Back Where She Belongs(37)

“You don’t think it’s a big deal?” His hips pressed against her, his erection against her belly, her chest heaving with harsh breaths. She was flailing around for a rationale to do what they both wanted. The desire rumbled through him, an idling engine ready to roar to life.

“I know it is,” she said, then frowned, “but denying it, fighting it so hard, makes us do stupid things. Like this. We’re supposed to be having fun, blowing off steam, but we’re in a cave where we made love, torturing ourselves, denying ourselves, getting all wound up.” She licked her lips, her tongue sticking to the dry surface. He wanted to wet them with his own, meet her tongue with his. Lust surged, washing away all the barriers he kept flinging up.

Her eyes darted across his face, seeking his agreement. “If we quit fighting and just do it, the pressure will evaporate. We’ll be ourselves again. We can concentrate. Our minds will be clear.” She paused. “I mean it can’t possibly be as good as we’re imagining, right?”

That was the problem. “What if it’s better?”

“You think it could be?” Her eyes flashed emotion after emotion—hope, alarm, despair, hope again.

“It could be.” He paused. “And that’s not helpful.” It would stoke the self-destructive urge he had to strap himself into Tara’s emotional roller coaster, take his chances on the drops and twists and hair-raising turns.

He was too old for that. Too wise. The thrill wasn’t worth the crash. And there would be a crash. For all she’d matured, Tara was the same demanding, difficult, quick-release girl she’d been as a teenager. And he was the same all-in rescuer scrambling to be everything she needed and not quite making the grade.

“What do you mean?” Her eyes searched his, a blazing blue.

“I think we’re safer staying friends,” he said.

Already, without sex, they’d been slipping into old habits, old ways of being together—good and bad. No matter what emotional safeguards they tried to build in, when she left, he would suffer. He knew himself that well.

She would leave. He couldn’t forget that. It wasn’t just geography standing between them. They wanted different things, they saw the world differently and they had a long-standing, gut-level distrust of each other.

He didn’t have time for a heartbreak. Not with the last phase of his work at Ryland at a crucial point, not with his town leadership dream about to become real.

He didn’t need fresh feelings for Tara getting in the way of building a life with a woman—a life built on trust and common goals and mutual respect. He was closing in on thirty. He didn’t have time for make-believe.

“I see your point,” she said. She was hurt, he saw, but trying to hide it. She’d suggested sex and he’d declined. She had interpreted that as him not wanting her as much as she wanted him. That had been the crux of the sense of betrayal over his not going to college with her.

So he had to explain. “I’m not into casual sex and casual is the last thing I feel about you. I ruined my marriage because of how I felt about you, Tara.”

She studied him, deciding whether or not he meant what he’d just said. He’d told her the truth and it hadn’t been easy.

“I believe you,” she said softly. They were lying exactly as they had been, his hands in her hair, their bodies together, faces inches from a kiss. Without moving at all, Tara withdrew from him. Desire faded from her eyes.

It hurt like hell, so he sat up and turned to the basket. “You hungry?”

“Starving,” she said, her voice breathy with relief.

He brought out the rest of the food—crostini with three kinds of spread, Bing cherries, a couple of sodas. They both avoided the cupcakes and chips.

Layering some fig-and-prosciutto spread onto a piece of bread, Tara said, “So we went over my dad’s will yesterday.”

“Yeah?”

She paused. “There was no money for me, but I knew that going in. The thing is...he gave me his library. All his books.”

“That’s nice, I guess.” Didn’t sound like much to him.

“Don’t you get it? He noticed that I love to read.” He hated that she settled for the man’s crumbs. But he had no right to judge. His relationship with his parents hadn’t been easy, either. Parents were supposed to love you no matter what, but when he’d chosen his father over his mother, a chasm grew between Dylan and his mother that existed to this day.

Love could be fragile. He’d seen that vividly then. He’d seen it with his mother and with Tara. It was a lesson that had registered down deep.

Hell, part of the reason he’d stayed with his father might have been to prove that he loved him.

“Also, he gave me his antique shotgun,” Tara was saying, so he tuned back in. “That means he found out I was shooting...” She swallowed hard, clearly struggling. “It’s sweet and awful at the same time. He could have talked to me. Written a note or an email...something.” She smiled sadly.

“Your father—”

“It’s okay. I get it. He is who he is. My mom, too. I have to accept her as she is and go from there.”

He was startled by the change in her attitude. His heart filled with tenderness and he touched her cheek, wishing he could say something to make her feel better. “Sounds like you’re a work-at-it person after all.”

“That means a lot to hear you say that.” She kissed his palm. Their eyes locked and the air between them crackled.

Dylan pulled away, more alarmed than he’d been by their physical connection. He cared for her. He admired her courage, her determination, her big heart. She was trying to make things right with her parents, giving them both far more credit than they deserved.

They finished eating, packed up and drove home in a companionable silence. At her house, she got out of the car and came to his window. Her eyes were clear. She had color in her cheeks and a calm expression on her face.

“Thanks so much. I know you gave up work to spend the afternoon with me. I feel lots better. You always know what I need.”

“It’s good to see you happy.”

“You’re a great guy, Dylan. I see that more and more. I don’t think I realized what I had when I had you.” In her eyes, he saw longing and regret in a flash like lightning in the monsoon they’d watched from that cave long ago. She leaned in for a quick kiss, then backed up and waved at him.

He watched her in the rearview. She looked lonely standing in front of that huge house in those baggy sweats, arms folded as if against a chill, though the day was warm.

He knew how she felt. He was lonely, too, and filled with regret. He could taste it on his lips—German chocolate, vinegar chips and Tara.





CHAPTER THIRTEEN



TARA HUNG HER DAMP, paint-spattered clothes on the drying rack in the laundry room so they wouldn’t mildew before Judith did laundry, her heart in turmoil.

Dylan. He’d said his feelings for her were serious, that they’d killed his marriage to Candee. When he’d said they were better as friends, Tara’s first reaction was hurt that he could set her aside as he had done years ago for what he found more important. But that was the old Tara, the girl eaten alive by her insecurities, the one who demanded all-consuming love because she didn’t love herself.

The more mature Tara understood him and agreed...except that she’d wanted him so much. When he’d touched her cheek, looking at her with such tenderness and pride, she’d felt lifted up, floating on air.

There was attraction, sure, but so much more.

Was she still in love with him?

The possibility hit her like a paintball bullet in the sternum, sharp, hard and bruising. It scared her. How could she still be lost in that teenage fantasy of perfect love? What if she never got past it? What if she was locked forever dreaming of the impossible?

She flipped off the light with a snap and headed down the hall.

“Tara?” her mother called to her from the sunroom, where she stood with a list in her hand, her eyes red-rimmed, her face swollen. She’d been crying. “Good Lord, you look even more homeless than when you left,” she snapped. “Is that mud in your hair?”

Tara bristled, then realized this was how her mother told her she cared. On impulse, Tara put her arms around her mother and hugged her. “I love you, too, Mom.”

Her mother backed out of the hug. “Have you been drinking?”

Swept up in new affection, Tara said, “Of course not. You don’t have to hide how you feel, Mom, or put on a face for me.”

“What is with you?” Her mother sounded vicious. “Why are you so extreme? On or off, black or white, thrilled or enraged. You’re so difficult. You’ve always been difficult. That’s your trouble.”

Hurt coiled around Tara’s heart. Just when she’d thought they were making some headway. She could hardly breathe for the pain. She’d tried, but her mother always rebuffed her.