Hero For the Asking (Reed Sisters: Holding out for a Hero 2) - Page 49

He chuckled, his hand moving in idle patterns on her shoulder. "I thought you'd figure that out. Crow is the entree on my menu for tonight's dinner." He sobered abruptly. "I'm sorry, Spring. For everything that happened between us that last night in California. I was spoiling for a fight when I saw you that night, and I all but leaped on the first difference of opinion that came up."

"All right, I accept your apology. And I'm sorry, too."

He shook his head against the carpet, then pushed himself upright, helping her up to sit beside him, her long legs tucked beside her. "No, Spring. Don't just shrug it off. We need to talk about it so you'll understand what happened."

She sighed. "I guess you're right. I just hate to bring it up now, after everything has been so nice."

"We're not going to argue again. I promise. I just want to explain."

She reached for her blouse. "All right. I suppose it is time for us to talk. Past time."

He reached out to still her hand. "What are you doing?"

"I'm getting dressed."

"No, don't. You're beautiful exactly the way you are."

She flushed, squirming a bit under his lambent regard. "I feel strange sitting here without any clothes on."

"You'll get used to it." He grinned, deliberately distracting her from her modest self-consciousness. "Surely you're not still accusing me of being dressed funny? This time my ego really would be hurt."

She laughed, as he'd intended, and shook her head. "You are a beautiful man. Clay McEntire. A perfect specimen. Well, almost perfect. There's that scar on your stomach. But even that looks good on you. What caused it?" she asked because she was genuinely curious about the thin white line that was a bit too crooked to be caused by a surgeon's blade and because she was still trying to delay their talk about the quarrel.

"A switchblade," he answered calmly, and somehow she knew that the talk had already begun.

"You were knifed?" she whispered in horror. "By one of your kids?"

He shook his head. "In a fight, when I was sixteen. I was carrying a knife, too, Spring. I just wasn't as good with mine as the other guy was with his."

"Oh, Clay." She reached out to touch his cheek. He was so beautiful, so wholesome and happy looking that she tended to forget the darker side of his past.

He caught her hand in his, kissed it, then lowered it to his bare thigh. "I've told you about my past, Spring. It wasn't so nice. My parents were cold, demanding people, and I could never live up to their expectations. Appearances meant everything to them and very little to me. I wanted so much to love them, as every child wants to love his parents, but their continuous emotional rejection made me angry. I took my rage out on them and everyone else around me, even myself. And that's why I was mad at you that night in California."

"But, Clay, I hadn't rejected you," she protested, her forehead creasing with a frown as she tried to understand. "Just the opposite, in fact. We'd made love."

He captured her other hand, leaning forward as he gripped her fingers in his. "Don't you see, sweetheart? I was anticipating your rejection. I was angry with you before the fact because I was so certain it was going to happen. Stupid, I know, but don't forget that I'd had several years of experience with rejection and it's not always easy to put the past behind me. You kept talking about returning home, and I knew how much it would hurt me when you left, so I took the initiative, I guess, and hurt you before you could hurt me."

"You were so angry with me for agreeing with Tony's parents."

"Another scar from the past," he confessed. "I was dragged home by the cops a couple of times when I'd had enough and decided to leave. It's a humiliating and pride-destroying experience, especially if you get a couple of thick-skulled cops who couldn't care less about kids and get their kicks by treating them like dirt. I work very closely with the police at times now, and I've developed a great deal of respect for most of them, but I'll never forget how it felt."

"And that's why you identified so closely with Tony."

"Yes. But you were entitled to your opinion, Spring. I could have told you how I felt and why, instead of shouting at you for expressing your own thoughts. I'm sorry."

"I was scared, too, Clay," she admitted quietly, her eyes dropping to their clasped hands. "You seemed so happy with your life, and I didn't think I fit in. I'm not adventurous and impulsive and outgoing, like Summer and your other friends. And I'm not exotic and beautiful, like the women in your past. I was becoming so deeply involved with you, but I thought you only wanted a fling with me because of a fleeting attraction. Your odd behavior the night we quarreled only seemed to confirm that suspicion."

Clay sighed deeply and raised her hands to his mouth, pressing his lips to her knuckles before lowering them again. "My beautiful, fascinating Spring. Why are you so determined to put yourself down? What makes you think that you're so uninteresting, and what will it take for me to convince you that you're dead wrong?"

She shrugged a little, embarrassed. "I guess my behavior is shaped by my past, just like yours. I'm so used to being compared to my extroverted, exuberant younger sisters. When we were little, Summer was always clowning around, performing, making people laugh with her impersonations and her songs and dances. And Autumn was a scrapper, a beautiful redheaded tomboy who impressed everyone with her fiery personality and her athletic prowess. I was known as the quiet one, the studious one, the shy one. My mother was always talking about the mischief Summer and Autumn got into, telling her friends the latest thing one or the other had done, like she was complaining but secretly amused by them. When she mentioned me, it was only to say what a good girl I was.

"I'm not saying she didn't love me as much as she loved my sisters," she added hastily. "I'm sure she did. And she was—is very proud of me. But I just got used to being on the sidelines, unable to compete for attention the way my sisters did. It wasn't bad. I liked being out of the limelight. I wasn't comfortable with too much attention."

"Poor love," Clay crooned, smiling tenderly at her. "It must have been as hard for you to always live up to the label of good girl as it was for me to live up to the label of bad boy."

She smiled faintly and bit her lip. "Oh, I used to rebel sometimes, in my own quiet, unobtrusive ways. I'd play practical jokes and never tell anyone who did them. People used to blame them on Summer and Aut

umn and think it was all hilariously funny. Or I'd unexpectedly accept a dare when no one thought I would. I broke my arm once climbing a tree that everyone knew was rotten, just because Tommy Trenton dared me to. My family was shocked, but I was secretly quite proud of that cast."

Tags: Gina Wilkins Reed Sisters: Holding out for a Hero Romance
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