The smell of food filled her nose, distracting her from her morose thoughts and making her stomach rumble. Though she'd spent a few hours serving dinner, she'd been too busy all night to eat so much as a single morsel of bread, and she realized that she was famished. She turned around to see Tanner's table covered with a lovely and festive red tablecloth, and expertly set with gleaming china and silver.
"When did you have time to do this?" she asked. Going in closer, she found a wonderful Christmas dinner with all the trimmings sitting on top of warmers on the kitchen counter.
"Why not think of this as a sort of holiday magic? Maybe I really am Santa Claus." Tanner smiled and held out a chair.
Maybe he was. She hadn't cried this holiday season, and she'd decorated a tree, and made gingerbread cookies. Had Tanner come into her life to help heal her? She didn't know the answers and she wasn't sure she needed to know. One thing that she had no doubt about was that there was far more to Tanner than initially met the eye.
"You're not the type of guy who ever would normally live in a place like this." It wasn't a question, and she was afraid of what he would say next, but why should she? She'd known almost since the beginning that Tanner didn't fit in here. This wasn't some great revelation.
He paused and looked at her almost guiltily - but that made no sense. What could he possibly feel guilty for? That he was slumming it? That he was playing games with the down-on-her-luck girl?
"I just want a piece of mystery between us," he told her. "We're two strangers who happened to fall into each other's path, and tonight is all about how we make each other feel, not about who we are. I think you realize that we don't have a future together. I don't want to lie to you about that. But we're two people who need each other now - tonight. We should take wonder where we find it."
Two lost souls on the highway of life? She knew she should try to learn something real, something legitimate about this man before giving him her body for a second time, but she couldn't seem to look away, couldn't seem to break the spell that he'd woven around her. Should she keep fighting this? Which would bring her more regrets than she already had - if she walked away right now, or if she stayed? Ugh! She just didn't know.
What she did know, though, was that even if she did end up regretting anything she'd done, she'd also have the good memories to counteract the bad ones from that horrific Christmastime two years before. They'd made love once, and it had been magnificent. Yes, her time with Tanner was coming to a close. She felt that in the air, knew he would soon be gone - he'd said so openly from the first moment sparks had flown between them. Like any good magical being, he'd be off in a poof of smoke.
Silence stretched on between them, but it wasn't awkward, wasn't unbearable. Tanner poured her a glass of wine, and she looked into his mesmerizing eyes before allowing a nervous giggle to escape.
"Wow, if you knew the thoughts running through my mind, you might try to run as fast as you can," she said when he raised an eyebrow at her little burst of laughter. She sipped her wine and prayed that her nerves would calm down.
"I don't think a bulldozer crashing through the walls of this building could make me run from you," he said, his eyes boring into her.
"If the owner of this building gets his way, Tanner, a bulldozer putting a damper on the mood could just happen."
He flinched and turned away, but she didn't take any offense. She was actually relieved to be released from the intense look in his eyes.
"Sometimes things happen for a reason, Kyla. Maybe you were meant to be in these apartments to take the next step in your life," he said, and she couldn't disagree with that. "And maybe by being forced to leave, it will help you take another step in your life." This last part seemed to be spoken in an almost desperate way.
"Is that what you want, Tanner? Do you want someone else to force you to make a decision?"
His body tensed and her eyes were locked on his back as she waited for him to turn back around. Talk about dampers. This conversation was doing a real number on them and their mood, killing the eagerness they'd felt earlier to get back here and tear each other's clothes off. But at the same time, it was actually making it easier for her to fall back into his bed. She felt she was getting to know him just a tiny bit.
"I've always made my own decisions," he said before letting out a sigh and turning back toward her. "I didn't choose to be here, but I'm grateful for this moment, grateful to be standing in this exact place with you right in front of me. Sometimes we're pushed to do something we normally would never do, and we might fight it, and we might look back and still be angry about it, but there's a reason for everything, and I have no doubt that I was meant to be here with you right here and right now. 'To everything, turn, turn, turn … '"