He sat down on the bed and ran his fingers over her thigh. “What were we talking about?”
“Do you think we’re going to pick up where we left off?”
He’d hoped they had fast-forwarded well past that point. He’d go back to chaste kisses and wooing if she needed that, but he much preferred the heated lovemaking.
He went for a joke because he thought that’s what she wanted. “Don’t tell me I’m still in trouble for not calling you sooner.”
“I was thinking we skip ahead and I don’t just mean in the physical sense.”
He let his fingers trail off her leg and onto the bed. “Okay.”
She scooted until she balanced on her elbows behind her. “Which I take it is some sort of male code for ‘time to run’ because that’s what it sounds like.”
“You’re jumping to conclusions.”
“Am I?”
“I don’t understand what’s happening here.” They’d morphed from light banter to a serious conversation. He had no idea where this was going or how to put on the brakes before it veered into danger territory. It had already crossed that line.
“Apparently.”
This had to be a male-female thing. That would explain his complete loss for how to navigate through this patch. He was still trying to figure out how they’d even wandered into this patch.
“Can you clue me in as to what you want? What are we talking about? I am a black-and-white guy. If I know what you want, I’ll try to give it to you.” Within reason, and that was the caveat that frequently killed the deal.
Her dark-eyed gaze searched his face. The frown and scrunch of her forehead suggested this was very serious to her.
He was desperate not to get this wrong.
She sat the whole way up, crossing her legs in that pretzel position women loved and men couldn’t conquer without a shoehorn and a lot of screaming. “If I asked you to come to my office holiday party with me, what would you say?”
He could not think of anything in the world he wanted to do less than venture to another party. If he had his way they’d postpone Christmas until he got caught up and Elan was a distant memory.
“You’re still having one after all of this? If I saw a Christmas tree right about now, I might shoot it. Same goes for angels, trumpets and bells.”
“Humor me.”
He wasn’t sure what answer she wanted. He’d hoped honesty would score some points. Amazing how often it didn’t in a world that professed to hold it up as a prize. “Well, it’s not really my thing.”
She picked at the comforter. As the quiet stretched, the plucking grew rough enough to rip the fabric.
“Not your thing?” She mimicked his tone as she said it.
Uh-oh.
“I’m not one for committed couple’s activities. Dinner parties, brunch, going home to meet the family. It’s not my style.”
The words weren’t even out of his mouth before he realized how asinine they sounded. Calling them back wouldn’t work. He debated if adding more might clean it up.
But she was already pulling away. She shifted and let her feet fall to the floor on the opposite side of the bed. “I don’t have any family.”
The words sliced through him. He hadn’t even thought about it enough to be careful, which was obvious by the way he threw it out there. “Sorry. That was insensitive.”
When she stared at him with flat eyes, he tried again. “Look, I—”
She stood up. Her head fell to the side, and her arms slipped across her stomach. It was the least receptive stance he’d ever seen from her. She closed everything off from him. Even her bright eyes and sunny face seemed to have dimmed in his presence.
“You want to know what I think?”
Worst. Question. Ever.
“Not when you say it like that.”
“I think you’re afraid.”
The fight behind the words shattered what was left of their calm existence. She wanted a reaction. That much was clear. Well, she got one. She could have a fight if she wanted one of those, too.
He slowly got to his feet. “Excuse me?”
“A woman hurt you and instead of writing her off as the wrong person for you, you’ve decided to remove yourself from the dating pool.”
She tapped her foot. He could hear it across the room on carpet. That had to be a bad thing.
Little did she know or want to understand, but Pam was the last person on his mind right now. He was having more than enough trouble with the woman in front of him. He didn’t need to add another to his list of responsibilities.
“That is in the past,” he said. “That relationship isn’t about us.”
“The breakup is who you are.”
That would make him a victim, and he refused to be that. He didn’t wallow. He wasn’t like his client, who refused to move on. “That is absolutely not true.”
“How else can I see this?”
He didn’t even understand what they were arguing about. To him, the topic kept jumping around, half the time landing on unrelated issues. “That we’re dating.”
“Meaning?”
He felt ridiculous spelling out the obvious. “We’ve gone out. Hell, we’ve stayed in. So I don’t think your theory about me hating dating applies here.”
“But you intended to keep it casual.” She threw her hands up in the air. “You never even called me back for another date. Without a shoot-out at Elan, I’d still be waiting to hear from you.”
He was going to pay for this forever. “We’re back to this? I said I was sorry. I can say it again.”
“Don’t bother.” She waved him off and went to the chair.
He couldn’t see what she was doing until he heard the zipper of a suitcase. He scanned the room for her clothes and missed the usual stray sock or shoe that usually sat in the middle of the room.
She was leaving and he had no idea why she was even angry.
“Why are we fighting?”
She picked up the suitcase, then threw it back down again. When she faced him, her eyes flashed with fire. Stress showed in every line of her body. Clenched fists and a flat mouth.
Nothing about her was open or receptive to anything other than a yelling battle. Shame he had no intention of playing along.
“I bet if all of this hadn’t happened, you would have found a different place to have coffee. One where you calculated you had the lowest risk of running into me. After all, the D.C. area is pretty big. If you hid and ran, I wouldn’t have been able to find you. I’d have been looking for a tax attorney who didn’t exist.”
The comment knocked him speechless.
But not for long.
Suddenly everything was his fault. Unfortunately for her, he’d picked that same moment to run out of patience. “Would you have looked?”
“Probably not back then. I didn’t really know you.”
Exactly. “Well, then, what’s the point?”
“That was before everything happened. Before we were on the run together.” She grabbed the bag with both hands and hugged it to her chest.
The defiant look had him backing off. So did the idea of her walking out. His mind shut down at the idea.
“Adrenaline is powerful,” he said.
“So is love.”
Silence fell over the room. He stood there all openmouthed and stupid. She huffed and puffed.
They made a curious pair.
He tried to think of something to say. For a way for his mind to process the words so they didn’t just hang out there. “Risa…”
“Yeah, if you weren’t terrified before, I bet you are now.”
He rubbed his chest. The heaviness refused to ease. “Maybe you could stop taking shots at my level of courage.”
“Oh, you’re great with weapons and anything that involves taking out bad guys. It’s the intimacy part that makes you run screaming for cover.” Her hands dropped to her sides. In one of them she held a suitcase.
It was her ticket out, back home
and away from him. He knew that as sure as if she’d said it out loud.
He tried his last bit of logic. This was about timing, not feelings. He had to convince her of that. “We’ve only known each other for a short time.”
“I don’t think the number of hours means anything.” She discounted the idea as quickly as he raised it. “You think I planned to fall for you? I had a man lie to me and turn my life upside down. I am still rebuilding from the fallout.”
She had just turned around and proved his point. They needed time, maybe a bit of space. He wanted to be with her, but he didn’t want the walls to close in. He didn’t want her to see something better away from him.
The ache in his chest ripped as he moved to her. It was as if he’d been sliced open and the gaping wound grew with every step. “See, it’s too early—”
“When a second man came into my life, telling lies and dodging his feelings, you’d think I’d have been smart enough to run, but the exact opposite happened. I want to stay and fight for you. For us.”
That fast, the pain turned to a red-hot anger. “Do not compare me to Paul.”
“Because you didn’t take my money?” She threw back her head and laughed. “Oh, Aaron, what you did is so much worse. You grabbed my heart and now you’re too afraid to hold on to it.”
The words punched into him. “You’re moving fast.”
“I’m moving forward. I’m ready. I’d hoped you were, too, but I guess not.”
“How did this situation become my fault?”
“It isn’t. You’re right.”
The tone of her voice changed. He wanted to think he was winning her over, but he feared she was giving up.
She hadn’t moved. Hadn’t come to him or reached out with any part of her. She was closed to him, something that had never happened before, not even when she learned he wasn’t who he claimed to be.
He tried to swallow, but his mouth was too dry. “We should calm down and think about this logically.”
“You never made me a promise. I’m the one who rushed to fill in the blanks.” She rubbed her cheeks and under her eyes.
Tears. The reality of her pain, that he inflicted it, sliced through him with the horrifying rip of a blade. “Please don’t cry.”
“I’m saying goodbye.”
The words shredded him as much as the tears. “Why does this have to be a forever-or-never issue?”
She rounded the bed with the suitcase in her hand. “If I thought, for even one second, that there was hope you’d put the past behind you and trust me with your future, I would ask you where you wanted to go for dinner.”
“Then we’re fine.” He reached out. When she didn’t shrink away from him, he let his hands settle on her arms. Let her warmth seep into him.
“You’re saying words you don’t mean.”
The hollowness in his stomach spilled over to the rest of him. “I hate when women do that, when they think they know what you feel and assume.”
She gave him a watery smile. “I’m just one of the ‘women’ now?”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“I can promise you I’ll never try to change your love for your job. Guarantee that I won’t make you choose. That I will always love you. But none of that matters if you don’t believe.” She kept the stranglehold on the suitcase and never touched him.
“I do trust you.” He said the words and meant them. He trusted her more than he’d ever trusted another woman.
She lifted her hand then. Her fingers traced his cheek to his jawline. “You are this smart and dedicated, strong and sexy man. But you have this wall around you, and while I am willing to climb over it, I need help.”
The words didn’t make any sense to him. He was offering her all he had. “You are making this so much more complicated than it needs to be.”
“No, I’m making everything very easy. You can go back to your life exactly as you like it—alone and safe.”
“That’s not fair.”
She leaned in and kissed his cheek. The touch was gone almost before it started. “Merry Christmas, Aaron. I hope you get everything you want.”
His hand dropped from her arm as she turned away. “Risa, don’t do this.”
“Goodbye.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
After a week without Risa, Aaron was slowly going mad. Though she’d barely been in his condo, he smelled her when he walked in the door each night. He saw her, or visions of her, on the street. He even listened to her last voice mail over and over to remember her voice.
He had it bad.
Royal sat at his desk and stared Aaron down. “Man, if you don’t smarten up soon I’m quitting.”
He’d been back in the office for four days. He didn’t let a little thing like surgery and almost being blown into a million pieces slow down his work schedule. Royal wanted his life back and insisted that happen immediately.
Then he came in, ribs wrapped and limping, and demanded to know where Risa was. He’d been asking questions about her ever since. The two times Aaron complained, Royal blamed the interest on Gail.
“I may leave anyway,” Royal grumbled. “It would serve you right.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Aaron asked, but he knew. Royal had been dropping hints at his displeasure over his boss’s love life every ten to twelve seconds.
“Take it from a long-married man—”
This counted as Aaron’s least favorite lecture. “You got married before you were legally able to drink.”
Royal pointed at Aaron. “And I’m still with the same woman, and will be forever, so the start date of the relationship isn’t relevant. Neither is how long you’ve known each other before you know she’s the one.”
Now he sounded like Risa. “Subtle.”
“Go to her. Get on your knees, beg for forgiveness and stop kicking around here.” Royal moved around too much, then grabbed his side on a wince.
“It’s not that easy.”
Two days ago when Royal had said the same thing, Aaron told him where he could go. Hearing the advice a second time now, Aaron could think if nothing but that it might not be enough to get Risa back.
He’d gone from being firm in his position to wavering. He was ready to chuck whatever complaints he could think of if it meant she’d give him ten minutes to plead his case.
“Of course it is. Christmas is next week. Do you really want to go through another holiday season alone?”
How had the holiday snuck up like that? The last thing he cared about was gifts and trees.
“I ticked her off.” The words popped out. Normally he wouldn’t share on this level with Royal, but all the arguments and frustrations were locked inside him and Aaron needed them out.
Royal leaned his chair back and stared at the ceiling. “You’re ticking me off.”
“We have work to do.”
His chair legs hit the floor again. “Let me ask you something.”
Aaron pretended to file. He’d done that a lot lately. “Can I say no?”
“Is there anything on your desk or anywhere in this office that matters to you more than Risa?”
Aaron slammed the desk drawer shut. “No.”
“Then go fix your mess.”
When he put it like that, it did sound easy. Pretty satisfying, too. Sleeping alone sure wasn’t.
And it wasn’t just the sex. He’d turned over a thousand times during the past week, thinking to tell her something and she wasn’t there. How a woman who spent so little time in his life could come to mean so much confused him.
He struggled to bring common sense back into the equation. The last time he’d led only with his heart, he ended up with a woman who dumped him. “I need to think this through. If I rush in I run the risk of disappointing us both.”
Royal nodded. “Absolutely. That makes sense.”
Aaron wasn’t expecting the agreement. “Right.”
“Good.”
Was it? “It’s the smart wa
y to proceed.”
Royal held up a finger. “One thing, though.”
“What?”
“She works with pretty much all men, right?”
Aaron didn’t like where this was headed. The chest ache he got every time he thought about her thundered back. “Where are you going with this?”
“Nowhere.”
“Okay, then.” Aaron stared at the papers in front of them. He had no idea what they said. His vision clouded until all the black ink ran together.
The silence lasted all of three seconds.
“It just seems to me the combination of men, mistletoe and the holidays could be tempting, especially if she’s looking for a way to forget you or even get back at you.” Royal reached for the soda on the far side of his desk and hissed when he couldn’t grab it. “You might want to be careful about how long you wait.”
That did it. Not having her ripped him up inside until he bled. Thinking of her with someone else shredded him further. It would also guarantee jail time because he’d kill anyone who touched her. It wasn’t rational and might not even be right, but he knew how he felt and that was it.
Aaron stood up, stopped by Royal’s desk to slide the can closer. “I’m leaving for the day.”
The guy sighed with delight. “Thought so.”
“I’m taking some vacation time.” Aaron got the whole way to the door before he turned back. “And, Royal?”
“Huh?”
“Thanks.” Maybe Risa was right about something else. Royal would make the perfect business partner.
* * *
THAT FRIDAY, RISA HOVERED by the eggnog bowl and watched her coworkers laugh as they fought over the remaining Christmas cookies. They joked. A few sang.
Who knew engineers loved sugar cookies in the shape of stockings?
Finding out she had almost died all in the name of locating the ultimate holiday party location made her the office star. When they insisted on changing the venue to the office, the relief crashing through her nearly knocked her off her feet. The idea of going back to Elan made her stomach heave.
Not that Elan was an option. They’d managed to blow that place apart. Literally.
The soft opening had turned into an early closing. A full renovation of the brand-new facility was now necessary. There was talk of waiting until spring to try again. Some reporters suggested a name change.
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