Just One Night 1_ The Stranger(45)

“I thought . . . I hoped I could have you,” he says quietly. “Every taste of you intensifies the craving. Like the Turkish delight the White Witch gives to Edmund in Narnia. I just have to have more.”

“So that means you’re Edmund, a modern metaphor for Judas, and I’m the personification of evil.”

“No,” he says with a sad smile. He stands and carefully lifts my shirt and pants from where he dropped them on the floor, but he doesn’t hand them to me. Instead he holds them like they’re a treasure, or a last hope. “My metaphor isn’t holding up. Obviously what we have isn’t anything like a children’s fairytale. What we have is . . . darker, richer . . .”

“It isn’t right.”

“But it’s us.”

I shake my head, staring at the shirt in his hand. I could pull it from his grip but I’m not ready. I can’t bear the idea of being so aggressive and violent in this moment. He will never see me in any other form of undress again. I’m determined to make sure of that.

But I do want him to see me now. I want him to look at me one more time. I didn’t cherish that last touch; I didn’t predict my own fortitude. But I want to feel his eyes on me. I want that to be a memory I can fall back on when life gets so rough, fantasies become hard to conjure.

“You think you know what you want, but you don’t,” I whisper. “You think you want me but what you want is a string of stolen moments like this one. You think you see through my facade but you can’t see that the facade is as much a part of me as the wildness beneath. You don’t want me.”

“But you can get rid of the facade.”

“Don’t you get it?” I scream. Suddenly I’m not the Harvard-educated businesswoman, I’m not the fiancée of a young lawyer from an old family. I’m anger, desperation, frustration, unrequited passion.

“I don’t want to get rid of it!” I grit my teeth against the violence that’s welling up inside. “You’re asking me to toss aside my thick-soled shoes and walk barefoot by your side, but look down, Robert! The ground we’re walking on is covered with rusty nails! I want my protections. They are part of me! I love them more than I love the . . . the savagery of my underlying nature and I want a man who loves the part of me that I celebrate! Why can’t you see that?”

“Because I’m a savage,” he says simply. But his eyes are sad; there is no savagery on display.

“Then find yourself a woman raised by wolves. I was raised to be civilized.”

“This is your definition of civility?”

“We have business, Mr. Dade. Shall we get to it?”

He sighs, “Ruby Tuesday” is gone, and its absence adds a small chip in my resolve that I can ill afford. I hold out my hand.

“Give me my clothes.”

He hands them to me without any resistance.

“You and I, we’re not the good guys,” I say as I slip back into my pants. “We did something wrong.”

“If you do this,” he says, watching me carefully, “if you marry a man you don’t love, you will not only hurt me but you will damage yourself. And most importantly, you’ll torture him.”

I pause but only for a moment. “I’m doing what I need to do.” The floor is cold under my bare feet.

“I think if you listen to me for even five minutes, you’ll realize that you have choices.”

I look up at him. There’s so much he doesn’t know. So many secrets and skeletons. And I no longer know if I’m running away or being led to a fate. All I know is that I’m going to survive. It’s more than my sister was able to do.

He examines me; his hazel eyes draw me in as they always do. “There are things you want to tell me?” he asks.

I smile despite myself. No one has ever been able to read me so easily and I’ve known this man for less than two weeks.

He nods. “I’m going to go up to the deck, pour two glasses of wine. I hope that once you’ve dressed we can talk.”

“Oh, now you want to talk? So it’s really not just about sex?” I say with only partial sarcasm.

“I told you, I want to know you in every way. I’m going to go up to the deck. If you come up to talk, then I’ll know that at least there’s some hope that you’ll let me.”

And with that he leaves the cabin. I listen to his footsteps fade away only to hear them again after he goes above board and starts to walk the deck, which is now acting as my ceiling.

With a jolt I realize that Robert Dade is no longer pushing me. He’s not trying to tempt me or overwhelm me.