"Is it a home-or a trap?"
She turned then, and her eyes were neither hot nor cold, but full of grief. "Is that how you think, really, in your heart? That one is the same as the other, and must be? If it is, truly, I'm sorry for you."
"I don't want sympathy," he shot back. "All I'm saying is that you work too hard, for too little."
"I don't agree, nor is that all you said. Perhaps it was all you meant to say." She bent down and picked up her basket. "And it's more than you've said to me for these past five days."
"Don't be ridiculous." He reached out to take the basket from her, but she jerked it away. "I talk to you all the time. Let me take that."
"I'll take it myself. I'm not a bloody invalid." Impatiently she set the basket at her hip. "You've talked at me and around me, Grayson, these last days. But to me, and of anything you were really thinking or feeling, no. You haven't talked to me, and you haven't touched me. Wouldn't it be more honest to just tell me you don't want me anymore?"
"Don't-" She was already stalking past him toward the house. He'd nearly grabbed at her before he stopped himself. "Where did you get an idea that like?"
"Every night." She let the door swing back and nearly caught him in the face with it. "You sleep with me, but you don't touch me. And if I turn to you, you turn away."
"You're just out of the fucking hospital."
"I've been out of the hospital for nearly two weeks. And don't swear at me. Or if you must swear, don't lie." She slapped the basket onto the kitchen table. "Anxious to be gone is what you are, and not sure how to be gracious about it. And you're tired of me." She snapped a sheet out of the basket and folded it neatly, corner to corner. "And haven't figured out how to say so."
"That's bullshit. That's just bullshit."
"It's funny how your way with words suffers when you're angry." She flipped the sheet over her arm in a practiced move, mating bottom to top. "And you're thinking, poor Brie, she'll be breaking her heart over me. Well, I won't." Another fold, and the sheet was a neat square to be laid on the scrubbed kitchen table. "I did well enough before you came along, and I'll do well enough after."
"Very cool words from someone who claims to be in love."
"I am in love with you." She took out another sheet, and calmly began the same routine. "Which makes me a fool to be sure for loving a man so cowardly he's afraid of his own feelings. Afraid of love because he didn't have it as a boy. Afraid to make a home because he never knew one."
"We're not talking about what I was," Gray said evenly.
"No, you think you can run away from that, and do every time you pack your bag and hop the next plane or train. Well, you can't. Any more than I can stay in one place and pretend I grew up happy in it. I missed my share of love, too, but I'm not afraid of it."
Calmer now, she laid the second sheet down. "I'm not afraid to love you, Grayson. I'm not afraid to let you go. But I'm afraid we'll both be sorry if we don't part honestly."
He couldn't escape that calm understanding in her eyes. "I don't know what you want, Brianna." And he was afraid, for the first time in his adult memory, that he didn't know what he wanted himself. For himself.
It was hard for her to say it, but she thought it would be harder not to. "I want you to touch me, to lie with me. And if you've no desire for me anymore, it would hurt much less if you'd tell me so."
He stared at her. He couldn't see what it was costing her.
She wouldn't let him see, only stood, her back straight, her eyes level, waiting.
"Brianna, I can't breathe without wanting you." "Then have me now, in the daylight." Defeated, he stepped forward, cupped her face in his hands. "I wanted to make it easier for you." "Don't. Just be with me now. For now." He picked her up, made her smile as she pressed her lips to his throat. "Just like in the book."
"Better," he promised as he carried her into the bedroom. "This will be better than any book." He set her on her feet, combing her wind-tossed hair back from her face before reaching for the buttons of her blouse. "I've suffered lying beside you at night and not touching you." "There was no need."
"I thought there was." Very gently he traced a fingertip over the yellowing marks on her skin. "You're still bruised."
"They're fading."
"I'll remember how they looked. And how my stomach clenched when I saw them. How I'd tighten up inside when you'd moan in your sleep." A little desperate, he lifted his gaze to hers. "I don't want to care this much about anyone, Brianna."
"I know." She leaned forward, pressed her cheek to his. "Don't worry on it now. There's only us two, and I've been missing you so." With her eyes half closed, she ran a line of kisses up his jaw while her fingers worked on the buttons of his shirt. "Come to bed, Grayson," she murmured, sliding the shirt from his shoulders. "Come with me."
A sigh of the mattress, a rustle of sheets, and they were in each other's arms. She lifted her face, and her mouth sought his. The first frisson of pleasure shuddered through her, then the next as the kiss went deep.
His fingertips were cool against her flesh, soft strokes as he stripped her. And his lips were light over the fading bruises, as if by wish alone he could vanish them.
A bird sang in the little pear tree outside, and the breeze sent the fairy dance she'd hung singing, billowed the delicate lace of her curtains. It fluttered over his bare back as he shifted over her, as he laid his cheek under her heart. The gesture made her smile, cradle his head in her hands.
It was all so simple. A moment of gold she would treasure. And when he lifted his head, and his lips sought hers again, he smiled into her eyes.
There was need, but no hurry, and longing without desperation. If either of them thought this might be their last time together, they looked for savoring rather than urgency.
She sighed out his name, breath hitching. He trembled.
Then he was inside her, the pace achingly slow. Their eyes remained open. And their hands, palm to palm, completed the link with interlacing fingers.
A shaft of light through the window, and dust motes dancing in the beam. The call of a bird, the distant bark of a dog. The smell of roses, lemon wax, honeysuckle. And the feel of her, the warm, wet feel of her yielding beneath him, rising to meet him. His senses sharpened on it all, like a microscope just focused.
Then there was only pleasure, the pure and simple joy of losing everything he was, in her.
She knew by dinnertime that he was leaving. In her heart she had known when they had lain quiet together after loving, watching the sunlight shift through her window.
She served her guests, listened to their bright talk of their day at the seaside. As always, she tidied her kitchen, washing her dishes, putting them away again in the cupboards. She scrubbed off her stove, thinking again that she should replace it soon. Perhaps over the winter. She would have to start pricing them.
Con was sniffing around the door, so she let him out for his evening run. For a time she just stood there, watching him race over the hills in the glowing sunlight of the long summer evening.
She wondered what it would be like to run with him. To just race as he was racing, forgetting all the little details of settling the house for the night. Forgetting most of all what she had to face.
But, of course, she would come back. This was where she would always come back.
She turned, closing the door behind her. She went into her room briefly before going up to Gray.
He was at his window, looking out at her front garden. The light that hung yet in the western sky gilded him and made her think, as she had so many months before, of pirates and poets.