Suzanna began tapping her fingers on the tilted white laminate. “Not without a reason.” A small smile crept across her gloss-covered lips. “So, how is Travis Gage?”
Dropping the sketch on the table, Rachel stood and began pacing. She hated being questioned, it made her feel uneasy, as if she’d done something wrong. Probably another annoying remnant from the past. Too many times she’d been called into the principal’s office to be questioned about her poor grades and the black circles under her eyes from staying up all night taking care of her mother.
The adults in her childhood had always tried to get the truth out of her, pried and prodded into her life to figure out if she and her sister needed to be carted off to foster homes. As much as Rachel had despised her mother, the thought of being separated from her older sister had been terrifying. Carrie was the only person she could rely on, and to Rachel, that had always meant sucking up the pain of her home life and pretending everything was just plain peachy.
Now, at thirty-one years old, she still turned to denial when someone applied pressure on her. No matter how much she loved and trusted Suzanna, talking about Travis and analyzing her own growing feelings for him only scared her to death.
Her assistant, however, was never one to back off.
“I know you met up with him last night, the least you can do is give me some details.” Suzanna grinned mischievously.
Details? God, she didn’t even know how to begin examining the details of last night. The kiss that had set her blood on fire. Travis’s assertion that he didn’t just want her body. It was the latter that seriously troubled her.
Of course he wanted her body. That’s all men ever wanted. She was a child when she’d reached that conclusion, but as an adult it had only been reaffirmed. Once she’d made a name for herself as a designer, going on casual dates had been necessary to keep up appearances. Nobody wanted to buy lingerie from a spinster. They wanted to know the person who’d designed their sexy items knew what she was doing, that she knew what it took to tempt a man and used her experiences to come up with designs guaranteed to drive the male gender wild.
The men she’d dated, however, had proved to her why she needed to protect her heart. The ones who tried to paw her in their cars were no better than those who’d accused her of being a prude. And then, of course, there was Paul. The only man she’d ever given her body to. The only man she’d ever considered giving access to her heart. But he hadn’t wanted that, had he? They’d spent six months together, six months in which she’d opened herself up, allowed herself to trust—and what had he given her in return?
Thanks for a good time, but it’s time for me to move on.
Her greatest fear was that if she let herself grow close to Travis, he’d say those same words. That he’d use her body and crush her heart, and that this time, no amount of therapy would be able to put together the broken pieces he’d leave in his wake.
“Travis and I are just trying to piece together an old puzzle,” she said, leaning back in her chair and meeting her assistant’s curious gaze.
“And?”
“And that’s it.” When Suzanna’s eyes flashed skeptically, she bit her lower lip, deciding to voice at least a few of her thoughts. “There’s just something about him, his perspective on everything. He reminds me that other people have had problems in their lives. He’s told me things about people I didn’t know, he’s told me about some of the cases he’s worked on.” She let out a heavy sigh. “I don’t know. Somehow, when I’m around him, I don’t feel alone. I feel like I’m normal, like everyone else.”
“Maybe that’s because you finally are becoming normal.”
“No, it’s not like that.” She tapped her pencil on the table, trying to find the right words. “There was this guy from school. I always hated him. He was the worst of the worst. Made me and Carrie feel like trash.”
She tossed the pencil in the tray. “Travis told me some things about the guy’s childhood. It sounded just as shitty as mine. There was something about it that made me realize all this guy’s taunting was more about him than it was about me.”
She shook her head and sighed. “It sounds really horrible, but hearing about other people’s problems actually makes me feel better about myself. I don’t feel so cheated, you know?”
Just talking about it felt like a giant weight had been lifted from her shoulders. Though the past few days had been difficult at times, as she reflected over it all, she realized that somehow Travis had managed to release some of the chains she’d been lugging around for years. Link by link, he kept managing to snap them off.
“Remember I told you he lost his wife?” At Suzanna’s nod, she continued. “There is something about his loss that I really relate to because of Carrie.”