Rose-Coloured Love

by Amanda Carpenter

The neighbourhood he drove through and then slowed down in was about half an hour from where she and Lee used to live. It gave her a strange feeling as she looked around the unfamiliar streets and apartment houses. Half an hour from this man, and their paths had never crossed. Four novels and a mutual lack of interest; professional, remote; editor and author. They had both been busy with their own separate lives and problems, and now they were lovers. Panic, now familiar from the last few days, gripped her in a sweating hold. This should not be happening.

  He pulled up to the kerb and stopped. “I’m not supposed to park here,” he told her with a crooked smile, “but I think we’ll be safe enough until we get the luggage inside. Then, while you nose around my apartment, I’ll get rid of the car. It should only take me about half an hour. Do you mind?”

  “Of course not,” she said quickly, and they climbed out. He took most of the things, except for the overnight bag of hers that she clutched along with her handbag. They ran up the wide concrete steps. She glanced quickly down the names listed by the door as he unlocked it, but didn’t have time to see his before he was pushing open the door and stepping back for her to enter. “Second floor,” he directed, as he bent again for the suitcases, and, with a glance around at the carpeted halls and steps, she started up the flight.

  His apartment was spacious, but she hadn’t expected anything else. The kitchen was small, tucked behind a waist-high counter with a dining table on the opposite side. The living room was large, with a white stone fireplace, and well decorated. Ryan deposited his load with a thump to the floor just inside the door, and he hesitated for a moment, looking at her somewhat oddly. He started to speak and then hesitated as she looked at him silently, enquiringly, distantly. Apparently he was feeling the sudden barrier between them as much as she. “I’d better take care of the car,” he said finally. “Will you be all right?”

  “Yes, of course I will,” she said lightly, moving around the corner of his couch. “I’ll just look around, if you don’t mind.”

  “Be my guest.” At those words, for some reason, he looked fleetingly rueful, but he quickly smiled at her and then shut the door as he left. She heard the lock click at his departure, and grimaced. At Helen’s she had got out of the habit of locking doors, but then again, this was New York.

  She wandered through the rest of the apartment. A large, modern bathroom, two bedrooms, one used as such, of course, and the other converted into a library startlingly similar to hers. She felt an absurd surge of comfort at that, and then spent a great deal of time browsing through his extensive collection of books. When she found all of hers, in hardback, she had to close her eyes tight against an unsettling, choked emotion. He had her books, ones that she had written not so long ago, not so very far away, but in a totally different life. She had lived in her cramped apartment while he had lived here. She’d had different expectations then from her life. She had been younger, more intense, tough.

  Her mood shifted unexpectedly, with a small laugh. She approached his antique wardrobe, which smelled of sandalwood, and she looked at herself in the full-length mirror. Come to think of it, she was still young, in the prime of her life, and as for the intensity of her moods, she only had to look at how she swung back and forth from one moment to the next, violently, to ascertain the strength of her emotions. Granted, she wasn’t as tough as she used to be, but there was something rather appealing in the vulnerability in her eyes. She hoped.

  Ryan’s scent lingered in the bedroom, the faint spice of the aftershave he used. She could close her eyes and feel that he was about to wrap his arm around her from behind. His place of rest, his home, his bed. All of it was strange to her. The walls suddenly seemed to close in on her, and she rushed back to the larger living room, wishing nothing more than to get out of this place, to go back to Maine.

  There were steps outside, and a key sounded in the lock. She turned as Ryan entered the apartment and shut the door behind him, his gaze searching for her and then smiling slightly as he found her, hovering near the fireplace.

  She couldn’t think of a thing to say to him. “Got it taken care of?” she asked, and could have bitten out her tongue at the idiocy of it.

  He looked amused. “Yes, were you worried?” he said, gently teasing, as he came away from the door. She backed away and went to the window to look over the street. After a moment, he commented, very casually, “I haven’t a thing in my refrigerator. I suppose I should go and pick up some groceries. How about going out to eat tonight?”

  “Sounds fine,” she said tonelessly, unable to look at him.

  A pause. “Good. Well, would you like to come shopping with me, or would you rather stare at the traffic?”

  That question had been rather sharp to be exactly nice, and she spun around to stare at him with narrowed, assessing eyes. But his expression was bland enough, so she relaxed and replied, “I’d rather come.”

  The rest of the afternoon was spent shopping. They browsed through bookshops, a jewellery store, a novelty shop. Only towards the later part of the afternoon did they buy groceries, and when they finally let themselves back into his apartment and put away the food, it was time to think about changing for supper.

  Devan quickly showered and then changed into a cream trouser suit while Ryan washed and also dressed. She applied blusher to her cheekbones and a dark blue shadow thinly over her lids while Ryan dried his wet hair and then came back to his bedroom. He regarded her for a long, disturbing moment before asking, “All set?”

  They ate at a local Italian restaurant, and, as they relaxed afterwards they chattered about light, inconsequential things while Devan felt more and more disorientated and miserable. Finally they headed back to his apartment once more, and Ryan let her precede him through the opened door.

  Devan moved aimlessly through the living room, touching things lightly with her fingers, not stopping at any one place. She heard and felt him not far from her, breathing quietly, watching her wander. “All right,” he said, and his tone was flat. It made her jump, visibly. “What is it, Devan? You’ve been this way all day long.”

  “What way?” she asked, turning to look at him, stalling.

  He looked grim and tired as he leaned against the end of his couch and crossed his arms. He also looked immovable, as sturdy as a rock. “Uncommunicative, moody, restless, uneasy, jumpy,” he said succinctly. “Need I go on?”

  She eyed him with a dull resentment. “No, I think you’ve about covered it,” she replied drily. Her eyes filled, suddenly glazing bright in the light of the table lamp, and she whirled away so that he wouldn’t see.

  But he had, and he asked very quietly, “What’s wrong? Don’t you know by now that you can talk to me?”

  And suddenly she could, for he was the Ryan she had known in Maine after all, and not such a stranger. He was listening and patient and caring, and she turned back around to face him. “I’m scared,” she said, and her voice caught on the words. “I don’t know what the hell I’m doing here. I don’t like this, I feel confused, and I want to go back. This isn’t going to work.”

  “My God,” he said wearily, and his face showed a sudden, startling anger as he pushed off the couch and strode for her. He retorted, his light eyes flashing, “Do you think you have a corner on the market of uncertainties here? Do you have any idea what it took me to invite you in the first place? I’ve never lived with a woman in my life! I waited two days for you to make up your mind, and now I’ve got to wait for you to be happy about it!” He made a visible effort to get back in control. “What’s wrong with this place? Tell me. Maybe I can change it.”

  He was impatient with her, and she couldn’t blame him. She looked around her as if seeing everything for the first time, but of course that couldn’t be, for spilling wetness dashed down her cheeks, blindingly. But she offered, her voice quavering, “It’s a lovely apartment.”

  He sighed heavily, and came slowly over to cup her face between his hands, his thumbs gently rubbing at her cheeks,
streaking across the path of tears. “It’s me, isn’t it?” he asked, still with that weary tone, now quite patient.

  His touch had her grasping at his wrists in tight desperation, feeling the solidity of bone and muscles and tendon, holding on to him like a lifeline. “No,” she whispered, and drew her next breath in on a sob. “It’s me. I’m not the same person I was four years ago. I—I need something I can hang on to. I need something to hold, to depend on. I’m afraid the rug’s going to be pulled out from under my feet, and the world is going to shift again. I thought I could take your offer. I thought I could try to build something here, in the same way I had with Lee. But I don’t want that. I can’t.”

  He pulled her forward and held her head against his chest. She felt his cheek laid against her hair rubbing, while one hand left her own cheek to circle her waist. Then she was clinging to his shirt and hiding her face in him, feeling the rise and fall of his breathing. She didn’t stop to marvel that the very person who could frighten her could also give so much support and comfort.

  “What will it take for you to believe in me?” he asked, and she could hear the note of sadness in his voice. “Time? We’ve got that, if you can push past your fears. A personal reference? I can get one that says I don’t get drunk, or throw drug parties, and that I’m a steady, hard worker. Support? I’ve given you that in the last three years. I think you know by now how highly I respect you and admire your work.”

  “I—need security,” she whispered, with great difficulty.

  He went still, as though shocked. “Marriage?” he asked, and the shock was in his voice. Then he drew back and stared down at her, his eyes huge and dark. “It’s so soon, I didn’t dare think of asking—is that what you meant?”

  She broke away from his hold and escaped to the other side of the room. “No!” she cried, and then, “I don’t know! God, I don’t know!” She dug the heels of her hands into her eyes.

  He took a step after her, and then another. “I’ll marry you if that’s what it takes to get you to trust me,” he said. His hand went out, strangely pleading. “I’ll marry you and be that something for you to hang on to. Hold on to me, Devan.”

  Her back was to him, and she tilted back her head to stare at the ceiling. Her voice coming broken, she whispered, “For ever and ever. You could make a decision like that after only a week? To me? Oh, Ryan, what are you doing to me? Why do you come out of nowhere and turn me around until I don’t know if I’m coming or going? I’m starting to live again inside; and I don’t know if I can take all this emotion you’re pulling from me. I don’t even know how you feel about me; all I know is what I feel and think, and that’s what is scaring me half to death.”

  “I love you,” he whispered starkly. “I’m in love with you. I want you to feel secure, and safe and warm and dry. I want to marry you because I want to, selfishly, for no other reason. I don’t know you very well, and I want to know you intimately.”

  She turned to look at him, her lips parted as she listened, dazed, to what he was saying. When he stopped, looking quite pale, she said, quite distressed, “I threw water on you.”

  He answered as if she had made perfect sense, “I dried, didn’t I?”

  “I’m afraid that I would be a failure,” she then said baldly, baring herself to the core without ever caring, indeed, needing to. “And I don’t want to hurt you that way.”

  “How could you fail?” he said tenderly, as he took in her widened, frightened eyes, and the fragile hope dawning. “You haven’t failed at anything in your life. You only thought you had.”

  “I’m thirty years old.”

  “And I’m going to be forty, the sun has set outside, and next month will be August. What does any of it have to do with what we’re discussing?”

  “What—if I never write again?” she whispered then.

  He blinked a moment. “I bring in a pretty hefty pay cheque,” he said in reply. “We wouldn’t starve.”

  That brought a flashing image of her bank account and how he surely must know what a great deal she was worth already, and, in spite of herself, she threw back her head and laughed. He smiled slightly in response and moved over to stare out at the street below. The living room lamp was the only light on, and he was in shadow at the other end of the apartment, which strangely didn’t seem at all frightening to her now. His face was lit from blue shadow to a white, moving light from the traffic below.

  “Take your time deciding,” he said to her on a sigh. “There’s no pressure. God, if it’s one thing we do have, it’s plenty of time. Time to get to know each other better, time to back out if that’s what you really want, nothing but time.”

  Yes, she knew that. She had often felt the burden of time on her shoulders this last year, and the feeling of futility at how she wasted it. But suddenly the future began to glow ahead of her, full of promise, and light, and warmth. She walked over to him and sank into a chair that was pushed to the wall by the window. He still looked tired, but now he also looked peaceful, once again content to wait for her.

  She reached out her hand and laid it flat against his thigh, feeling the hard muscle under silken cloth, and his body warmth. As she stroked him lightly, he looked at her, and she said with great tenderness, “You. Your understanding, your concern. Your sympathy, your caring, your integrity. How could I not love you? You were a stranger, and yet you took the time and effort to yank me out of the rut I was in, whether I wanted it or not. Nobody asked you to do it. Don’t you know that, if I could, I’d give you the world?”

  He squatted close to her chair, and brought her hand to his lips. “I don’t need the world. I just want my corner of it, with you. And maybe a honeymoon in the Bahamas.”

  Another burble of laughter coming from her, unexpected and rich. Her heart expanded to hold all the swelling joy and delight she felt, and she wondered fleetingly if her chest would burst. She reached with her free hand to touch the side of his face, watching it gentle incredibly at the feel of her fingers, cool and light. “You are unfathomable,” she said quietly, and he looked rather puzzled at that.

  “Because I want a honeymoon in the sun?”

  “No, because you could look at me the way I was, and love me anyway. You actually want me.”

  “It’s not a great mystery,” he whispered. “I’m astonished you haven’t seen it already. Didn’t Janie and Gary’s reaction to your departure give you a clue? Didn’t the deep and passionate joy in your writing give you a clue? Helen knows. She’s a lovely lady, but she can’t hold a candle to your warmth and intensity of feeling. I looked at you and saw through your misery at what you were able to feel, for your sister, and the children, and I wanted you to learn to care for me, too. I knew that if you could radiate your pain so clearly, then you would radiate your love in just the same way, marvellously, magnificently.” She watched, rapt, as the silver white lights flickered across his shadowed face, bringing those mature features into sharp focus, bringing those light eyes to brilliance. And then he looked at her and smiled, a slow, sweet spreading of his lips, and she was not at all surprised to find it to be one of the most beautiful sights of her life. It etched itself with a delicate permanence into her mind. “So you see,” he said. “It is very simple. I hope to keep warm by your love for the rest of my life.”

  About the Author

  Thea Harrison started writing when she was nineteen. In the 1980s and 1990s, she wrote for Harlequin Mills & Boon under the name Amanda Carpenter. The Amanda Carpenter romances have been published in over ten languages, and sold over a million and a half copies worldwide, and are now being reprinted digitally by Samhain Publishing for their Retro Romance line.

  For more information, please visit her at: www.theaharrison.com. You can also find her on Facebook at: www.facebook.com/TheaHarrison and on Twitter at: @TheaHarrison.

  Look for these titles by Amanda Carpenter

  Now Available:

  Rose-Coloured Love

  A Deeper Dimension

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sp; The Wall

  A Damaged Trust

  The Great Escape

  Flashback

  Rage

  Waking Up

  Writing as Thea Harrison:

  Novellas of the Elder Races

  True Colors

  Natural Evil

  Devil’s Gate

  Hunter’s Season

  The Wicked

  Coming Soon:

  Reckless

  The Gift of Happiness

  Caprice

  Passage of the Night

  Cry Wolf

  A Solitary Heart

  The Winter King

  Friends for life…but could they have even more?

  Waking Up

  © 2013 Amanda Carpenter

  Robbie Fisher had been friends with Jason Morrow for years. A lifelong confidant, he’d listened to all of her hopes and dreams for the future before leaving to pursue his.

  After years away, Jason is back in town, looking after his parents’ house for the summer. But Robbie’s all grown up now, and suddenly uncomfortable with spilling all of her secrets to her handsome neighbor.

  The cute boy next door has become a stranger…and a disturbingly sexy one at that. But can they forge a new relationship to replace the old?

  Enjoy the following excerpt for Waking Up:

  Lazy warmth, on a peaceful summer day. Lazy, sensuous warmth. With her eyes closed, Robbie could see a blurry red as the sun’s hot, powerful rays pulsed down on her lithe, outstretched body. Clad in the briefest of swimsuits, she oozed sleek, shiny, slippery suntan oil, every browned muscle relaxed, full mouth slightly curved in unspoken satisfaction.

  The air smelled like freshly cut grass, the fruit of her recent endeavor. It was a ritual for Robbie to cut the grass every Saturday during the summer, weather permitting. Her father worked quite hard, and she always felt that it was his due to have at least one day in which he could totally relax, with no obligations to meet. She raised slim arms over her head in a languid pose and sighed, turning her head to one side. Someone else in the comfortable neighborhood was cutting grass; the sound of a mower purred and rattled, a continuous, faint undercurrent to the occasional passing car and the far-off shouts of children playing.