Dancing Barefoot (13 page)

His gaze locked on her mouth. “
Is that your plan? Seduce me away from Simone? How would Marc feel about that?”

“
Stop throwing him in my face.”

“You want me back in your bed, Jess?
Is that all you want? Sex and nothing more?”

Blue eyes darkened to indigo. B
ody shifted toward him. Teeth bit into her bottom lip. He knew she wanted him, but he wanted more than that.

“Do you want me to beg?” Her hands settled on his hips. 

“Yes, I do. Beg me.”

The war in her eyes was evident.

“Jacques, please—”

“
No more.” He closed his eyes. “We aren't capable of a casual affair and you know it. We'll get sucked in and then what?”

“
It could be different this time. We'll make it work.” 

"W
hy the change of mind? Ava? Last Friday night? What? Why? If you hadn't seen me last week, I wouldn't be on your mind at all. If I hadn't come to Boston for the exhibit, we would not be standing here. If I am the great love of your life, then you would have tried to contact me and explain. According to Kevin, I have a huge social media following. Not too hard to catch up to me. I don't trust you. I don't trust this, not at all. Are you using me again? Is this promotion scaring you and I happened along at the right time?"

"I never used you, never.
I thought about contacting you so many times, but what would I say? Then what? I waited too long, was too messed up—maybe still am, I don't know—I didn't know how to say what I felt. Think of all the places you've been in the past five years, all you would have given up for me."

When she stopped speaking, he started thinking. Without opening his eyes, he moved his hands over her arms, felt the softness of her dress beneath his fingertips, heard her sharp intake of breath, felt her
lips caress his chin.  

He shook his head, reality waking him up like a cold shower. “We no longer fit.”

Her hands fisted in his shirt when he tried to step away.  “What does that mean?”

“It means I think you and Marc will have a nice life together.”

“Marc and I are not a couple. He does his thing and I do mine, that's it.” Her hold on him intensified.

He looked at her—really looked—and saw a woman who was as far removed from his lifestyle as he was from a corporate boardroom. 

“I haven’t been fair to you. I came back here hoping to see you, that’s true. All of it was designed to open that door for me.” Confusion twisted his thoughts into meaningless meanderings going nowhere. “We were what we were and had what we had. I gave you back the ring, meant what I said. We've had our closure,
bellazza mia.
The end.”

“The end?
” Fire returned to her eyes. 

“I look forward to seeing you at the gallery on Friday.
I hope you'll change your mind about showing your art.” A hole opened up where his heart once existed. “You should be there with me, like Ava says. You were there in the beginning—”

“The beginning.”
Her eyes flickered with pain. “There are other reasons that I keep Italy to myself, Jacques.”

“What other reasons?” 

"You're mine, my memory, mine alone. I don't share you, us, with anyone who wasn't there because no one would understand the magnitude of it. I don't tell anyone because it's sacred to me, you, Ava, our life together that summer...sacred to me." She shook her head, disbelief and sadness transforming her eyes into the color of the deep ocean. “Even when I boarded the plane home, I thought somehow, someway we'd be together. That's why I didn't leave a note, I was trying to figure it out. I didn't want it to end, but I needed to come home. I returned too late, I know I screwed up, but I never intended to end us, can't you see that? Now we have a chance to begin again. Brand new. Jessica and Jacques the sequel. Think about how amazing it could be.”

She made him doubt himself. The look in her eyes, the way her hands fisted in the material of his shirt at his waist, the longing that emanated from her. It was as if he had been caught beneath a wave and didn’t know which way was up. 

Without answering, he disengaged from her and strode across the park. He had to give up the idea of her, surrender the notion that they'd once had a great love affair. Memory had a way of glossing over reality. He broke his stride and looked over his shoulder. She leaned against the trunk of the tree, a vision in yellow surrounded by green.

And he wondered why
walking away felt so damn wrong. 

* * *

Chapter Eight

She ran harder than she had in a long time, ran until her legs shook and her lungs screamed in protest. Ask him, Ava had insisted and she'd been foolish enough to do it. He'd looked at her like she'd lost her mind.  And she'd thought blurting out the words 'do over' had been bad. Well, they paled in comparison to the joke she'd made of herself today.

Twilight set upon the city as she rounded the corner toward her apartment. Running usu
ally soothed her tormented mind but not tonight. Miranda had left more messages about showing her art. Julie had called saying she couldn't wait to be at the celebration dinner tomorrow, something she would curse Sela out for later. The image of Jacques walking away from her—rejecting her offer—branded in her vision. Marc's words about making a fool of herself echoed in her head. All the images and words clashed in her brain like crossed radio signals.

She stumbled onto her front steps, mind no quieter than it had been when she'd set out, and fumbled with the lock.

"What do you have in mind for our date?"

Her hands froze on the door.

Jacques stood behind her. "Your neighbor told me you went jogging after I kept holding down the security button, certain you were hiding. I thought he was going to call the police."

"That was Sam, he's a graduate student. Good to know he's protective of me."

Without facing him, she pushed open the door, stood aside, and waited for him to pass. Still trying to catch her breath and sort out her thoughts, she followed him up the stairs and tried not to notice how well his jeans cupped his ass or how sexy his beat up leather jacket still looked all these years later. 

She unlocked the door to her apartment without saying a word.  Walking to the kitchen, she pulled off her iPod and tossed it onto the counter before reaching for a bottle of water. 

He tossed his jacket onto the oversized leather chair and started his infuriating habit of pacing around the room looking at every little detail. "Are you going to speak or is this a silent date?"

She slammed the bottle onto the counter and stared at him. Everything she'd ever repressed threatened to break free. He looked too similar, hair a mess, leather bracelets wrapped on his wrist, green eyes seeing too much, black t-shirt stretching across muscles she remembered too well, black jeans.
He didn't fit into her world. He belonged with beautiful people and irreverent artists. He had been right to walk away in the park. She needed to let go of that fantasy of them as a couple.

What would he think of her mother, of the way she'd grown up?

He and Ava had grown up with privilege, had traveled the world with their diplomat father and famous violinist mother. She'd met them once when they'd visited Florence. His mother had loved her art, had even taken a canvas back to Belgium with her.

But she'd been living a lie over there. She hadn't been one of them, but it had f
elt nice pretending.

Images filtered through her mind—her
mom throwing her up against the wall when she'd found her painting instead of studying, her mother ripping up the acceptance to art school screaming that she wouldn't tolerate a lazy dreamer who might as well strap a mattress to her back to make a living, her sneering in contempt while lecturing her on the importance of money, and Marc saying she'd make a fool of herself and ruin her reputation as a serious architect by agreeing to show her work at Miranda's gallery.

Yet here stood Jacques Sinclair of all people looking almost the same and staring at her with those eyes that had always seen into her soul.

She rubbed a closed fist across her forehead, closed her eyes, and tried to stuff away the tumultuous emotions reeling throughout her body. 

"What's wrong?" he asked, genuine concern lilting through his accented voice.
"Do you want me to leave?"

Damn the man for showing back up in her life.
The timing couldn't be worse.

"Why didn't you find me? Why didn't you follow me here?
You said you would always come looking for me, but you didn't. Doesn't that make you the liar?" she asked, tears rushing beneath the closed eyelids. "You blame me for leaving you, for being scared, but you didn't follow me despite having my address. You let me go just like that, like I wasn't worth fighting for. You act like I'm the most vile person on earth because I freaked out—because I had to come back here." She smacked her palms against the counter and opened her eyes to stare at him. "Do you have any idea the pressure I'm under, that I've always been under? I don't know what to do or who to be or what to say or how to act; but I do know what I want. I do. And you know how I know? Because it scares the hell out of me, that's how."

They couldn't move forward without resolving the past. Confusing or not, he'd been the one true love of her life
and she needed him to know everything—even though it terrified her to leap from this ledge.

He folded his arms across his chest and leaned his hip against the back of the sofa. "I thought you'd gone missing, called the police, had everyone searching for you. You didn't leave a note, nothing. Vanished. I thought something horrible had happened to you, Jess. The police notified me that you'd taken a plane back to Boston. It messed me up.
I took that as a rejection. I went on a self-destructive binge. Would you have really wanted me showing up?"

"Yes, I wanted you to show up.
I fantasized about it." Trembling from her run and tumultuous emotions, she drank the rest of the water while silent tears fell. 

He frowned and looked down at his booted feet. "I never imagined yo
u'd want me to follow you. I thought you'd changed your mind about marrying me. What was I supposed to think? You disappeared and I still do not know why."

"It hurts to talk about why."

He nodded. "Was it Marc? Did you come back because of him?"

"No...I need to shower. I will tell you everything, but then it needs to be over. No talking about the past. I need to move on." 
She pulled off the headscarf that held her hair back, turned her back on him, and walked toward the bedroom.  Uninvited, he could do as he pleased while she showered because she needed a minute to regain control. 

"If you had bothered to tell me you were leaving, I would have come with you
no matter what was wrong." He followed. "But you didn't and I did some unforgiveable things. You can't imagine what I have done. It hasn't been all pretty pictures and fabulous places." He grabbed her by the elbow and swung her around. "Let's stop this. I'm here. I heard you this afternoon. I want to go out on a date with you, just us, here and now. Let's go out to dinner or for a walk. No arguing. I will charm the hell out of you."

"Yeah, you're really charming at the moment."
She wiped the tears away with the back of her hand and sighed. "I'm all sweaty, I need a shower."

"I always liked you a little messy." When he smiled, dimples dented his cheeks. "I'm in hiding, everyone from Ava to Kevin to Miranda is looking for me. I am missing an important dinner tonight, I hear, because a certain brunette asked me out. I couldn't resist an opportunity like that."

She bit back a smile, liking the fact that he was ditching everyone to spend time with her and that he'd waited on the street for her to come home. "Okay. Give me ten minutes. There's a bar down the street, we can grab a burger and a beer."

His smile widened. "Burgers and beer sound ideal
. I can't wait for our first date."

She watched him walk back to the living room before smelling her armpits to make sure her deodorant had done its job. Satisfied that she didn't reek too badly, she peeled off her shorts and t-shirt enroute to the bathroom where she grabbed a washcloth. Her hair had dampened with the run, curls returning despite the straightening of the morning. She brushed it until soft waves curved around her ears and skimmed her jawline. In a hurry, she pulled on the first pair of jeans she found, a hooded Boston Red Sox sweatshirt and a pair of sandals.  Not exactly glamorous. 

In the living room, he sat on the window seat of the front bay window and leaned toward the side portion that had been propped open. He held a cigarette to his mouth as if savoring a long drag before noticing she'd entered the room.  Looking guilty, he blew out the smoke while his gaze traveled from the frayed hem of her jeans to the hair that had a mind of its own. They made eye contact and a world of mistakes swirled between them.

Without saying anything, he
snuffed out the cigarette in her potted fern, grabbed his jacket, and followed her from the apartment. They walked together in silence, side by side.

She stuffed her hands into the giant pocket in front of her sweatshirt to avoid brushing against him.  She
simultaneously felt that they'd said too much and not enough. She'd missed the smell of him that reminded her of sex, secrets, laughter, and whispers in the night.

It wasn't until they were comfortably seated in a dark booth in a busy restaurant that she braved a look into his face.  He sat across from her, eyes locked on her face, arms folded on the top of the table. 

"Sorry for being late," he said with a lopsided grin.

"What do you mean?" Damn, the man did crazy things to her heart with a simple grin.

"You said you'd hoped I'd come and get you. I took the long way. Detour." He smiled before looking around the bar as if equally uncomfortable in this situation. They'd done much better arguing.

"Better late than never," she said, wishing this could be easy. "You really suck at the whole knight in shining armor thing."

Without making eye contact, he shifted uncomfortably in his seat.  "I'm European, I'm supposed to be romantic by nature, isn't that right? "

"
I thought being romantic was in your DNA or something. Don't they teach Chivalry 101 in school over there?" She grinned, wanting to put him at ease.  After all, she felt as if she were on some type of mission now with the full backing of Ava, Sela, and Jane.

He laughed, the sound easy and warm. "
Maybe I need to take a refresher course."

"What d
o you think of Boston so far?" She blurted out the question. Why not? She'd gone insane on Friday and was on a roll of crazy. 

A myriad of emotions swirled through the depths of his green eyes as he studied her from across the table.  Suddenly she wished they'd stayed back
at her place, talked heart to heart in private.

"I've thought about how it could have been," she continued with her confessions of the night. "Sometimes when I'm jogging, I'll see something that I know you'd love...be it how the sunrise reflects in the Charles River or a child flying a kite.  I'll stop and think, 'I wonder how Jacques would see that through his camera lens'. Then there've been times when something ridiculous happens and I think, 'I wonder what Jacques would say about that'. When I'm with my friends, I often wonder how you'd like them, wish you'd gotten to know them, feel rotten for not giving you the chance."

Feeling conspicuous, she broke eye contact. Well, if nothing else, she'd always be able to say she left nothing left unsaid. Words came forth with a mind of their own, revealing her heart in ways she hadn't in years—at least not verbally. In her art...well, that was another story. She felt exposed and vulnerable. Her blush started on her neck and burned itself upward.

"Hey, Jessica," the waiter said when he tossed their menus onto the table.  "Let me guess...it's a weekday which means you'll
have your usual Ipswich Ale, am I right? I haven't seen your friend before, but I'd guess he's more of Sam Adams kind of man. Am I right or am I right?"

"You're right as usual, Benny."
She cleared her throat.

"Where's your posse? You really need to get Sela to go out with me, c'mon do a guy a favor." Benny clutched both hands over his heart and gave her his best puppy dog look.

"You'd just break her heart, I see how you operate around here, you lady killer you." She winked at the old man who'd been serving them all for years. Part owner, Benny McDougal, loved to flirt with all the ladies regardless of age, shape, race, or size.

"So just the two of you?" He gave Jacques the once over before turning his attention back to her.

"Just the two of us, no Sela tonight." She drummed her fingers against the tabletop. 

"I'll be back." Benny winked before moving back toward the bar. 

"You're a regular here? You have a posse? I thought you'd take me to some out of the way place where you'd have no fear of running into anyone you knew, but here we are with Benny. You're doing an excellent job of fucking with my mind."

"Speaking of fucking, Friday night was pretty hot."
Why start censoring myself now?
"Do first dates follow up with sex or are we going to put on the brakes and go slow?"

He
arched an eyebrow, his smile widening at her boldness. "I hear you told Ava it was mind blowing. Don't you think that's a little too much information to share with my sister?"

"
I lost my mind sometime around Friday morning. Who knows what I'll say or do next?" Her heart twisted despite the laughter. She'd missed him more than she'd allowed herself to admit all of these years.