Created In Fire (Art of Love Series) (14 page)

“Hand—now,” he said firmly.

Carrie sighed and reached across the table to put her hand in his.

“I don’t have in reserve nor do I want any other woman. Do you believe that?” Michael asked.

Carrie sighed again. It was certainly what she wanted to believe.

“I believe you will honor our agreement,” Carrie told him.

“What in the hell is it going to take for you to believe you’re the only one?” Michael asked, rubbing her fingers with his.

“Did you feel sorry for Erin today? Did you understand that she had woven a dream around you based on the time she spent with you? Do you get that she was mourning the loss of the dream as well as you? You looked like you didn’t care at all.” Carrie asked.

Michael let her fingers slide from his. “I didn’t enjoy hurting her, but it was preferable to watching her hurt you.”

Carrie leaned back in her chair, her gaze finding its way to his patio work area. “Michael, I was probably one of the first women you did that to, and yes it was partially my own fault, but—God, it still hurt. Even if it hadn’t been for the abortion making my life hell back then, it still would have taken me a very long time to get over you discarding me like I wasn’t even worth knowing after I gave you my virginity.”

Michael heaved a weary sigh.

Carrie shook her head. “I’m not trying to beat you up about what happened years ago. Damn, don’t you get it? I’m just trying to get you to have a little sympathy for a woman you hurt, even if you obviously don’t have any empathy. No one wants to think they’re unimportant. With all the women you went through in your life, it was inevitable you were going to sleep with some who weren’t the don’t-give-a-shit party girls you thought or hoped they were.”

“So what am I supposed to do? Do I owe Erin an apology?” he asked.

“No, I guess not,” Carrie said, resigned to his lack of understanding. “No more than you owe me or any of the women in your life an explanation. Maybe Erin brought today on herself. You’ve not dated her in months. It’s just—never mind. I can see you don’t understand.”

“No. Say it. Say what you think. I don’t want you holding back your real thoughts,” Michael said, his gut churning with frustration.

Carrie closed her eyes, tried to think of how to tell him. But nothing could stop a tornado from decimating things in its path. A tornado remained a tornado until it decided to stop being one.

She opened her eyes to meet and hold Michael’s gaze.

“If you can’t look at Erin and feel sorry for hurting a woman who loves you and can’t have you, then you are never going to understand what you did to me and why I don’t like you now. I loved you when I slept with you in college, Michael. I haven’t loved anyone the same way since because my disillusionment is bone deep. Even casual sexual relationships are serious to most women. If they tell you differently, they’re lying. A woman always has a reason for sleeping with a man.”

Carrie looked at the table. “I’m not trying to be preachy or moralistic. I’m being as honest as a woman can be in sharing how she feels. In my experience, men just want to believe women don’t read more into being sexual because it absolves them of accountability. I know you liked Erin when you were with her. I saw you together.”

“I liked her,” Michael told her, his voice hard with hurt that Carrie had such a poor opinion of his feelings for her. He got up from the table. “But I love you. It’s different. I can’t explain it to you. It’s just how it is.”

“Sure,” Carrie said, her voice tight with age-old pain. “You tell me it’s different, but in the dark, most women are all alike to men like you, Michael Larson. I saw first hand that one blonde woman was just as good as another to you. Sure, I’ve discovered it works the same for other men as well. On a smaller scale, maybe I’ve become you. My two husbands were interchangeable. I’m sure Tom would have been okay as well. So who am I to talk, right?”

“If you really think that’s true, then why did you leave the other guys you married and end up with me—carrying my child?” he asked. “We are not accidental or casual. You’re not just another Erin, and I am for damn sure not Tom whatever-his-name-was.”

When Carrie didn’t answer, Michael grabbed his keys from the pegs by the door and headed to the front hall. He needed to put some distance between them. He needed to run from the pain just for a little while.

“I’m going out,” he yelled back at her. “Don’t faint and fall in the floor while I’m gone. It would be hell on my homeowner’s insurance rates.”

When the door closed behind him, Carrie laid her head on the kitchen table and wept, totally ashamed for arguing with him about his past, the very thing she’d promised him she wouldn’t do.

She just couldn’t seem to help herself anymore than she could give up hoping that Michael Larson would one day say or do something to help her heal her broken heart.

*** *** ***

Shane ignored the doorbell’s pressing chimes the first five times. When the person outside held it until it rang non-stop, he threw down his pencil, abandoning his work.

The insistent door ringer wasn’t interrupting much anyway, he thought. You couldn’t draw a heroine you didn’t believe in. His irritation put a scowl on his face.

“What?” he yelled, yanking the door open. “Oh, Michael. Lucky you weren’t someone trying to sell me something.”

“Got time to talk?” Michael asked, walking past his brother into the great room of his condo. “I need you to fix me before I do any more damage to the mother of my future child.”

Shane sighed. “I’m having woman trouble myself. But I need a break from it. Let me get us a couple beers.”

“You meet someone?” Michael asked, thinking of their bet, but without the glee it usually brought him.

“Only in my dreams,” Shane told him from inside the refrigerator. “The woman remains faceless and nameless. I know what she needs to be like, but I can’t get a clear picture of her in my head.”

“
Your novel? You’re talking about your novel?
Hell, Shane. I got real problems—not imaginary ones,” Michael said harshly.

“I’m going to ignore that swipe for now. Don’t make another one. Carrie mad at you?” Shane asked, giving Michael a beer and setting one of his two on a coffee table in front of him. He took a long drink and relaxed on the couch while Michael sat morosely in a chair.

“Mad doesn’t even begin to cover it. I took her medicine to her today at work because she forgot it. I walked in on Erin blasting her over marrying me. I defended her, but I’m the bad guy for hurting Erin’s feelings,” Michael said. “If there’s a manual for this relationship shit, I wish someone would tell me where to get a copy.”

Shane smiled at Michael’s frustration. It would have been too rude to laugh. “Erin is the woman you’ve been dating off and on for several years, right?”

“It was never serious,” Michael said harshly.

“Did Erin ever turn you down for a date or sex? Ever make demands you hated and fought about? Ever draw a proverbial line in the sand and dare you to cross it?” Shane asked.

“No. Hell, we didn’t know each other well enough to fight,” Michael said.

“Then you and Erin never officially broke up. You laid out the rules for her relationship with you, and she was following them as best she could. I can see why Erin would have been upset to find out Carrie was the replacement player in your game with her,” Shane said.

“Erin was never in love with me,” Michael said. “She never told me she loved me, and I never said it to her.”

“You kept coming back to her to date her. You didn’t do that with the others. What was she supposed to think? That you were just using her?” Shane asked, giving his brother a you-can’t-be-that-dumb look. “Not that I think it would make you a bad guy if the answer is yes, but, Michael—women almost never have sex without a motivated reason. Physical relief is not at the top of their list like it is for men.”

“You don’t get serious with women,” Michael accused. “How is what you do different?”

“It isn’t different. I didn’t say it was, but I’m clear about it and careful not to form any lasting relationships with women I don’t really like,” Shane said softly. “That’s why I quit sleeping around months ago. I want a girlfriend—a real one. Not just a warm body in bed. My sleeping around for the hell of it days are ending sooner than yours did.”

“I never would have dated anyone else if Carrie had just dated me when I met her three years ago. I took one look at her and just knew. You can’t imagine how I felt when she rejected me,” Michael said.

“No, I can’t,” Shane said. “But be fair, Michael. Carrie didn’t parade her husbands under your nose every day where you worked. You slept with just about every woman she worked with, and she had to be civil and professional to them while it was going on. If Carrie had any feelings for you at all, you demolished her self-worth on a regular basis with that alone. No woman wants to feel like she’s competing with the entire female population of the world.”

“
She was fucking married, Shane
,” Michael yelled, standing to pace. “What was I supposed to do? Become a eunuch?”

“No—but stop lying to yourself so you don’t have to feel bad. You didn’t date those women to get over Carrie. You could have gone to bars and picked up all the willing women you wanted for sex. Be honest with yourself. You dated women Carrie knew to get even with her, Michael. And it probably worked because she’s still hurting over it. Now your petty behavior is coming back to bite you on the ass. From where I sit, it seems like you two have been torturing each other this whole time,” Shane said firmly.

He watched as Michael swore and paced around the room like a mad tiger in a cage.

Shane took another drink and stared hard at his hard-headed, hot-natured brother who wore every emotion he felt on the outside for the world to see.

“It would help if you knew why Carrie rejected you initially. From what you told me, there doesn’t seem to be any reason for her to have rejected you the first time. I’ve seen her interest in you every time you two are together. Maybe being attracted to you scares her or something. You’re pretty intense when you lock onto something.”

Shane’s musings brought the pacing to a halt. Michael turned his back to Shane and ran a hand over his face. He knew why. He hadn’t then, but he knew why now. He just didn’t want to admit that he’d started the whole cycle by hurting her first. Part of him still didn’t accept that he did.

He sure as hell didn’t like the idea that he dated Erin and the others to hurt Carrie, but the sinking sensation in his stomach was not a good sign.

“I slept with Carrie in college. She says I took her virginity,” Michael said, swinging around to look at Shane’s face, his own a tortured scowl. “She says it wasn’t just casual for her then either, but I guess it was for me. I sure as hell don’t remember her. I had a thing for blondes back then, which she reminds me of every time we talk about the past.”

“You told me something about your college history, but not that you did all that,” Shane said quietly. “That’s a pretty big thing to ask her to get over just because you got her pregnant and want to marry her now, Michael. Between that and dating women at her work, it’s going to be next to impossible for her to ever trust you, much less love you like it’s obvious you keep wanting her to do. You haven’t exactly been her romantic hero.”

Shane took a sip of beer while he watched Michael fume. Nobody ever wanted to see themselves as doing something wrong, even unintentionally. His passionate brother lived from crisis to crisis, never seeing the bigger picture until someone pointed it out. It was usually one of their parents. Shane polished off the first beer resenting that he had to be the bearer of bad news to Michael this time, but figuring what the hell. He’d cut his parents a break. They just got their own lives straightened out.

“Tell me this, Michael. How is Carrie really different than all the rest of the women you dated and dropped?” he asked.

“First, I didn’t know I’d dropped her, and second—,” Michael stopped, shook his head. “I didn’t tell you the whole story about our history because it makes me ill to think about it now. Carrie never told anyone until she told me.”

He walked back to the couch and sat, put his face in his hands to rub again. His beard scraped the palms of his hands. He’d been too busy to shave all day.

“Carrie says she got pregnant that first time and had an abortion without telling me or anyone. Shane, I don’t even remember being with her. It’s like she’s telling me a story about a woman I haven’t met. The only woman I know is the one I fell in love with three years ago when she walked into the conference room to meet me the first time. Don’t you think I’d have some memories of the woman if I’d slept with her?”

Shane shrugged. “I wasn’t even drunk with most of the women I’ve been with, Michael. I certainly don’t remember most of them. Mostly sex for me is like taking care of an insistent need, and then after that I forget about the need until it becomes insistent again. I remember the bad experiences more than the good. I remember Angela, but that’s because I had to be careful with her. Intimacy can be complicated. I’m sure you know that.”

“I never meant to hurt Carrie sexually or to use her. Not in college and not now,” Michael said, thinking if Shane believed him, maybe Carrie would.