Restorations (Book One Oregon In Love) (9 page)

Sara emitted a little squeak when she
remembered the letters in her lap. She shoved them between the
cushions of the couch, praying he didn’t notice. She stood up,
striving to appear nonchalant.

“Uh, were you able to get the trailer
rented?”

“Yep. It’s parked out at the curb. I talked
to Mrs. Hogarth, and she said her son would help me load the
furniture tonight.”

“Oh, how nice.”

He glanced at his watch. “It’s almost time
for dinner. Is there anything special that sounds good?”

Sara furrowed her brow as if deep in
thought. All she wanted was to put those letters where he’d never
find them. “Honestly, I don’t care. Whatever sounds good to
you.”

Brian walked around to the front of the
couch and plunked down on the cushions, missing Sara’s expression
of dread when she heard the telltale crinkling sound from the
paper.

“Where’s your phonebook? I’ll look in the
yellow pages and we can decide together.”

“Really, I couldn’t care less what we have,”
she said, waving her hands in little desperate motions. “Just
something quick.”

Brian settled more comfortably on the couch.
“I was hoping for something different. Could I take a look at your
phonebook?”

“Can't you look something up on your
phone?”

“Dead battery.”

Okay
. She had to oblige him. The chances were slim he suspected
anything, but somehow the thought failed to comfort her.

“Fine. I’ll go get it.”

In the kitchen, Sara bit her lip in
frustration when she saw all the boxes the phonebook might be
under. After waging a feverish search, it still took her a good
five minutes to locate the thing. She wrenched it out from under a
box and rushed back into the living room.

Sara found Brian reading the letters. She
let out a squawk of outrage. “You have no right to snoop in my
personal things!”

Brian looked up.
“
I
wrote them,” he
said with maddening reason.

Sara stood clenching the phonebook, unsure
of what to do. If she demanded the letters back, he might think she
deemed them important. And of course she didn’t. She raised the
phonebook and tossed it at him, glad when it hit him in the chest
with a satisfying thwack before falling unheeded to the floor.

Brian reached out and grabbed her by the
wrist, pulling her down onto the couch next to him. When she tried
to tug free, his grip tightened. Heart pounding hard, she slowly
raised her gaze to meet his.

“Been reminiscing, Sara?”

“I...I found them when I was packing,” she
said, feeling trapped by the intensity of his green eyes.

Brian released her wrist, but took her hand
in his. His fingers felt warm and firm wrapped around hers. With
his thumb, he lightly traced patterns on her skin. “We need to
talk.”

“About what?” she asked stupidly.

The doorbell rang. Brian groaned. He stood
up and thrust the letters at her. “I’ll get the door.”

He waited until Sara left the room before
yanking the door open. A well-dressed man stood on the other side
of the threshold.

“Can I help you?” Brian said gruffly.

“Is Sara here? She said she’d be home if I
dropped by.”

“Who are you?” he asked, not allowing him to
enter.

The man smiled equably. “A friend. Tell her
it’s Daryl.”

Brian crossed his arms. “What kind of
friend?”

“I could ask the same thing of you.”

Brian heard Sara coming back into the living
room. “Sorry, she’s unavailable right now.”

“Are you trying to tell me that you two
are—?”

He edged the door closed. “That’s right.
I’ll tell her you said hello.”

Daryl smirked. “So
you’re
the new
opportunity.”

Brian shut the door in his face, cutting the
man’s speech short.

“Who was at the door?”

He started guiltily at the sound of Sara’s
voice. “Um, just someone who made a mistake.” He crossed the room
to her side. “Sara—”

Sara put up her hands in a defensive gesture
and took a step backward. “Really, Brian, there’s nothing to talk
about. I merely found some old correspondence, and I needed to look
over it to decide whether or not to throw it away.”

Brian moved closer. “And did you?”

“Did I what?”

“Throw those letters away.”

She lifted her chin and glared at him with a
particularly mulish expression. “It’s none of your business.”

Which hopefully means she
didn’t toss them
. If she kept them, it
might be a sign she still viewed him with some warmth.

He looked down at her, noticing she stood
bathed in an ethereal light from the stained glass windows. She’d
been born in the wrong century, he decided. She looked like some
melancholy princess out of a fairy tale, a picture of wary
innocence with her large gray eyes fringed by thick lashes.

Sara felt she should move,
but remained fixed to the spot. The tender verses and words from
Brian’s letters coiled seductively through her brain. With a little
shock, she realized a part of her still longed to hear him say
those words to her, to experience that feeling of being cherished
once again. She searched his gaze, wondering if she imagined the
tenderness there. Moisture burned her eyes.
I can’t still be in love with him. I just
can’t
.

Sara bit back an anguished sob, despising
her weakness. Brian seemed to hesitate for a moment, then slid a
hand against the small of her back, pressing her toward him. She
didn’t resist. With his other hand, he nudged up her chin and
lightly touched his lips against hers. His kiss was everything and
more than she remembered, warm and sweet. Sara gave herself up to
the embrace, relishing the familiar feel of being held in his arms.
As his kiss deepened, she felt her resistance slip away. Her arms
stole around his neck and she touched his hair the way she used
to.

For this moment her world was made right
again.

Brian silently exulted in Sara’s pliant
response. Her trust, her sweetness, intoxicated him. He thought of
the man on her doorstep moments before. Was the guy a boyfriend?
Did she still care for the jerk?

A black wave of jealousy obliterated the
feel of Sara’s kiss. Brian needed to know. He lifted his lips a
breath away, tightening his hold on her. “Do you ever kiss Daryl
like this?”

Sara went rigid. Then she gave him an
almighty shove, sending him stumbling backwards toward the
couch.

“Don’t ever touch me again! Gah!” She
disappeared into her room, slamming the door behind her.

Brian blinked at the sudden turn of events.
When he regained a modicum of reason, he gave his hair a fierce
tug, calling himself every kind of idiot for blowing the moment.
How could he say something so stupid?

But when Sara responded to him so
passionately, the thought of her in Daryl’s arms made him choke.
All logic had flown away.

Brian harshly rubbed his face. He didn't
hear any sound from Sara’s room. There’d be no talking to her
tonight—especially when there wasn’t much he could say in his
defense. Glancing around the room, he saw all the waiting boxes and
furniture. What else could he do but continue packing?

Brian worked into the night with the help of
the landlady’s son, expending his frustration through physical
labor. Soon everything was packed into the trailer and ready for
the trip out in the morning. He made his way back to the studio
apartment and fell into an exhausted sleep.

The next morning, Brian awoke more fatigued
than ever. As the events of the previous evening filtered into his
groggy mind, he wondered what in the world he could say to Sara to
fix the situation.

Next door, he found her putting away the
vacuum cleaner. The apartment, empty of décor, fairly shone from
the cleaning.

“Everything’s done here,” she said, her
voice resigned and her features drawn.

Yes, it
is
, he thought dismally.

With a suitcase in hand, Sara swept past
him, presumably to turn in her keys to the landlady. Brian made one
last check around the apartment to be sure nothing was left behind.
In her bedroom, he noticed the smell of burnt paper. He found ashes
in a metal wastebasket. No mystery as to what had burned there.

Brian clenched his jaw and walked out of the
apartment, shutting the door behind him with a snap.

Chapter Eight

Outside the sun shone in an azure sky and
Sara heard a bird chirp from a nearby tree. Dark thunderclouds and
lashing rain would’ve better suited her mood. After castigating
herself last night for her foolish behavior, she worked with a will
to clean her apartment, hoping to put the whole sorry episode with
Brian out of her mind. Now, she just felt jaded and tired.

Sara climbed into her little Honda Accord,
accompanied by her small suitcase and pillow, the former of which
she shoved into the backseat. Brian insisted on driving, so she
planned to sleep all the way to Buell Creek. The less interaction
with him, the better. She had nothing to say to him and swore never
to let him know how deeply he hurt her.

The notion he considered her free and easy
with her affections burned deep. Brian was the first and only man
she ever allowed to kiss her with any measure of passion. Though he
couldn’t possibly know that, it rankled that he thought otherwise.
Just because he probably kissed scores of women didn’t mean she
treated men the same way.

Sara mashed the pillow up against the window
and squirmed to get comfortable. Brian got in the opposite side,
only affording her a quick glance before starting the car and
pulling away from the curb. She refused his offer of coffee when he
stopped at an espresso shop on the way out of town. Squeezing her
eyes shut, she was thankful when he no longer attempted to engage
her in conversation.

Brian watched Sara leave the car and head in
the direction of the gas station restroom. He ground his teeth in
aggravation. Over the last several hundred miles, he'd wracked his
brain to think of a way to open up dialogue with her. Her freezing
attitude daunted him to say the least. He sent up a prayer for
wisdom and took a deep breath when she came back into view.

Once he paid the gas station attendant,
Brian eased his frame back into the car. Sara, already inside,
punched her pillow and pointedly ignored him. He drove some
distance on the freeway before taking the plunge. He cleared his
throat. “Sara?”

She responded with something that sounded
like, “Grummph.”

“We need to talk about last night.”

Silence. Then, “There’s nothing to say.”

“I disagree.”

Straightening in her seat, she narrowed her
eyes at him. “What happened was just a pathetic moment of weakness
best to be forgotten.”

“That’s not the way it was!”

“Would you mind staying in the lane please?”
she said with saccharine sweetness.

Brian turned his attention back to the road,
stifling the urge to give Sara a good shake. “I need to explain why
I said what I did.”

“Trust me, Brian, I have no desire to hear
your excuses.”

“If you don’t listen to me, I’ll...I’ll pull
over and kiss you again.”

She gave him a haughty stare. “You like
using a kiss as a threat.”

“Be reasonable,” he said, exasperated. “We
need to work this out.”

“Work what out?”

“You and me,” he grated.

Sara scooted closer to the passenger door
and crossed her arms.

Brian flicked on his turn indicator and took
an exit leading to a rest stop.

“Where are we going?” she asked, sitting up
in alarm.

“We are going to talk, like it or not.”

Sara’s hands began to sweat when Brian
pulled into the rest area. He parked away from most of the other
vehicles and shut off the engine. Couples and families taking a
break from their travels milled to and from the bathroom. Two kids
played Frisbee in the grass while a dog ran around their legs.

It looked sunny and happy out there. Sara
suppressed a sudden desire to escape from the car. Away from the
uncomfortable presence of Brian Farris and his searching gaze.

He turned to her. “What I said last night
was terrible. But when I saw Daryl I became jealous and—”

“So
that’s
who was at the door! Why didn’t
you let him in?”

“He’s not the kind of guy you should be
seeing.”

She raised a supercilious brow. “And I
suppose you’re an expert at identifying those types?”

“As a matter of fact I used to be one of
those types, so I should know.”

“
Used
to be?”

“Used to be.”

Sara lowered her gaze, vaguely aware of the
pinging sound of the cooling engine and the muffled noises from
outside. “So what’s this about ‘you and me’?” Through her lashes,
she watched Brian toy with the steering wheel.

“We have a history together, Sara. And the
way it ended two years ago really bothers me.”

She bit back a sarcastic comment.

“You never gave me a real explanation,” he
continued.

“I wrote you a letter!”

“It was a nasty letter and not worthy of
you. Why did you really leave?”

Sara flushed angrily. The letter had been
horrid, but certainly no worse than the way he’d treated her. “I
heard what you said about me to your roommate.”

Brian maintained a blank expression.
“Refresh my memory.”

Sara’s heart thudded dully in her chest. She
swallowed. “You...let him know that you were using religion as a
means to an end with me.” Sara pinned him with her gaze, daring him
to deny it.