Heat of the Moment

by Lori Herter

  “I was preoccupied and I guess I forgot to shut the garage. It had been so long since I’d driven anywhere. But why did you want to see me?” Peter’s eyes took on a curious stillness, as if her answer was important to him.

  She smiled. Her reason seemed irrelevant now. “Because Martin offered to double what you were paying me if I’d work for him again and tell him what your company was doing. Ronnie was there and witnessed the whole thing. I thought if you knew I had refused his offer, it would clear my name. It bothered me that you thought I was in cahoots with Martin.”

  Peter shook his head, looking dismayed. “I’m sorry I ever questioned your integrity. It was Al who planted doubts in my mind. I never knew he hated me.”

  “He’s locked up?”

  “Without bail, awaiting trial. Now we have to go through all that. But thank God you’re all right! I was never so scared in my life as when I saw you lying there bleeding from the head. When the paramedics said your vital signs were strong, I nearly passed out from relief. I’ve called the hospital several times asking about your condition.”

  Josie was touched. Peter stood by her bed, solemn and pensive, as if remembering what they’d lived through.

  “Um, are those flowers for me?”

  He looked at the forgotten bouquet in his hand and smiled. “Yes.” He presented them to her.

  Josie took the yellow roses wrapped in cellophane. “They’re beautiful. Thank you.”

  “Thank you, Josie. You probably saved my life showing up when you did. Al was planning to take me out to the desert at gunpoint and—”

  “Oh, no!”

  “I’m so sorry you got hurt. You were awfully brave staying there. We were a good team, going at him from two directions.”

  She nodded. “Yeah…”

  “Which leads me to something else I want to say.”

  Josie held her breath. Peter looked so serious, his eyes meaningful and caring. Was he going to say he loved her?

  “I wanted to come to see you sooner,” he went on in an earnest manner, “but I had to deal with the police yesterday and again this morning, and then our employees. The investors heard about it on the news and they started calling. I had to assure everyone that I could keep Frameworks on track. Which is where you come in—I hope.” He wet his lips, looking a bit apprehensive. “Josie, would you consider working for Frameworks Systems again? You’d basically take Al’s place.”

  Josie felt a sinking feeling in her chest. She shouldn’t have assumed that just because he was glad she was still alive, it might mean he loved her.

  “Peter, you don’t owe me anything for saving your life.”

  “It’s not that,” he insisted. “You’re the only person on the planet who can fill in for Al. You know what we’re doing, and we need someone to keep up the momentum now that we have a proven retrofit system. Which, by the way, you had a big part in inventing.”

  She looked up.

  “I checked the formula for the composite material they used for the test, and it contained the components you suggested. So Frameworks Systems needs you. I can pay you whatever you think is fair.”

  Josie still felt hesitant. “What about you and me? How can we work together after…?”

  “It’s my fault. I did mislead you, and everyone, pretending to be an invalid.”

  She tilted her head. “I can see now why you felt you had to do that.”

  “But it led you to feel safe with me, when, in fact…well…”

  “I wasn’t?” She smiled a bit, wanting to be fair. “You didn’t really take advantage of me. Nothing happened that wasn’t of my own free will.” Her smile faded as she remembered making love with him, the beautiful moments that would never be recaptured.

  “I know you don’t feel the same way toward me.” Sadness clouded his eyes. “But all the same, I want you to know that I’m still crazy about you. I love you. Maybe we can try to build a new trust between us.”

  She stopped breathing for a moment, hardly believing her ears. “You love me?”

  “Yes.” He stared at her with an earnest expression.

  “You didn’t tell me that before.”

  “I haven’t known it long. I only figured it out the day Al put all those doubts in my mind.” He reached for her hand. “But having almost lost you, I know how much you mean to me. I need you in my life. You told me you loved me before everything went wrong. Do you think you could give me another chance?”

  She smiled through tears. “You don’t need another chance, Peter. I still love you. I never stopped.”

  Peter’s eyes shone with surprise and relief. Mindful of her injuries, he leaned over her and kissed her. “Thank God!” he said in a heartfelt whisper.

  “Thank God,” she echoed as she gazed at him with adoration. “I wasn’t looking forward to going on without you. You’ve meant so much to me.”

  He beamed at her, as if brimming with happiness. “You mean everything to me.” He flashed his gorgeous smile at her. “Now we can get married!”

  Her mind seemed to go blank.

  “M-married?” The idea took Josie totally off guard. She literally had to catch her breath. “I’m just getting used to being in love. Marriage? Peter, we’ve known each other only a little over one month. I’m not ready to even think about getting married. I always intended to stay single.”

  “But that was because of your bad experience,” Peter said, looking confused and troubled. “You said when you were a teenager, you wanted to get married and have children when you grew up.”

  “Yes, but I was only thirteen. I was just a dreamy kid thinking about wedding gowns and Prince Charming. Soon I got interested in a career in science instead.”

  “You can have your career and a wedding, too. I don’t know if I qualify as Prince Charming, but I love you.”

  The thing of it was, Josie realized, he did qualify very nicely as a fairy-tale hero. And she’d longed to hear him say he loved her. But now that he’d declared his feelings, anxiety was taking a hold on her again. She’d been single for so long. Being independent was all she knew. It was hard to picture herself married, even to Peter.

  “I have to think about all this, Peter. You should, too. Your life has just been turned upside down with Al’s murder attempt. Don’t you think it’s a little too soon to be asking a woman you’ve only known a month to marry you? It sounds like you may have rushed into your first marriage, and it didn’t work out. Maybe you shouldn’t be so impetuous.”

  Peter looked unhappy. “I suppose you’re being sensible,” he reluctantly admitted with a sigh. “I keep telling myself to be more careful about my decisions.” He gazed at her, his green eyes wounded. “So what should we do? Date?” He sniffed with disdain and shook his head. “Why should I be dating you when all I want is to be married to you?”

  “Look, Peter, I’ll need to take a week off to recover from this head wound and feel like myself again. And then I’ll go back to work with you at the Frameworks plant. We’ll take it slow, and see how things go. Okay?”

  He nodded, acquiescing. “Okay. Can I drive you home?”

  “You need to go back to work. Ronnie will drive me.”

  “I can find time to take you home. In fact, why don’t you stay at my place?”

  “Oh, no. I’d rather stay at my condo.”

  “All right.” He looked mystified but didn’t argue, perhaps because she was still recovering and looking fragile. “Well, I guess I had better get back. I’ll call you later.”

  “Okay.” Josie was relieved he wasn’t trying to coax her into his point of view.

  He kissed her again, his manner positive and upbeat. But she could sense he felt unsettled beneath his smiling exterior.

  After he left the hospital room, Josie lay back on her pillow and closed her eyes. He loved her. He loved her! And she loved him. So why was she getting cold feet at the idea of marrying the man she loved so much?

  Who would she be as Mrs. Peter Brennan? she wondered. Wh
at would happen to Josie Gray? Would that admittedly repressed, but independent and self-sufficient woman just disappear?

  She had the feeling that if she married Peter, she’d melt right into him. After they’d made love, she’d felt fulfilled, radiant. She remembered throwing herself on his chest in adoration. She’d transcended her old fears and could have worshipped him. Though she’d loved feeling so united with him, something was making her resist that now. She could so easily get lost in his arms and never find her way back to herself again. That scared her as much as the thought of sex used to.

  Tears filled her eyes. Would she ever be a normal, well-adjusted woman, without some tremendous hang-up to work through? She was in love with the ultimate Mr. Right and he’d proposed. Why couldn’t she just be a happy bride, as any other woman who had the opportunity to marry Peter Brennan would be?

  IT WILL NOT BE LONG, love, till our wedding day…

  Alone in his living room, Peter closed his eyes, listening while the Irish Tenors DVD his mother had given him played on his wide-screen TV. When the song ended, he picked up his remote and clicked the right buttons to make Anthony Kearns’s soothing rendition of “She Moved Through the Fair” play again.

  He’d found the DVD in a closet and played it most every night. The song reassured him now. Even the last verse no longer bothered him. Josie hadn’t died, thank God.

  The crisis had passed. But three weeks had gone by since she’d left the hospital, and she still wasn’t back in his life the way he wanted her to be. Whenever he brought up marriage, she changed the subject.

  Things were finally calming down at Frameworks Systems. Al’s office was no longer a taped-off crime scene. They’d changed it into a needed file room. Josie worked in the lab and Peter set up a desk for her in his office. But dealing with lawyers for Al’s upcoming trial, reassuring nervous investors, and getting the company back on track had kept everyone distracted. Peter had also begun interviewing prospective new employees because state and county contracts were beginning to pour in. The Big One was still waiting to happen, experts believed, and bridges and overpasses, above all, needed to be made secure.

  Working closely together, Peter, Josie and his staff had dealt with these issues one frantic day after another. But Josie still lived at her condo. And because they both had to work late at the plant every night, where there were always others around, they hadn’t had much chance to further explore the physical relationship they’d begun.

  Peter suspected Josie was avoiding close contact, but it wasn’t because she was afraid of him. He sensed her new anxiety stemmed from his proposal of marriage.

  At work late the next Friday afternoon, Peter decided to let his staff go home early. “No need to work tonight. We’re in good shape,” he told Tim, Amy and the others.

  He was walking back to his office when Josie came out.

  “Where did everyone go?” she asked.

  “I sent them home. We’ve got a handle on the workload now, and I thought they deserved a nice weekend for a change.”

  “Good, I need to stop at the grocery store—”

  “No, Josie, I need you to stay a little longer.”

  “Why?”

  He looked into her eyes, brown and lustrous beneath the bangs she now wore. She’d had her hair cut to hide her healing wound, but Peter thought they made her look absolutely sexy. The rest of her dusky hair had grown longer, and thick tresses of it trailed over her shoulders, brushing her breasts. She was wearing a green sweater over a pair of white jeans and she looked fabulous.

  “There’s something on the computer I wanted to show you,” he said.

  “Okay…”

  He could tell she’d discerned the way his eyes were traveling over her face and body. As usual, she seemed to be mentally giving herself some backbone, as if he were a formidable force to reckon with. It miffed him.

  “Now that we’re alone for a change, can I ask you something?” he said as he took her elbow to lead her into the office they shared.

  “What?”

  “Why do you look at me like I’m a Hoover vacuum cleaner and you’re a bread crumb?”

  Josie chuckled nervously. “You’re imagining things.”

  She wouldn’t look at him, so he slid his arm around her waist and pulled her against him. Whenever he did that, she always got shy, and gazed up at him with a bit of awe in her eyes. Peter guessed it was because she still was getting used to his height. When he was in the wheelchair, he’d been the one looking up at her.

  “And you let me kiss you now and then,” he went on, ignoring her evasive answer, “but you won’t come home with me to make love. I can feel sparks igniting every time I get near you, and I think you feel them, too. Like right now. But you won’t do anything about it.”

  “We’ve been so busy, there hasn’t been time,” she said, her worried eyes closing as he kissed her cheek.

  “Sweetheart, I can always make time to make love. You won’t even come home and sit in the spa with me.” He edged his lips to her mouth. “Why is that?” he whispered, then took her mouth, enjoying the soft sweetness.

  She broke the kiss, as if growing skittish. “Because in the spa, I lose track…”

  “Of what?”

  “Everything always gets hazy and beautiful when I’m near you. I know you want…a committed relationship, but—”

  “You can’t even say the word marriage?”

  She ignored his interruption. “For me it’s just like having sex with you the first time. I need to take things at my pace. You…you move a little too fast for me.”

  He ran his hands up and down her back. “It took you a month to make love with me. Now another month has passed. It’s time for the next step.”

  She leaned her forehead against his chin, looking troubled. “It’s a pretty giant step. Two months isn’t very long. Some couples know each other for years before—”

  “Some couples don’t know their own minds. Except for those few brief dark days, we’ve gotten along like two peas in a pod. We’d simply be marking time to wait even another six months.”

  “But you made a mistake marrying Cory. How do you know you wouldn’t be making a similar mistake with me?”

  He took her by the hand. She looked puzzled as he directed her to sit down in front of the monitor. Leaning over her, he brought up the Web site he wanted.

  “There,” he said as words and stanzas appeared.

  “‘She Moved Through the Fair’?”

  “Remember the song I kept humming?”

  “Sure.” Her eyes began to scan the screen as she read the words.

  “This is the part that’s important,” he said, pointing to a particular line.

  Her head drew closer to the screen. “Wedding day…” She turned to look at him.

  “Those are the words I was trying to remember. So you see, it’s a sign.”

  “A…sign?” She looked at him as if wondering to which institution he should be committed.

  “This song came to me as I first saw you from my window. I realize now it was a sign. Fate or providence—or maybe my psyche—was trying to tell me that you were destined to be my wife. Other parts of the song have had significance in our relationship, too. And it’s this very song that made my great-grandparents fall in love at first sight.”

  Josie’s eyes were widening.

  “All I got were warnings when I married Cory. But this time, the messages are all positive. Maybe my great-grandparents are watching over us. Who knows?”

  Josie massaged her eye with her fingers and shook her head. “You’re such a crazy Irishman!”

  Peter smiled. “Well, Sigmund Freud did say that the Irish were the one race of people for whom psychoanalysis was of no use whatsoever. So, don’t bother sending me to a shrink.”

  She sighed. “Peter, it’s a very romantic song, but we’re talking about a lifetime commitment. We have to use some common sense.”

  “What’s common sense got to do with passio
n?” he argued. “In my soul, I feel it’s our destiny to be together. I’d be only half-alive without you. How would you feel without me?”

  Tears welled in her eyes. “Half-alive. But that’s exactly what troubles me. I already feel I’ve lost half of myself in you. If I marry you, who would I be? You…overwhelm me. Being in love is scary.”

  “Josie, you’ve spent so many years protecting yourself, you’re having trouble adjusting to the fortress walls coming down. When we made love, the real, authentic you finally came out of hiding. She just has to get used to being out in the sunlight, accepting love and giving it back.”

  Tears streamed down her cheeks. “You think so? I feel I’ll be losing my identity if I marry you.”

  Peter got up, went to his desk and picked up a large envelope. He came back and went down on one knee beside her chair. “I was saving this as a surprise, but maybe now’s the time to tell you. I want to rename the company.”

  “Rename Frameworks Systems?” Josie looked shocked. “Why?”

  “We’ve restructured the company and it’s a whole new beginning. I had an artist create a new logo, just to see how it would look.” Peter took the sheet of thick artist’s rag paper out of the envelope and handed it to her. “What do you think?”

  “Brennan-Gray Frameworks,” she read, running her fingers over the design. “Oh, Peter…”

  “It was your formula that worked, Josie. You’re my new partner in the company. If you like, we can hyphenate our married name to Brennan-Gray, too. I think it has a nice ring to it. So, you see, you won’t disappear. Your identity is precious to me.”

  Josie dropped the drawing into her lap and burst into tears, burying her face in her hands.

  Peter’s heart sank. Had he done the wrong thing?

  JOSIE’S HEART FELT too full for her to even speak.

  “You don’t like the idea?” he asked, taking the drawing from her and rising to his feet.

  She turned to him, sniffing, drying her tears. “It’s a beautiful idea. I don’t know what to say.”