“Christ, I hate that guy,” Liam muttered.
She held her phone out to him. “Ally’s always teasing me about what she calls my crush on you. She hates you as much as she hates her father probably, just because that’s what he’s made his name in. You.”
He took the phone from her and glanced at the second message.
“She gave me this route,” Clarie said as he read the screen. “Claimed there was construction. She must’ve gotten a little thrill out of thinking that this might happen. I’ve always claimed my interest in you was just scholarly and she said that was bullshit. I guess she was right after all.”
He said nothing.
“But I never thought you were a washed-up hottie. A brilliant, totally fucked-up hottie maybe.”
“I’m an ass,” he said, handing the phone back to her.
“No.” She waited a beat. “Jerk says it so much better.”
One corner of his mouth crooked up.
“And to be perfectly clear, I didn’t set out to bag you. I just—I was overwhelmed when I met you and you were so…so here, so real. So in person.”
That probably sounded funny to him. “I can see how you must have thought I was a real sleaze, a slut.”
He shook his head.
“I don’t know how Ally would have known this was your cabin.”
“Alex and I were friends once upon a time. He probably mentioned it.”
“Friends.”
“Yeah, until I found out he was fucking my wife.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I think that’s my line. I’m sorry. Clarie,” he whispered. “I just saw that text and completely lost it. I thought Alex put you up to this. I’m…irrational…when it comes to him. I remember now that he had a daughter about your age.”
They stood unspeaking for a moment and, God help her, she stuck her neck out. “Was that what this was all about? All the anger? Because you thought Professor Friedman put me up to this?”
Was that what this was all about? Not really. Not if he was honest with her, which he supposed he should be at this point. He owed her that much.
“No. Being angry is pretty much my status quo most of the time. I would’ve slipped back into it sooner or later and driven you out. If I hadn’t seen that text, I probably would have come up with some other reason to turn on you.”
He left her with that, going back into the bedroom to pull his pants back on. He felt naked enough as it was. By the time he went into the bathroom to splash water on his face in an attempt to avoid going back in to face her, and sat on the closed lid of the toilet for a while staring at drifts of snow outside the small window, he half wondered whether she’d be gone when he came out. If she was as smart as she seemed, she would be.
No such luck. She was sitting on the sofa when he emerged from the bedroom, brooding at the fire, her legs folded up underneath her. He had absolutely no right to feel so goddamned relieved about it.
She must have gotten the fire going again as it was roaring now. She didn’t even look up when he came in. “So are you going to say something obnoxious to make me risk my neck and go out into that snowstorm tonight rather than share this cabin with you?”
He went and sat beside her. He didn’t touch her, though. “I don’t know. I’ve used all my best lines and you’re still here.”
“I don’t believe it’s possible for Liam Conner to have used up all his best lines. They’re still to come.”
He dropped his head back against the headrest of the couch. “That kind of comment is why you’d be better off going out into that snowstorm rather than staying here with me.”
She turned to look at him finally. Her eyes were reddened. Christ, he’d made her cry on top of everything else. “Why? Why do you say that?”
He lifted his head. “Because you don’t know me.”
“No! You don’t know me. I know you.”
He tentatively reached his fingertips out to the soft curve of her cheek. “You’re right. I don’t know you. But I know enough about you to know you’re too good and smart to delude yourself about a man who isn’t who you think he is.”
“And what’s that?”
“Somebody you refer to in the third person when you’re with him.”
“I was joking.”
“No. You weren’t.”
She turned back to look at the fire. “What did you think about me? Before you saw the text, I mean?”
He laughed despite himself. “I believe the words ‘manna from heaven’ crossed my mind.”
She smiled, and it was so lovely that he hated to chase it away again. But he had to. ”I’m a fuck-up, Clarie. If I was any kind of a good guy, I’d order you out right now.”
“But you’re not?”
“Hell no…as long as you’ve still got condoms, of course.”
Her smile vanished. Then she said, tightly, “See? That was a pretty good line.”
“But it’s true. You’re a beautiful, incredibly hot girl and I’m no better on that score than any other guy.”
“So I could be any girl?”
He hesitated. “The truth is, I don’t know.”
She appeared to be digesting that. Just as he was about to get up to pour himself a whiskey—this was a hell of a conversation to try to take sober—she said in a rush, “I’ve lost people I love too.”
He ought to get up anyway and get the whiskey. Down it in one gulp and say something like “big deal” or “thanks for sharing.” But he wasn’t quite at the kicking-puppies stage yet. Besides, her big blue eyes had turned on him, a little watery still, but so intense he couldn’t look away. He felt…something. And it wasn’t sexual.
“When I was seventeen, my parents died in a car crash. They’d been pretty old when they had me. Academics, of course.” She smiled slightly. “I was their only child. But we were a family. I had a family. A family I loved. Very much. And then they were gone. One minute I was coddled and praised for how smart and beautiful I was, and the next minute I was no one. Just an orphan somebody had to figure out what to do with. And my parents? The people I loved most in the whole world were just ashes in these funny jars the funeral home gave me. It was…so hard.”
Her voice cracked and he felt as if he should say something. But he couldn’t think of a goddamn thing. Then he offered, “Kate had never wanted to be cremated. She always said to put her in the ground like a potted plant. So we had these—”
He stopped. He didn’t want to think of the elaborate gold casket, and its tiny white companion one. But he suddenly remembered how funny Kate had been when she’d joked about the kind of funeral she wanted. He had—they both had—thought it was a joke. Something that wouldn’t happen for decades. He swallowed, hard.
Those blue eyes, still trained on him, didn’t waver.
“I guess that’s why your work always meant so much to me. I felt a connection, I guess.” When he said nothing in response, she added, “But I suppose it’s not fair to think you would too. Why would you?”
Oh, he should so let it go. Let her think he felt no connection. He’d been honest when he admitted that he didn’t know if his small head was overwhelming his big one. He didn’t know what he felt. But he felt something.
He took her hand and kissed her palm. “I’d be even more of an asshole than I already am if I took advantage of the connection you felt you had with me.”
“Didn’t you already do that by going to bed with me?”
The question caught him off guard. Ouch. He laughed. “That was a pretty good line yourself.”
Her smile took a bit of the sting out of it. “I’m not a wily seductress sent here to trap you, Liam, but I’m not a pretty little porcelain doll you need to be careful with either.”
“What are you, then?” he asked softly.
“I’m a grown woman you might like to get to know. If you let yourself.”
He let her palm drop. And let the natural hard edge to his voice creep back in. “How about we give you
a little dose of reality about me first? You know why Kate died? Why Jimmy died?”
He didn’t bother to clarify that Jimmy was his son. His baby. She would know that anyway since she’d made such a study of him.
“Because of that puritanical streak you said you didn’t see in my writing. Kate confessed to me about her affair with Friedman the day she died and I threw her out. She said it was over, but instead of forgiving her or trying to talk it out, I told her I wanted a divorce. Just like that. Ten years of marriage and she was, as they say, dead to me.” He’d thought of that particular line for years. It was so fucking ironic.
“Liam—”
“The fact it was Friedman enraged me. She was so upset, she was sobbing, but I didn’t give a damn. I told her to just get out. To go to her lover, or ex-lover, or whatever the fuck he was. I even let her take Jimmy because frankly I was such a piss-poor husband and father that I barely knew how to diaper him. And they were dead a half an hour later. She probably didn’t even notice the fucking truck.”
He started to get up and Clarie, surprising him, tried to stop him with a palm to his chest. The light pressure wouldn’t really keep him there if he didn’t let it. But she supplemented the move by climbing right on top of his lap, facing him.
The erection he started to get at the feel of her on top of him, the feel of her touch, did make him feel guilty. Even though he knew it shouldn’t. His wife and son were dead. Seven years now. They were dead because of him and nothing he did or didn’t do was going to change that now.
Clarie took his face in her hands. “The truck driver who hit your wife’s car had driven thirty-six hours straight trying to get his haul to its destination on time. You know that. The truck veered onto your wife’s side of the road. She couldn’t have avoided it. Even if she had been calm. Even if she had been the best driver in the world. It was one of those God-awful accidents that just happen. It happened to my parents.”
The erection should have softened him toward her. The fact that it didn’t just proved she should run away from him as fast as she could. “I suppose you’re some kind of an expert in horrific car crashes.”
“No. I just know about my parents’ crash. And I know about yours.”
“It wasn’t mine,” he said before he could stop himself. A Freudian slip probably, since he’d been dodging the guilt he’d felt for so long.
“No. It wasn’t.” She leaned forward and kissed him lightly, then pulled back. “I know you wanted to die with your family. I did too. I felt all alone in the world. And I did blame myself. Not directly, like you did, but in the way kids do. Teens think everything revolves around them so if something happens to them, it must be because of them in some way.”
He stayed silent.
“But I didn’t die, Liam. And neither did you. No matter how much you may have wanted to.”
Part of him wanted to use sex to shut her up. Or just wanted sex with her probably. Shutting her up was a bonus.
But he tried to keep up the fight. “You sound like all those bullshit psychiatrists everybody was always trying to get me to see.”
“How would you know? You didn’t go.”
“How would you know?” he shot back with as much belligerence as he could muster.
“I can tell. Maybe because I’ve been through it, but I can just tell. You’ve kept all this bottled up inside you for so long, you don’t know how to let it out. You don’t know how to let yourself.”
“Get the fuck off my lap,” he muttered.
“No.”
They locked eyes. And he took in a deep breath. With the consequent exhale—her sincere blue eyes on him and her palms on his face—something went out of him. Maybe it was the fight. Maybe it was something else.
“I know one thing about you, Clarie Lewis. You’re stubborn as hell.”
“Right back at you.”
Finally, he said, “What do you want from me?”
“Dinner. A movie maybe.”
He shook his head in exasperation. Of course he put his hands on her hips, too, and rubbed his hard-on against the crotch of her jeans. He couldn’t help it.
“Did you minor in psychology?” he managed to get out through the pleasure that was overtaking him.
“No. I just had a very good counselor at my high school. And a very beautiful writer to read to take my mind off my troubles after my parents died.”
“I’m not that writer anymore,” he warned.
Her hips matched the rhythm he was setting with his grip. “In case you haven’t noticed, I’m not interested in your writing right about now.”
His chuckle in response was so spontaneous. He tried to dredge up his anger. But it was fucking impossible.
He unzipped her jeans and slid his hand inside, along her flat belly and through the delicate curls of her bush to her clit. Rubbing lightly, he leaned forward to take her mouth, tracing the sweetness of her plump lips and sucking her tongue as he tended to her clit. She returned the favor by running one finger along the ridge of his cock and then unzipping him to take it in hand. At just the clasp of her warm hand around his bare cock, he was ready to plunge up into her again. He urged her up, so he could pull her jeans down.
And then the woman had the nerve to climb off his lap.
“Okay, you’re trying to piss me off now, aren’t you?”
Rummaging in her bag again, she came away with the all-important condom and waved it at him. She pulled her jeans off in the bargain, which did placate him a little. “Not at all. I’m getting an essential accessory.”
“God, you’re responsible. Don’t you believe me that I haven’t had sex in, er, I don’t know how long? If I’d had a sexually transmitted disease, I’d be dead by now.”
“I believe you, but I don’t happen to want kids just yet.”
He didn’t know what must have crossed his face, but she crouched down beside him suddenly, kissing his cheek, holding his arms. Christ. If he cried, after not being able to do so during all this time, he was going to fucking kill himself. But his eyes were dry. His heart, on the other hand…
To ward off the reminder, he snatched the condom from her and put it on, keeping his mind blank. “Fuck me,” he demanded gruffly, pulling her onto his lap.
Bracing her hands on his shoulders, she set one leg on either side of his and lowered herself carefully on to his throbbing cock. She slid her wet cunt up and then down again a few moments later, but it was too slow. He needed more. He needed something to make it all go away.
Gripping her hips, he lifted her up swiftly and then brought her back down again with force. Pleasure shot through him as he repeated the motion again and again, pounding up into her, feeling her getting wetter and wetter, his own breath coming harshly. But before they could orgasm from these wild thrusts, she urged his hands off her hips, and slowed her movements deliberately. Leaning forward to press her lips to his, she sifted her fingers through his hair, causing a tingle in his scalp as she kissed him slowly, thoroughly. At that sweet, deep kiss, and the calm, wet clasp of her cunt taking him in below, what had been harsh and desperate became smooth, mellow…right.
His hands, no longer trying to control her pace, drifted up to the delicate contours of her back beneath her shirt. He explored the curves and valleys and silken smoothness of her skin with his fingers as she pressed short, feather-light kisses along his brow, his temples, his neck. When her lips reached his ear, she nipped at his earlobe and he groaned.
“We’ll do this slow, Liam,” she whispered. “Me and you.”
She rose up on his cock, swaying toward him in that sweet rhythm as she came back down and he took her mouth, bringing her closer as they kissed, moving together, so in sync.
When he came this time, it wasn’t frantic. He didn’t need to blank his mind. He felt as if maybe he was starting to open it again.
What did she want from him? This, of course. The sated pleasure he seemed to be able to deliver to her so effortlessly. But she wanted something more
too. She guessed she wanted to help him after all, since he had so helped her—whether he acknowledged it or not.
She dropped a kiss on his heated forehead and started to climb off his lap. But as soon as he slipped out of her, he pulled her back, firmly, cuddling her sideways in his arms and burying his face in the curve of her neck.
“He was the sweetest little boy.”
She heard the whispered words, but just barely.
“Did he look like you?” she murmured and he raised his head, smiling.
“A carbon copy. Kate used to lament my domineering genes. God, I loved that kid.”
She let him hold her, not knowing what to say. The loss of a child was something she couldn’t even begin to comprehend. She wanted to say something trite. Like he had to cherish the memories. Or better to have loved and lost.
But, thank God, she managed to stop herself. She didn’t know what the loss of a child felt like. She hoped to God she never would. And that was all she could do to protect against it.
It was better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. That was true whether she said it or not. She hoped he knew that.
“But you’re right,” he finally said. “I didn’t die, no matter how much I thought I wanted to.”
“The drinking…”
Instead of being outraged by her prying, as she’d thought he might, he laughed. “Christ, your generation is so goody-two-shoes.”
“Except for the sexual liberation thing.”
“Except for that, fortunately. So is that on your to-do list for me after dinner and a movie? Signing me up for AA? Don’t you know true writers are supposed to be drunks?”
“I never bought that.”
“Yeah? Well, no AA for me. I’m not a joiner. But don’t get all worried about saving me from my dissolute ways. The drinking, the hardcore drinking, stopped a long time ago, if I’m honest about it. Not long after I got fired from my last teaching gig. I’d even started running again, doing pushups—forgetting to drink, I guess. Until a gorgeous, soaking-wet blonde showed up in front of my fire, of course. That drove me to the whiskey bottle again.”
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