by Megan Hart
“Wow.”
“What?” he asks, totally pissed off himself, now, because as far as he can see, she’s being unreasonable.
“Is that all this is to you? What are you trying to do, make me mad so I’ll punish you, so you can get off?”
That’s not it at all, but he’s not about to say so. Not when she has that look on her face, which confuses him but also makes him even angrier. She points at the basket of laundry.
“Go fold that. Put it all away. Go make dinner.”
He’s already getting out of bed, but hesitates. “I’m not a servant, Corinne.”
Her eyes flash and her voice is cold but lacks that undercurrent of sexual tension that usually would have his cock twitching. “I told you to do something. I expect it to be done.”
“Yeah, well, you know what, you can fold it yourself.” With that, he gets off the bed and leaves the room.
The water’s boiling in the kitchen, but fuck that, he turns off the heat without adding the pasta. He wants to go for a run, work off all this anger, and he strips down to his briefs in the kitchen. At the sound of her behind him, he turns, hands on his hips. And yeah, he notices how her gaze takes in his body, how she looks at him, and no matter how pissed off he is, he takes a gleeful, smug satisfaction in the glitter of her gaze.
“What?” Reese holds out his arms. Confrontational. Tensing muscles, putting on a show to be sure she notices the ridges of his muscled belly—all this time at home without finding a job has left him a lot of hours to work out. He knows she loves it too, the way his body’s changed.
“Let me guess, the floor needs to be scrubbed. You want me on my hands and knees, Corinne? Yeah. Look at you. You’re dying to see me down there on the floor.”
“Stop it.”
He can’t. He’s horny and angry, and all he wanted was to have some time with her before she has to go to work, and fuck all of this, he’s spent too many days just trying to make her happy and now she’s being a bitch because he didn’t make the goddamned dinner? Sneering, he sinks to his knees, arms still held out, palms turned upward.
“This is where you like me, right?”
It’s where he wants her to like him. He’s pushing her; he wants to see the gleam in her gaze and watch her swipe her tongue over her lips. He wants her to order him to push his face into her pussy and make her come.
Corinne shakes her head.
“No? Seems like you liked it last night.”
“What I like,” she tells him in a low, angry voice, “is when you do what you promised you’d do. When you keep up your end of the bargain. When it’s not just all about you and your dick.”
The floor hurts his knees, but he doesn’t get up. Instead, he crawls toward her, making a show of it, until he’s at her feet. He bends as though to kiss her toes, but looks up at her.
“The princess wants her little tootsies kissed, right?”
She flinches and takes a step away. “How about you kiss my ass?”
She’s turning, but he’s on his feet fast enough to move in front of her, blocking her way. He’s not sure why or how this became so enormously catastrophic between them. He’s not sure how to stop it. They’ve argued before. Minor things. But nothing like this.
This feels like it could end up being permanent.
“It’s not just about getting off,” he says.
Corinne won’t look at him. She presses herself against the wall, her arms crossed over her breasts. Her jaw is set.
“Corinne.”
She shrugs. Reese sighs and tries to pull her closer, but she’s too stiff and unyielding. He lets her go.
“It’s not,” he says again.
“Sometimes, it feels that way. I’m tired, Reese. Tired of working late and getting up early so we can manage to pay the rent, and I know in a few months it’s going to get better, but it’s not now. Okay? And I know you have your reasons about not wanting to move into the house, but…it would’ve made life easier. That’s all.”
His fingers curl into fists at his sides. “My parents died, Corinne. They’re dead. I’m a fucking orphan, and all you can think about is that house? Oh, sorry. And your career.”
He’s hit her someplace soft, he can see it on her face.
“I’m sorry. I know it’s been hard,” she says.
“You have no idea how I feel.”
She frowns. “That’s not fair, Reese. Maybe if you talked to me about it, I could understand.”
“What’s there to understand? My mom had a stroke, and my dad died six months later of a coronary. Everything’s tied up in probate. The money I got from selling off the livestock is paying for the lawyer. I told you that.”
It’s a lie. His parents had both had very clear and concise wills, allowing the estate to pass to him with a minimum of fuss. He has a bank account in his name with nearly ten grand in it, and the land and buildings are worth five or six times more than that, if and when he decides to sell.
He hasn’t told her, that’s all.
He doesn’t want to tell her.
Things will change, once money is involved, and though, yes, it will make their lives easier it will also make it all different. It’s not that he likes relying on her for everything, or that she has to work so hard to keep them afloat while all he’d managed to do was keep house. It’s more than that. The money is his ticket to the bigger and better things he’s always dreamed of having but had been certain he’d never get. The money is freedom.
It’s his escape.
Chapter Thirty-Six
“I wish we didn’t have to get up.” Corinne burrowed deeper into the blankets.
“Go back to sleep for another hour or so.” Beside her, Reese stretched, then curled to spoon her against him. “It’s early.”
“I need to get back. The kids will be home from their dad’s before six, and I have lots of stuff to take care of before then.” She yawned and pressed her bare ass against him, smiling when she felt his cock stir against her. “Mmmm.”
It felt impossible that she could want him again after last night. After the entire weekend. She should’ve been so sated and worn out that she wouldn’t have wanted sex again for at least…oh, at least another ten minutes or so she thought as his dick hardened against her ass. And Reese definitely should’ve been struggling.
“What kind of stuff could be better than this?” His fingers moved between her legs.
With a groan, she stopped him and got up, hopping out of bed before he could stop her. She admired him posing for her though, an arm flung behind his head. The sheets pulled down to expose his belly. She made an appreciative noise.
“I could look at you forever, just like that.”
He bumped his hips a little, moving the bulge of his erection beneath the sheets. “If you lived here with me, you could see it every morning.”
She laughed at the absurdity of that, then saw he wasn’t laughing. “Reese.”
“What? It would make sense, wouldn’t it?”
Frowning, Corinne searched for something to put on over her nakedness. She found his discarded T-shirt and tugged it over her head. The hem hit her barely midthigh, but it was better than feeling bare.
“To move here, to Philadelphia with you? That makes no sense at all. My job is in Lancaster.”
Reese snorted softly. “I’m guessing I could change that for you.”
The heat that had been kindled inside her when she woke in his arms was rapidly being replaced by creeping ice. “Are you going to fire me?”
He frowned. “No, of course not.”
“My house is in Lancaster. My kids,” she said tightly, “live in Lancaster.”
“I didn’t mean—” He sighed and caught sight of her face. “Corinne, don’t look at me like that. Isn’t this better, here? Didn’t we have a great weekend?”
“Yes, we did.” She began looking for her clothes.
“So what’s the problem?”
She turned, a pair of panties and a bra in her
hands. “I can’t move here with you. My life and my family and my job are in Lancaster. But let me guess, Reese, because it’s so obvious I should’ve seen it before. You have no interest in making a life there.”
His expression told her she was not far from the truth. But when she turned to head for the bathroom, he was up and out of the bed to follow her. She turned on the shower, not looking at him. Not wanting to turn this into an argument, but knowing it was heading there, because it felt so much like the last time she had to stare hard at herself in the mirror to be sure she hadn’t somehow traveled back in time.
“You didn’t think I was going to…what…live in my parents’ old house? C’mon. My life, my business, it’s here.”
“You told me yourself, you have houses all over. Why not one in the place where I live?” she asked and stepped into the shower’s hot spray. “You don’t need to live in the farmhouse. You could buy something. It’s not like you can’t afford to, right?”
“And if I don’t want to live in Lancaster?”
She didn’t bother washing her hair, merely rinsed herself with a thin sheen of soap and got out to grab a towel. “Did you ever have any intentions of living there?”
Again, he didn’t have to answer her with words. Disgusted and angry, Corinne wrapped the towel around herself and went into the bedroom to put her clothes on. Reese followed.
“No. I didn’t. I intended to see you again, Corinne. The offer to buy the company was just an excuse to do that. I told you that already. But then I did see you, and I wanted to keep seeing you. But—” he laughed without much humor, “—surely you can see that it’s impossible for me to actually live there.”
“Because you never wanted to live there, right? You wanted out. You wanted to get as far away from Lancaster as you could. Even though it meant leaving me.” Tears sparking her eyes at the memories of that last, final fight, she shoved her legs into skinny jeans and yanked a tunic blouse over her head. Her hair came free from the elastic, and she twisted it on top of her head again, ignoring the snarls. “So tell me something, Reese. Why did you bother? Why did you come back around, if you didn’t think you’d want to stay?”
She let him take her by the shoulders and look into her eyes. She didn’t want this to be a fight; she didn’t want old pains to rise up and come between them. She lifted her chin, meeting his gaze head-on.
“I didn’t know, until I saw you, how much I wanted to be with you again, Corinne. I had no idea.”
“But now?” she asked quietly. “Now you know, right?”
“Now I know.” He kissed her, and she let him.
She let him pull her close too, her cheek pressed to the warmth of his bare chest. She closed her eyes. She breathed in the scent of him.
“I’ve only ever wanted to take care of you, Corinne. And now I can, beyond anything we ever talked about back then. I wouldn’t be where I am today if I hadn’t left, if I hadn’t used the money my parents left me to finish school and buy my first turnaround company—”
She paused, uncertain if she’d heard him correctly. “What do you mean, the money your parents left you? I thought there was nothing, that it was owed in back taxes and stuff, that’s what you said. A second mortgage.”
Reese looked uncomfortable. He took a step back, running a hand through his hair. It was his turn to look for something to put on, and as she watched him get into a pair of jeans with nothing beneath, she had time to piece it all together.
“Oh my God,” Corinne said. “You…lied. You lied to me.”
“Corinne…”
She held up a hand. He went silent. She shook her head, remembering long, hard hours of work and school and taking on all the responsibility for the two of them, especially those last few months before her first good job began and she and Reese had been at each other’s throats constantly.
“You used that money to leave me,” she said, her voice a rasping husk. “Is that what you did?”
“I asked you to go with me.”
“No.” She shook her head. “You asked me to leave behind everything I’d been working for, but you didn’t tell me that you had money that would help support us. You let me believe that you intended to head out to parts unknown with nothing more than a couple bucks in your pocket. I had a job, a good job, lined up for me. I’d been busting my ass for years to get my degree so I could have more than a job. I could have a career, something you didn’t seem to understand. I’d been supporting you—”
“And now I could support you,” he put in.
She shook her head again, trying to take this all in. “Why didn’t you tell me, Reese? Why lie? Did you think I would try to take it from you, or what?”
“I didn’t tell you, because I knew it would change everything,” he said angrily. “And I never liked being dependent on you, you know that, but once I found out about the money, all I could think was that if you knew I didn’t need you that way, that it was going to change how you felt about me.”
“I don’t think it would’ve changed my feelings for you then,” she said after a moment or so, “but I think knowing it is definitely changing my feelings for you now.”
“Shit. No, Corinne. No, okay? Look, it doesn’t have to change anything—” He tried to take her by the shoulders again, but she shrugged out of his grasp.
“You need to call the car. I want to get home.”
Silently, Reese nodded and left the room. Corinne spent the next few minutes gathering her things, packing up her bag. She hesitated before taking the items she’d just bought on South Street, then left them behind. She found him in the living room, still wearing only the jeans. No shirt, no shoes.
“Are you coming with me?” she asked.
“No. I have things to do here too. Where I live,” he told her coldly.
She did not want things to end this way. Not after such a great weekend. Learning he’d lied to her about something so big, though…it wasn’t sitting well with her. Not at all.
“The car’s downstairs,” Reese said. “You should go.”
So, she went.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Before
It’s cold outside and not much warmer in the house. She can see her breath, and while she’d tugged off her mittens upon entering the kitchen, she hasn’t taken off her coat. Reese wasn’t in the apartment when she got home. His note said he was here.
“Reese?”
Corinne hears a muffled noise from upstairs, and she follows it up the narrow staircase and down a hall to a small room with slanting eaves and a dormer. Reese’s old bedroom, she can see that at once by the posters on the walls. The single twin bed is made up with what looks like a homemade quilt and several pillows. Trophies line the dresser.
“I didn’t know you played baseball.” She runs a finger along the golden figurines, then turns to face him.
“In high school. Yeah. I wasn’t very good. I just didn’t quit.”
Things have been strained between them since the fight about dinner two nights ago. She’s tried to make it up to him, but the problem with being with someone who likes it when she’s stern is that in the fragile aftermath of an argument, it feels like any kind of discipline, even teasing, relates right back to the fight.
Anyway, they’ve been tiptoeing around each other since that night, and when she got back to the apartment tonight to find him missing, she’d been sure the note was going to say he’d left her. That he’d only gone “home” to the old farmhouse should’ve been more a relief—but it wasn’t. Not quite. This relationship has been souring for months, and Corinne isn’t sure how to fix it. At this point, she’s no longer sure if she wants to.
“Are you hungry? I brought takeout from the China King. It’s downstairs. Your favorite, beef with broccoli.” She smiles, trying to tempt him into smiling back.
He doesn’t. “Thanks. I’m in the middle of something. I’ll get some later.”
“Anything I can help with?” She sits next to him on the hard wood
en floor and reaches for the file box he’s been sifting through, but when Reese pulls it away, subtly but definitely moving it out of her reach, Corinne lets her hand fall onto her lap. “What are you doing, exactly?”
“Cleaning out some stuff.”
She looks around the room and tucks her knees up, linking her fingers to hold them close to her chest. “Looks like this whole house is going to need a good cleaning out. That’s a big job, puppy, are you sure you don’t want—”
“I’m fine. I can handle it.”
“Okay.” She sits in silence for a few minutes, watching him. Waiting.
She can’t imagine what it has been like for him, to lose both his parents so close together, and so unexpectedly. Her own parents are sometimes annoying, as all parents can be, but she sees them as often as she can. Since they moved to Delaware, it’s not as often as she, or they, would like. To have both of them be simply…gone…Corinne can’t begin to think of how terrible and sad it must feel.
She’s tried talking to him about it, but Reese has said very little, other than to occasionally tell her there are problems with the estate. Lawyers to pay. Mortgages to settle. Back taxes to take care of. She hasn’t pressed him about any of it, though she does wonder if surely, somehow, some way, there is a way they could move into this house and stop paying rent. It might ease some of the financial burden that has started to cause such a strain in their relationship over the past few months. It might help lead them toward some kind of future.
Maybe, she thinks, watching him sort through piles of papers without looking her, maybe the trouble that seems to have crept between them has nothing to do with money.
Maybe Reese just doesn’t want to be with her, anymore.
“You know, I’m here to listen to you. If you need to talk.”
“I don’t need to talk,” he says, still without looking at her. His voice is clipped. Cold. Distant.
“Reese.” When he still won’t look, she says it again, harder. Firmer. A tone that brooks no disobedience.