When You Are Mine(21)

She closed her eyes at his sweet endearment, feeling it wrap around her  nerve endings like a blanket. And then his arms twined around her,  bindings for wounds left too long unattended.

One Sunday at the Murphys' church, Mt. Olive Baptist, the preacher  talked about healing by the laying on of hands. She had scoffed at the  idea, as she did so many of his ridiculous notions. But tonight she  believed. Believed in Walsh. His hands made soothing tracks up and over  her back, suffusing every pore with warmth, starting from her center and  working its way to her extremities. To the tips of her toes and  fingers.

She wasn't sure when the tears began, or how long she wept into his  once-crisp shirt. She only knew that with each stroke of his hand on her  back, another layer of pain, another layer of shame, fell away, until  she was bathed in the waters of her healing, baptized in her own tears.  Made new. Made whole. It was such an unfamiliar feeling that she had to  search for the emptiness and dirtiness she had carried with her since TJ  stole her innocence.

It wasn't there.

She raised her head, staring at him. Tears wet his cheeks, too. She  trailed her fingers down the carved planes of his face, tipping her head  to the side with a watery smile.

"What did you do to me?"

This man had reset the broken bones in minutes, during one conversation  in a dimly lit gazebo. He smiled, reaching behind her where he had laid  the orchid, replacing it in her hair.                       
       
           



       

"Feel better?"

"You could say that." An understatement.

She felt lighter, cleaner than she had since she was ten years old.  While she had been nestled in the protective circle of his arms, the  world had faded, a blurry reality they could hide from. Now the cooler  air of the dying night raised goose flesh on her arms, and she  remembered. Remembered Cam. Remembered Sofie. She needed to get away  from Walsh, away from these moments that could so easily muddy the path  she needed to take.

She stood, smoothing her wrinkled dress.

"We'd better get back in before Sofie sends out a search party."

"Sofie?" Walsh lowered both brows, confusion crowding out the warm  tenderness she had toasted in moments before. "Why would Sofie be  looking for us? If anything, Cam's the one looking."

"You're probably right about that." She turned to leave the gazebo and this strange and wonderful interlude.

"Hey." Walsh took her elbow gently, turning her back toward him. "Can I ask you something?"

She nodded without hesitation, sure that there could be no subject more awkward than the one they'd just discussed.

"Are you planning to marry Cam?"

Well … maybe there could be one topic as awkward.

"Um, why do you ask? I know you're his friend, but-"

"Don't do it." He squatted from his superior height until he could  pierce her eyes with his. "He's not right for you, and you're not right  for him. You're not meant for each other."

"Meant for each other? You mean like destiny? Fate? Soul mate kind of stuff?"

"You don't believe in that?" He didn't take his eyes off her face.

"No, I don't." She steeled herself against the sweetness left over from  the moments they had shared. "I believe in making choices. Every time  I've been left at the mercy of fate, or destiny, it's ended badly for  me. So excuse me if I decide to take one of the most important decisions  of my life into my own hands. Not wait for ‘fate' to deliver some  nonexistent soul mate to me."

"That's mighty cynical of you."

"Hearing my story, you don't think I should be cynical?"

"Hearing your story and knowing you're not cynical is what I love about  you." His voice was so soft and sure. "It took faith, belief,  hope-something for you to press through what you experienced to be who  you are."

Kerris remembered hope. She'd hoped TJ would not come back to her room,  that he would leave her alone, but he had come again and again and  again, each time peeling away her illusions and pillaging her girlhood.

She tugged to free her arm, but Walsh didn't let go.

"What do you feel when Cam kisses you?" Walsh backed up his demand with the heat of his eyes.

"That's none of your bus-"

"What do you feel?" He tightened his fingers around her elbow and held her hostage to his intensity.

"I won't talk about this with you."

"So you can be honest with me about the most traumatic thing that ever  happened to you, but you can't tell me how you feel when Cam kisses  you?"

Kerris looked away from the unrelenting heat of his eyes chasing every emotion across her face.

"It's fine."

The silence of the gazebo swallowed her words almost before she'd even  said them. She heard the inadequacy of it. The word "fine" lay flaccid  beside the sensations she'd experienced with Walsh in that hospital  room. She didn't have to look at Walsh's face to see him remembering. He  dropped her elbow, his fingers curling into his palms, like he had to  stop himself from touching her. From reminding her how it had been.

"That's not how it's supposed to be with the person you marry." Walsh  left space around each word as if that would help her understand.

"Maybe not for you, or for other people, but that's how it is for me. I  just don't think I have the capacity to be affected that way." She  looked back into his face, silently daring him to call her a liar. "I've  always accepted that what happened with TJ just turned a switch off in  me. Not that I won't be intimate with my husband, but … "                       
       
           



       

"That's not fair to Cam, because his switch has not been turned off."  Walsh brushed a hand across his eyes, evicting a heavy breath from his  mouth. "He deserves someone who'll love him the way he loves her, want  him the way he wants her. I know for a fact Cam feels more than ‘fine'  when he thinks about making love to you."

Heated blood stormed Kerris's cheeks. Despite the fact that she had just  shared her most closely guarded secrets with this man, his candor on  this particular subject embarrassed her. And his persuasions were  pointless. Her decision on whether or not to marry Cam would not hinge  on their sexual chemistry. Cam wanted whatever she had to give, and she  could live with what she felt for Cam.

What she had with Walsh … it was emotion and feeling and passion. All the  things she couldn't trust to sustain her for the long haul. Those things  could be gone as quickly as they flared to life. And he would never  consider someone like her to start the dynasty everyone expected of him.  She wanted forever, not a fleeting attraction.

"Let's go on in." She turned her back on him and placed one foot on the  first step out of the gazebo, not bothering to address his last  statement.

"So you've never talked to Cam about what happened with TJ?"

His question petrified her, left her afraid to even move or breathe with  him at her back. The silence puffed up with all the evasions she could  offer instead of the awkward truth.

"No. You're the first person I've talked to about it since it happened."

"Why me?" His voice was soft, but insistent, pinioning her arms and legs to the spot where she stood.

"I'm not sure."

"Do me a favor." His voice hardened and bounced off her troubled mind  like pebbles against a windowpane. "Figure that out before you marry my  best friend."

She looked over her shoulder, lost for a moment in his unwavering stare.  She refused to acknowledge the heat that flared between them. Without  another word, she crossed the lawn as quickly as she could, hoping he  would not follow.

* * *



Walsh watched Kerris cross the yard, his stomach a cauldron of heating,  stirring emotions. He shouldn't have followed her when he saw her slip  through those French doors. He could tell himself what he told her. That  he'd just been concerned, but the truth was an ugly thing he owed  himself. He'd wanted to be with her alone and unguarded. Even as  disgusted as he was with himself, he would have chosen these last few  moments with her over every Bennett holding he stood to inherit.

He sat down on the gazebo bench, leaning his elbows on his knees and  dropping his head into his hands. There was too much information to  process. What she'd been through. That monster had touched her, hurt  her. The primal beast inside him pulled against the restraining chain of  civilized behavior. Not just because of the abuse she'd suffered, but  at the thought of Kerris marrying Cam. He knew in his gut that would be  disastrous for them all, but he didn't know how to stop it without  ruining the most important relationships in his life.