Releasing a slow breath, he rubbed his hand down his face, hoping the action would dispel her image from his thoughts. It didn’t work. Nothing did.
He had never intended to make love to her, and even now, ten days later, he wasn’t sure how the hell it had happened. He continued to suffer from a low-grade form of shock. His thoughts had been in utter chaos since that night, and he wasn’t sure how to respond to her or where their relationship was headed now.
What really distressed him, Steve realized, was that after everything that had happened between them, he could still want her so much. More than a week later and the memory of her leaning against the doorjamb in the kitchen, wearing his shirt—and nothing else—had the power to tighten his loins. Tighten his loins! He nearly laughed out loud; that had to be the understatement of the year.
When Carol had stood and held out her arms to him, he’d acted like a starving child offered candy, so eager he hadn’t stopped to think about anything except the love she would give him. Any protest he’d made had been token. She’d volunteered, he’d accepted, and that should be the end of it.
But it wasn’t.
Okay, so he wasn’t a man of steel. Carol had always been his Achilles’ heel, and he knew it. She knew it. In thinking over the events of that night, it was almost as though his ex-wife had planned everything. Her red dress with no bra, and that bit about placing decorations on the tree. She’d insisted on standing on the chair, stretching and exposing her thigh to him … his thoughts came to a skidding halt.
No.
He wasn’t going to fall into that familiar trap of thinking Carol was using him, deceiving him. It did no good to wade into the muddy mire of anger, bitterness, regret and doubt.
He longed to repress the memory of Carol’s warm and willing body in his arms. If only he could get on with his life. If only he could sleep.
He couldn’t.
His sister, Lindy, had coffee brewed by the time Steve came out of his bedroom. She sat at the table, cradling a cup in one hand while holding a folded section of the Post-Intelligencer in the other.
“Morning.” She glanced up and greeted him with a bright smile. Lately it seemed his sister was always smiling.
Steve mumbled something unintelligible as a means of reply. Her cheerfulness grated against him. He wasn’t in the mood for good humor this morning. He wasn’t in the mood for anything … with the possible exception of making love to Carol again, and that bit of insight didn’t suit him in the least.
“It doesn’t look like you had a good night’s sleep, brother dearest.”
Steve’s frown deepened, and he gave his sister another noncommittal answer.
“I don’t suppose this has anything to do with Carol?” She waited, and when he didn’t answer, added, “Or the fact that you didn’t come home Christmas Eve?”
“I came home.”
“Sure, sometime the following morning.”
Steve took down a mug from the cupboard and slapped it against the counter with unnecessary force. “Drop it, Lindy. I don’t want to discuss Carol.”
A weighted silence followed his comment.
“Rush and I’ve got almost everything ready to move into the new apartment,” she offered finally, and the light tone of her voice suggested she was looking for a way to put their conversation back on an even keel. “We’ll be out of here by Friday.”
Hell, here he was snapping at Lindy. His sister didn’t deserve to be the brunt of his foul mood. She hadn’t done anything but mention the obvious. “Speaking of Rush, where is he?” Steve asked, forcing a lighter tone into his own voice.
“He had to catch an early ferry this morning,” she said, and hesitated momentarily. “I’m happy, Steve, really happy. I was so afraid for a time that I’d made a dreadful mistake, but I know now that marrying Rush was the right thing to do.”
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