Gwynneth Ever After (23 page)

She weighed her options. Asking Gareth was the most obvious solution, but that mischievous amusement in his eyes pretty much guaranteed at least some kind of comment to add to her discomfort. And parading out into the living room clad in the duvet would almost certainly engender a similar reaction.

Her gaze fell on Gareth’s open suitcase atop the wooden bench at the foot of the bed. She dismissed the notion out of hand. Way too forward.

Or just the sort of thing a confident, worldly woman might do in the same situation, her inner voice countered. A woman self-assured enough to drive two hours out into the country to spend a casual weekend with a man. One who was capable of that kind of fling and who knew how to behave on a morning after.

She drew up her knees and dropped her forehead onto them. Therein lay the real trouble. Clothes – or the lack thereof – weren’t the problem at all, nor were they likely to make much difference to the real issue.

The issue of exactly how one did behave on the morning after, when the very concept of a fling was foreign...

“I didn’t think to bring cream,” Gareth called out to her. “Will milk do?”

Gwyn lifted her head. Much as she wished otherwise, she couldn’t hide under the covers all day.

“Milk is fine,” she called back, forcing a lightness into her voice that, combined with a tension she couldn’t quite disguise, made her sound a little like Tweety Bird.

Rousing herself to actual motion, she picked up the thick, cable-knit turtleneck Gareth had worn the day they met. Not because of any sentimental reasons, but because it seemed to offer the most coverage. Then, semi-clad, she strolled out to the kitchen with a hard-won casualness she hoped would hide her mass of seething nerves. A casualness that fled the instant Gareth’s eyes raked over her and settled, glowing, on the sweater’s edge a scant few inches down her thighs, putting to rest any illusion of coverage.

She tugged, with a complete ineffectiveness, at the bottom of the turtleneck. “I couldn’t find – I didn’t have – ” she stumbled. Fiery heat flamed over her cheeks.

Way to keep your cool, Gwyn
.

“I don’t mind,” he assured her. “I was just thinking it looks considerably better on you than it ever did on me.”

She recalled how the sweater’s snowy whiteness had emphasized his dark good looks and magnetism in the shadowed theatre. Remembered her initial reaction to that magnetism. And seriously doubted his observation. She kept her thoughts, however, to herself.

Gareth held out a cup of coffee to her. She made herself step forward as if she drank coffee half-naked every morning and weekend affairs were a regular occurrence in her life.

When she reached to take the mug, however, he held it fast and imprisoned her free hand in his. Her heart stopped mid-beat, shuddered, then resumed its life-giving force with adrenaline-powered beats.

Gareth lowered his lips to the curve of her neck. “Now I can say a proper good morning,” he murmured against her skin.

Her coffee-cup hand jerked. Scalding heat barely registered before Gareth muttered a curse and leapt away. He took the mug from her hand, caught up a dish cloth from the counter, and mopped the dripping fluid from her fingers.

“Are you all right?”

She nodded, biting down hard on her lip. How unbelievably stupid...

She snatched the cloth from him and rubbed her hand vigorously.

“I’m fine,” she said. “I’m so sorry. Did I burn you?”

She turned her attention to mopping up the puddle on the floor, all the while excruciatingly aware of Gareth’s nearness as he leaned against the counter and watched her. Aware, too, of his silence in the face of her non-stop verbosity.

“I can’t believe I was so clumsy. Do you need a first-aid kit? I didn’t think to bring one, but maybe your cousin – ”

“Gwyn.”

She finished her mop-up in silence. She stood and dropped the soiled cloth into the sink. Then she faced Gareth, her fingers clutching the turtleneck’s hem convulsively.

Dark eyes studied her. “What’s going on?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“I mean, you’re behaving like a scared rabbit. What’s going on?”

“Nothing.” She forced a bright smile but couldn’t meet his gaze. “Nothing.”

“Regrets?” he asked quietly.

“No!” Startled out of her discomfort, she raised her eyes to the shadowed, almost pained reserve in his. “No, it’s not that, honest.”

“Then what?”

“I don’t know...” She sighed. “Yes, I do. It’s this.” She glanced around herself. “All of this.”

Gareth followed her gaze but didn’t appear enlightened. “All of what?”

“This. Being here. You. Everything.”

“Gwyn – ”

“It’s the whole morning-after thing,” she muttered, feeling renewed heat creep into her cheeks. “I haven’t done a morning-after thing for fifteen years, Gareth.” She looked away, gnawing on her lip again. “I’m not very – I don’t usually – I’ve never – ” She stopped and heaved a sigh. “Oh, hell,” she muttered. “I’m sorry.”

“For what, being honest?”

“For being so – so – ” She hugged her arms to herself and sought a word that would describe her emotional quagmire - and allow her to complete a sentence. Inexperienced? Unworldly? Gauche? All of the above?

“Gwyn.”

She started, realizing that Gareth had moved to join her. His wide shoulders filled her field of vision, hand lifting to smooth back a strand of hair from her face.

“Will you please stop tying yourself in unnecessary knots?”

She blinked. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“Do you really think this is just a weekend fling?” he asked, tracing her jaw line with the back of one finger, infinitely gentle.

She tried to untangle her tongue to tell him she’d never wanted more, but the lie refused to be spoken.

“That’s all I expected,” she finally managed, her voice husky.
All that I let myself expect.

Gareth tipped her chin up. “It’s not all I expected.”

She stiffened. “Gareth, I don’t – ”

He put a single finger against her lips. “We can’t keep pretending –
you
can’t keep pretending – that what’s happening between us can be resolved with a one- or two-night stand.”

She took his hand from her mouth. “We talked about this – ”

“Not all men are like Jack.” His voice was quiet and curiously flat.

“No,” she agreed, knowing – and not liking – where the conversation was headed. “But some are a higher risk than others.”

She referred to his high-profile, unconventional lifestyle, but as she watched his jaw clench she felt on some deep, instinctive level that she’d once again unwittingly touched a nerve of some kind. But she refused to probe, because it didn’t matter. Couldn’t matter.

Frustration played across brooding features. “Damn it, Gwyn, it’s been four years,” he said, his voice rough. “I’m the first man you’ve let close in all that time. Doesn’t that count for anything?”

“I told you before that I don’t believe in fairy tales.”

“Good,” he retorted, “because believe me, I’m no Prince Charming and I’ve never once thought of you as a damsel in distress.”

She couldn’t help but think of spilled pencils, dead car batteries, and sludge-filled bathtubs. As if he’d read her mind, Gareth’s mouth curved wryly.

“Well, maybe once or twice,” he conceded, “but never for very long.” He took her face in his hands, his thumbs caressing her cheekbones, tracing her jaw line. His gaze was penetrating, serious...loving?

 
“I know you’re scared,” Gareth continued, “and I know you’re worried about your kids. But I also know that what we have between us is too big to walk away from. I’m forty-two years old, Gwyn, and I have never felt about anyone the way I feel about you.”

His hands were so warm, so strong, so gentle. Gwyn’s breath strangled deep in her throat. It took every ounce of her resolve not to close her eyes and melt into his touch.

“Don’t,” she croaked. “Please don’t.”

Catching the arms she tried to cross over herself, he held them at her sides. “Why not? You can’t tell me you don’t feel anything.”

“I’m not. I mean, I do, but I can’t.” She gestured impatiently, her movements hampered by his grip. She stilled herself, then inhaled deeply. She could do this. She had to do this, because she couldn’t survive another Jack. None of them could.

“I’m not saying I don’t feel anything,” she said, her voice quiet and measured. “I’m saying I don’t want it to go any further. If two ordinary people like Jack and me couldn’t make it work, then – ”

“Then what, Gwyn? Then no one else deserves a chance? Or just I don’t?”

She blinked in surprise at the bitterness underlying the question. She hadn’t meant it that way at all. “Lord, Gareth, it’s not about you – ” she began.

 
“Actually, it’s more about me than you know,” he muttered.

Chapter 32

Releasing his grasp on her, Gareth turned away to pace the small kitchen. His secret loomed huge in his mind, and he wondered yet again how he had managed to make his life so very complicated. How he would ever redeem himself while keeping Gwyn’s heart – and his own - intact. He turned to face her.

I love you,
he wanted to say.
I love you more than I thought I was capable of loving a woman. More than I ever dreamed any man
could
love a woman.
But the words jammed in his throat, tangling with all the other things that his conscience told him should be said first.

“God, Gwyn, there’s so much I want to tell you,” he growled. “I owe you so many explanations - ”

On the other side of the room, Gwyn retreated behind the table, avoiding his eyes. “I told you before, friends don’t need explanations.”

Frustration surged in him, edging his voice. “Are we back to that again? Friends?”

She lifted her chin a defiant inch. “We never passed it,” she said. “Not really.”

“Bull.”

“I won’t deny that there’s a potential for something more,” she continued as if he hadn’t spoken, “but I meant what I said about needing to protect my kids.”

She hesitated. He waited, sensing more to come. She sighed.

“Gareth, we have a weekend together...a wonderful, uninterrupted weekend. Can’t we please just leave it at that?”

“No.”

Her startled gaze flicked back to him. “What?”

“I said no. I won’t settle for being friends when we both know we have a chance at so much more.”

She went still. He wrestled with his conscience one final time, then made his decision. While he couldn’t break his word to his daughter, at least Gwyn could know how he felt when she learned his secret. He’d just have to trust her to be strong enough to handle it.
 

“I love you, Gwynneth with two n’s,” he said softly. “I think I fell in love with you the very first time I saw you in that theatre, and again over coffee in that little café, and over building blocks on your living room floor, and over dinner and tuna casserole and spotted kids and late-night phone calls. I fall in love with you each and every time I see you, or speak to you, or think of you, and an entire lifetime will never be enough to show you how much. And unless I’m very much mistaken, you feel the same.”

Across the room, entirely too far away, Gwyn blinked away the shine of tears. She shook her head. “We’re too different. Our lives – ”

“Do you love me?”

“That’s not the point – ”

“It’s exactly the point.”

“You live on the other side of the world – ”

“Do you love me?”

“You’re famous, and I’m just an ordinary person – ”

Gareth could think of a thousand ways to rebut that statement, but he made himself stick to the issue.

“Do you love me?” he repeated yet again.

He watched the woman he loved steel herself, then whisper her denial.

“No.”

He smiled. “Liar.”

Her tears spilled over at last, making her blue eyes shimmer, her lashes go spiky. “Damn it, Gareth – aren’t you listening to anything I say?” she demanded.

“No,” he said simply. “Because none of it matters. Distance, jobs, lifestyle – those are just details. We’re both old enough, experienced enough, to work those things out.”

“And what if we can’t?” she asked, dashing away her tears with the sleeve of his sweater. “What then? You walk out on my kids the way their father did? Leave me to pick up the pieces of their lives a second time?”

He gritted his teeth and battled the guilt over a promise that wouldn’t let him give her a direct answer; wouldn’t let him assure her that he had learned that particular lesson the hard way and had no intention of repeating his mistake. Until Gwyn knew about Amy, simple reassurance would, at least to him, feel all too hollow.

Best to deal instead with all the other issues. He crossed his arms and leaned back against the counter.

“Fine, let’s sort it out now.”

“Wh-what?”

“Let’s sort it out now. What’s your first concern?”