From the Beginning (15 page)

Failed romantic relationship or not, a part of him still thought of Amanda as his. A feeling that had been reinforced by the fact that he’d never seen her with another man. Not in that way.

Which only made this whole thing with Jack more concerning. He didn’t know exactly how he felt about Amanda yet, but he knew he didn’t want to lose her. Not to a man he’d considered a good friend for well over a decade now.

Determined to get his mind off thoughts of Amanda and Jack together, Simon glanced around the room. And in doing so, realized how little Amanda had let herself relax there. Her bag was still neatly packed and there was nothing personal anywhere else in the room, except for the gray sweater draped across the table. There wasn’t even a water bottle—the only clutter the still-full coffee cups he’d brought with him that morning.

It didn’t take a genius to figure out that she had no long-term plans to stay here. Which made him nervous—the last thing he needed was for her to bolt. Or maybe she simply wasn’t comfortable here. Which meant he might be able to talk her into moving into his apartment, for a whil, anyway.

He hadn’t pushed Amanda about choosing to stay at a hotel instead of with him because she had seemed determined to be on her own. Plus, he’d needed time to assimilate their situation on his own, to wrap his head around the changes—in her and in his life.

And he hadn’t wanted her to think it was a lascivious thing. Sure, he wanted her—sometimes he thought he’d go to his grave wanting her—despite the fact that she looked as if she’d been ridden hard and put away wet. But his desire for her wasn’t a factor in why he wanted her to come stay with him. He wouldn’t let it be, not now, when she had so much healing to do.

Besides, she couldn’t stay in this hotel forever, he told himself as he folded the sweater and shoved it into the suitcase. It was too expensive, too impersonal, too empty. She needed to come home with him, where he could take care of her.

The shower finally turned off. Convinced he’d be able to persuade her to move to his apartment, Simon waited impatiently for the bathroom door to open. Of course, when it did, he found himself face-to-face with an Amanda he hadn’t seen in a long time. Wet, wildly curling hair, dark, sexy eyes, a skimpy towel wrapped around her slender body but still showing plenty of skin.

Desire hit him with the power of a freight train and it was as if all those years without her had never existed. He was taken right back to the beginning, when he had first seen her and would have done anything to have her.

Still, just because he’d shot back in time didn’t mean she had, and he tried to tear his gaze away from her. Find something other than the soft, creamy expanse of her thighs to focus on.

But even as he told himself to look away, he couldn’t do it.

Instead, he skimmed his eyes over her, lingering at the slight curves of her breasts where they pushed against the towel before moving on to her long, long,
long
legs. While they were skinnier than he remembered, they were still killer. Beautiful and strong. He couldn’t help remembering what it had felt like to have them wrapped around his waist as he moved inside her.

“Sorry. I forgot my clothes.” Her voice sounded strained as she brushed past him. The tension he heard there snapped him out of the flashback, and he turned in time to see her duck her head, cheeks flushed.

Her obvious embarrassment made him feel like a total lech. He cleared his throat. “No big deal. I’ll just look…somewhere else.” He crossed to the window.

“Thanks.” A pause, while he heard her rummaging in her suitcase. Yeah, real smooth. He probably should have thought about her getting dressed before he packed her up.

“Hey, did you mess with my bag?” she asked, her voice more vulnerable than he had heard it in a very long time. “Or am I losing my mind?”

“No, it was me. I wanted to help get you ready.” He glanced at her over his shoulder, felt his whole body go on red alert as one side of her towel dipped precariously to reveal a glimpse of a perfect, rose-tipped breast.

She clutched at the towel, and he looked away quickly, but not before he hardened painfully. He told himself to chill out, that sex was the last thing Amanda was interested in right now, but it didn’t work. His body didn’t seem to care. But then it never did when he was around Amanda. He’d wanted her from the first time he’d set eyes on her, and though their relationship had evolved through the years, that desire had never gone away.

“Get ready for what?” she asked, heading toward the bathroom.

“You can’t stay in a hotel forever,” he told her. “I figured, after everything that happened earlier, you’d be okay with coming home with me.”

A stunned silence was his only answer as the bathroom door closed firmly behind her.

As he waited for her, he cursed himself and his rampaging libido. He hadn’t planned on bringing the subject up quite so abruptly, but he’d gone stupid at the first sight of her. Could he have been a bigger idiot?

What he should have said was that he’d been looking for a pair of scrubs to fit him, not that he’d packed up her errant possessions as if he expected her to follow him wherever he went. As if he was a jealous idiot who thought he had the right to control every aspect of her life.

He shook his head, slumped down on the bed. Nothing quite like taking one step forward and seven back. Of course, that was the story of his life with Amanda.

She emerged from the bathroom a couple of minutes later, fully dressed and with a look of total disbelief on her face. “We have one conversation that doesn’t end in a fight and you think that means I’m ready to move in with you?”

“I know, I’m sorry. I handled that badly.”

She snorted. “So you’re not sorry for thinking I’d drop everything and move in with you. You’re just sorry about the way you handled it?”

Well, yeah. Pretty much. But thank God his brain started working before he could blurt that out. “I wasn’t trying to push you into anything you weren’t ready for—”

“Right. Because you never do that.”

He narrowed his eyes. “Sarcasm is not becoming on you.”

“What a shame since I’m so fond of it.”

It was his turn to snort, this time with laughter. It took only a few seconds before she joined in.

When they’d sobered, she said quietly, “You know there’s not a chance I’m going to move in with you, right?”

His levity fled. “Why not?” He put his arms out, gestured around the hotel room. “Come on, Amanda, this is no place for you. You deserve better.”

“Better than one of the best hotels in Atlanta? You
are
the one who sent me here, if you remember correctly?”

“That’s not what I meant, and you know it. You’re not taking proper care of yourself—”

“And what? You’re going to change all that?”

“Why not?”

“In case you’ve forgotten, you have trouble keeping a goldfish alive, let alone a person.”

He ground his teeth in frustration. “I want to help you, Amanda. What’s wrong with that?”

“Nothing, except I don’t need your help.” She crossed to him, laid a gentle hand on his forearm. It felt so good that he closed his eyes for a moment, just soaked the sensation in. Soaked her in.

“I’m a grown woman, Simon. I’ve traveled all over the world—in places a lot more primitive and dangerous than downtown Atlanta. I’m pretty sure I can take care of myself.”

He sighed, thrust a hand through his hair. “We’ve already had this fight.”

“And we’re going to keep having it until you get it through your thick skull that I don’t need to be your do-it-yourself renovation project. I can handle things on my own. I swear.”

“Usually, I’d agree with you. But, no offense, lately you’ve done a pretty crappy job of taking care of yourself. I understand why, but still, you’re in bad shape, Amanda. Let me take care of you.”

He expected her to tell him to go to hell, to reiterate all the things she could do on her own. Instead, she tossed her head and asked scornfully, “You don’t actually think I’d let myself depend on you, do you? I’ve been there and I still have the skid marks on my back.”

CHAPTER NINE

SIMON STARED AT AMANDA stonily. Her response to his plea had cut him off at the knees. He was reeling, shocked by the attack after the compassion she’d demonstrated the night before, but the last thing he wanted was for her to know how bad she could hurt him. With the way she felt about him, giving her that kind of control would be disastrous.

For long seconds, he didn’t know what to say to her. After all, he hadn’t expected her forgiveness for not being there when Gabby died—not when he couldn’t forgive himself—but he’d hoped for a little understanding. Obviously, he’d been dreaming.

“We’re never going to be able to get past that, are we?” he finally asked, dully.

Amanda bit her lip, and her gray eyes were sad, but she didn’t retreat. “I wasn’t talking about Gabby. I was talking about all the years before that, when you flitted in and out of my life at whim.”

“I was
working.
”

“You’re always working, Simon. There’s always another story to tell, always something happening, somewhere, that’s more important than I am. That isn’t going to change now.”

“I’m a reporter, Amanda. I go where the news is. Besides, I never complained about you ‘flitting off’ to country after country doing your doctor thing. I never said a word when you dragged Gabby through five countries in four years.”

“Why would you have? It made your life infinitely easier not to have me waiting at home for you, wondering where you were. I couldn’t complain about your absence if I wasn’t home, either.”

“Are you saying you’d give it up? That you wouldn’t work with For the Children anymore?”

“I think you’re forgetting, I did give it up. Twice.”

“That doesn’t count. You always knew you’d go back.”

“You really think that’s what I did? That I weighed my options when Gabby got sick? You think I said to myself, ‘Oh, well, I’ll give it a year and by then she’ll be dead and I can go back to doing what I really want to do?’”

“You’re putting words in my mouth.”

“Yeah, well, you sure as hell implied it.”

“Don’t change the subject. I may not have always been there, but I was committed to you. You’re the one who walked out on me.”

“Because I couldn’t handle never knowing where you were or who you were with—”

“I
never
cheated on you.”

“It doesn’t matter.” She waved his words away as if they were inconsequential, which only angered him more.

“Really? I thought the fact that I loved you—wanted to build a life with you—did matter. My mistake.”

“You didn’t want to build a life,” she flung at him. “You wanted a drive-through relationship, one where you could show up for a few days, have great sex and then get the hell out of Dodge before anything got serious.”

The words hit hard, took all the righteous indignation right out of him. “That isn’t true,” he whispered.

Amanda sighed as she crossed the room, put a gentle hand on his arm. “It doesn’t matter,” she told him softly. “That period in our lives is over.”