That Boy From Trash Town (16 page)

"You're not suggesting— You an, aren't you?" She swung away from him, smoothing her hands across her heated cheeks. "You've lost your mind. You've finally and completely lost your mind."

After a moment she glanced cautiously over her shoulder. He was watching her closely still, as though gauging her reaction.

Keeping her eyes on his face, she moved to sit beside him on the couch. "Are you sure you fed all right?" she asked, frowning in concern.

He laughed silently. "You sound like you're thinking about taking my temperature. I'm not crazy and I'm not feverish."

"Then what in hell is going on?" She was genuinely confused. "You were practically begging me to cut those old ties that strangle. You said—"

"The ties never strangled," he interrupted, his voice quiet and emphatic. "Never. I thought it would be best—for you—if you stepped back a little. I thought you should put some space between yourself and a relationship that began when you were too young to know better. I simply wanted you to look at your feelings from an objective distance."

After a moment she said, "You seemed to have done a lot of planning for me. And you made an awful lot of decisions without asking about my druthers. But maybe it's unfair of me to resent that. I certainly didn't give you any reason to believe I could make those decisions on my own."

She paused, chewing on her lower lip. "But now you've obviously changed your mind and come up with a whole new plan for me," she said slowly. "Because— I may be way off base here, but it seems to me that what you're suggesting is not going to put any distance between me and anything." '

He reached out and cupped her neck with warm fingers. His eyes were half-closed so that she couldn't see his expression. "I haven't changed my mind, Whit. I still want you to make objective decisions. When it's time," he added firmly. "When you're ready to handle whatever comes along."

She pulled away from the hand that was destroying her ability to think. "And sex comes under the heading of Whatever Conies Along? Couldn't you just buy me one of those Now-That-You're-a-Woman books that mothers give to their teenage daughters?"

"Does the idea of making love with me embarrass you?" he asked, his voice blunt.

"I—" She broke off and shook her head in a helpless movement.

He glanced away from her. "That day you walked into my bedroom, just before you left § Antonio, you wanted me that day."

Whitney's breath caught in her throat, and she closed her eyes in self-defense. "The gloves are off now," she said wryly, her voice weak.

Saying she wanted him was like saying a roaring furnace was a little blaze. She had never felt anything as powerful, before or since. "I wanted you, too, Whitney." The quiet words dropped like a bombshell between them. Opening her eyes, she studied his face and knew he was telling her the truth.

She ran her tongue over the inner edge of her lower lip in a nervous gesture. "But you— Why did you hide it? Why did you say all those things?"

He frowned. "You were brought up by people who didn't know anything about real life. I guess I just got used to protecting you. And I was afraid you would get sidetracked. I pulled out the...the 'slash-and-burn psychology,' as you called it—" he didn't relish using her vivid description ''—because I didn't want you to think an affair with me was the real thing."

Whitney let the explanation sink in. Dean was saying he wanted her. But he was also saying he didn't love her. She knew that. She had known it when she left San Antonio. Hearing the words shouldn't have caused the suffocating pain in her chest. Hearing an acknowledged truth shouldn't hurt quite so much.

Moistening her lips, she drew in a slow breath to steady her voice. "And now?"

He shrugged. "Whether you're a Harcourt, a Grant, or Mary White, you're an adult. Old enough to make your own decisions, old enough to handle a physical attraction."

"Oh, yeah?" Her tone was openly skeptical.

"Yeah," he said with a slight smile. "But I don't want this to be something that we simply slide into. No being carried away by the heat of the moment. I couldn't handle the thought of you waking up tomorrow regretting what happened tonight. We both have to know what we're getting into before we make another move."

"Are we going to sign a contract?" Without waiting for a response she rose abruptly to her feet. "No, you stay here," she said when he started, to get up. "I need some time alone.. .to think. I'll go make us some coffee," she added on her way out of the room.

Dean watched her leave. What in hell was he doing? She was right, he had finally lost his mind. This wasn't what he had intended when he came here tonight. He was simply going to make sure that Frankie wasn't pulling any fast moves on her.

A short, contemptuous laugh escaped him. Frankie wasn't the problem. The only one trying to pull a fast move around here was Dean himself.

He stood up and was almost to the kitchen to tell her to forget the whole thing, that it had been a bad joke, when he stopped, shoved a hand though his hair and walked back to the couch.

Whitney said that Dean had been making decisions for her without her knowledge or consent, and to a certain extent she was right about that. If he really believed Whitney was a mature, capable adult, then he had to allow her to make this decision on her own. It wasn't his place to tell her to forget it. Only Whitney knew what was best for her.

He had put his proposition to her in an unconventional way, but even if he had said, "How's about it, kid?" it would lead to the same thing. She would make a decision—of her own free will, and based on her own needs and desires—whether to accept or reject his offer.

And if she decided—on her own—that she was better off rejecting it, then the fact that Dean wanted her more than life itself was something he would have to deal with... on his own.

In the kitchen, Whitney put the coffee on, then stood and watched as it slowly ran into the pot. Could she handle it? Could she come away from an affair with Dean without permanent injury? Could she accept the fact that when he touched her, he was touching only the outside, making no effort to reach what was inside her?

The pot had been full of coffee for a good quarter of an hour before Whitney finally decided that it didn't matter if she could handle an affair with Dean or not. She would almost certainly get hurt, but that had never stopped her before. Whitney didn't believe in foregoing the wonderful things in life just because some bad might come along with them. If this was all she would ever have of Dean, it was more than she had had yesterday.

She walked back into the living room, carrying two cups of coffee. She handed one to him and sat down, cradling the other cup between her fingers.

Several minutes of silence passed. Dean was taking a sip of coffee when she finally said, "Okay, let's do it."

He choked. "Damn it, Whitney, you made me burn my mouth."

"Want me to kiss it and make it better?"

He drew in a sharp breath and turned his bead slowly toward her. "Yes...yes, 1 want that very much."

Turning slightly in her seat, she leaned toward him. This was what she wanted. It was what she had always wanted. But now that it was finally going to happen, she felt awkward. She had always imagined their first real kiss would come about in a more natural, less calculated way.

She drew back a little and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, then glancing at him, said, "I'm getting there. Don't rush me." She pushed the hair from her forehead. "I can do this." She leaned forward and almost immediately pulled back again. "But on the other hand, there's something to be said for being carried away by the heat of the moment. I feel like there's a script for this and I've forgotten all my lines."

He gave a soft laugh and framed her face with his hands. "Want me to help?"

Pulling away from his hands, she rose abruptly to her feet. "I don't know what's wrong with me. It's not like I've never been kissed, for pity's sake. I even did a little petting when I first got into college, back when I-"

"I remember." His voice was rough. "You told me all about it, every damned time it happened."

"There weren't that many times."

"There were enough. I had to sit and listen to you tell me about some snot-nosed kid touching you."

She stared at him in silence. Something about his tone, something about the look in his dark eyes, nagged at her.

"I don't remember any of them being snot-nosed," she said, her voice distracted as she tried to analyze the information that was being received by her brain. "In fact, I'm almost sure they weren't. I happen to be very discriminating."

She continued to stare at him, a frown creasing her brow. "You sound mad. Did it really bother you to know that I was... getting close to other men?"

"Bother me?" He gave a short, harsh laugh. "That doesn't even begin to cover it. I told myself that I was simply being protective. That I didn't want you getting into something you couldn't handle. But that didn't explain why I had the urge to pound some heads on the pavement."

She gave a soft whistle. So that was it.

"Ain't life strange," she muttered, then walking to the window, she pushed the curtain aside to look out.

The minor sexual skirmishes he was referring to had taken place during her first year at college. Six years ago. He had wanted her for six years?

Her first reaction to his amazing disclosure was relief that on those long, lonely nights when all she had had of him were dreams, Dean was feeling something similar. But relief was soon superceded by anger. All those lonely nights. If he had told her this years ago, those long, lonely nights wouldn't have happened.

Then finally she began to think about the implications of Dean's revelation. He said he wanted her. He wanted an affair with her. Period. And he was careful to tell her that she wasn't to make more out of it than there was. Nothing but good old-fashioned lust.

He was fooling himself. She didn't know why, but he was fooling himself. Lust was notoriously fickle. It wasn't the kind of thing that hung around for six years.

As she stared into the darkness, the hand that was holding the curtain to the side began to shake. She wanted to tell him. She wanted to share this as she shared everything else with him. She wanted to turn around and say, "You fool, you're in love with me." She wanted to list all the facts and show him why her conclusion was undeniable.

Whitney had to clamp her teeth together to keep from confronting him with the truth. She couldn't do it. She couldn't tell him. Not yet. Dean was the most intelligent man she knew. He understood all about people and motivations. And he spent a lot of time examining his own actions and reactions. Which meant that something was keeping him from this particular truth. For some reason, he was hiding from his feelings for her. Dean didn't want to be in love with her.

There was only a little pain attached to the realization. It would have been better if he were able to return her love freely and joyfully, but she had long ago accepted the fact that he was complicated, mentally and emotionally. This was the man she had loved all her life. He was worth fighting for. He was worth waiting for.

"What are you thinking about?" he asked now.

When she turned around, she found him close behind her, a frown worrying his features.

She raised one hand to smooth away the lines from his face. "I'm thinking that I'm through thinking. I'm thinking that thinking uses up time that could be spent—" she wiggled her eyebrows "—more productively." She moved closer. "Did you notice how I wiggled my eyebrows? That's to let you know I was making an oblique sexual reference. Now this—" she stood on her tiptoes and brushed her lips across his, smiling when she heard his sharply indrawn breath "—there is nothing at all oblique about this. This is—"

The rest of her explanation was cut off as he wrapped his arms around her and pulled her tightly to him. Hie molded her body to his, touching her with hands that shook, as though he had been waiting for a long time to feel this particular feeling and couldn't wait a second longer.

His breathing was labored when he pulled back a little and rested his forehead against hers. "You remembered your lines," he said in a hoarse whisper.

Her laugh was cut off by his mouth. The taste of him, the feel of him, had filled Whitney's dreams, waking and sleeping, for most of her life, and now it was no fantasy. It was real. His kiss set off an explosion of sensations and she couldn't get enough of it. Afraid he would change his mind, she clasped his neck and frantically sought his tongue with her own, pushing her body even closer to his.

Now that she knew he loved her, she was fearless, and she felt the shock of her response rock through him. A deep groan came from deep in his chest, and he bent slightly, picking her up in his arms without interrupting the fiery kiss.

He carried her into her bedroom and fell with her onto the bed. Then he was touching her and it was better than all her dreams put together. All the long, lonely nights were forgotten as they hungrily explored territory that had been forbidden than only hours ago, staking claim with their lips and tongues and fingers.

Even in the heat of passion, Dean was still protective. He didn't rush her. He made sure she was ready before he took the next step. He discarded his shirt, but merely unbuttoned her silk blouse, easing her into total intimacy. He had to take it slow. He had to make this right for her.