Change of Heart (21 page)

My hands dart to his jeans, and my fingers stumble over the button holding them together. Rich is still kissing me, exploring the insides of my mouth with such wanton abandon that I cannot doubt he wants me every bit as much as I want him. He kisses me like a man possessed by his need for a woman. I give myself to him for the taking.

With no warning, he pushes away from me. A rush of cool air runs over my abdomen where his body had just been. I nearly cry out with the loss.

“No,” Rich says. “No. I shouldn’t be doing this.”

My mind protests in alarm.
What
? “Rich—”

“I’m not good for you, Penny,” he interrupts. His eyes meet mine. I can see the fire raging in them. “Do you understand me? I shouldn’t—
can’t
—be doing this. After what I’ve done, I don’t deserve you.”

“Rich, I…” I
what
? How can I explain the desperate need throbbing through me for him? How can I explain the way every single cell in my body wants nothing more than to be surrounded by his strength again? How—

“Don’t talk. Just listen.” He turns away, leaning into the punching bag with his forehead in a defeated stance. “I have a weakness for you, Penny. I told you that. I let you stay when I should have sent you hundreds of miles away. You can’t be with me anymore. Every hour you spend with me puts you in deeper and deeper danger. I let you stay when I should have forced you to go. It was stupid.” He punches the bag. “Selfish.” Another punch. “And just fucking wrong. And now I forced myself on you like some, some
animal
.” He accentuates the word by jabbing the bag once more. He shakes his head, his dark red hair swinging back and forth. “I’m no better than my dad.”

A light sparks in my head, and I understand.
That
is what all his reservation is all about. Rich’s unresolved issues about his father.

“Rich,” I say softly, coming up to him and laying a hand over his tattooed arm. “You are nothing like your dad. I promise you.”

“Oh? Like you would know.” Surprisingly, there is no venom in his words.

“I do.” I take his hand in two of mine and hold it between us, turning him toward me. “You’re loyal, and caring. You value your family. Look at everything you’ve done for your sister.”

“At your expense.”

“And I can see how it tears at you. I can see how much you regret it.”

“You…can?” There’s a very sweet, very endearing mix of uncertainty and relief in his voice. “Really?”

“Yes,” I promise.

“Penny.” He looks at me hopefully. “I… I can’t help the way I feel about you. That’s why we need to be apart. That’s—” he grunts all of a sudden as I hit him hard in the ribs. “
What was that for
?”

“For your idiocy,” I tell him, rubbing my hand. I had no idea how much it would hurt. It felt like punching a steel wall! “For having the audacity to keep pretending you know what’s best for me. For thinking I
want
to be left behind while you run off.”

“It’s the best thing for you.” He pulls his hand out of mine and picks up his shirt. Regret and disappointment fills me as he tugs it over his head. I feel disproportionately exposed in nothing but the blue bra he’d bought for me.
Rich continues. “You saw the type of people who want my sister. You know they want me now, too. If I take you with me—” he grunts and shakes his head, “—and I can’t even believe I’m entertaining the possibility—but if I do, and if they discover the way I feel about you, your life will be at risk. Your
life
, Penny! I can’t do that to you.”

“And how is that?” I ask.

He looks at me quizzically. “How is what?”

“How is the way you feel about me?”

Rich makes a vague, empty gesture around him. “You know.”

“No,” I say. “I don’t know.” I step up to him and look him in the eyes. His beautiful, misting silver
eyes. “Tell me.”

He stares at me for a long time. In the quiet moment, I
feel
the connection between us. It’s more than lust. More than mere attraction. It’s something deeper, more profound. I can see it in the way he looks at me. The concern hidden behind his eyes, the conflicting emotions raging in his head. I can feel it in the way my skin tingles when I stand this close to him. In the way my heart beats louder and my breaths become fluttery.

He breaks off by turning away. “I can’t. I can’t put it into words, Penny. And even if I could, I
wouldn’t
.” He lowers his voice. “Because then I’d be afraid you might never let me go.”

My heart melts at the unwavering sincerity in his words.
He really does care for me
, I realize. “Rich?” I say softly. “Answer me this. If I were any other girl, would you still have come back for me?”

He looks back over his shoulder at me. His eyes seem to soak me in. They run over my face, down my body, and back up again to meet my eyes. “How can you even ask that, Penny? I came back for you, and you alone. No. If you were anybody else, I would never have returned.” He grunts in a half-laugh. “You can see how much shit that little decision has gotten me in.”

“Rich—”

“No.” He points a finger at me. “Don’t start again. Don’t tempt me.” His voice becomes hard. “Put your sweater back on. If Amanda comes home and finds you like that, she’ll make assumptions.”

“Let her,” I say, emboldened by what he’d just told me. Rich came back for
me
. Not for anybody else. Just for me. “I want Amanda to see us like this.” I start toward him in my best impression of a sultry walk. “I don’t care what she thinks.”

I step into him, leaning my bare body against his. Rich stands still as a statue. “I never got to thank you… properly… for what you did.” My hands go back to his jeans, resuming the work they’d begun before. This time, they’re steady and resolute.

Rich still doesn’t move. “If we do this…”

“No ‘ifs,’” I purr, going on my toes to kiss him. My lips brush against his, gentle as silk rippling in the wind. His mouth parts slightly, as if he’s unsure of himself.

Then he grunts and shoves me away. “No.”

I stumble back and nearly fall. The moment between us shatters.

“What the fuck, Rich?” I demand, growing angry. “You can’t just—”

“
You
can’t,” he stresses. “You can’t do this. I will
not
let you get involved with me.”

“You fucking condescending bastard!” I yell at him. “Why do you always get to decide what’s best for me?” I feel humiliated, rejected as surely and cruelly as I had been just now. Livid words pour out of me. “Why do you get to decide what’s right for me? Huh, Rich? What makes you think you know best?”

“What do you know, Penny?” he rages back. “You’re no more than a child! If you had two proper thoughts in that brain of yours, you wouldn’t be anywhere near me right now!”

“A child?” My voice drips with scorn and anger. “Is that how you think of me? Take a look in the mirror, Richard! You may be smart enough to have gotten into Princeton, but you have all the emotional maturity of a five-year-old!”

He glares at me. “Put your sweater on,” he says coldly. He turns and stalks out the garage. “Once you’ve calmed yourself, you can come find me and talk.”

***

It takes me more than a few minutes to compose myself. Never before have I experienced such a slew of emotions so rapidly. I’m lost, uncertain, and angry. My temper threatens to boil over. I wait for it to simmer down.

When I emerge from the garage, the anger I feel is only a muted roar at the back of my mind.
Only.

I find Rich in the living room. I wonder what he’s feeling. His hard eyes give away nothing as he watches me move across the room. It’s like nothing has happened.

Nobody can go through what we have and recover so quickly. It has to be an act. Well, I can act unaffected, too. But damn him for stirring all these feelings in me. Damn him for kindling all the emotions raging and then acting so aloof, so distant. Damn him for kissing me, and damn my body for reacting to him so resoundingly.

I reach under the coffee table and pull out the laptop I’d noticed there before.

“What are you doing?” Rich demands.

“Checking my email,” I say, giving him a bright and brittle smile. “You don’t think Amanda will mind, do you?”

“I—”

“You said so yourself,” I continue, booting up the computer with an angry jab. “You want to leave me here while you continue on. Fine. I need to check my mail and get in touch with certain people if I’m to go home.”

“That,” Rich says hesitatingly, “would be for the best.” He sounds distracted. My eyes dart to him then back to the screen. He’s staring off into the distance. “I’ll leave you to it, then. I’ll be in the kitchen.”

I snort loudly as he stands up.
That
was it? That was how easily he’d accepted what I just said? The rush of air as he walks by threatens to stir the smoldering flames in me in to a full-out conflagration.

I fixate on the glowing Windows logo as the laptop starts up, and try to find my calm.

“I am sorry, you know,” Rich says from the doorway.

I ignore him.

“I know the way I’ve handled things with you has been shitty. But, a clean cut now? It’ll be for the best.”

I don’t dignify him with a response. I can feel his eyes digging into my shoulder blades. The tension builds for a long time. It only dissipates when he finally turns and leaves.

I exhale a breath I didn’t even know I had been holding. With Rich out of the room, I feel somehow more unsteady. Less certain of myself. My fingers tremble as I place them on the keyboard and use the mouse pad to open a web browser. I type “www.gmail.com” into the address bar and sit back, waiting for the slow connection to load.

The browser hits the page and logs in automatically. I’m so distracted I don’t even notice I’m in Amanda’s inbox until I mouse over the “Compose Mail” button.

Irritated, I move the cursor horizontally across the screen to log out, when the most recent message catches my eye. The subject line is innocuous enough: “Meeting.” But the name of the sender sets my heart racing.

“Rich?” I call out. I can’t help the quiver in my voice. “Rich, come here!”

He must have picked up on my urgency, because he comes running. “What? What is it?”

“Rich,” I say softly, turning around to face him, “what is Tam’s last name?”

“Bakker,” he tells me. “Why?”

I point a trembling finger at the screen. He frowns as he walks over to me. When he sees what I’m pointing at, his breath catches.

“He’s meeting with Amanda,” he says, his voice hoarse with disbelief. Hearing him confirm it sends a chill down my spine. “Shit! When? Penny, quick, open the email!”

The cursor flies across the screen. I click on the subject line.

“Come on, come on, come on,” Rich urges behind me. “If it wasn’t for this damn dial-up connection… There!”

My eyes sweep over the newly-loaded text. I find what I’m looking for right away. “One-fifteen,” I say, pressing my finger to the screen. “And now it’s…” a despairing, sinking feeling weighs down my chest. “Almost one-thirty.”

“Shit!” Rich curses. “Shit, shit, shit!”

“I thought you said they didn’t know we were here!” I exclaim. Panic throttles up inside of me. “Rich! Answer me!”

“They don’t! Or, they didn’t. Or, rather, they weren’t
supposed to
.” He runs a hand through his hair. “Fuck! Amanda must have told them.”

“I thought you said we could trust her!”

“That’s what I thought,” Rich says in a rush. “Fuck! I should have thought of it before. Of course these people would have checked on my past relationships. Of course they’d know about Amanda!”

“Could she really be so spiteful? Could she really have given us away?”

Rich snorts. “You’ve met her. What do you think?”

I don’t hesitate for a second before answering. “Yes.”

Rich starts pacing the room in front of me. “I wouldn’t have believed it if I didn’t see it with my own two eyes. I would never have believed it of Amanda. But I’ve always tried to see the good in her. Okay.” He takes a deep breath. “This changes everything. Amanda doesn’t know that we know. She could just be meeting with Tam to cover for us, to say we’re not here.”

I look at him flatly. “Do you really believe that?”

“No.” He fidgets with his hands. “No, even I’m not that naïve. She’s bringing him here. The question is, when? Penny, read the email. Where does it say they’re meeting?”

My eyes scan the screen. “A coffee shop in town.”

Rich nods. “Okay. Good. It takes about fifteen minutes to get from there to here. Which gives us—”

He cuts off as the sound of tires driving over gravel sound from outside. I jerk my head toward the window. Mel starts to bark.