lips.
They got back into bed after their shower and held each other while raindrops pattered on the windowpanes. Slowly, cautiously, she let it happen—allowed the spell of her growing love to settle and encompass her just as surely as Thomas’s embrace.
They didn’t sleep, but continued to commune with touches and softly murmured conversations.
After a while, however, her stomach felt hollow with hunger and Thomas began to move restlessly. Sophie sensed that he was too active of a man to spend long awake in a bed . . . if he wasn’t making love, anyway. He seemed increasingly eager to do just that. His lazy kisses on her breasts were becoming hungrier by the second. It amazed her that she found his fascination with her breasts endearing—and arousing—instead of annoying, and she was increasingly focused on the trail of his talented mouth. Before he could reach a peaking nipple though, her stomach growled loudly.
He raised his head, looking adorable and sexy with his hair tousled on his forehead and an incredulous expression on his face.
“I never ate breakfast,” she laughed.
He hugged her tightly, rolling her across his body until she was at the edge of the bed near the door. “Go on,” he growled, swatting her ass playfully, the resulting crack making her jump out of bed. “Better get you fed before I make another meal out of you.”
Thomas said that Daisy had made them a large breakfast in celebration of the six fish Sherm and he had brought back, so Sophie ate her meal of toast and fruit alone. Thomas sat with her at the breakfast bar, turned in the swivel stool so that he could see the steady rain falling onto the gray lake. He sipped his coffee, his mood becoming more and more somber with each passing second.
A sense of helplessness pressed down on her when she once again recognized that he was emotionally withdrawing. She wondered if her earlier bout of crying following their lovemaking had ruined her chances of trying to have an honest conversation with him . . . of trying to reach him. He’d been so intent on trying to soothe her unrest that she hadn’t taken a chance—not just with seducing him, but with encouraging him to talk to her, by telling him the truth—like she’d promised herself she would.
“Thomas,” she began impulsively, “there’s something I wanted to—”
But he had begun talking at the same moment she did.
“You seem like you’re in good shape. Do you want to go running with me?”
Her mouth hung open. She glanced out the picture window.
“It’s raining outside.”
He stood.
“Not hard. And I feel . . . restless.”
Sophie studied his face, seeing the tension that had crept back into his muscles and pinched at his features. How could she deal with his inner demons, invisible as they were to not just her, but him as well?
Well, at least he asked you to go with him this time, instead of taking off all worked up like he did last night, Sophie thought, trying to staunch her disappointment.
She gave him a small smile and nodded. “Sure. Just let me change.”
They returned forty-five minutes later, both of them soaked through with rain and a healthy salting of sweat. Thomas hadn’t said much during their run, once again seeming preoccupied. When they returned, Sophie said she wanted to open the boathouse door for Guy. She didn’t like to think of the little fox out there in the woods, drenched and injured. She’d told Thomas to go into the house without her, but he’d silently accompanied her to the boathouse and helped her arrange a little den of old blankets for the fox.
They entered on the side porch afterwards so they could remove their wet tennis shoes and socks on the tile floor before entering the house. Sophie’s gaze was snagged by the image of Thomas whipping his T-shirt over his head and the flex and ripple of gleaming, supple muscle. It was on the edge of her tongue to suggest they shower again together—maybe this time she wouldn’t melt into a puddle of tears—but she stopped herself when he turned his back to her and headed toward the house.
“I smell like the inside of a marching boot,” he muttered. “I’ll shower in the extra bedroom.”
And Sophie was left standing alone on the screen porch, holding her soggy tennis shoe and knowing her attempt at cracking the barrier of his defenses had utterly failed.
Seduction hadn’t worked, she thought grimly as she peeled off a wet footie. She might have broken down the walls she’d erected against honesty and intimacy, but apparently Thomas’s remained intact.
She was going to have to take a risk. She was going to have to do it—just tell him.
It was time to go, Thomas thought as he stared out the picture window morosely later that afternoon. He needed to get back to his work . . . back to his life. It was past time. It’d never been time to begin with, he thought with rising exasperation.
He’d tell Sophie as soon as she finished her shower. What he’d said earlier about not being able to walk away from her was true, but he could see her in the city . . . it wasn’t like they lived on opposite sides of the country.
A voice inside him kept shouting out that he should leave her for now, though.
His life was too up in the air at the moment. He was too much of a downer . . . a heavy burden on what should have been a relaxing vacation for her.
She walked into the living room a few minutes later wearing a pair of faded jeans, a long-sleeved, ivory button-down shirt that ghosted her full breasts and not a trace of makeup, her bare feet padding silently on the carpet.