“So, how are you really? Feeling any better?” He located a mug and filled it with the dark, aromatic brew.
“I may look like a wreck,” Kelsey said with a laugh as she ran a hand through her hair, “but this is a great improvement. I’m just feeling weak now.”
“Come on,” he said, his cup of coffee in one hand as he guided her back to the couch. “You need to rest.”
Sinking down, she pulled a blanket over her pajama-clad legs and leaned back with a sigh.
“Shouldn’t you be in bed?” he asked, his automatic reaction to her kicking in.
“No, I’m better now,” she assured him. “How did you get free in the middle of the afternoon?”
Guilt stabbed him again. He smiled at her, the effort full of regrets and old longings. “I heard my oldest friend was sick and needed cheering up.”
She snuggled under the blanket, a secret smile on her face. “So your kind-hearted boss let you take the afternoon off?”
“No,” he said with a wry twist of his lips. “I worked through lunch and finished early. I know how much you hate being sick and thought it might help to have someone to talk to.”
Kelsey shrugged. “This kind of virus would make Mary Sunshine feel despondent. But I’m a lot better now.”
“Well,” he said, sitting his coffee on a nearby table, “we can’t have you—not Mary Sunshine on your best days—feeling down. What can I do to help?”
She chuckled at his assessment, as he’d known she would. “Oh, just talk to me. Tell me about your romance.”
With unerring accuracy, she’d touched on his most tender spot, he reflected, carefully keeping his turmoil off his face. Getting up and going behind where she sat on the couch, he said, “Neck rub while we’re talking.”
“Ahhh.” Her head fell forward in submission.
“So you want me to talk about my romance with Amy?” Doug forged forward manfully. The subject lay between them just as much as her marriage to Jared had altered the terrain of their relationship. They had to find a way to go on, a way to continue a friendship he cherished while maintaining this new relationship with Amy. It had come out of nowhere, but he couldn’t imagine giving her up.
“Yes, your romance to Amy!” She reached up, slapping at his hand playfully. “Who else? I’m so excited for you both.”
“Amy’s great,” Doug said, meaning it. “She’s terrific.”
Hot, torrid lovemaking night after night. Even in his fantasies he hadn’t found better. Even more important, Amy and he shared a day-to-day rhythm, a connection he was coming to truly value. She made him laugh, made him feel loved.
He just didn’t know where to put his old feelings for her sister, his dreams of Kelsey making him someone other than ordinary-Doug. Somehow he knew he’d be a different man with her, someone brighter and stronger.
“You’ve been seeing a lot of each other,” Kelsey commented, her voice muffled by the dark fall of her hair around her face as he worked out the kinks in her shoulders.
“Yes.” And Amy would hate his being here now, he knew. Knew it and recoiled from lying to her. But this was something he had to do. How could he simply cut Kelsey out of his heart?
So he’d broken their luncheon date, lied to Amy and said he had to work through lunch.
“Amy’s the best,” Doug murmured, half to himself.
“The very best,” Kelsey agreed from behind the curtain of her hair.
Looking down at her, he remembered again the tough girl in high school. Mouthy with teachers and not intimidated by the roughest guys. Her spiritedness had drawn him like a magnet that first day.
All the days and nights of his adolescence, Kelsey had been his ideal, her spunky attitude and beautiful face making her a prize worth winning.
In a flash, he recalled the clench of Amy’s tight, silken body around his, the way she cried out his name as he drove into her over and over. In all his patient dreams of winning Kelsey’s love, he’d never really fantasized about making love to her, which was odd. Of course, when he was a kid, he’d fantasized about nailing everything that moved.
Hell, as an adult he’d fantasized fucking women he’d seen walking down the street—it was a man thing—but not Kelsey anymore. Not for years had he actually thought about her as a sexual object. She belonged to that chivalrous, stronger-than-he-felt part of himself.
How could he let her go? How could he give up on his longing to win a woman who could make him more than his ordinary, nice-guy self? More than the schlepping average-guy his father had been.
He knew he ran the risk of alienating his boss by continuing to hover around Kelsey. There was a good chance his preoccupation with her would lose him a future with Amy. But how did a man break a habit of so many years?