Always On My Mind (The Sullivans #8)(38)

Only this time, instead of him being the one to put the brakes on when he was on the verge of heading for the point of no return, Lori was the one dragging her mouth from his.

“How can you kiss me like this,” she asked him in a voice that shook slightly, “when you won’t even talk to me about what happened to you?”

She didn’t say “Stop.” She didn’t tell him, “We shouldn’t do this.” Just, “You won’t even talk to me about what happened to you.”

But it was enough. Because she was right—he had no business kissing her like that, or even thinking of going further, when he could still barely think about his past, let alone share the details of it with someone else. With her.

She was still trying to catch her breath, her br**sts rising up in the slinky dress as she gasped for air. “I wasn’t trying to make you hurt worse by asking you questions about your past, Grayson. That’s the last thing I would ever want to do and I’m so sorry if anything I said in the stables hurt you. I swear I was only trying to help.”

God, he’d nearly yanked her dress up to her waist and taken her against the front door, and she was the one apologizing.

“I know,” he said. And he did. Because for all of Lori’s faults—and he felt as if he’d gotten to discover each and every one of them over the past week—she was a good person. Maybe if they’d met in a different time, years ago, when he was still in the city...

No. He couldn’t go there, couldn’t wish that things had been different. Because if he were going to turn back time, wasn’t there only one thing he would ever be allowed to wish for? His wife, alive and healthy. And if Leslie were still alive, then Lori Sullivan would have no part of his life at all.

His gut twisted twice as hard at that thought.

Grayson already knew that there was no way to win, that the grip his past had on him was too strong ever to get away from. Because while he simply couldn’t imagine his world anymore without Lori in it, he also couldn’t move beyond the loss he’d suffered before her.

“I’m still so damned sorry for grabbing you the way I did in the stables, and I never should have pushed you up against the door just now.” It took every ounce of self-control he had left to step away from her. “I understand if you don’t want to go to the barn dance with me now, Lori.”

He felt awkward and too formal, as though he couldn’t get anything right with her. He didn’t deserve to have her on his arm, didn’t deserve any more of her smiles, or the sound of her laughter as it floated through the air.

Lori stared at him as if she’d never seen him before. “Are you actually asking me what I want to do?”

He ran a hand through his hair. “You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do, Lori. You know that.”

Her smile came so suddenly he actually felt the wind knocked out of him at the beautiful force of it. “Of course I know that, but it’s so fun to see if I can make you lose it,” she teased, and amazingly, his gut untwisted a little. “Plus, it keeps Sweetpea entertained when you stomp around and smoke starts coming out of your ears—doesn’t it, baby?” she said to the cat, who was watching the two of them from the bed of pillows and blankets Lori had made for her on the floor by a heating vent.

“Don’t let her pull you into this discussion, Mo,” he warned the cat.

Lori laughed out aloud, a sweet waterfall of joy that untwisted his gut even further. “Aha! You finally talked to her like she’s a person.” She clapped her hands. “Just because of that, I’ll go with you to the barn thing.”

She wasn’t pushing him anymore on his wife’s crash, so he wouldn’t push her on the fact that she couldn’t even say the word dance.

But he wanted to. And that was what worried him most—even more than the desire over which he had no control whatsoever. It was why he was taking her to the barn dance, after all—because he’d heard her on the phone with her sister and knew how badly she missed dancing, how important it really was to her.

For three years he’d been so careful to keep himself from getting close to anyone, but Lori had barged into his life and refused to take no for an answer when he’d told her he didn’t have time to train a farmhand who had no experience and was worse than useless.

Somehow she’d gotten under his skin.

And he didn’t know how to get her out again.

He was frowning when the soft, oh-so-sweet touch of her hand on his jaw finally made him stop and look down at her beautiful face again. “I’ve thought a lot about what you said to me in the stables,” she said in a soft voice. “It turns out you were right about it being easier for me to focus on helping you rather than looking at my own life.”

“Don’t.” He covered her hand with his. “Please don’t let me off the hook like that. I f**ked up, Lori. And you shouldn’t forgive me.”

The last thing he expected her to do was smile up at him. “You just said it yourself—you can’t keep me from doing whatever I want.” She lightly stroked his cheek. “And I want to forgive you. But only for what happened in the stables. Because what just happened here against the door...” Her eyes flashed with heat. “Well, I can’t think of any part of your kisses that you have to be sorry about.”