Her soft laugh was derisive. “Fool that I am, I thought you had patiently waited for me to get over Thomas before making your move. Actually you’d only been holding out until your divorce became final, protecting yourself in case of any ‘difficulty.’ ”
He spun her around, his hands gripping her shoulders. “I was waiting for you to get over Thomas. You had to come to terms with yourself before you came to me.”
“Then, why didn’t you tell me about Pam?”
He sighed heavily. Good question. Unfortunately he didn’t have a good answer. He had made an error in judgment and it was going to cost him.
“We had enough to deal with, Kari. It wasn’t important. Listen to me,” he said firmly when she began to squirm away from him. “I never would have taken you to bed if my divorce hadn’t been final, at least not without telling you first. It became final the week before I heard you were in Breckenridge. Pam wasn’t an issue between us. She’d had no place in my life for years. Any mention of my marriage would have only further complicated the situation. It was as simple as that.”
He trapped her face between his hands, drew it up close to his and forced her to meet his eyes. “I’m sorry. I should have told you. But that’s all I have to be sorry for. I don’t love Pam. I haven’t for many years.”
“Why was she here today?”
“She had sensed my urgency about the divorce and came to deliver the papers. They had mistakenly been mailed to her.”
“Are you sure she’s over you?”
“Absolutely. She was giving me a good-bye kiss on the cheek, which I neither asked for nor returned. That’s all you saw when you walked in. I’m not even sentimental over our breakup. It happened so long ago. You’re the woman I love, Kari. You.”
His voice had taken on a desperate edge and his hands pressed harder against her cheeks. “Why are we arguing about this? Don’t you know by now how much I love you?”
Then his mouth came down on hers possessively. He wanted to impress his sincerity on her. He moved his head to one side, slanting his mouth over hers and parting her lips for the ardent penetration of his tongue.
Her craving for him hadn’t abated. She melted against him, aligning her curves to his hard frame as his arms closed around her. She moaned against his lips. He was already full and hard and she wanted him. But, dragging her mouth free, she pressed her forehead to the middle of his chest. “Hunter, no, no.”
He lifted his mouth from hers, his breath uneven. His hands rubbed her back. “Thanks for stopping me,” he whispered into her hair. “My career can’t stand a scandal right now and that’s what we’d have on our hands if my secretary came back from lunch and found us, uh, inappropriately engaged.”
She could feel his smile against her temple. He hadn’t completely understood her. “When I said ‘no,’ I meant no to more than just that, Hunter.”
She slipped out of his arms and went to stand at the corner of his desk. Her finger traced the wood grain in its polished surface.
“What else did you mean no to, Kari?” There was a slight hint of irritation in his voice. That brought her around to face him squarely.
“I meant that we can’t go on this way.”
He didn’t even pretend to misunderstand. He jumped right into what he sensed was going to be a debate. “Why not?”
“It’s happening too fast.”
“Not for me.”
“Then, for me.” She drew a deep breath that made the cloth across her breasts flutter.
He wished he hadn’t noticed. “What’s bothering you?”
“Up there in Breckenridge, it was easy to lose our heads. We were alone. We had no one to account to but ourselves. Down here, you have your life, I have mine.”
“Why can’t they be one and the same life?”
“You know why! You have a high public profile. So do I.”
“I must be dense. What’s your point?”
“I don’t want to sneak around and have a secret affair.”
“I hadn’t counted on sneaking anywhere or keeping our love affair a secret.”
“You’d flaunt it?”
“I’d shout it from the rooftops.”
“Then, you don’t know me at all. I won’t live with you, Hunter. And I can’t believe you would even consider it.”
“I didn’t. I want to marry you.”
That effectively silenced the next point she was going to make. Her jaw hung slack as she stared at him speechlessly. “Marry me? We barely know each other.”
His eyebrows went up. “Taking last week into consideration, don’t you think that statement is ludicrously inaccurate?”