“I thought Izzie would understand another woman and be able to tell me—”
Her skin burned. She couldn’t breathe, was capable only of sucking in enough air to say, “You bastard. Leave me alone.”
“Max ...”
She yanked open the sidetable drawer, a drawer big enough to fit the damn album and the frigging yearbook, big enough to fill with all the tears she’d never shed. With shaking hands, she emptied the contents, then shoved in the two books, one on top of the other.
“Max,” he tried again.
“Get out.” She shrieked the words, then threw the thing in her hands against the connecting door. The Gideon’s Bible fell facedown, open, its spine twisted.
“I love you. I’ll be back.” A promise in a swirl of peppermint that vanished abruptly.
For the first time in two years, she wished he wouldn’t keep that promise.
A soft knock sounded on the door she’d just given a pounding.
“Go away.” She didn’t have the energy to sound convincing.
“Open up.”
Witt. Of course it was Witt. His room was next door. He’d turned his TV off. Witt, who wanted her.
She scrambled to the doorway, fumbled with the lock, threw open the door. His brow creased in worry, his eyes wandered over her face as he raised a hand to cup her chin, cool fingers against her chafed and stinging flesh.
“You okay?”
She nodded, a hint of movement. She liked his touch and loved the color of his eyes when they were full of emotion, a dark and heavy blue she could lose herself in. He’d brushed his teeth, the scent of cinnamon all around them. Thank God it wasn’t peppermint. His skin smelled of the hotel soap he’d washed his hands with, the same as the one she’d used on her face.
Cameron had pushed her at Witt, lauded him, perhaps hoped he could turn the task of protecting Max over to him. She was like a captured wild animal that could be passed from one keeper to another. Yet Cameron was the one who said Witt would have nothing less than true love from her, that having sex could never be good enough. He doubted she’d ever be ready. He went on and on about her inadequacies. Maybe the truth was that Cameron didn’t really want to see her with another man.
Without a thought for the consequences, she wrapped her arms round Witt’s neck, buried her face in the crook between shoulder and ear. Uncaring of the roughness of his shirt against her raw skin, she breathed deep of him. “Make love to me.”
His body hardened in her arms and not in the right place. “It’s not time.”
She rubbed her body against him, smiled when she felt him begin to rise to the occasion. “I’ll let you be on top.”
“You’re doing this because you’re pissed at your husband.”
“He’s a ghost,” she mumbled against Witt’s shirt. “I’m putting him to rest.”
“You’re getting back at him.” His hands rose to her arms around him, pulled them away until he could look down into her face. “You gotta want me, Max, not vengeance.”
Her nose tingled. Tears she wouldn’t cry pricked at her eyelids. “Did you ever lie to your wife?”
“I didn’t tell her things I knew she wouldn’t like.”
“But you did those things anyway.”
“Sometimes you have to.”
“Did you have sex with another woman?”
“No.” He searched face, touched a finger to her reddened cheeks. “And that’s not what your husband did.”
“No.” She took a deep breath, then added, as if it were the same thing, “He talked about me with another woman.”
“Would it have bothered you if it was another man he told?”
She didn’t say anything.
“It would have bothered you, but you’d understand that sometimes people have to talk their marriage out with someone else to find perspective.” Damn, that was a long speech for him.
“It’s different.” She said the horrible name. “Izzie was his old girlfriend.”
Witt’s hands slid down her arms, cupped her elbows. “Izzie was two thousand miles away.”
She wanted to rest her forehead against his chest. Okay, so it was a little like the times, after a fight with Cameron, that she’d run to her best friend, Sutter Cahill. Except that Sutter wasn’t the opposite sex like Izzie. And she hadn’t run to Sutter in two years.
But Izzie had been two thousand miles away.
Witt bent at the knees, tried to look into her downcast eyes. “You’re a lot prettier than her, too.”
“Don’t try to make me feel better,” she muttered, hiding her face in his shirt. He’d managed to take the edge off her jealousy, blunt the anger, and make her feel ashamed and over-reactive. “You think I’m skinny.” So did Cameron. “Izzie’s buxom.”
He slid his hands down, trailed his thumbs beneath her smallish breasts, spanned her waist, then rested his fingers on her hips. “I like the way you feel.”
“She has long, beautiful hair. Men like long hair.”