He traced her lips with his fingers as he watched her with bedroom eyes and she felt the growing bulge at his groin. Guilt came on the heels of desire because she knew she couldn’t stay. “You make me feel weak and strong at the same time, Vincent.”
“Good. I’m just returning the favor then. Eat your waffle before it gets cold. There’s scrambled eggs and syrup on the breakfast bar already. You smell sexy.”
“Sexy? Not like skunk?”
Vincent shook his head. “I’m not picking up any trace of it on you although I can definitely smell it in the house. What I’m referring to is that lavender. It reminds me that you’ve been in our shower, nekkid, and in our bed.”
The heat crept up in her cheeks again and she nodded. “I’m reminded of that, too, when I catch a whiff of it.”
If he kept talking sexy to her like that, it would erode her resolve about approaching the Abilene store as a serious option. The fact that he hadn’t pushed her on the issue at all was also making a difference.
Time ran out too soon and she rinsed her plate after eating her fill. Vincent kissed her good-bye and James carried her things out to his truck. The rental company was supposed to drop off a car for her sometime that morning while her vehicle was being repaired.
“What’s in the box?”
“The missing pieces to a set of antique crystal I inherited from my mom and grandmother. For years, she and I searched antique stores for replacements and I found them last Sunday. They aren’t anything terribly rare or expensive, they just remind me of Mom and Grandma, and we never seemed to have any luck finding them.”
“Show me?”
Tilting her head, she looked up at him and said, “I don’t want to waste your time with my life’s minutiae. We’ll be late.”
He checked his watch and said, “We have plenty of time, Miss Go-Getter. I’d genuinely like to see.” Feeling a little self-conscious, she unwrapped the platter and he took it from her, holding it up with gentle hands as he smiled. “I wondered if you liked things like this. It’s pretty.”
Pleased, she took it back from him and wrapped it up. “The other pieces are a candy dish and a sugar bowl in the same pattern. I have a whole set of it stored in boxes in a closet.”
“Our mom loved crystal, too. Pretty things like that should be shown off.”
“One of these days,” she said with a shrug. She glanced at him, wondering what was on his mind.
Their conversation from the night before came to mind as he drove her into town and she hoped she wasn’t making a mistake as she said, “Can I ask you about something you said last night?”
“Last night? Sure?”
“You said when you found Patterson’s book of poetry that it made you angry to read them so you stopped and set the book aside for later. Why did they make you angry?”
The morning light shining in through his truck window illuminated his green eyes and made them seem to glow a little as he gazed at the road in front of him, thinking. “I probably shouldn’t have said that.”
“Why?”
“It might offend you. And how I feel won’t change anything. He’s gone. It can’t be fixed.”
“I know what you mean. Are you still angry at him?”
He let out a long, tired-sounding breath. “There’s a deep-down part of me that stays furious at him. It was a simple thing. Wear a helmet.”
“I’m glad I’m not the only one. But I’ve been thinking about it and I realize, a little unwillingly, that maybe it was his time to go. Maybe thirty-nine years was enough.”
He turned to her and his eyes were a little bloodshot. “He wouldn’t agree. Not if he knew.”
“Knew what?”
“What’s it’s like to be with you, to be near you and not have to hide the fact that I love you. To make love to you. He’ll never know.”
When she swallowed the tears in her throat, the noise seemed loud in her ears. “I feel like I’d be tempting fate by wishing I could’ve known him that way but I do. When I’m in the moment with you, or with Vincent, it’s all you. I want you to understand that. But sometimes, later, when I’m lying there, I wonder what it would be like.” She giggled. “I can imagine him arguing with you about who sleeps where in the bed. He wouldn’t take the outside edge very willingly.”
James chuckled softly and smiled, his gaze on the road ahead. “I noticed you slept soundly until I woke you this morning. Is that a good sign?”
She smiled so broadly she knew she must look silly but she couldn’t help it. “There was no bad dream this morning, even though you woke me. My sleep was so disrupted night before last that it didn’t surprise me when I wasn’t awakened by the nightmare but this morning…this morning gave me a little hope.”