by Leanne Banks
“What does he want?”
“Freedom to research without having to publish or teach.”
“How long has he been working on his inventions?”
Dylan smiled. “Years.”
“Now that’s what I wanted to see,” Justin said. “The trademark, Barrow lady-killer smile.”
Dylan felt his good humor fade. He shrugged and lifted his beer to take a long drink. He felt Michael’s curious gaze.
“How’s Alisa?” he asked casually.
“Better. She’s just about back to normal.”
Michael and Justin exchanged a glance. “How normal?” Justin asked.
The roar of conversation and tinkling of glasses struck an odd counterpoint to the quiet, hollowness inside him. “She knows what happened. She’s moved back to her apartment.”
Dylan felt the weight of their gazes.
“Sorry,” Michael mumbled.
“Yeah,” Justin said in agreement.
Dylan shrugged. “I knew it would happen. It was just a matter of time.”
“How long since she left?” Justin asked.
“A few days.” It had felt like a year.
“What did she say when you called her?” Michael asked.
Dylan stopped midmovement as he lifted his mug. “I haven’t called her. She said she needed to think.”
Michael looked at him like he was crazy. “And you’re going to let her think by herself?”
“Well, yeah. If she’d wanted me around, she would have stayed.”
Michael and Justin glanced at each other again.
Irritated, Dylan swallowed the last of his beer. “What?”
Justin cleared his throat. “I know you’ve dated a lot of women, but you haven’t exactly been known for the duration of your male/female relationships.”
“And you have?” Dylan challenged.
“I’m married to the woman I love,” Justin said bluntly. “You’re not.”
Angry at the truth in his words, Dylan clenched his fingers into a fist and stuck his hand in his pocket. “So you’re an expert on women.”
Justin lifted his hand. “Not me, but I’ve learned a few things. One is you don’t leave a woman alone if she’s upset about you. It’s called hedging your bet.”
“He’s right,” Michael said. “Women have active imaginations. If I had backed off from Kate when we first got married, she would have left me so fast my head would still be spinning. Kate says it’s one of those Mars/Venus things. Men need to go to their caves. Women need to talk.”
Dylan thought about their advice for a long moment, then shook his head. “You didn’t see the look on her face.”
Justin shrugged. “If you don’t mind living without her, then it’s no big deal.”
“That’s her decision,” Dylan said crossly.
“Partly,” Michael said. “Depends if you’re a quitter or not.”
Insulted, Dylan stiffened, almost rising to the bait. “What do you mean quitter?”
“I mean no matter what happened in the past between you and Alisa, she won’t forget that you were there for her when she needed you, unless you let her forget it.”
“I don’t want her gratitude,” Dylan said.
Justin rolled his eyes. “Where is this sudden attack of honor coming from? You can use gratitude to your advantage. Do you want the woman or not? Are you gonna roll over and let her get away again? You already did that. Did it make you happy?”
“No,” Dylan said.
“If you want Alisa, then you’re gonna have to use everything to your advantage. You’re not a twenty-year-old college kid anymore, and you need to make damn sure that she’s reminded of that on a regular basis. It’s my experience that one thing a woman wants is a man who’s going to hold on to her no matter what. If you want this woman, you’re in for the fight of your life. Trust me, I’ve just been through my own battle.”
Michael nodded. “Same here,” he said. “It may sound hokey as hell, but I had to court my wife. Had to take her out on a date after we got married. After I did it, I found out it wasn’t such a bad idea. But this is all up to you, bro. You have to decide if you’re going to hold or fold.”
Alisa tried to examine her relationship with Dylan and pack it away in a nice, neat box, but every time she tried to categorize him as the man who had betrayed her, she couldn’t help remembering that he was also the man who brought her markers and art paper while she was in the hospital. He was heartless, she told herself, then remembered that he allowed his property to be used for horseback riding lessons for handicapped children.
He couldn’t be trusted, she told herself. Then why would her mind fly to his name if she ever had an emergency? She scowled as she cleaned out her bedroom closet on Wednesday night.
He didn’t appreciate the importance of love. Perhaps, her conscience conceded, but what kind of permanent love had he ever experienced?
He didn’t need anyone. Her stomach twisted at the thought. Closer to the truth. Dylan didn’t seem to need anyone. She wasn’t certain he was capable. Straining to empty the corner of the top shelf, she came upon a small box and curiously pulled it down.
She wouldn’t be able to keep his attention. The insidious thought slithered through her mind like a hissing serpent. Her chest tightened, and she tasted the familiar, bitter flavor of fear. The truth again. She told herself it didn’t matter because she didn’t want to keep his attention.
Pushing the unwelcome thought and emotion aside, she sat down on the carpet and pulled the top off the shoe box. It was full of letters, photos and stubs to movies, concerts and dances. The edges of some of the letters were charred as if they’d been rescued from a fire.
Alisa felt a sinking sensation. This was the Dylan box. She’d noticed that in her other photo albums there’d been no pictures of him. She’d found that curious until now.
She recalled the moment she’d begun to burn the memory of Dylan Barrow from her life. In the middle of the night at her mother’s house, she’d crept downstairs to the den where the fireplace still burned. It had been weeks since her breakup with Dylan, but she still cried herself to sleep. She still was so angry she’d wanted to scream. To exorcise him from her mind and heart, she would burn the memories. She remembered tossing the precious mementos into the fire and watching them begin to burn.
Something inside her panicked. She wasn’t quite ready to let go. Using the fireplace shovel, she salvaged most of the photos and letters and mentally put Dylan in a box. He had been her childhood friend and her first lover, so it was natural that he have a place in her memories. Alisa looked at the box and the small empty space on the top shelf. A small place in her memories, she saw, and put the lid back on the box.
The doorbell rang, and she shoved the box back in place, still unwilling to destroy that part of her history. She would have to think another time about why she still kept that box.
Hurrying to the door, she looked through the peephole and blinked several times. Dylan stood outside with a purposeful expression on his face. Her heart jumped. It was as if Dylan had jumped out of her box. She slowly opened the door.
“Hi,” he said, when she didn’t move from the doorway. “Can I come in?”
“Sure,” she said, moving out of the way. “What’s the occasion?”
“You’ve had time to think,” he said, and walked into her den and sat down on her easy chair as if he belonged there. “Now it’s time to talk.”
Alisa felt an odd mix of emotions. She had thought about him entirely too much over the past few days. She had mentally screamed at him, cursed him and cried at him. Now that she had her opportunity, she was at a loss. “I’m not sure it’s a good idea to talk.”
“Why?” he asked, meeting her gaze so directly she almost looked away.
“Because of what happened between us,” she said.
“Which thing?” he asked. “My teaching you to catch ball, you sneaking me into see reruns of The Lone Ranger, us tramping through
mud puddles, me staying with you at the hospital, us making love when we were college kids or us making love as adults. Which thing?”
Alisa swallowed over a lump in her throat. Awash in confusion, she looked away. “I think what happened between us in college.”
“That was one thing,” he said.
“Big thing,” she said, refusing to allow him to diminish it. “Big important thing.”
“Agreed,” he said. “You’ve had time to think about it. It’s time for us to talk again.”
Uncomfortable with his attitude, she frowned. “We didn’t talk after it happened eight years ago.”
“That was a mistake,” Dylan said. “I made more than one mistake when I was twenty years old. I’m not going to make the same ones now.”
Uneasy, she began to pace. “I don’t really understand what you want. What happened between us in college changed things.”
“Your accident changed things, too,” he said with a level gaze.
She found his calmness maddening. “Temporarily,” she said.
“Was it?”
Her chest grew tight. “Yes,” she insisted. “As soon as I remembered what happened in college, everything changed.”
“Everything?” Dylan stood and walked toward her. “So you have reverted to preaccident Alisa. You feel nothing for me.”
His voice purred over her skin, bringing her nerve endings to life. He stood so close, she thought, struggling with a thousand feelings she didn’t want. “I can’t say that. Haven’t you heard the expression ‘been there, done that, got the T-shirt’? We’ve been there done that three times.”
“Then maybe we need to get it right this time,” he said.
Alisa felt her heart pause, then take off for the races. “I’m not sure this is a good idea.”
“Why?”
Heavens, he was making this difficult. “I’ll never be comfortable about you and your legions of feminine admirers.”
He lifted his lips in a sexy grin and dipped his head entirely too close to hers. “Take me off the market,” he taunted.
She took a quick shallow breath at his audacity. At another time she would have been sorely tempted to take him up on his seductive offer, but now she knew better. “I might be able to take you off the market, but I don’t think I have what it takes to keep you off the market. Someday, somehow I’ll be busy taking care of some other part of my life and you’ll feel neglected. And just because you’re you, a woman will appear to console you.”
His humor faded. “Is that what you would expect from what you’ve come to know of me since the accident?”
That stopped her. Her mind went blank.
“If it is, you haven’t been paying attention,” he said with a finality that alternately terrified and relieved her. She wondered if the next words out of his mouth would be goodbye.
“But that’s okay,” he finally said, his jaw clenching with impatience. “I’m leaving right now, but I’ll be back. A long time ago the old janitor at Granger used to joke with me and call me a ‘bad penny.’ A bad penny just keeps showing up. Well, Alisa, I’m your bad penny,” he said, and turned toward the door.
Feeling as if she’d just been through a game of crack the whip, she skipped after him. “Why are you doing this?” she asked to his broad, straight back. “Why are you talking when you know I don’t want to talk? Why are you trying to get something started between us when I told you I don’t want it?”
“I don’t like the alternative,” he said, then opened the door and stepped outside. He turned around to face her with a determined devil glint in his eyes. “Hasta la vista, baby.”
Alisa closed the door, then rested her back against it and slid to the floor. Whatever she had expected from Dylan, this wasn’t it. All those years ago, when she’d sent him on his way, he’d gone quietly. Since then, when he’d occasionally asked her out and she of course had refused, he’d left her alone. Now he wasn’t going quietly. How was she supposed to put herself and her life together if he was going to generate his unique brand of turmoil inside her all the time?
Frustration boiled inside her and she covered her eyes. “Great,” she muttered. “Now I’ve got the terminator after me.”
Ten
He called her every other day. Just enough to keep her off balance.
Alisa had filled in most of the blanks in her memory now and was trying to take back her life. She continued to work on crossword puzzles and make lists to help with her short-term memory loss. Her problem was that her preaccident life didn’t quite fit. She had changed.
She wasn’t sure what all those changes entailed, so she focused on putting one step forward and living one day at a time. She finished lacing her running shoes for an early-morning run, tucked her apartment key in her pocket and bounded out the door and down to the lobby.
She slowed, then stopped, but her heart raced. Dylan was waiting for her, dressed in a tank top, shorts and running shoes.
“What are you doing?” she asked, remembering that she’d told him she planned to start running this morning.
“Meeting you to go running,” he said.
“Why?” she asked, moving toward the apartment building door.
“I could say it’s because I love to run any chance I get,” he told her, positioning himself closest to the street and matching his stride to hers as she began to run.
“Something tells me that’s not true,” she said.
“I don’t want you having any more close encounters with SUVs,” he said.
His words grabbed at her. She stopped and looked at him, taking in the stubborn set of his chin. Tenderness and frustration warred inside her. “I’m not going to get hit by an SUV again,” Alisa told him.
“Damn right you aren’t.”
She sighed. “You’re not responsible for me anymore. The doctor has officially released me.”
“The doctor hasn’t made love to you,” Dylan said, his eyes dark with emotion, then he lifted his lips in a half grin. “Humor me. I just want to guard your body while you run.”
Heaven help her, he made her feel so confused. She lifted her hands. “Okay, but it’ll be short. I’m out of practice.”
“You set the pace.”
He ran beside her in blessed silence as if he understood her need to be quiet. Although she was always aware of his presence, after a few moments it didn’t feel like an intrusion. He allowed her to choose the route and took a cool-down walk with her around her building.
“How are you doing?” he asked.
“Okay,” she said. “Still trying to find my feet. That’s part of the reason I wanted to start running again.”
“Clears your head. Makes you feel stronger.”
She nodded. “I miss my art,” she confessed. “When I look at my schedule before the accident, it was packed. I didn’t have time to draw or paint. You brought me the paper in the hospital and it was like finding a lost part of me.”
“It was always your secret passion,” Dylan said. “You hid it from just about everyone.” He studied her for a long moment. “I’d like you to do a drawing for me.”
“Of what?”
“Tonto, the dream dog with the pea-size bladder,” he said dryly.
Alisa smothered a chuckle. “How’s the training going?”
“My housekeeper almost quit.”
She winced.
“But he’s getting there. He’s demanding and wants a lot of attention.”
“I suppose you could have sold him,” she said.
He shook his head. “He was a gift. Besides,” he said with a sexy grin. “He’s my dream dog. So when will you draw him?”
Just a little pushy, she thought, but she didn’t feel at all put off. “I could probably do it sometime this weekend,” she said.
“Great. Anytime except Friday night.”
Her curiosity grew exponentially. It was none of her business what he did on Friday nights, she told herself, but she couldn’t keep the question from poppi
ng out of her mouth. “You have plans for Friday night?”
His eyes glinted as if he could read her mind. “A charity fund-raiser. The entire board was invited. Would you like to join me?”
Wishing she’d kept her mouth shut, she shook her head. “No thanks,” she muttered heading for the apartment building door.
“When will you run again?” Dylan called after her.
“Friday morning,” she said. “But you don’t—”
“I’ll see you then,” he said, and took off before she could tell him not to bother.
As she climbed the stairs to her apartment, she knew she drew a strange comfort from being with Dylan. He’d known her so long and he’d been there for her during that frightening, frustrating period after the accident. At the same time, she didn’t want to depend on him. She might be able to trust him with her life, but deep down she wasn’t sure she could trust him with her heart.
He’d broken her heart, and she couldn’t let him do that again.
It was pouring rain on Friday morning, so she skipped her run and didn’t see Dylan. That night her mind turned frequently to him. She wondered who he had taken to the charity function. Dylan never had to be without female companionship. The thought scraped at a raw spot inside her, so she pushed it aside and pulled out a sketch pad and lost herself in drawing for a couple of hours.
On Saturday morning Amy invited her to join her at the park with the children. Her red hair glinting in the sunlight, she patted the seat beside her on the bench. “Nice of you to come,” she said, and pointed to the swings and wooden gym in front of her. “Perfectly positioned for watching.”
Alisa joined the friendly, intense woman. “Nice of you to ask me. Did you have something on your mind?”
“A few things,” Amy said glumly. “I hope nothing I said to you the other day made things bad for you and Dylan. I have a problem keeping my mouth shut sometimes.”
“I appreciate your truthfulness,” Alisa said.
“Yeah, but sometimes the truth hurts.”
The truth had hurt, Alisa thought, but she would rather live with the truth than a lie. “You’re not responsible for what goes on between me and Dylan.”