Chapter 18
As the instructor walked away, Ella’s heart began to pound. She’d anticipated spending some real time with Dane. She’d looked forward to it. But now that wasn’t going to happen. She had to think of a reason to keep him close to her. It was no longer a curiosity that drove her toward him, but a need that she couldn’t ignore.
“Maybe we could get an early lunch?”
“I should probably check in with Thomas.”
“Dane, he’s a big boy. He can handle himself.” She winked at him.
“It’s not like that with us.” He narrowed his eyes. “My son is everything to me.”
“That may be true, but I have the feeling that you could stand to give him a little room. He can’t always be your everything. That’s a big role for him to play.”
“What are you saying?”
She looked into his eyes and wondered if she’d said too much, but true to her impulsive nature she spoke her mind.
“I’m saying that maybe you’ve relied on his company a little too much over the years. Now that he’s going to be heading off to college, it’s time to free him from that role. Or don’t you think that he worries about you?”
Dane’s brow furrowed. “As much as I worry about him, I guess I never really thought about whether or not he worries about me.”
Ella began to walk along the water. Dane matched her pace. She noticed the billowing black clouds that formed on the horizon but felt no urge to seek cover. She didn’t want to do anything to make her time with him end.
“What comes next for you, Dane? What happens after Thomas goes to college?”
Dane lifted his shoulders in a mild shrug. “I don’t know—maybe some carpentry, maybe catch up on some work around the house. “
“So nothing that involves other people?” She looked over at him. “Dane, don’t you see how you’ve isolated yourself?”
“I guess I don’t see it that way. I’m just content on my own.”
“Alone.”
“What?” He looked over at her. She stepped a little closer to him as their eyes met. “You can call it enjoying your own company or being on your own, but it’s still about being alone.”
He looked away from her out across the open water. “What’s so bad about that?”
She grasped his hand and ran her other palm across the back of it. “No one wants to be alone.”
He looked down at her hand around his. “Maybe I do.”
“No.” She smiled a little. “I don’t think that you do. Last night was—”
“—Let’s not talk about that.” He looked away again.
“Why? I’m not ashamed of what I did. I live my life connecting with people.”
“That’s not connecting.”
“It’s more connection than you offer.”
“Oh?” He tilted his head to the side as he looked at her. “So you’re saying I should have uncommitted romps that still end with being alone?”
“Romps?” She laughed a little. “Really?”
“It’s the polite way of putting it.”
“That’s so important to you isn’t it? To be polite?”
“Maybe.” He squinted his eyes at the horizon. “It’s going to rain soon.”
“Do you ever just let loose? Not worry about what you’re saying or how you’re feeling—just be?”
He sighed as if she might be exhausting him and was silent for a moment.
“What? What is it?” Ella asked, curious about the change in his demeanor.
When he spoke again his voice was softened with nostalgia. “I have this one memory—when Thomas was a baby, he had colic. He wouldn’t stop screaming no matter what we did. Pam was so tired, and we were both scared. We had no idea what we were doing wrong. We tried everything.” He shook his head. “Then it was about three in the morning, neither of us had had more than an hour of sleep, and Thomas was screaming again. I was at my breaking point. I was ready to put him in the car and take him to the emergency room. I was sure that there was something wrong with him.”
“That must have been scary.”
“I was terrified. I thought I’d failed at being a father, a husband—everything. I went to grab my shoes and when I started to slide my foot inside this huge spider came crawling out.” He looked over at her. “You’d better not laugh.”
“I’m not going to laugh.” She set her jaw.
“I was so overtired and emotional…when I saw this spider, I shrieked. I started to jump around the room hollering at it and trying to whack it with my shoe. The next thing I heard was laughter. Pam was laughing at me so hard that she had tears rolling down her cheeks. I started to laugh too, and then we both realized that Thomas wasn’t crying any more. He was looking at me like I was the strangest creature he’d ever seen, but he wasn’t crying. Pam and I had gotten so tense over being good parents that we’d forgotten to enjoy the time, enjoy each other, enjoy him. He still had colic, but we handled it better because we knew to lighten up and laugh.” He looked into her eyes. “I think maybe I’ve been back in that tense state ever since Pam died. I guess I’ve forgotten how to lighten up.”
“So, you’re afraid of spiders.” She grinned.
“I am not afraid of spiders.” He narrowed his eyes. “It was just that one time.”
“So if I do this?” She tickled her fingers along his bare back. “That doesn’t frighten you?”
He shivered and pulled away from her touch. “I’m not afraid of spiders.”
She tried to meet his eyes, but he refused to allow it and kept looking away.
“But you are afraid of me?” Her eyes widened at the thought.
Chapter 19
The sky rumbled above them. The air was filled with the charge of the storm rolling in, but Dane was too busy being captivated by the way Ella was looking at him to pay much attention to the storm.
She had a way of prying between his secrets that made him say more than he’d ever intended. She kept him fascinated, though he had no real idea why. As she waited for an answer to her question, his throat grew dry. He could lie. He could tell her that he wasn’t scared of anything. But something about the moment they seemed to be sharing felt sacred. It was as if he knew that if he lied, everything that had been building between them would be shattered.
With a short breath he forced the words from between his lips. “Yes, Ella. I am scared of you. I’m scared of the way you make me feel.”
She reached out and traced her fingertips along the smooth surface of his bare chest. Her touch was so light that it almost tickled.
He gritted his teeth.
“How do I make you feel?” She looked into his eyes.
He reached up and caught her hand as it coasted down the length of his chest. Instead of pushing it away, he pressed it against him so that she could feel how heavily his heart pounded.
“I don’t think there’s a way to describe it.”
“Try.” She stepped closer to him so that their bodies were close enough to share heat.
The air cooled as the storm drew closer. He could barely draw a breath with her hand pressed against his chest. The wind stirred her hair again. Without hesitation he reached up to brush her hair away from her face.
As his hand curved along her cheek, his fingers curled around the side of her neck. Before he understood what he was doing, he drew her closer to him until their faces were only inches apart. The heat and pressure between his lips and hers defied physics. Where there should have been nothing but shared breath, it seemed as if a new type of air existed—filled with potential, both for ecstasy and for heartbreak.
Thunder clapped above them. In the distance, rain splashed against the sea.
He drew back just an inch and savored the sight of her mouth. How long had it been since he’d even considered kissing someone? Her chin tipped upward, her lips lunged towards his.
He drew back again and looked into her eyes. There was Ella, a woman he barely knew, but who had worked her
way right into the most intimate areas of his thoughts. He witnessed a flicker of hurt in the tension of her lashes and the way she looked away from him. His chest ached at the thought that he’d caused the flinch.
With the lightest touch he stroked the line of her chin and drew her mouth back to his. There was no stopping then as he plowed right through the unknown and embraced the silk of her lips. The moment his lips touched hers, his heart raced. His entire body flushed with warmth and need.
The kiss, one that at first he was sure he couldn’t offer, deepened with such fervor and passion that he was too dizzy to know if he was awake or lost in some fantasy. He tightened his arm around her waist and curled his hand through the long tresses at the back of her neck. He was blinded by his desire for her, to the point that he was unaware that rain was now pouring down from the sky.
There was barely enough space between them for a single raindrop to slip past—until her hands shoved against his shoulders and pushed him firmly away.
He stared at her, lips still parted, his hands still tangled in her hair, shocked that something so intense could end so abruptly.
“That wasn’t fair.” She looked into his eyes with a wildness that left him confused.
Was she angry at him? Had he lost himself in that flood of passion and taken things too far? He didn’t think he’d done anything wrong.
“Ella, what is it?” He brushed his palm along her cheek to try to calm her.
“Don’t.” She grabbed his hand and squeezed it. “You’ve been playing me all along, haven’t you?”
“What are you talking about?” He took a slight step back, but she didn’t release his hand.
“That story you fed me about your wife—it isn’t true, is it?” She shook her head. “I can’t believe how stupid I’ve been.”
“How can you say that to me?” A fury rose within Dane so quick that he nearly choked on it when he tried to speak. “How dare you? You have no right to question my love for my wife.”
“Your love? You told me that you’ve only ever had one love. So how could you kiss me like that? No one has ever kissed me like that.”
“So that’s your reasoning? That I must have been lying?” He pulled his hand from hers as his eyes narrowed. The rain fell harder between them. “Maybe my first impression about you was the right impression. I’m the one that has been fooling myself.”
“What is that supposed to mean?” Ella put her hands on her hips.
“I mean, you struck me as a selfish, spoiled person the moment I laid eyes on you. I should have trusted my instincts. Only someone with an ego as big as yours would have the audacity to think that I would make up a tragedy just to seduce you. I don’t know what’s happened in your life, Ella, I really don’t, but whatever it is, I think it’s broken you in a way that I’m not sure can be fixed.”
“Oh right, I’m the broken one? You’re the one who can’t see that your son is not your friend. He’s a young adult who’s going to pave his own way in life. You’re so caught up in what he’s doing that you can’t even find a way to live your own life.” She shook her head. “Maybe you two came up with this together, just like the way he threw the football at me on purpose. I’m just a pawn in your twisted little plot, aren’t I?”
“Ella.” He gritted his teeth.
“It’s the truth, isn’t it?” She lifted her chin and curled her upper lip as she stared at him. “All you wanted was a little fun on vacation. Well, I don’t come with paradise. I’m not included in your little fantasy.”
“Ella.” He grabbed her hands at her wrists and pulled her close to him. His touch was loose but his gaze was fierce as he looked into her eyes. “None of that is true. You can believe what you want about me. It’s clear you’ve not been feeling for me the things I feel for you. I don’t understand why you stirred up so much inside of me, but you did.”
He paused as she searched his eyes. She didn’t pull her hands away, though she easily could have.
“You go ahead and say such horrible things about me, if it makes you feel better. But don’t ever let me hear you say that you didn’t mean anything to me. You don’t get to take that away from me. I’m sorry that you’ve been so hurt, I truly am, but I’m not the one that will hurt you—believe me or not, it’s the truth.”
Chapter 20
Ella stared at him as her chest burned with fear and anger. Underneath it all was an undeniable buzz of pleasure. Dane’s words rolled through her mind, but she didn’t really hear them. His touch against her skin made it hard for her to concentrate on her resistance. She thought the heat of his kiss—the way it had consumed her with passion—was a telling sign that he wasn’t as inexperienced as he claimed. His kiss had awakened things in her that she had no control over.
Even though she was soaked from the rain, she didn’t even consider walking away. She wanted nothing more than to slap him—but at the same time kiss him again. It was quite possibly the most confusing experience of her life.
“How can I know that?” She searched his expression. She wanted to believe that she meant everything to him, but how could she trust it? She could see the mixture of his anger and desire in the tension of his jaw and the reddening of his cheeks.
His breath was ragged as he moved closer to her in an attempt to shield her from the rain. Was it from passion? From fear? She was in too much of a panic to be able to tell.
“You can’t.” He slid his hands down from her wrists so that they were palm to palm. “You have to take me for what I am. I can’t make you any promises, Ella. I can’t prove myself to you, when you’ve already made up your mind about me. I came on this vacation to spend time with my son. I didn’t come here to meet someone—to feel the way I do about you. I never expected this, not now, not in the future—not ever, really. All of this is a surprise to me. I can’t tell you why, or how, but I want to know what comes next. Don’t you?” He gave her hands a light squeeze.
Ella stared into his eyes. She wanted to believe him. It would be so simple to just believe him. But her mind was fogged by the passion that still throbbed through her at the memory of his kiss.
It seemed impossible to make the right choice. One day he was Captain Innocent, afraid to even see her skirt hiked up, the next he kissed her in a way that she was sure would have ended with them sprawled out in the sand. It wasn’t her imagination that he was sending mixed signals. What she couldn’t figure out was why.
He looked down on her for her lifestyle. Maybe he didn’t come right out and say it, but she could tell. Yet she was sure that he wouldn’t deny her again if she offered. He was a hypocrite—she was sure of it—and far more manipulative than she gave him credit for.
Just like Louis. Louis, who would whisper in her ear the hundreds of things that he loved about her, who would worship her as if she was a goddess, who, in the end, laughed at her pleas for marriage counseling and a chance to fix things between them.
“No.” She shook her head and drew her hands sharply from his.
He took a slight step back, and his eyes widened.
“No, Dane. The fun is over. I want nothing to do with you. I’m not as stupid as you think I am.”
“What?” He reached for her hand.
She jerked it out of his reach before he could touch it.
“Ella, I don’t think you’re stupid at all—just hurting.”
“Oh, and you know so much about me? What? Am I wounded?” She laughed. “I’m strong—that’s your problem with me. I know what I want, and I’m not afraid to take it. That doesn’t make me wounded. Guess what, Dane? I don’t want you. You’re classic. An old-fashioned guy that sees an independent woman and thinks he can dress her up and make her a housewife. The fact that you would use your wife’s memory to pull me into your twisted little game doesn’t make me feel sorry for you, it makes me feel sorry for her!”
Dane lunged toward her so fast that she was sure he might strike out at her. Instead he captured her face between the softness of his palm
s and guided her to look directly at him.
“Look at me.” She closed her eyes. “Look at me, Ella. I’m not going to leave you alone until you look at me.”
Reluctantly she opened her eyes and looked into his. She wasn’t sure if it was the rain between them, or if there were actually tears in his eyes. “I’m not that person. I know that you know that. I know that you’ve seen me, just as I’ve seen you.”
She reached up and pulled his hands away from her cheeks. She didn’t attempt to hold on to them. Her heart ached with the need to kiss him again, but she ignored it. She had trusted her instincts once, and they’d led her in the absolute wrong direction. There was no way she could know for certain that Dane wasn’t just like Louis. Her romance with Louis had been intense—and quick—and then gone.
She’d only met Dane the day before, and he’d played it off like he was shy and withdrawn. Now he expected her to believe that he was smitten with her? She didn’t buy it. Not for a second.
“I’m here to discover myself, Dane, not to let you discover me.”
“That kiss said something different.” He squinted through the rain. “Are you really going to deny that?”
“I’ve been here before. It doesn’t end well. What you’re feeling isn’t love, Dane—if that’s what you’re thinking. I’m nothing more than the first woman to give you attention since your wife. I’m new and shiny, and maybe there’s something about me that you like. But that won’t last. You’ll tire of me, or I’ll tire of you, and then it will be over. The men I date—they know it’s just a brief encounter and they don’t want more from me. I can tell from the look in your eyes that you want too much. Neither of us knew what we were getting into. Now we do. So let’s just leave it at that.”
She took a step back from him and willed the rain to create a curtain between them. She didn’t want to see the hurt in his eyes. She didn’t want to wonder if she was wrong.
Chapter 21
There was no reason for Dane to still be standing there and yet he was. The rain poured down over his face, his chest, his back. He should have been cold, or at least uncomfortable, but it didn’t even occur to him to seek shelter.
To Trust Again: A Sweet Romance (Forty and Free Book 2) Page 7