He grinned. “I like having you touch me.”
Her hands stroked down his abdomen. She felt delicious muscles quiver beneath her fingertips, felt an answering fluttering in her. Heat unfurled deep inside, desire, need, the power of which surprised her, shocked her even.
She felt a shudder rippling through him, felt him take a breath and slowly let it out, saw a hint of surprise on his face. She absolutely loved the idea that she could make him tremble, shudder. That she could surprise him. That he would give her this kind of control over what happened between the two of them. She’d always believed if he ever pressed the point, she would be lost. That if he came at her full force, every bit of resolve in her body would simply melt away. So she’d been afraid to get near him. But not anymore.
She might well ignore every bit of common sense she possessed, for a few brief weeks, maybe even months, with him. Life had taught her she could live with regrets. What was one more to add to her already long list?
Amanda leaned her head against his shoulder, against the enticing hollow made by his neck meeting his shoulder, and she carefully moved into him, until her entire body was resting lightly against his.
“What about this?” He slid an arm around her waist, holding her more securely. “Can I do this?”
“Yes, please.” She drew in a breath, drew in his scent, nuzzled her nose against the side of his neck, and she felt his chin atop her head, felt him drop a light kiss at her temple.
His chest expanded with a breath. “I don’t know how it can feel this good, just to hold you.”
Which struck her as odd. She backed away a bit, puzzled. “You, too? The man with a bathroom big enough to entertain an entire dance troupe?”
“I don’t like dancers,” he said. “They’re too skinny. There’s nothing to hold on to. And I told you, I take it one woman at a time.”
“For how long?” she asked, her curiosity getting the best of her. “How long do they last?”
“I don’t know.”
“The last one? How long were you with the last one?”
“I honestly don’t remember, Amanda.”
“Do you remember her name?”
“What do you really want to know? How long this is going to last between you and me?”
“Yes,” she said.
“You tell me—how long are you going to want to be with me?”
“I…I don’t know.”
“That’s what I mean. It’s impossible to say at this point. Do you want a time limit? A maximum and a minimum?”
“I don’t know.”
“You name it,” he told her. “A year. A month. A week?”
“Have you ever been with one woman for a year?”
“No,” he admitted. “And a week wouldn’t do it. A month wouldn’t do it, either. Split the difference with me. How ’bout six months?”
Six months, she thought. Would it be enough? Would he last that long? “Have you ever been with one woman for six months, Josh?”
He thought about it, thought long and hard, then admitted, “I’m not sure.”
An uncomfortable silence stretched between them. She slipped away from him. He frowned, a dark flush in his cheeks. He was angry.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “That’s not fair of me, and you’re right. It is impossible to say now how long any relationship we might have will last.”
“No, I’m sorry.” He sighed, cupped his hand against the side of her face. “I shouldn’t have come at you that way. I’m not in the best of moods, okay? Sexual frustration isn’t very becoming on me.”
“Oh.” She backed away.
“And you don’t have to run away, either. Come back here.”
She did, just for a minute, she told herself. He held her loosely, as he had before. She closed her eyes and willed herself to forget about everything that could go wrong and thought instead of simply being here with him. What it could be like. This afternoon he’d suggested going away, just the two of them. Locking themselves away from everyone. Amanda shivered with pleasure. Locked away with Josh. He’d promised her it would be good. She knew it would, once they got past that awkward first time and all her silly insecurities.
“I do want to be with you,” she admitted.
He bent his head, his lips against her right ear. “Say it again.”
“I want you.”
She felt a rumbling deep in his chest, a wholly appreciative sound that sent an answering ripple of anticipation through her.
“What are we going to do about that, Amanda?”
The phone rang, saving her, she supposed. She tried to slip away.
He didn’t loosen his hold. “Let it ring. The machine will pick up.”
Amanda heard the machine click on, heard his voice, smooth and so very inviting, asking the caller to leave a message. She shouldn’t have been surprised to hear a woman’s voice broadcast from the machine, a soft feminine laugh, a hint of a European accent making the woman sound so worldly, so sophisticated. Everything Amanda was not.
“Hi, it’s Sunnie. I got caught up in a new piece, and when I looked at the clock it was almost four in the morning here. I thought I’d take a chance you’d be home, but I should have known better. Don’t you ever sleep, Josh?”
Amanda just stood there, feeling foolish, thinking it was so much easier when the other women were nameless creatures, when she never had to hear the husky invitation in their voices.
Josh brushed past her, picked up the phone. “Hi, Sunshine. I’m here.”
Amanda didn’t hear a hint of irritation or impatience in his voice when he answered. If anything, there was genuine warmth, genuine affection. It hurt, she found. If truly hurt. He hit a button on the machine, so Amanda didn’t hear any more of what the woman said. But she heard his end of the conversation. She stood right there shamelessly eavesdropping.
He laughed, then told the woman, “No, no problems at all in Paris. And everything’s fine here. The painting was waiting for me when I arrived. It’s beautiful. Thank you.”
A woman who sent him paintings? Amanda glanced over the walls of the living room again, looking more closely at the artwork this time, noting a striking similarity among them. Something about the use of color and light, the style. She noted the artist’s signature in the lower right corner. A decidedly feminine, elegant script. Sunnie.
He lived in an apartment surrounded by paintings by a woman named Sunnie.
“Look,” he said. “I’m kind of in the middle of something here, and you’re probably too wired to sleep just yet, anyway. Can I call you back in a few minutes?”
The woman must have agreed. Amanda wondered if she was used to calling him at night and finding someone here with him, wondered if it bothered her at all. Amanda couldn’t imagine not being bothered by something like that.
“I miss you.” He said, grinning. “I love you, too, angel face. I’ll talk to you soon.”
Amanda looked away, but not before he looked up and saw her, not before he no doubt saw the look on her face.
“You’re going to feel absolutely foolish when you hear who that was.”
“I wasn’t going to ask,” she said, already feeling foolish for thinking she had a right to know or to be upset.
He cocked his head to the right and drilled her to that spot with just a glance, steel in his eyes. “You don’t even want to hear what I have to say?”
“What’s the point?” she said, daring to move a step closer to him, then another. Honestly, she wanted to hit him. It shocked her a bit. She’d never hit another human being in her life. But her hands balled into fists and she imagined the satisfaction she’d get from slapping her palm against his handsome face.
“She’s my sister, Amanda.”
“Sister?”
“Yes.”
Amanda came closer still, the urge to hit something gone entirely, the urge to simply disappear growing by leaps and bounds. Still wary, she glanced down at the counter, so she wouldn’t have to look at h
im, her gaze falling to his answering machine. The light was blinking. Absently, she took note of the messages.
“It says you have eleven messages,” she accused, feeling so childish it hurt. “How many sisters do you have, Josh?”
“Just one,” he said tightly.
Amanda stood there, saying nothing, wishing she could sink into the floor. She’d been so stupid.
“Oh, for God’s sake,” he said, punching a button on the machine. “You want to listen to what they have to say, go ahead and listen. You choose not to believe a damned thing I say or anything I happen to feel for you, that’s up to you, too.”
And then he turned and stalked away as the first message started to play. A woman’s voice, sultry as sin. Her name was Mitzi, and she’d just heard he was back in town. She’d love to see him, she purred.
Amanda was feeling decidedly catty herself, and foolish and downright mean. His sister? She supposed it was entirely possible. He’d already told her he had a sister, a mother and a father, too. It was reasonable to expect them to talk on the phone from time to time.
But she didn’t think it was reasonable to believe he’d truly limit himself to one woman at a time. That was especially hard as she stood in his living room listening to one woman after another fussing over him and making a few suggestive invitations to him via his answering machine.
Neither could she accept the fact that Josh, beautiful and sophisticated and spoiled as he was, truly wanted an absolutely ordinary woman like her.
Amanda felt miserable and sad and sorry for herself the next day. She hadn’t even apologized to Josh. She felt foolish wanting reassurance from him about how long they’d be together. After all, it wouldn’t last; he’d told her so. What did the little details even matter?
She’d also developed a shameless fascination with him and his life that by mid-morning had her in the research department, where Gwen was all too helpful, ready to show her the impressive array of information one could find on someone like Joshua Carter and his family in any public database in the country. Amanda felt guilty about invading his privacy, but still looked at what Gwen found. She was surprised to find that he was a Rhodes scholar with an undergraduate degree in international studies from Princeton. The man was no lightweight. According to the news magazines, he was close friends with the current U.S. president, who was a sort-of unofficial uncle. Josh had carried out several high-profile diplomatic missions over the years, missions she’d always suspected were cover for assignments at Division One. He also had one sister, Meredith Carter, who according to several news reports had died when she was sixteen and the family was living in Italy. She’d drowned.
Amanda couldn’t make sense of that—Josh telling her the message was from his sister, when his only sister had been dead for almost ten years. It would be an incredibly callous thing to do, and he wasn’t a callous man.
She was in the ladies’ room, staring at the dark circles under her eyes—the telltale puffiness that said she’d been crying—when Jamie walked in.
“Bad day?” she suggested gently.
“Bad year,” Amanda said.
“Josh looks like he’s having a very bad day, as well. Not that I’m prying….” She hesitated, then admitted. “I guess I am.”
“It’s okay,” Amanda said.
“I just love Josh. I always have. He’s the best friend I’ve ever had. He’s great to work with, too. He’s always happy. He makes me laugh, wants to take care of me, too. He reminds me a lot of my brothers.”
“He said you reminded him of his sister.”
Jamie looked surprised. “He talked to you about his sister?”
“Just a little bit. Why?”
“He never talks about his sister.”
“Meredith, right?”
“I don’t believe I’ve ever heard her name.”
“Do you know what happened to her?”
“I never came right out and asked, but I sensed it’s something that still hurts him.” Jamie hesitated. “I feel like I’m gossiping now, but just so you know, you might want to tread lightly on that subject. I heard once that she committed suicide. When she was very young.”
“Oh,” Amanda said.
“I know. It’s hard to imagine anything bad ever happening in Josh’s life, at least from what he lets people see of him. But there’s a lot more to him than he ever lets anyone see.”
“I know.” Amanda closed her eyes, hurting for what she’d said to him the day before at the firing range about guns and suicide. She remembered what he’d said. People who want to kill themselves can always find a way.
Had his sister done that? Had she found a way? To drown herself?
“Josh has a big heart,” Jamie added. “And he’s very kind, and very good at his job. You can trust him to watch out for you.”
Amanda nodded, thinking to trust him with her life, but not her heart. She almost left it at that. But there was one more thing she wanted to know. She just couldn’t leave it alone.
“Have you ever heard him mention a woman named Sunnie? An artist?”
“Of course. He gave Dan and me one of her paintings as a wedding present, a beautiful, magical piece with a castle on a hill in the mountains. In Germany, I think. It has the most amazing colors, looks like something out of a fairy tale. I hung it in the nursery.”
“So, they’ve been friends for a long time?”
“Friends?” She hedged. “Or something. But I’ve seen him return calls from her from halfway around the world. Women call him all the time, and if he returned all their calls, he’d never get a bit of work done. But he always seems happy to talk to her.”
Amanda nodded. So he was capable of maintaining an interest in a woman over a period of time. At least in one woman. Sunnie. Josh had told the woman he loved her. Amanda thought she might hate the woman for that.
“Are you going to be okay?” Jamie said.
“Yes,” she claimed. “I’m going to pull myself together. It’s time.”
Time she grew up a bit and accepted the man for what he was and stopped trying to make him into what she wanted him to be.
Josh slammed down the phone and swore, once again taking his anger out on an inanimate object, like some silly adolescent boy who flew off the handle at every turn. He took a bit of comfort in knowing the door was closed and there was no one to witness his little display of childish frustration. After all, he was a man who placed great value on self-control.
And he’d always possessed a great deal of it, until a pretty little innocent, brown-eyed woman came into his life. One who liked to snuggle against his chest and run her hands over his body and make him absolutely crazy, and then, in the space of a heartbeat, show him how absolutely wrong he was in thinking she could handle the kind of relationship he wanted or in thinking it could even be good for her.
He heard a knock on his office door, called out a brusque, “Come in.”
Amanda stood there, hesitating on the threshold, reminding him of a scared rabbit who might bolt at any moment. He let himself look at her more closely, as he hadn’t permitted himself to do this morning. Her hair was hanging loose for a change, straight and thick and shiny, curling up a bit at the ends near her shoulders, probably because she’d slept so late she hadn’t had time to twist it into a knot. Her eyes looked huge and slightly scared, and he found that it hurt just to look at her, that it was physically painful to him to be this close to her and not allow himself to touch her.
The night before, when he’d retreated into the dubious comfort of a very fine bottle of scotch, he thought he heard her crying softly in the room next to his, and he wanted to go to her. But Amanda crying softly in the night, probably in some prim little nightgown of the purest white, lying amidst the rumpled sheets of a bed, was more than he could handle. Especially when he’d already had a few drinks. He hadn’t trusted himself to go in there and try to comfort her, and she didn’t need comfort from him, anyway.
He was afraid what she neede
d was another man. Anybody but him.
“I can come back later if this is bad time,” she said.
“No, come on in.” He got to his feet and walked toward her, thinking to close the door. They didn’t need an audience for this.
He reached past her, and she slid to the right. He frowned, shut the door, then put a full three feet between them. Josh hated the thought of her shrinking away from his touch, hated seeing the faint, bruised look beneath her eyes, the utterly fragile quality about her. He shoved his hands into his pockets and put his back to her, staring out the window rather than looking at her.
“Sit down,” he said, “please.”
“I owe you an apology. For last night.”
Josh closed his eyes and looked down at the floor. Something hurt deep inside of him, something he didn’t understand. It was like someone planted a big ache in the pit of his chest that seemed to be growing. With each passing day, he hurt more and more, and he’d hurt her. Dammit, he’d hurt her, and he didn’t think he was going to be able to make this work.
“It wasn’t your fault, Amanda,” he said grimly. “None of it.”
“Yes, it was. You’ve been up-front with me about what you want, about how you live your life, and I don’t know what I’ve been doing. Rearranging reality to suit me, I suppose. We’re so different. We want very different things, and I knew that going in. In my head, I always knew. So I don’t have any right to be upset with you. I’m sorry.”
Josh closed his eyes, his hands balled into fists. He was still thinking about hitting something, maybe the wall. Because he was so very angry at the whole situation, angry at himself for creating it. He’d drawn her into this mess, and now it was up to him to keep her safe. Which meant he had to turn around and try to explain things to her, so she didn’t feel so bad. He needed to look her in the eyes, pretty, sad, tear-filled eyes, and he wasn’t supposed to touch her. He wasn’t supposed to want her, either.
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