Too Close to Touch (30 page)

“Do you mind if I stop by your place? We need to talk.”

We need to talk.
The most dreaded words in the history of relationships, and Gretchen had just said them.

Kylie closed her eyes, inhaled deeply, and slowly let it out. “Sure,”

she said, resigned. “You know where to Þ nd me.”

“Great. See you at Þ ve.”

Kylie stared at the phone in her hand for several minutes after

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TOO CLOSE TO TOUCH

they’d hung up. She’d had a feeling things would end up like this, so she wasn’t at all surprised. There was a pain in her chest, though, a steady, pounding ache, and she swallowed hard, willing it back down, knowing if she let it go, it would tear up and out and she’d end up a blubbering mess on her own living room ß oor.

The last thing in the world she wanted was for Gretchen to know how much this was going to hurt her. She needed to stay strong, unaffected, at least until she could get Gretchen out of her house.

She tidied the couch, took her water bottle into the kitchen, and then headed upstairs to take a quick shower, not quite sure why she was even bothering.

Not quite Þ fteen minutes later, she was clean and dressed, having donned an old pair of navy blue shorts and a yellow tank top emblazoned with University of Rochester across the front. Both articles of clothing were over ten years old and worn to the perfect softness. She combed her wet hair back away from her face and momentarily wondered if she should bother drying it. But the air was sticky and the thought of the heat from the blow dryer was enough to deter her. She spritzed on some perfume, then rolled her eyes at herself.
Like Gretchen’s going to care
what I smell like while she’s letting me down easy.

As she headed downstairs, her stomach growled. Thinking she was Þ nally ready to eat something, she pulled an ice cream sandwich from the freezer and plopped back down on the couch to continue watching TV while she waited for Gretchen. She hoped they could get this over with quickly, like ripping off a Band-Aid. She was determined to be Þ ne while Gretchen was here; she’d let the sting hit her later, when she was alone.

Kylie was eating the last bite of her ice cream when the doorbell rang and she licked her Þ ngers clean on her way to answer it. She took a deep breath before opening the door. The sight before her nearly caused her to choke.

Gretchen stood on the doorstep in the rain. She was dressed simply in khaki cargo shorts and a black T-shirt and she looked positively delicious. Kylie had no control of her own eyes as they roamed down over Gretchen’s bare legs, then back up.

Gretchen smiled uncertainly. “Hi.”

Kylie blinked. “Hi.”

Gretchen’s smile faltered ever so slightly as they stood staring at each other. “Um…can I come in?”

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GEORGIA BEERS

Kylie shook herself. “Oh. Yes. Sorry.” She stepped aside and let Gretchen enter.

“It’s good to see you,” Gretchen said, Þ dgeting as she stood in the foyer.

“It’s good to see you, too. You look great.” Kylie grimaced as soon as the words left her mouth, chiding herself for letting them slip.

“So do you.” Gretchen took in the sexiness of Kylie’s wet hair and then scanned her Þ gure. She wondered how it was possible for a woman to wear crappy old clothes and look this alluring. She pulled her attention back up to Kylie’s face. “Can we talk?”

“Sure.” Kylie studied her as Gretchen shook the raindrops out of her loose hair. She ground her teeth against the familiar tingle that made her itch to dig her Þ ngers in and grab a handful of the dark curls.

She bit the inside of her cheek, completely annoyed at herself for being sucked in so easily. “Come and sit down.”

Gretchen followed into Kylie’s living room. She sat on the couch and patted the spot next to her, inviting Kylie to sit close. Kylie sat, leaving plenty of space between their bodies, not trusting herself to be in close proximity.

“You know what?” Gretchen felt strangely exposed as Kylie’s blue eyes blinked expectantly at her. “Could I have a glass of water?”

“Water?” Kylie noticed the slight tremble in Gretchen’s hands and forced herself to hold back a sarcastic and bitter grin at the thought of Gretchen being nervous about cutting her loose. “Sure. Be right back.”

A couple minutes later, they sat again facing each other. Gretchen took a large gulp of her water, and then set the glass down before she spilled it all over the couch. She took a deep breath and studied her lap for several minutes.
How is it possible for this to be so damn hard?

When she looked up and met Kylie’s eyes, her heart warmed. In the depths of the blue, beneath the veneer of anger and hurt, she saw worry, concern, and love…so much of it. Gretchen felt courage pour into her and she brieß y wondered how Kylie managed to do that to her—help her through hard times the way she did, with nothing but her eyes.

“I’ve made some changes this week,” she began and then suppressed a grimace.
All right, not exactly my strongest opening.
Now, she had no choice but to run with it.

“Okay,” Kylie said, drawing out the word.

“I’ve had a lot of time to think.”

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TOO CLOSE TO TOUCH

“Mm-hmm.” Kylie ß ashed on the phone call from Jessica Scott that had come earlier in the week and her heart clenched.

“And I realized a lot of things about myself.”

Kylie nodded. Gretchen looked so nervous, and it was so unlike her to look so nervous, Kylie almost felt sorry for her.
God, just tell me,
she thought with a hint of irritation.

“So, I made some calls.”

Kylie could take it no longer. “And you’re leaving Emerson,” she blurted.

Gretchen blinked in surprise. “Yes. How’d you know that?”

Kylie looked out the window at the darkening sky, unable to bear looking at Gretchen’s face. This was harder than she’d thought it was going to be, the ache in her chest intensifying and eclipsing her anger, much to her dismay.

“Jessica Scott called for you last week and said you’d called her from Poughkeepsie. I put two and two together.”

Gretchen felt blindsided by the turn the conversation had taken.

“And…how do you feel about that?”

“About you leaving?”

“Yes.”

Kylie shrugged. “Hey, you’ve got to do what you’ve got to do, right?”

Gretchen was surprised by the nonchalance in Kylie’s shrug. “I suppose that’s true.”

“The company will miss you.” Kylie was still gazing out the window. “You were good for the sales force. They’ll be sad to see you go.”

“The company will miss me,” Gretchen repeated softly. “Oh.”

Suddenly Kylie’s head whipped back around. “Can I just say something?”

“Of course you can.”

Kylie felt the strange combination of deß ation and anger as she spoke. “I’m sorry, Gretchen. I won’t say I wish things had happened differently, but I feel bad. I feel responsible. At the same time, I wish you had the balls to face this instead of running from it. I…” Her voice trailed off as if she’d run out of steam. Finishing quietly, she added,

“I’m really sorry that things ended up like this.”

Gretchen shook her head, confusion written all over her face. “The balls to face…ended up like what?”

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GEORGIA BEERS

“Ended up with you being so uncomfortable working with me that you had to leave your job.” There was an unspoken
duh
at the end of her sentence that almost caused Gretchen to burst into laughter.

“Kylie.” Gretchen was smiling widely now, a fact that Kylie found unrelentingly grating.

“What?” she snapped.

“I left my job so I could continue to see you. To date you.” She amended quickly, “If you want to, of course.” She waited for what seemed like hours, watching as Kylie’s mouth opened and closed several times, no sound escaping. “You look like a Þ sh doing that. Please say something. Say anything.”

“You want to date me?” Kylie’s voice was small, like that of a disbelieving child.

“Yeah. I do. Very much.” Throwing caution to the wind, she added,

“Actually I…I want to do more than date you.”

“You do? Why?”

“Why?
Why?
What kind of a dumb question is that?” Gretchen’s smile took any sting out of the words, but Kylie pressed on, the sternness of her voice matching that of the expression on her face.

“But…you just disappeared on me, Gretchen. I mean, I know you had stuff to deal with at your dad’s, but…you were just gone. It hurt.

After the time we spent together last weekend, it hurt a lot. I didn’t know what to think.”

Gretchen wet her lips. “I know. I’m sorry. I really am. I had so much to sort through, Kylie. I was confused about so many things…

things about my father and things about you. I wanted to talk to you so badly.”

“And instead you left me a cryptic, I-need-time-to-think message on my voice-mail.”

“I know. I shouldn’t have done that.”

“No, you shouldn’t have,” Kylie said.

“I just wanted to talk to you so badly.”

“But you didn’t.”

“But I
couldn’t
. Don’t you see?” Gretchen inched closer and took Kylie’s hands in her own, studying them, remembering how they felt on her, how those Þ ngers could be both gentle and demanding at the same time. She focused on the words in her head. “I had to do some serious soul searching and I had to do it on my own, with no outside inß uences…not even yours, much as I wanted it. It was the only way

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TOO CLOSE TO TOUCH

to make sense of what was going on in my head. It was the only way to come to honest, unbiased conclusions about what I was feeling.”

Kylie was quiet for several seconds, but her eyes never left Gretchen’s face. It was as if she was expecting answers to appear directly on Gretchen’s skin. “And what conclusions did you come to?

About what you were feeling?”

Kylie looked so sweet and so beautiful, Gretchen thought she might melt into a puddle right there on the couch. She felt so overcome with emotion that the next words slipped from her mouth before she had time to even think about editing them. “I’m in love with you, Kylie.

I’m so in love with you I can barely see straight. No pun intended.” She took a deep, relieved breath. “There. I said it.”

Flashing a nervous grin, Gretchen felt as if an enormous weight had just been lifted and she was suddenly light as a feather. She inhaled again and said it once more for good measure. “I’m in love with you.”

She watched with enormous affection as Kylie’s impossibly blue eyes welled and one tear spilled over from each eye, rolling down her ß ushed cheeks. “Please tell me those are tears of joy,” she whispered.

Kylie could only nod, her throat closed up by emotion.

Gretchen held her arms open. “Come here.”

Kylie threw herself forward into the waiting embrace. “I love you, too,” she murmured into Gretchen’s shoulder and felt Gretchen’s hold on her tighten.

Suddenly, a huge crash of thunder rocked the house. Gretchen chuckled at the timing. “I hope this isn’t the part where you begin to laugh maniacally and I realize I’ve just sold my soul to the devil.”

Kylie’s shoulders shook as she laughed, but instead of a verbal answer, Gretchen felt warm lips on her neck, nibbling gently and working their way up to her ear. Kylie held Gretchen’s face in her hands as she pulled back and looked her in the eyes. A ß ash of lightning colored the room an eerie gray for a split second.

“I love you, Gretchen,” Kylie whispered. “I have for a long time.”

Without waiting for a response, she pulled Gretchen closer and kissed her slowly and deeply, trying to convey all she was feeling into that one action.

Gretchen let herself sink into the kiss, allowing her entire being to center on the unbroken connection of mouth to mouth, focusing all her energy on the wonderfully intense heat that suddenly ignited between them.

• 217 •

GEORGIA BEERS

The lightning ß ashed again and was followed a few seconds later by another crack of thunder and the sound of harder rain spattering the house. The two women on the couch barely ß inched, so lost in one another were they. Their easily paced kissing didn’t last long, though, as Kylie began pulling at Gretchen’s clothes, her arousal increasing dramatically the longer her lips were fused to Gretchen’s.

“You’re overdressed,” she complained. “Take these off. Now.”

Gretchen arched an eyebrow, as she had just been thinking the same thing about Kylie. She tugged at the shoulder strap of the yellow tank. “Maybe we should take this up to your bedroom.”

Kylie nodded, then yanked on the neckline of Gretchen’s T-shirt and fastened her mouth to the exposed collarbone before sliding up to her throat. Gretchen groaned, slipping her Þ ngers into Kylie’s still-wet and shockingly soft hair. Holding her head in place, Gretchen dropped her own head back as the sensations of whatever Kylie was doing with her mouth shot straight to her groin.

Somehow, she managed to stand, pulling Kylie up with her. She divested Kylie of her tank top. As if in a duel, Kylie grabbed Gretchen’s T-shirt and pulled it over her head until they both stood in their bras and shorts, breathing heavily and staring at one another. Their mouths found each other once again and they performed the nearly impossible feat of kissing and walking at the same time, making it halfway up Kylie’s stairway before losing their balance.

Gretchen found herself on her back on the steps, the carpeting rough on her bare skin. She kicked off her shoes, hearing them tumble down several stairs. Kylie was on top of her, wrenching at the button of her shorts, her tongue deep in Gretchen’s mouth, chasing all other thoughts from her head.

Kylie wanted nothing more than to have Gretchen completely naked under her hands, but the steps were hindering her progress. She wrenched her mouth from Gretchen’s, who whimpered at the loss of contact, and pulled her to her feet. Leading her quickly by the hand, she led her up the rest of the stairs and down the hall until they Þ nally fell backward once again the second they hit the edge of Kylie’s bed.