“Why are you here... alone.” Sunny gave a quick impatient shake of her head. “Why did you come here alone?”
Good question, Adam conceded. Too bad he didn’t have a good answer. He pondered a response for a moment, then with a mental shrug, decided to go with the unvarnished truth, odd as it might sound.
“Believe it or not, I’m here, at this family time of year, because of a whim.”
“A whim,” she repeated, her wry tone giving evidence of disbelief. “Of course.”
“A whim,” he repeated, adamantly.
“You have no family?”
“Yes, I have family,” he answered. “Two brothers and a sister, all younger and all unmarried...” He paused a beat before adding, “As I am.”
“No wife or significant other?”
“No wife or significant other,” he echoed, grimacing at the current term for girlfriend or lover. He hesitated, almost afraid to ask the next logical question, yet aware he had to know the answer. “Do you have family somewhere, your parents, siblings...a husband?”
“Parents, yes, and a brother and sister, both older, both married, with one child apiece, all living in northern California.”
“No husband?” He arched his brows. “Or significant other in your life?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“I could ask the same of you.” Her eyebrows rose in reflection of his.
Adam felt caught in a trap of his own devising. He didn’t want to answer, resisted the self exposure of explaining his reluctance to commit to any one woman. And yet, he wanted to hear her reasons for remaining single.
Sunny waited in calm patience for him to respond, as if she somehow knew the inner struggle he was waging. To Adam’s way of thinking, her apparent knowing was more than unnerving, it was damn creepy.
She raised her glass and sipped at the wine, all the while maintaining eye contact with him.
Adam smiled, conceding victory to her in the silent war of wills. “I have just never found a woman with whom I wanted to share either my life or my space,” he said, hoping the explanation was enough to satisfy her. He should have known better, even after such a short acquaintance.
“Found?” Sunny pounced on the word. “Found presupposes that you’ve been looking.”
“Not actively,” he hedged. “Have you?” he shot back. “Been looking, I mean?”
“Actively,” she admitted. “For you.”
Adam heaved a long-suffering sigh. “Why do I have this feeling I’ve landed in the middle of a particularly weird episode of ‘The Twilight Zone’?” he asked, as much of himself as of her.
She laughed. “Scary, huh?”
“More like dumb,” he retaliated.
“Perhaps.” She shrugged. “Nevertheless, for certain reasons we are both unattached.”
Adam slowly expelled another heartfelt sight. “So, you’re basically alone here.”
“Yes. My choice.” She smiled. “And you are here, now, in reaction to a whim.”
Adam suddenly felt funny—funny odd, not funny ha-ha. He didn’t like the feeling, and so felt compelled to explain, which wasn’t easy since he wasn’t accustomed to explaining his motives or actions to anyone and since he wasn’t certain he himself understood the whim, or impulse, or whatever.
“A couple of weeks ago, I turned on the TV to catch the news,” he began, hoping to discern some sense of it for himself while explaining to her. “As a rule, I watch little television, but, since I head up the family owned business, I do like to stay abreast of what’s going on in the business world.”
“You’re the CEO?”
“Yes—” he smiled “—which only means I ride herd over the other members of my family.” Then he laughed aloud. “We’re a diverse and farflung bunch, one running a casino in Deadwood, one managing a ranch in Montana, the youngest doing her fashion thing in San Francisco. And then there are other interests, oil, computer software,” he went on, wondering why in the hell he was babbling away to her, when he was usually closedmouth. And yet, his smile wry, he continued on, just the same.
“It’s a tough job but somebody has to do it. Since I’m the eldest of the lot, I inherited the job of holding the corporate strings and keeping them from tangling.”
“And I suspect you do it very well,” she murmured.
He shrugged. “There have been no complaints... so far.” Frowning at his sudden propensity to shoot his mouth off, Adam brought himself back to the point of discussion. “At any rate, I was in front of the TV. During a break, a commercial came on extolling the attractions of Colonial Williamsburg at Christmastime.” He gave a half laugh, half snort. “I wasn’t even paying attention... and yet...”
“You felt drawn,” she murmured into the quiet space left by his voice trailing off.
“Yes.” Adam cringed inwardly at the detectable strain in his voice.
“Yes.” The understanding in her eyes reflected her solemn tone. “I know.”
“How do you know?” he demanded, the strain in his voice rough edged.
“I’ve felt it, that compelling draw,” she replied, her voice a bare whisper. “Many times.”
“I don’t understand any of this.” Gulping down the last of the wine, Adam rose and went to the drinks cabinet to withdraw another small bottle. “Are you ready for another?” he asked, in a near snarl.
“No.” Sunny shook her head, setting her hair rippling against her shoulders and back.
Adam shuddered in response to the sight of the long, swirling strands, the gold highlights glinting in the glow from the table lamps. His hands ached to bury themselves in the silken mass. In reflex, his fingers clenched around the delicate stem of the wineglass.
“You’re angry,” she murmured, staring pointedly at his white-knuckled grip.
And aroused, he replied in silent frustration, glaring at the offending digits. When had he ever responded to a woman—any woman—like this? Never. Adam knew full well that he had never before in his life, not even as a young and admittedly horny man reacted so strongly to a woman.
“Adam.”
“What?” Startled by the harsh sound of his own voice, he sliced a quick, hard look at her.
“Come sit down, please.” She drew a slow breath, then went on, “I have a story... several stories, to tell you.”
Recalling the tales of Scheherazade, Adam smiled, wryly, took a fortifying swallow of his wine, and returned to settle again on the opposite corner of the settee.
“About what?” He raised his brows in a deliberate arch of skepticism.
“Seasons past,” she answered, her beautiful, revealing eyes filled with gut-wrenching sadness.
Shifting mental gears away from the tales of Scheherazade, Adam suddenly recalled another tale and the visit of Dickens’s fictional ghost to Scrooge. Smiling in an attempt to ease the tension in the muscles banding his stomach, he repeated the miser’s response to the specter.
“Long past?”
Sunny’s return smile was soft, melancholic.
“Our past.”
Adam had reached the point of explosion. Leaping to his feet and nearly spilling the wine in the process, he took the two steps necessary to close the