“Huh.” He straightened the frame and stepped back from the wall, his ragged mood soothed by the simple task of hammering a nail. And by her softly voiced explanation. “I didn’t know the bear was such a philosopher.”
“Christopher Robin said it to Pooh.”
“Not sage advice from mother to daughter?” he asked as he moved forward and thumbed the frame up a tenth on the left. He edged back and surveyed it through narrowed eyes. Gave a small grunt of satisfaction. Waited for Jillian’s response.
She couldn’t answer right away. She’d been so ready to show him the door, to slam it on his moody brooding back, but that quiet question turned her around all over again. The affirming message, stitched by her mother’s hand so many years ago, resounded through her with an escalating rhythm, reminding her of the decision she’d made two days before.
A decision made and put on hold.
Well, Christopher Robin, let’s see how brave and strong and smart I am.
Drawing a deep give-me-courage breath, she turned to face Seth. The hand she extended trembled like a newborn colt, but she still managed to hold her shoulders straight as she splayed the naked fingers of her left hand.
“It feels very strange after wearing it for so long.” She wriggled her fingers. Yes, it felt strange in several ways. Strange unfamiliar, strange scary, and strangely liberating now she’d finally taken this positive step forward, out of the shadows of the past.
“Why did you keep wearing it?” he asked after one long beat of intense silence.
“Not because I still felt married or bound to Jason.” And since her hand wouldn’t stop shaking, she tucked it in the pocket of her jeans. Then she lifted her chin and looked right at him. “I wore it as a reminder of all that marriage cost me. I’m ready to put that behind me, now. To move on.”
“What are you telling me?”
“I’m not telling, Seth, I’m asking.” Jillian paused to moisten her suddenly dry mouth. “What now, Seth? Now that I’m not wearing the ring?”
Eight
Still and silent, he stared back at her, but today that intensity didn’t make Jillian uncomfortable. The fact she’d obviously read him wrong did. She’d thought that Seth wanted her, but then she’d believed the same of Jason.
Could she be any worse a judge of men and their motives?
“I’m sorry,” she said briskly, avoiding Seth’s eyes in case she detected any—Lord help her—pity. That would be the last straw. “I’ve overstepped and put you in an awkward situation. Forget I said anything.”
She swung away and would have kept on walking, except his harsh expulsion of breath brought her gaze back around. And what she saw there halted her in her tracks. Her limbs, her thoughts, her heart all seized in that one second of sizzling heat.
“Why would you think I could forget it?” he asked.
“You didn’t say anything. You didn’t respond. You just stood there looking so…stunned.”
“Yeah, well, you got that right.” He shook his head slowly. “Hell, Jillian, you could have given me some kind of warning.”
“I’m sorry, but I don’t know the warning system. Is it lights or hand signals or semaphore flags?”
His response fell somewhere between a snort and a laugh, which would have gotten Jillian’s back up again if not for the heat in his eyes. They remained steady and unwavering on hers, igniting a lick of hunger in her veins and a surge of courage in her gut.
“So.” She lifted her chin a fraction. “You said the kiss was a long time coming.”
“I did.”
“And was it worth the wait? Was it something you might want to repeat or was once enough?”
“One kiss wasn’t close to enough,” he said, his voice as deep and dark and hot as his eyes. “I want to do much more than kiss your mouth.”
“Oh.” Heat suffused her skin, a small part of her shocked and a much larger part aroused. Intensely aroused. “More…in what way?”
“Don’t push me, Jillian. My willpower is hanging by a loose nail here.”
Okay, but she had to know where she stood, in case the nail gave way while she was standing in the danger zone. In case all that dark and dangerous intensity came toppling down on top of her. “I just need you to tell me straight, so there’s no misunderstanding. Is that all right?”
His expression screamed no, it’s far from all right.
“Please?”
His nostrils flared slightly and he jutted his chin in a gesture that was pure male aggression. Jillian’s heart did an uh-oh kind of lurch, but then it was too late to back down. He’d started talking. Telling her exactly what he wanted to do with her in short, blatant terms that blew her mind and tempted her secret, hidden core.
He wanted sex—all those ways—with her, the good girl, the ice princess, the wife who couldn’t keep her husband satisfied. Oh, wow.
Jillian closed her mouth and swallowed audibly. Their eyes clashed with enough heat to set the timber cottage ablaze. She didn’t blink, didn’t flinch, just held his gaze with wide-eyed, I’m-shocked-but-in-the-nicest-way interest, and stunned them both by saying, “Okay.”
Okay?
Seth stared back, unable to muster enough blood to jump-start his brain for several long drawn-out seconds. Enough blood had mustered in other places to jump-start all kinds of motors, to send them revving and roaring and rocketing into overdrive.
“Okay?” he asked finally, on a rising note of disbelief. “All you have to say is ‘okay’?”
“Actually, no.” A whisper of a smile crossed her lips. “But I’m having some trouble with words. With finding a path from here—” she tapped her head “—to here.” She touched those same fingers to her mouth. “I suspect your straight talk just melted a few synapses.”
Yeah, well, same here, he thought. He’d thought he’d shock her right out the door with his hard-core honesty, by laying his every erotic midnight fantasy on the line, but all he’d done—apparently—was incite her sloe-eyed interest.
She couldn’t want to do all that with him.
His head spun with the improbability. And then he remembered the look on her face when she’d galloped up that hill. He recalled her passion in the tasting room and the cab sav headiness of her kiss.
Yeah, she could.
“Have you found those words yet?” he asked, needing to know for sure. To hear more than “okay” from her lips. He didn’t know whether it was dread or hope that thudded hard in his blood and his head and his ears, whether he wanted her to tell him to go to hell or to see her start unbuttoning the prissy pink shirt she wore.
“Sex,” he said, just to make sure she had the picture. “Once, not as any kind of a relationship.”
“I’m not looking for a relationship, Seth. I don’t have a great record with those. But I’ve never had a one-night stand or an affair or whatever this is we’re talking about. How do we, um, go about this?”
With creditable control Seth rocked back on his heels. “You sure you don’t want to think it over?”
“Good Lord, no! After all those things you said…” She huffed out a breath and straightened her backbone decisively. “I don’t want to think about it, Seth. I want to do it.”
She was killing him. Slowly. Inch by painful inch.
“The