She didn’t watch him drive away. She put her back against the door and slid down, slowly, until she was sitting on the floor with her knees bent.
Only then did she allow herself to cry.
Chapter Four
Erin dragged herself out of bed at six the next morning, determined that her humiliating encounter with Jake wouldn’t impact her work. She went downstairs in her pajamas and logged on to the computer in her living room, opening up her email before starting on the prep work for her client meeting.
It was a good thing she did, because the first email she saw was from the client, hoping they might be able to reschedule.
Thank God for small favors. Even with all the preparation in the world she wouldn’t have been at her best for this particular meeting. She wrote back to the client, assuring him it would be no problem at all and giving him a list of possible dates and times.
Then she sat back in her chair and ran both hands through her hair, already sticking up in all directions. This meant, too, that instead of calling Beth at the ungodly hour of eight to ask for a ride, she could wait until the more civilized hour of ten. The universe had thrown her a bone. She could even go back to bed if she wanted.
No, she was awake now. She’d grab the newspaper from the porch (assuming the paper boy had made it through the snow), make herself a double espresso with the machine she’d given herself for Christmas, and curl up on the couch with Pepper for a lazy Saturday morning.
She was feeling almost cheerful as she went towards the front door to fetch the paper. Then she saw a button—no, two buttons—lying on the floor of the entryway.
Her eyes closed as it all came flooding back. The heat—the wild hunger—Jake’s mouth on hers.
The memory made her knees weak.
She’d never thought of herself as a passionate person. Not like Allison or Beth, for instance. She’d resigned herself to this fact a long time ago, figuring that while she might never experience the intense highs of emotion that some of her friends did, she’d never experience the intense lows, either. And wasn’t that better in the long run?
She would never have dreamed she had such primitive urges inside her, just waiting for the right match to ignite them into flame. Even her feelings for Jake so many years ago hadn’t prepared her for it. What she’d felt then was a schoolgirl’s crush; what she’d felt last night was a woman’s desire.
Pepper came out of the living room to curve around her ankles, meowing to go out.
“Maybe we never really know ourselves,” she said softly, reaching down to pet the black cat. “Maybe we just think we do.”
“You, for instance,” she told Pepper as his requests to be let outside grew more insistent. “You think you want to go out, but when I open the door”—which she did—“you take one look at the snow and change your mind.”
Pepper looked at her with the deep reproach cats reserve for their owners when the weather doesn’t meet with their liking.
“Told you so,” she said, grabbing the paper from the porch and then leading the way back into the kitchen. “How about a can of tuna, instead?”
A few hours later she was eating tuna, too, although hers was seared and served with a sauce of cilantro, lime, and ginger. Beth had picked her up in her rental and driven back to the hotel so Erin could pick up her car, and now the two of them were eating lunch at a restaurant in the city before Beth left to catch her flight back to California.
“So Jake drove you home, huh?” Beth asked for the fourth time as she poured dressing over her salad.
“Like I said.”
“And nothing happened?”
“Like I said. Jake and I are just friends.”
“Well.” Beth chewed her first bite of salad thoughtfully. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, since I usually encourage romance in all its forms, but this may actually be a good thing. I adore Jake Landry, but at this point in his life…well, he’s got project written all over him.”
Erin frowned. “What, like he’s damaged goods or something? The man serves his country for ten years, goes through who knows what kind of hell, and because that might have affected him no woman should go near him?”
“I didn’t say that. But he only got out of the Army a few months ago, didn’t he? And the word is he’s not interested in dating right now.”
“What word? Whose word?”
“I overheard Mindy talking to someone in the bathroom. She came on to him, and he turned her down flat.”
Mindy was an old girlfriend of Jake’s. Erin shouldn’t have felt so happy that Jake had rejected her, but the truth was, she did. “What’s your point?”