“There would have been, if you’d said ‘yes’ when I first asked you to go out to dinner with me.”
“We couldn’t have gone out. The blackout—”
“The blackout came after you turned me down.”
“That isn’t the point. If we’d been in a restaurant, nobody would have been hovering over us, not once the power went out.”
Zach shrugged. “OK. You got some of it right.” The look on his face changed. His eyes darkened from emerald to forest green as he took a step forward. “But you got the most important part wrong.”
How had she gone from offense to defense?
“What important part?” she said, taking a quick step back.
“The sex part.” He reached out, framed her face with his hands. “What we had was more than sex. It was—hell, it was incredible.”
“It was only—”
He leaned in. Put his mouth gently against hers. She bit back a moan.
“Don’t try and change the topic.”
“Trust me, honey.” His arms went around her as he gathered her in. His erection pressed against her belly, hard and full of absolutely decadent promise. “I’m not trying to change the topic. Why would I want to do that when we’re finally together again?”
Jaimie caught her breath.
“Don’t,” she whispered. “I can’t think when you—”
He caught her hand. Brought it to his mouth. Kissed the palm, then brought her hand down his body and lay it over his fly. She gave a moan so soft, so filled with need that he was afraid he’d ruin everything by moving too fast, undoing his zipper, parting her thighs and burying himself deep inside her again.
“That’s half the problem,” he said in a husky whisper. “Not thinking, I mean. Or maybe it’s thinking too much. Like you, thinking that what had happened that night was so good that it had to be bad.”
She raised her face to his.
“It was,” she said, her voice breaking. “I have never, ever done anything so—so wanton in my entire—”
“And I’ve never done anything as stupid.” Her face fell; silently, he cursed himself for a fool and he caught her chin, forced her to meet his gaze. “Anything as stupid as letting my pride get in the way.” There’d been more to it than that; there’d been that goddamned lying call from Young because yes he was sure it had been a lie, but now wasn’t the time to talk about it. Instead, he brushed his mouth over hers, again and again until she sighed and her lips parted and clung to his. “I should have called you, Jaimie. Hell, I should have flown to D.C., banged my fist against your door until you had no choice but to let me in and then—”
“And then,” she said, “this would have happened a lot sooner.”
“You’re damn right, it would.” He framed her face with his hands. Ran his thumb lightly over her mouth. “I thought about you all the time.”
“About how easy I was, you mean,” she said, jerking away from him. Color flooded her face. “How easy I still am.”
She turned away.
Zach wanted to pull her back into his arms, stop her doubts with his mouth, his hands, his body, but she deserved to know why he had let so much time go by before coming after her, and why he finally had. He couldn’t tell her about Caleb, but he could tell her the truth that mattered, the truth he’d known the instant she’d opened that door.
He reached for her, his hands hard on her shoulders, and swung her toward him.
“You’re doing us both a disservice.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Do you want me to believe that’s what you are, Jaimie? An easy lay?” Anger flashed in her eyes. Good. It meant he was getting somewhere. “And that I’d come hundreds of miles just for a woman who was?” She tried to turn her face away, but he wouldn’t let her. “The truth is you’d never done anything like what you did that night. Isn’t that right?”
He waited. And waited. Then, finally, she nodded.
His heart lifted.