Second Chance Pass (Virgin River #5)(114)

“I know. Do you hate me?”

“Of course not,” he said, but he kept a safe distance.

“I was embarrassed,” she said. “And scared.”

“Embarrassed?” he repeated. “Scared?”

She gave a deep sigh. “I couldn’t imagine what you thought of me. I jumped into bed with you so fast…”

“You could have asked me. I jumped into bed with you pretty fast, too.”

“Men can get away with that.”

“I didn’t,” he said. “My punishment was pretty brutal.”

“Yeah,” she said softly. “I guess it was. I’m sorry about that.”

“Okay,” he said. “Scared?”

“Oh, Joe…I was so damn scared. I thought about morning coming and you giving me a whack on the butt and saying, ‘Thanks, baby.’”

“What did I say or do to make you think it could be like that?” he asked her.

“It wasn’t you, Joe. It was me. I guess I just wasn’t ready to move on yet.”

“Did panic come with the morning?” he asked.

“Yeah. It was a nice night. A night like I’d like to have again, and I thought about what it would feel like to look forward to it and be—” She lifted her chin and sniffed. “Not in the cards.”

He laughed without humor. “So you ended it to keep me from ending it? Jesus, Nikki, all I wanted to do was make you feel like you were headed for something good. What the hell happened between us to make you think that way?”

“It was just my past,” she said, shaking her head. “You were wonderful to me.”

“And so—you never want to hear from me again?” he asked, totally stumped. “You didn’t want to even see if there was something more there? Scared of that, too?”

“I was afraid to go any further. We don’t even know each other! I want something permanent, I want a family.”

“Weren’t you listening? I don’t have any idea if that’s going to happen with us, you and me—we’re too new. But wasn’t I clear? I’m not avoiding that.”

“Joe, I think I might be clueless when it comes to love. Afraid I wouldn’t know real love if it bit me in the ass.”

He chuckled in spite of himself. “Been there,” he said. “Pretty recently, in fact.”

“I thought I was probably mistaken. At the time it seemed to me you were showing me something good. Sincere. Loving. But it could have just been…You know. Sex.”

“No complaints about the sex, then,” he said.

“It was so much more than that. For me, it was so much more than that.”

It was a huge relief to hear her say that, he actually let out a slow breath. He reached out a hand and wiped a tear from her cheek. “And you didn’t think it could’ve been more than that for me, too?”

“I just didn’t know.”

“But you came back here?”

“Well, Paul called me.”

“Paul?” he asked, astonished.

“Yeah. I think I’ve been played.”

“How’s that?”

“He called to tell me not to worry about you—that although you admitted you had it real bad for me, you were working at getting over me and I’d probably be free of you in no time. He said you wouldn’t bother a woman who didn’t want to be bothered.”

“He did that? Why’d he do that?”

“To make me think about what I might be giving up, maybe.” She wiped the other cheek. “So. You’re over me?”

“Not quite,” he said. “I’m still working on it.” He looked down for a second, thinking. “What did you come back for?” he asked her. “To clear the air? Get it over with? More sex? After which you’ll take off before I’m awake?”

“Then Vanni called me. She told me she’d been thinking about things, and decided I must be out of my mind. She told me a lot of the same things you’d already told me—about coming together to help your friends, about being there for Paul while he buried Matt. She knew that if she ever needed your help for any reason, you’d be there for her. And I thought, what the hell’s the matter with me? I’ve always wanted to be with someone who thinks like that, acts like that.” She looked up at him with those wide, damp eyes. “She told me you’d be here—bringing Paul the plans. Should I have stayed away? Would that have been for the best?”

“I don’t know, Nikki,” he said, shaking his head. “I’m not going to kid you—the way you ran out on me…That was awful. Then I wrote you that it broke me apart and you still wouldn’t respond. What am I going to think, huh? You’re not the only one who doesn’t feel like getting hurt again.”

“You wouldn’t know it by the way I acted with you, but I’m inexperienced. I’ve never done that before. It turns out I’m lousy at one-night stands. All paranoid and spooked.”

“Yeah? Me, too,” he said. “I never thought of it as a one-night stand. Not even that one night. I was destroyed to find you gone. More destroyed to hear it made you cry. I couldn’t believe anything happened to make you cry. I’m still having trouble with that.”