All of You (11 page)

Jessica opened the door around six thirty, well aware of who would be on the other side. He was exactly as she expected. Bruised from temple to jaw with an ugly black-and-purple mark that would have made her flinch if she were willing to feel compassion. He wore the same white dress shirt and dark slacks too, but the sleeves were rolled up and he had a rumpled look all over him that she just knew was driving him crazy. She hadn’t known him long, but he was as exacting with his appearance as she was. Which meant this was a calculated decision to come to her for sympathy.

“I didn’t think you’d let me in,” he said when she gestured for him to enter.

“A couple of hours ago, you’d be right.” She closed the door, hoped he got a little unnerved by the sound of her throwing all four of her locks behind him. “But then I started thinking, why should it matter to me what you have planned for your future? It’s not as if I’m going to be part of it.”

“Jess—”

“I’m just part of your present. A very brief part,” she added, not facing him as she continued toward the kitchen. “Thirsty?”

“Jess—”

“No? Well, aside from that, I’d like to make an early night of it. I have briefs to write and I need to catch up on some sleep—”

“Jessica!”

She spun, her voice drying up at the disappointment in his eyes. What right did he have to be disappointed? She was the one with the ruined plans for a perfectly meaningless affair. He was the one who lied every time he got near her.

“We need to talk. About us.” He dragged his hand through his hair with a wince. “About whatever Lucas told you.”

“He didn’t have to tell me anything. Unlike your usual lovers, I’m fully capable of reading.”

“About that list, you have to understand, it was just a way of getting my thoughts straight. It wasn’t about you.”

“Of course it wasn’t.” She strolled over to her fridge to pull out a bottle of water, not liking the angry energy surging through her. “I’m too nitpicky and spendy for it to be about me.” Not to mention too emotionally unavailable. The bottle crackled in her hold. “Like I said before, I’m not the woman you’re looking for.”

“I wish you’d stop saying that,” he groused from the other room. “You could be everything I ever wanted, if you’d give us half a chance to find out.”

Oh, could she? If she tried really, really hard? The bastard. She knew what it was like when you turned yourself inside out for people. All it got you was left behind. The urge to throw the full bottle at his overblown head was nearly overwhelming. “There’s no way I could possibly be the woman on that list.”

“How do you know?”

“Because if I were, I’d have to shoot myself!” She stomped back into the living room where Kyle was standing, arms crossed and an expression of patience on his face. For some reason, that annoyed her all the more and logic flew out the window. “Have you ever said a single word of truth to me? Even one? Because I have to tell you, it’s far preferable to be with a schizophrenic than a pathological liar!”

“There’s nothing wrong with knowing what I want,” he replied stubbornly. Which wasn’t an answer to her question.

“There is if you’re sleeping with me while you look for it.”

“I’m looking at what I want,” he snapped, snapping his hand her direction.

If he’d reached out and made contact with the side of her face, he couldn’t have shocked her more. No one just wanted her. Least of all on such short acquaintance. Who made claims like that? “You don’t know the first thing about me.” It was all she could think to say.

His face softened. “I know that you want me the same way.”

“For sex,” she replied, finally coming to the correct conclusion. A disturbing disappointment filled her instead of relief.

His good eye squinted. “Do you look for ways to make everything I say sound evil?”

Probably. It was the reason one of her foster mothers had pointed her toward law. Jessica forced her arms to stay rigidly at her side instead of hugging them around herself. “You can’t possibly claim you want anything else.”

“What if I wanted everything else?” he asked, his gentle tone loud in the silence between them.

Her laugh sounded terrified even to her own ears. “You’d be off your medication.”

“Because I took one look at you and recognized your value as a person?”

She fisted her hands as he stepped close. As a little girl, she’d listened to the flattering lies of a set of prospective parents. Believing Kyle just wasn’t in her anymore. “Because you think you made some life-altering connection with a woman over a single dinner.”

“We did. If we hadn’t, you wouldn’t have brought me home in the first place.”

He was close now. Close enough to breathe his scent, sense his warmth and remember the perfect way their bodies fit together. The urge to lean into him, let him comfort her, had her body arching without her permission. As if her body and her mind were at odds.

“Do you know what brings me back to you, Jess? When you push me away? When you tell me that what’s happening between us means nothing to you? Do you know what keeps me up at night, thinking about you?”

She didn’t want to know. But she knew he was going to tell her. When his fingertips brushed over her cheekbone, faint as a rose petal, her eyes fluttered closed all by themselves and she pressed her cheek into his palm.

“It’s that when I look at you, when you talk to me, that’s when I feel easy in my skin. I plan every second of my life. Every step I take. Everything I have ever done, because I’m scared shitless of making a mistake. I don’t even know why. No one is going to think any less of me. Honestly, my family doesn’t think a hell of a lot of me now. Even my mother calls me the charming one. They think nothing ever bothers me. They love me, they just don’t think that I have any depth. I’m just happy-go-lucky Kyle, the man without problems and you know what? I’ve gotten so I believe it half the time. I mean, let’s face it, apart from my job, I’ve made an entire life out of having no discernable substance at all.

“But when I’m with you…” He stopped to take breath, his forehead grazing against hers in a caress. “All of a sudden, I’m real. I’m stupid. I make mistakes left and right. And it doesn’t matter. I stop thinking about anything but you. How to make you smile. How to get you to talk to me. How to make you look at me that way that tells me no matter what you say, you care.”

She shook her head. “No, Kyle.”

“Yes, Jess.”

She opened her eyes. “You don’t understand. I can’t care. I quit caring about other people a long time ago.”

“Why?” He hadn’t given up. She knew that. Whatever her illusions were about a no-strings affair, they were gone now. And he had to lose them as well.

“Because eventually, everyone will quit caring about you. If they ever really cared in the first place.” She felt herself go cold beneath his hand. “I don’t ask anyone to care about me. I specifically told you not to. I don’t need it and I don’t want it. If you can’t deal with that, you need to leave.”

“You don’t want me to.”

Something in her was shivering. Responding. It needed to be quelled. “I’m not going to give you what you want. I can’t.”

“Try,” he murmured, his other hand sliding around her waist, heat seeping from it into her back. Those tingles only he could create began dancing down her spine while her belly warmed like chocolate liqueur. She softened into him, her breasts pressing into his wonderfully solid chest and their hips meeting with perfect alignment. He fit her, every jut and angle matching her curves and valleys. It didn’t make sense, but it felt like heaven. He lowered his mouth until it grazed hers. “For me, Jess…”

Senses mesmerized, Jessica let him lure her in. His lips were soft against hers, kind and inviting. It could have been a first kiss. A promise. A vow—

“No!” She jerked away, nearly unbalancing him. Again she saw disappointment turn down the corners of his mouth. “Don’t look at me that way. You don’t know, all right? You have no idea what it’s like to care and not have it returned. You, you’re loved by everyone you meet. Effortlessly. Even the people you say don’t think much of you are thinking about you. You have no idea what it’s like to be alone. So don’t you judge me, Kyle. You don’t have the right.”

“I’m not.” But he was. She could tell. He was thinking her weak. Believing she didn’t know how to take risks. He was just like Dory, risks came easy to them. It was safety they didn’t understand.

“Tell me what it was like. Help me understand.”

She shook her head. Like she hadn’t gone through that line of questioning with the state-mandated shrink year after year. “Yeah, right after you tell me why you’re claustrophobic. Better yet, why not even your brother knows about it.”

That shut him up for a few seconds. Precious seconds while she grappled for direction. If she sent him away, he’d know he’d affected her—unacceptable. If she let him stay, he’d slowly but surely burrow himself into the fabric of her life. He’d make her care about him. And eventually, he’d leave. He’d realize his infatuation was only physical. Once she stopped being a mystery, he’d get bored. Not to mention he wanted a family for some godforsaken reason and her maternal days were gone for good thanks to the dozens of kids who’d forgotten her once they had real mothers to care about.

“It was the year Lucas left for MIT.”

Jessica felt her eyes widen. Oh God, he was calling her bluff.

“It was strange being away from him. We went from doing just about everything together to being a country apart, and I had to figure out what it meant to be independent for the first time in my life. To be alone. Contrary to what you think, I do know what it’s like to be alone. I just never choose to be. Not when there’s a whole world of people and places and things I can be a part of.”

She bit her lip at the gentle reproof.

He took a deep breath. “That year I was a minor part in a ten-car pileup off the 805 interchange. My car got pinned to the median and buried under two others. Three people died in that accident. Two others have permanent injuries. I walked out with a broken arm and a dislocated shoulder. That’s it. A few scratches in the scheme of things. If walking out with an oversensitivity to cramped spaces is the most I have to deal with, I’m not about to complain.”

She hated how much she wanted to touch him right then. To wrap her arms around him and tell him he had as much right to his ghosts as anyone else. But it was an impulse she couldn’t indulge. Kyle would take hold of her right back.

“And you know what? In the five hours it took to dig me out, the whole time I waited, I knew how lucky I was. I still know. It’s why I follow my instincts about everything. It’s how I know that what I feel for you is real and worth building. So, yes, I’ve lied to you. Not to hurt you. Not to pressure you. Just to know you. I’m not proud of it, but all we have is the day we’re living, Jess. If you constantly live for tomorrow, you’re never gonna live at all.”

That much she knew wasn’t true. “Tomorrow always comes, Kyle. Usually when you can least afford it.”

And finally, it happened. What she needed him to do and hated most to see. The light in his brilliant blue eyes faded and he accepted the inevitable. She was a lost cause. “So this is it? You just…send me and what could be out the door.”

Jessica swallowed around the jagged lump in her throat. “I have to.”

He wouldn’t be Kyle if he didn’t try one more time. “No, you don’t.”

She made herself smile, though it hurt for reasons she couldn’t explain. Walking to the door before she made an even bigger fool of herself, she ignored the part of herself that wanted too much and listened to the part that knew better. She undid the locks, twisted the knob and opened it before lifting her chin and facing him one last time.

“Yes. I do.”

“Leave it to our girl to kick your ass in the lame platitudes department.”

Kyle slumped into the vinyl bench seat of Baldy’s and tried to summon a grin. Even a sarcastic one.

“That about when she threw your ass out?” Dory asked, lifting a Sam Addams longneck to her lips.

“Give or take a few seconds.”

“Told you not to tell her.”

“My brother told her.” A crime for which Kyle was still considering modes of revenge.

“What’s that got to do with the price of eggs? The idea was to seduce her, kid. I didn’t think you’d have much trouble with the concept.”

He wasn’t answering that. “When I called you, I thought you’d be a little more helpful, Dory.”

“Why?” The older woman ran a restless set of fingers through her fluttery bangs, the weariness on her face shining through. When she’d whistled for him at the door of the bar, he almost hadn’t recognized her. The slightly blue, tightly permed hair he now knew was a wig was gone. Instead, her real hair was fine, steel-colored and cut in a jagged diagonal shag. She wore a sleeveless black cotton tee with snug dark jeans on her wiry body. He realized the reason for their instant rapport at once; Dory was Belinda in forty years. “I already got you every opportunity you’ve ever had. Plus, I was saving Jessica for my son, Daniel, but when you floated her boat I made an exception and believe me, buddy, I don’t ever short my kid. I really don’t see how much more helpful I could get.”

“Help me fix this.”

Dory shook her head at him. “Honey, you gotta face that it’s over. You had a chance when she couldn’t see you coming. Telling her you’ve got feelings for her?” She threw up her hands. “You didn’t just screw the pooch, kid. You went out back and shot Ol’ Yeller.”

Kyle dropped his head back onto the top of the booth seat. Yeah, that’s about what he’d figured too. “I might accept it if I could just figure out why she’s so afraid.” It hadn’t escaped his notice that he’d bared his weak spot, but she hadn’t uttered a word about hers. He finally understood what it meant to have something sticking in your craw.

The silence from the usually vocal end of the table finally registered. He looked up to find Dory staring at him from behind her tipped beer. “What?”

“Do you really love her? Not that hearts-and-flowers bullshit, but the real thing, the stick-with-her-through-anything kind. The kind that’s more important than what you thought you wanted. The kind that puts her first.”