“I’m thinking about starting a new business, an event dating site,” Loretta said. “Ten people, five women, five men, five day catamaran cruise.”
Already thinking of a marketing campaign and splashy ideas for a website, Sarah nodded.
“I think you should be my first client. Get back on the horse.”
“That’s a mixed metaphor. Get back on the horse, but the horse is really a boat.”
“Sail into the sunset with a new man?” Loretta suggested.
“I wish it were that easy.” Sometimes it seemed the harder she tried to forget him, the more pervasive his memory became.
“Then give me his phone number, and I’ll call him.”
“I believe you would.”
“Man’s an idiot to let you go. He needs to be slapped upside the head. I’m happy to do it.”
“Honestly, Loretta, I don’t want a man who I have to convince.”
“Well, that might not be a problem. Might want to put down your drink.”
Frowning, she did.
“Let me know how it goes.” Loretta picked up her designer leather purse and said, “Thanks for the coffee.”
“That’s it? You’re leaving?”
“I’ll get back to you on the dating site idea.” She stood.
Then Sarah heard, “Is this seat taken?”
Her heart stopped.
Stunned, she turned around.
Reece?
“Reece McRae?” Loretta asked. “Saw your picture online. Treat this woman well, young man, otherwise you’ll deal with me,” Loretta said, pointing a finger at him.
“I will, ma’am.”
Loretta winked and said goodbye with a quick wave.
Reece slid into the vacant seat across from her.
He looked…amazing. His dove-gray suit was tailored and made his hair seem even darker by contrast. His red tie radiated power. His crisp shirt invited her to crease it.
A hundred questions slammed together in her mind, and she couldn’t sort out a single one, so she stared, her pulse in overdrive, her stomach a twisted knot.
“I fucked up.”
She opened her mouth then closed it again. “Welcome to Colorado,” she said because she couldn’t think of anything else.
“GPS coordinates,” he said. “From your phone number.”
“What?”
“You’re wondering how I found you. Genius of the Known Universe figured he’d save me some time, so he texted me with your location.”
“Handy.”
“He wants his plane back.”
“I’m trying, Reece. Really, really trying to figure out what’s going on here.” She couldn’t dare allow herself to hope.
“Are you finished with your coffee?”
She nodded.
“Let’s go to your place.”
“I rode my bike.” Which meant that she was hot, sweaty and had helmet hair. She didn’t look a thing like she did in her fantasies. “I can meet you at the house. Better yet…” She finger-combed her hair. “I can meet you later for dinner. After I’ve cleaned up.” Someplace neutral, where he wouldn’t dominate the space.
“I have an SUV.”
“A nice one,” she said when they went outside.
“Helps to know a genius.”
He loaded her bicycle then helped her into the passenger seat before climbing behind the driver’s wheel and merging into traffic.
“Let me guess, you don’t need my address.”
“Helps—”
“To know a genius,” she finished for him.
Figuring that she wouldn’t get much more out of him until he was ready, she settled back and tried to practice some yogic breathing. She failed. Her breaths were closer to shallow gasps.
This close, his windswept scent enveloped her, comforting and unnerving her at the same time.
A lock of dark hair had fallen across his brow, but it softened the scowl buried there.
He navigated to her complex and parked in a visitor’s slot.
She didn’t protest when he unloaded her bike and carried it up the stairs to her front door. A long time ago, she’d learnt not to fight him when he was this quiet and focused.
“If you prefer dinner,” he said, “I’ll come back for you in an hour.”
“No. This is fine. You’ve seen me at my worst.”
Inside, after she’d closed and locked the door, she took off her bicycle shoes. He was so much bigger than she was. When she was in a scene or when she was in heels, she didn’t notice it as much. Now, adrenaline flooded her in little bursts that kept pace with her heartbeat.
“Nice place,” he observed, wiping his wingtips on the mat.
“Can I offer you something to drink?” she asked. She headed toward the kitchen. Acting like a hostess gave her something to do, and she desperately needed that to quell the building agitation. “I’m sorry that I don’t have any single malt Scotch,” she said over her shoulder, “but there’s probably a cheap bottle of red wine or maybe a beer left over from my holiday party.”
“Nothing, thanks.”
She reached for the refrigerator handle. “Don’t mind if I do?”
“I’d prefer you didn’t.”
His words stopped her.
After dropping her hand, she turned to face him.
“I’d like to talk. And I don’t want any distractions.” He took out his cell phone and turned it off.
“This seems serious.”
“I got strapped in by Svetlana, got hauled across the country at a speed I was sure was going to create a sonic boom and I’m now in debt to Julien Bonds.”
“This is serious,” she said. “Uhm…”
Unless…
She leaned her shoulders against the refrigerator door and swallowed. In the past, she’d prided herself on reading his moods, and she knew he was agitated, but wasn’t sure why. “Is your mom all right?”
“Fine. Getting better.”
She let out a relieved breath.
“She’s hoping I’ll come to my senses and bring you home.”
“I…” She opened her mouth then closed it again.
“Actually, Dad is, too.”
“Reece, please.” Being apart was torture enough. But the idea that he’d talked about her to his parents? It wasn’t fair to give them false hope. They loved their only son, and she knew they desperately wanted to see him happy. “Please don’t say things like that to me.”
He plowed his hand into his hair, and she realized that was why the lock had fallen across his forehead. Reece looked as nervous as she felt.
“May I?” He indicated one of the bar stools in front of her granite countertop.
“Please. Can I take your jacket?”
“No. Thanks.”
So he wasn’t planning on staying.
“You’re brave,” he said as he sat.
“I’m brave?” She scoffed. “I was trying to imagine what you might have to say, what brought you here. But that didn’t make the list.” Suddenly, she couldn’t wait anymore. “Why are you here?”
“To apologize.”
“For what?”
“The way I treated you.”
“You have nothing to be sorry for. When I look back, I realize that you couldn’t have treated me any better than you did. I showed up unexpectedly and I asked you to forget the past, the hurt, the damage. I’m lucky you didn’t call me all sorts of names or walk out on me. I should have left the past alone. I’m the one who owes you an apology.”
“Kennedy told me there was a line between cowardice and real fear.”
“He’s right. There is.” She wrapped her arms around her middle. “I crossed it.”
“No. I misunderstood where it was. When I think about you two years ago, frightened, alone, nervous, I don’t blame you for your reaction.”
“I should have talked to you. You’d always insisted that we have open, honest discussion. But when the stakes were that high, I couldn’t.” She pushed away from the fridge, but then, not knowing what else to do, she paced to the far end of the kitchen, putting as much distance between them as possible. “If it were to happen today…”
“Go on.”
“That’s not fair.” She shook her head. “That’s too easy. I have the benefit of hindsight, of having evolved into someone I wasn’t, someone more capable and sure.”
“All things being equal,” he said. “Hypothetically, you’re now living in Houston.”
“Okay.”
“And you run a successful franchise operation.”
“I like the way you think.” Despite herself, her nerves, she smiled. She slipped out of the fantasy world he had been creating. “You’ve been talking to Kennedy.”
He inclined his head.
“I think the man’s an optimist,” she said. “But thank you for having him call. You didn’t need to do that.”
“Man’s got an eye for what works. If he didn’t think this could franchise, he wouldn’t have put you in touch with the Blancharde Group. He doesn’t spend a lot of time unless he’s going to get a good return on investment.”
“At any rate, if you hadn’t recommended me, I wouldn’t have gotten past his switchboard.”
“You’re probably right. You’re welcome.”
“So, back to all things being equal?”
“You come home from work, you find a collar in my drawer. It’s huge. It’s a monstrosity.”
“I panic. I freak out. I do the happy jig.”
“Want to demonstrate? You wearing a bra?”
“You really are a teenager at heart.” There it was, the easy intimacy that had so often defined their relationship. This was what she’d never found with anyone else.
“Are you?”
“Pervert.” She exhaled. “I was riding a bike. I’m wearing a jersey and a sports bra beneath it. The girls aren’t moving no matter what I do.”
“Not sure I can get past the jig, regardless,” he confessed. He turned over his cell phone several times.
Outside, a horn honked, and it jolted her. She continued, “But maybe I take out the collar while you’re not home and try it on.”
He sat up a little straighter.
“Maybe I imagine what it would be like to wear it in public. Maybe I wonder what it means to you. Maybe I call you up and ask what the hell you were thinking. Maybe I take a picture of it with my cell phone and send it to you and ask what the hell you were thinking. Maybe I put it on and kneel in the entryway…” Of the house they no longer shared. After worrying her upper lip, she went on. “Naked, waiting for you to come home.”
“Jesus, Sarah.”
The atmosphere seemed to thicken and churn. He was picturing it as surely as she was. Did the image make him as hungry as it made her? “Maybe I decide to wait until you mention it. And maybe you do, bluntly one night, telling me to lift my hair because you’re damn well going to collar me. Or maybe you talk about it in vague terms over time until I get accustomed to the idea and it no longer seems threatening. Maybe you come home and ask me to fetch it so you can show it to me.”
“What would happen then?”
“That sets up another series of choices.” Things between them had always worked well when they’d hung in there, talking, even when it was uncomfortable. Especially when it was uncomfortable.
As they talked through the hypothetical, she relaxed, breathed. “I could use the word yellow. Or say cream pie. Or I could tell you to fuck off.”
“That’s blunt.”
“I warned you that the new Sarah won’t be consumed.”
“Fuck off, it is.”
“Or I could tell you that I needed to talk first.”
“That sounds downright friendly after fuck off.”
She grinned. Warming to her subject, really sorting through it in her mind, she continued, “I could have refused to wear it. That might have caused some damage, posed some risk, but it was an option. My option.” She paused. “One thing I now know with certainty? You would have never put it on me without my permission, without us having an agreement as to what it meant. But the bottom line, Reece? I tell my clients when an emergency happens that they can respond or they can react. I reacted, from raw instinct, from fear. Fight or flight was triggered in my brain, and I ran. I’m not proud of it. I’ve never stopped regretting it.”
“You came to Florida, dragged Julien into an elaborate scheme to exorcise the past.”
She lifted her hands then let them fall to her sides.
“Did it work?” he asked.
“No.” Then, because she had nothing left to lose, she said, “It made it worse.”
“How so?”
She swallowed. “I’ve laid my heart bare to you, Reece. What do you want now? To eviscerate my soul?”
Damn it.
“Hang in there with me. How are things worse?”
“I realized I still care. You’re better than I remembered. Just as kind. Just as implacable.” She put her hands behind her on the countertop and pushed forward a little. “The sex is as good as it ever was. And the glimpses of intimacy only showed me what I could have had if I had been stronger.”
He nodded.
“My choice destroyed trust.”
“And my reactions can leave it that way or take the first steps toward repairing it.”
Her body temperature dropped several degrees. “I don’t understand.”
“I tested you. Again and again. You passed every one of them, and still it wasn’t enough.”
“It could never have been enough.”
“I told myself that. Like you said that night at dinner, things look different when you wear the other person’s shoes. You told me not to wear yours. But my mother shoved me right into them.”
“She knows?”
“Enough. No real details. She thinks you freaked out when you saw the engagement ring, and if it’s okay with you, we’ll leave it at that.”
“What would you have told them if they saw the collar you got me?”
“As little as they needed to know. You’re right about that collar. It’s a statement.”
“With an exclamation mark,” she said.
“It’s probably not something you’d want to wear all the time.”
She sought his gaze but couldn’t decipher anything. “Are we still talking hypothetically here?”
“No.”
Her stomach plummeted.
“Maybe I was too rigid.”
With the way blood buzzed in her ears, she could barely make out what he was saying.
“That’s what my mother helped me to understand. And I didn’t like standing in your shoes. I did have expectations. All along, I should have been paying closer attention to you, making sure we were on the same path. I’m a few years older than you are. I was probably more ready to get married than you were. And because it was my idea, I pursued it with the same attention I bring to everything else that I want. It might have seemed too fast for you. But the point is, I never asked.” He took a breath. “But I’m asking now.”
“I don’t understand. What are you asking?”