“To walk to a car across the street.” He shook his head, unable to see what that had to do with this. “So?”
“So? So, it was the first time I was alone with the woman who…” She trailed off as if she was about to say something she didn’t mean to…probably something revealing she’d rather him not know. He was so tired of her holding back.
“The woman who what, Sarge? Come on. We have been over and over this. Finally, fucking say what you mean.”
“Fine. The woman who took you from me.” Her voice trembled but he could tell she’d fought to keep it strong.
Ah, hell. His chest morphed into a sinkhole and swallowed his heart. He wrapped Gloria so close his nose was on hers. “You see her around here anywhere?”
Gloria held on to his neck but didn’t answer.
“Do you?” he repeated.
Slowly, she shook her head.
“Do you see any woman other than you in my arms?”
She shook her head again.
“Right. Because when there’s you, there’s only you. And right now, there’s you. I’ve told you a hundred times I didn’t fuck her when she crawled into my window. She’d tell you herself if you asked.”
“She did tell me,” Gloria whispered.
“Seriously?” He pulled back to study her expression. Sincerity was written all over her face.
“Earlier today,” she confirmed.
“So what’s the problem?”
“The problem…” She looked up at the sky before pegging him with those blue eyes and shooting him straight. “The problem is that if I go to bed with you tonight, there’s no guarantee you won’t go to bed with someone else tomorrow.”
He pulled his head back some so he could focus on her. She actually looked worried. “I could say the same to you.”
“I wouldn’t do that to you.”
“I wouldn’t do that to you either, Sarge. I never did it to you. You need to check your feelings against your facts, babe. I never had the desire to sleep with Jordan again. I didn’t try to start a family just because she had my kid. Besides, if I married her, she’d be Jordan Knight. Like one of those New Kids on the Block.”
Gloria blew out a brief laugh, and he could tell she didn’t want to laugh. Her smile faded a second later.
“Point is, I don’t want Jordan.” He lowered his nose to hers again and squeezed her in his arms. “I don’t want anyone else. I want you, dammit. And here you are.”
“Ash.”
“Sarge,” he said, letting his voice drop low and his arms hold her tighter. “Let me blow your mind tonight.”
There it was. As offers went, he couldn’t make what he wanted any clearer. And when she gave her answer, it was equally clear and the exact opposite of what he wanted to hear.
“I can’t,” she whispered, then let go of him and swam for the ladder on the dock.
Chapter 9
Sofie pushed her sunglasses up and leaned her head back to smile up at the bright sun. “This. Is. The. Life.”
“Totally.” Faith smiled up at the sky as well.
Then the two of them laughed and clinked their iced tea glasses together. Next to Gloria, Charlie let out an audible sigh. They’d come to her office for Girls’ Night Out—Charlie had kept her house for her photography work after she moved in with Evan two doors over. It was a great setup with a huge porch that emptied right onto a grassy/sandy beach and the shallows of the lake. Sofie and Faith, both pregnant, lounged on chairs at the edge of where grass met sand with nonalcoholic beverages, which left Gloria and Charlie on the porch and in charge of drinking the wine.
“The babies are an epidemic around here.” Gloria refilled Charlie’s wineglass, then her own.
“Yeah.” Charlie accepted her wine, her voice was as watery as her eyes.
Gloria cast a glance to the pair of friends several feet away on the beach. Faith laughed at something Sofie said. They were wrapped in conversation, not listening in at all.
“You okay?” Glo asked Charlie.
She nodded, but she wasn’t. And because once Charlie had been there when Glo had a complete meltdown over Jordan, she turned her chair to her blond, sad friend and invited her to open up.
“Talk to me, Charlie.”
Charlie cast a gaze at their friends, then lowered her voice. Eyes rimmed with red, she said, “Evan and I have been trying to get pregnant for a year…I haven’t wanted to say anything in front of Sofie and Faith because I don’t want them to think I’m not happy for them. Because I am.” She shook her head. “It’s just…”
Oh, shit.
Once upon a time, Gloria had been faced with a best friend confiding in her about an unplanned pregnancy. She hadn’t given Kimber the sagest of advice. At the mention of something so quintessentially female, Glo nearly burst into hives. She sucked at advice for other people and was so terrified to steer Charlie wrong, she didn’t want to say anything. So she lifted her wineglass instead.
“I’m really happy for them,” Charlie sort of repeated. She sniffed and pressed her lips into a line.
Well. Damn. Gloria had to say something. She couldn’t sit here completely silent like a jerk.
“I almost had sex with Asher.”