Through gritted teeth, he said softly, “I’m fine, Rita.”
“Yeah, I can see that,” she said. “That’s why you don’t have to set an alarm to get up at four a.m., because you can’t sleep but you’re fine.”
He jerked his head back to give her a glare. “How the hell do you know I can’t sleep?”
“I can hear you, moving around the apartment, going out onto the terrace...”
Apparently, he wasn’t as stealthy as he liked to think. And he had to ask himself, if he’d known she was awake, too, would he have gone to her? Tried to lose himself and the dreams that dogged him in the warmth of her embrace? Would he have given in to the insistent urge to take her, to find the heat and the welcome he’d once found in her arms? He didn’t know the answer and that worried him.
“Sorry,” he said tightly, rubbing the back of his neck. “I’ll be quieter.”
“Oh, Jack, that’s not what I meant at all,” she said and rested her hand on his forearm. “I’m right here. Let me in. Am I so scary you can’t talk to me?”
For the first time ever, he was tempted to do just that. To just start talking and in the talking, maybe the images in his head would start to fade. Looking down into those compelling eyes of hers, he could feel himself weakening, in spite of the promise he’d made to himself. That he would never talk about the past, because doing that kept it alive. Kept it vivid. But hadn’t it stayed alive despite his silence?
“I’m not going to do that.” He shook his head and gave a halfhearted laugh. “Besides, one thing you’re not, Rita, is scary.”
“I can be, when pushed. Just ask my brothers.”
Gaze still locked with hers, he lifted one hand, smoothed her hair back and briefly let himself enjoy the silky feel of it against his skin. Her emotions crowded those whiskey-brown eyes of hers and her teeth tugged at her bottom lip. God, she was beautiful. He wished...
“Let it be, Rita,” he said quietly. “Just let it be.”
“You know I can’t.”
She stared up at him and he fisted his hands at his sides to keep from grabbing her, burying his face in the curve of her neck and drawing her scent deep inside him. She made him feel too much and he couldn’t allow that. He was done with caring. Done with letting others care about him. It was the safest way.
Finally, she lifted both hands and cupped his face in her palms. Heat from her body poured into his and still couldn’t thaw the knot of ice he carried deep inside. “Rita, just leave my secrets in the past. Where they belong.”
Looking deeply into his eyes, Rita shook her head. “They’re not staying in the past, Jack. They’re right here, surrounding you, cutting you off from me. From everyone. So no, I won’t let it be. Not a chance.”
* * *
Rita couldn’t sleep. Maybe it was the confrontation/ lunch with Jack two days before. Maybe it was the baby, who had decided to start training as a gymnast while still in the womb. And maybe it was just the whirring sounds of her own thoughts spinning frantically in her mind. Whatever it was, though, pulled her from bed and sent her pacing the penthouse.
It was beautiful, she had to admit, though it was a little impersonal for her. Beige walls, gleaming wood floors and comfortable, if boring, furniture. There were generic paintings on the walls and in the penthouse kitchen, the appliances were top-of-the-line, but the dishware was buy-a-box-of-plates-style.
Nothing in the place spoke of Jack. It was as if some decorator had come in, put in inoffensive furniture and left it at that, expecting whoever lived there to eventually make it their own. But apparently Jack had no interest in putting his own stamp on the place. Here, like everywhere else in his life, he was simply an observer. As if he were a placeholder for the real person who hadn’t arrived yet.
Rita curled up on the forest green couch, pulled a throw pillow onto her lap and wrapped her arms around it.
For two days, she’d been determined to make Jack interact with her. She refused to let him lock himself away in his office once he returned to the penthouse. She made dinner and forced him to talk to her over a meal. She told him all about what was happening at the bakery and peppered him with questions about his work.
She didn’t understand half of what he was talking about—with cargo containers and shipping schedules, but at least he was talking. She asked questions about his family and listened when he told her stories from his childhood, the fishing trips, the cabin they used to have in Big Bear.
And though she was managing to keep him engaged, it was a lot of work. The man spoke grudgingly and she had to practically drag information from him. But it was better than letting him brood alone. Still, her heart hurt because she wasn’t getting to him. She wasn’t any closer now to finding the real Jack than she had been when she married him.
Moonlight pearled the darkness. If she’d had company, it might have been romantic. As it was, though, she felt sad and tired and frustrated all at once.
“If he doesn’t care, why is he working so hard to shut me out?” she asked the empty room and her voice sounded overly loud in the quiet. Hugging the pillow a little tighter to her middle, she told herself that if he didn’t care about her or their baby, he wouldn’t have so much trouble being around her.
“And if that doesn’t sound backward I don’t know what does.” But it made an odd kind of sense, too. He was throwing himself on a proverbial sword by avoiding her. Making sacrifices she didn’t want for a reason he wouldn’t share.
So how was she supposed to fight it?
The week she’d spent with him now seemed like a dream. Even that last morning in her hotel room had taken on the soft edges of a fantasy rather than the warm, loving reality she remembered.
“I should go,” Jack said, bending his head to take her mouth in a kiss that was filled with a hunger that never seemed to ebb.
“Not yet.” Rita cupped his cheek in her palm and looked into those amazing blue eyes, trying to etch everything she read there into her memory. “Stay. Just for a while.”
He smiled and threaded his fingers through her hair. Rita closed her eyes briefly to completely savor the sensation of his hands on her. She’d never known a week to fly by so quickly. She’d thought only to take a week at the beach. A little vacation to clear her head after the Christmas holiday rush at the bakery back home.
But she’d found so much more than she’d ever expected. A man who made her laugh, made her sigh and made her body sing in a way she’d never known before. They’d spent every waking moment together in the last few days and even asleep, they were locked together as if somehow afraid of being separated.
And now, they would be.
Her heart was breaking at goodbye. But her flight home was that night and Jack would be leaving himself first thing in the morning. Their time was up. But what did that mean for the future?
“My enlistment’s nearly up,” he was saying and she told herself to concentrate on the low rumble of his voice. “This time, I’m not going to re-up. I’m getting out.”
She ran her hand over his chest, loving the feel of those sharply defined muscles beneath soft, golden-brown skin. “What’s that mean for us?”
He slid one hand up the length of her body to cup her breast, his thumb and forefinger tugging on her hardened nipple. Electricity zipped through her entire body and set up a humming expectation at the very core of her. One touch from this man and she was a puddle of goo at his feet.
“It means I can come up to Utah as soon as I get home.”
“Good,” she said on a sigh. “That’s very good.”
“And