.
“For what?”
“For this. For us. For letting you have the apartment in the first place.” She twisted out of his numb grasp and out the front door. The sound of the siren faded into the distance.
“What?” Jack skidded to a stop before he chased her outside naked. Running back to the bedroom for his jeans he hopped to the front door putting them on. Her footsteps thundered up the stairs and through her apartment. He ran around the house to her door and pounded on it. “Katherine! Open the door.” One well placed shoulder and he could break it down. Get to her. Make her talk.
Archer started barking in the back yard.
“Archer, shut up,” Jack shouted. He turned to see where the dog was and noticed the next-door neighbor standing in his own yard, a shovel and a flat of marigolds in hand, looking stunned. What was he thinking about the sudden spectacle? And what would he do if Jack broke down her door? Katherine’s anger would be nothing compared to the arrival of the Arden Police. The arrival of Vince Howard.
Jack waved. “Hi.”
“Hello.” The neighbor leaned the shovel against his house and headed for his own back door.
Jack pressed his forehead against the house, cursing under his breath. There was no way he could have done it anyway. He couldn’t break down her door any more than he could walk through a wall. It would frighten her, and he couldn’t bear to do that. He couldn’t be a brute even though the primitive part of him wanted to go in there and claim his woman.
But she was not his woman.
Everything hurt again. Parts that hadn’t hurt before, hurt now. The last thing she said rang in his ears. ‘For letting you have the apartment in the first place.’
She regretted every moment since February. Jack’s heart shattered to a fine powder. Once, when he was about eleven years old, his family had gone to the beach and he’d gone body surfing. It had been exhilarating until he caught the wrong side of a wave. The water churned him around and dumped him face down , too disoriented to know which way the air was. He felt a lot like that now.
Nothing would ever be enough. She might not even give him the chance to start over. To win her friendship. To win her trust. She might cut him out of her life altogether.
And then what would he do?
* * * *
Katherine threw herself on her bed sobbing. Every part of her throbbed. She could still feel his rough hands dragging across her body and his lips tasting her. The deep, shattering contact still rang in her soul. Nothing before even came close, and she knew with terrifying certainty no one else would touch her that profoundly.
She hugged herself and discovered she’d forgotten her bra downstairs. Her underwear wasn’t on so much as wrapped around one leg and shoved down the other leg of her jeans, leaving the seam of her jeans in close contact with her still tender womanhood. She heard Jack pounding on her door, but couldn’t bear to face him. It was too soon. If she opened that door now, she would never again be able to close it with him on the outside. Archer barked in the backyard. Jack shouted at him. There was anger in his voice, but she also heard fear and bewilderment.
She loved him mind, body and soul. If that siren hadn’t reminded her how dangerous it would be to commit to him, she would have. The sensation of her cheek pressed against his chest as she drifted into a contented half sleep haunted her. Had he said what she thought he had? It seemed quite likely and, without the warning of the siren, she would have told him how much she loved him too.
The risk was too high. She couldn’t stand to be alone again.
But wasn’t she alone now?
Chapter 11
Katherine rubbed her eyes. She had her box unpacked and everything put away for the summer. The gift cards waited on the newel post at the top of the stairs for her minor spending spree.
Yesterday, she’d cried herself to sleep. Jack hadn’t made another attempt to get her to talk to him. When she woke up it had been dark, she’d had a throbbing headache, and she’d needed something to do, so she’d started unpacking her school box. It was a pretty thought-intensive project. At some point she’d closed her eyes to rest them and fell asleep on the floor of her office.
Jack woke her this morning when he closed the back door. She lay on the floor, stiff and aching from more
than just the one bad night’s sleep, listening to him open the garage, start his truck, back out, close the garage and pull out of the driveway. Then she'd gone to bed and slept until mid afternoon. After that nap she’d taken a bath, washing away his scent. Her soul felt as if it had been dragged for miles by a stampeding herd of wild stallions. She could feel their individual hoof prints.
Gary had never been like that. He’d never touched her that way. Seeing her late fiancé in Jack's shadow, he became smaller and meaner. She had more of a true marriage to Jack than she could have ever hoped for with Gary.
But she could not be married to Jack. Too much risk. If she had been shattered when Gary died, how would she feel when Jack died? The Cambridge Sun already had a lovely photo of her being carried out of Gary’s funeral service. Would they get a better picture next time? Would she lose her mind completely? She could imagine that picture. On the front page of the newspaper, Jack’s friends Kevin and Dan carrying her out of the church while she gibbered.
She picked up a book. The sophomore grammar book. With her free time this summer, she planned to try to work up some better lessons. As she put it on the shelf a note slipped out and flittered to the floor. In the middle of the page, in her own handwriting, it read, “Be careful at work tomorrow.” Across the bottom in Jack’s jagged hand it read, “I can’t be careful. It’s my job.” She’d taped it to his door one night before going to bed and found it taped to her door the next morning.
Folding the paper in half, she jammed it in her pocket. She’d told Jack she was going to the bookstore today, and today had almost slipped away. On the way to the car, she dumped the empty box into the trash. Archer whimpered as she passed the fence. “Hello puppy, have you missed me?”
He put his front paws on the top of the fence and wagged his stumpy tail so hard she thought he might knock himself over.
She let herself into the back yard. The ground was still soft and uneven from the work he’d done yesterday. Jack’s boot prints were still visible where Archer hadn’t trampled them out. Archer bounded toward her with a tennis ball between his teeth. He dropped it and waited, poised to run. “So what is going on in your owner’s mind, boy? Does he hate me? He should by now.”
Archer yipped and nosed the ball toward her.
Picking it up, she tossed it toward the fence. Archer chased it. His feet sank deep into the tilled soil. Jack had even gotten the soil tested so he could get the right kind of fertilizer. He was always careful with her too. Thoughtful and gentle.
Archer brought the ball back and dropped it at her feet. He still liked the wrestle, but when they played fetch, he dropped the ball without a fight. To reward him, she threw it again. The sun would be setting in about an hour. The bookstore was open late, but Jack would be coming home soon, and she didn’t feel up to another strange conversation like the one they'd had yesterday. Not after what had happened. She needed to get a little more time between herself and yesterday so she could think straight. A little more time for her body to forget. As if it ever could. “Time to go, Archer. I’ll play with you more tomorrow while Jack’s at work.”
When she backed out of the garage, she noticed something under the windshield wiper. After closing the garage door, she pulled it out. It was a piece of note paper wrapped around a five dollar bill. The paper said, “Treat yourself” in Jack’s handwriting. Tears came to her eyes, but she pulled back before it turned into a full on sob. If she didn’t want to have a strained conversation with Jack, she certainly didn’t want him to come home and find her sobbing over five dollars. She folded the note into the pocket with the other note and put the money with the gift cards in another pocket.
As she backed down the driveway, she flicked on the headlights because it was within an hour of sunset and according to the law drivers had to have their headlights on. It was one of the old Gary habits she’d never shaken.
She hadn’t had the opportunity to shop for books in a very long time. It had been one of her great passions before Gary’s death, but for the last four years, she’d done all her reading from the library or from her own collection. Choosing two paperbacks and a magazine she settled in at the coffee bar with a hot chocolate. For a while she sat watching the sky darken and remembering how it felt to be human again. Until the middle of February, she’d been like a robot going through the motions to keep at least her nose, if not her whole head, above water. And it hadn’t started when Gary died either. There hadn’t been money enough before, but something else had been missing too. Something that had been missing so long she hadn’t noticed until the first time Jack looked at her. Even without touching her, they'd developed an intimate relationship of easy laughter and good conversation.
Then he’d kissed her, and she realized what she'd been missing all those years. The adoration in his eyes, and little things he did to please her—right down to an extra five bucks to blow on a nonessential. She touched her cheek where his hand had brushed her the night of the dance. The faint heat of his fingers still stained her skin.
And then there was yesterday.
Yesterday when she’d curled into his embrace after he’d kindled something she didn’t know existed. One long glorious afternoon of touching and being touched. Healing and reveling in one another.
Until reality intruded.
And now that she’d had it, this felt like exile. Close enough to touch, but too far away to reach. He was Pandora’s Box, and she’d opened him anyway and unleashed all the plagues of the world upon herself.
She sighed. The light had left the sky. Looking at her paperback novels she wondered if she should switch them for one self help book that would make her stop wanting heroes she couldn’t have. If she could learn to settle for a nice middle manager or a teacher, she might be happier in the long run.
But would Jack? She’d hurt him. If she’d used a meat cleaver, she’d have done less damage. He was a hero, he wanted to protect people. While she was a wonderful victim of circumstance, losing her father and then her fiancé. Of course he would fall for her. She stopped pursuing that line of logic before it unraveled. She’d been attracted to Jack before she found out what he did, and he’d been interested in her from the first moment too, long before he discovered her history.
Picking up her cup, she put it in the bus tub before grabbing her books and magazine. She didn’t feel attached enough to the fashion magazine to want to take it home, so she put it back on the rack. On the way out of the section, she noticed a magazine on display about fire trucks. Picking it up, she leafed through it. An entire magazine about fire trucks. Would he be annoyed or pleased when she used the money he gave her to buy a gift for him? She slid the magazine under her paperbacks and went to the register.
“I didn’t know we had a magazine about fire trucks.” The cashier picked it up and studied the cover. Her name tag read Jessica. “This is neat. Do you work for the fire department?”
“No, I have a…friend who does. I’m a teacher.”
Jessica nodded. “Are any of these for classroom use?” She picked up Katherine’s fantasy novel. “We have a discount program for books you plan to use in the classroom with the students.”
“This is pleasure reading. But thank you. I’ll keep it in mind.” Katherine handed over her gift cards, pleased that she’d worked it out about right. She would walk away from this trip with a dollar and change.
“Here you are. Receipt’s in the bag. Happy reading.” Jessica handed over Katherine’s bag.
“Thank you.” Katherine headed for her car. The lot had been full when she arrived. She’d had to park in front of the computer store next door. Tossing her bag on the passenger seat she turned the key.
Nothing happened.
Katherine cursed, turning the key again and nothing happened again. Then she started feeling the controls, cursing more when the headlight switch shifted to the off position as she twisted it. She’d forgotten to turn her lights off, and they’d drained her battery while she sat sipping cof
fee and pondering the perversity of her fate.
She leaned her head against the steering wheel and considered her options. At one time, she could have called the police and they would have sent the nearest cruiser to get her on her way. But those days were gone, and there was no reason to dwell on it. If she felt cruel she could call Jack. He would do the husbandly thing without the benefit of being her husband. And then she would have to talk to him. She’d have to explain herself and make him understand why she couldn’t marry him because he was a hero whether he worked for the department or not.
But she couldn’t call Jack any more than she could call the police. She would have to pay for a tow truck. Inside the store there were a couple of customers ahead of her at the information desk, and she had to wait.
“Can I help you?” The woman on the other side of the counter frowned. “Didn’t I just ring you out?”
Jessica. “Yes, you did. My car won’t start and I need a tow truck. Do you have a phone book I can look at?”
Jessica reached to the side of the counter. “Is it a dead battery? Somebody here might have cables.”
“Oh, no. I’ll call—”
“I’ll jump it.”
Katherine jumped at the voice behind her. She noticed Jessica’s eyes focus over her left shoulder so she turned to face the owner of that familiar deep voice.
Kevin stood behind her with his hands jammed in his pockets, looking gruff and capable. “I’ve got cables. Where are you parked?”
He didn’t sound at all friendly despite the friendly offer.
“Is this someone you know?” Jessica asked, leaning forward so Kevin couldn’t hear her. “Would you like one of the guys to go out with you and help? I can even come out if you like.”
Katherine felt comforted by the offer. With Jessica around, she wouldn’t have to have an awkward conversation with Jack’s friend, but she didn’t want to take the other woman away from her job just to save herself a little embarrassment.
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