And sounded that way, too.
It didn’t gel with the woman who’d taken his hand and climbed down into his arms the night before.
“Why not?”
She glanced at him, at the phone he still had in his hand. “You have to ask?”
The question was meant to put him off. Shut him up. Whatever. It didn’t faze him.
“Yes, I do. Because, frankly, I’m finding it hard to imagine losing this again.”
She sucked in her lips. Pursed them. Took a sip from the water bottle in the holder. There was one there for him, too. She never traveled in the desert without her water.
“Losing what?” Her question came just as she was turning onto Mustang Mountain Drive—such a fancy name for the one-lane, rugged road.
“Losing you.”
Pulling off into the first lay-by she came to, Kerry faced him. “You don’t have me, Rafe. We slept together. Maybe it was a really bad thing to do, maybe it wasn’t. It’s too late to do anything about that. But you do not have me.”
He’d hit a sore spot. Wasn’t sure how to salve the wound. “I’d like to know I can call and you’ll answer. That you’ll call me if you want to. That we can share a meal now and then.”
“Share a meal. Where, Rafe? In my house? Because anywhere else in town, people will just talk. It’s not like the mighty Colton board hangs out in our restaurants. And I’m guessing having me out to your house would be a no.”
It shouldn’t be. But when he hesitated, picturing that happening, he couldn’t really see it, either. “My home is my own,” he told her anyway. “I can entertain anyone I choose to entertain.”
“So you bring women friends there?”
“No.” He’d never dated anyone long enough to expose her to the Colton clan.
“I’m not going to be a woman you visit occasionally,” Kerry said. He could see the pain in her eyes. The longing. And the shard of reality, too. “And you can’t offer me any more than that. It would be suicide for me, Rafe.”
That was the time to tell her he could offer her more. But he couldn’t picture how that would look. How it would work.
He’d never felt so helpless in his life, looking at heaven and knowing he wasn’t going to get there. No matter how good he was. How hard he tried. It just wasn’t his to have...
He had felt that helplessness before—twenty-three years ago, sitting in Payne Colton’s study.
“It’s okay,” Kerry said, reaching out to run her hand along the side of his face.
Comforting him? He’d been attempting to comfort her. To let her know that he was going to be there for her. That he wouldn’t just abandon her again.
“I understand,” she added, her voice soft and oh so sweet.
“Understand what?”
“You already let go, Rafe. You moved on. These past few days...what you’re feeling...it’s just residue of long ago. It’s not real. Not part of your life.”
“You don’t know that.” He didn’t know it.
She nodded. “Yes, I do.”
Her confidence pissed him off. What the hell? She wasn’t inside him. Had no idea what he was feeling. “What makes you so sure?” he asked, ready to point out the error in her ways as soon as she clued him into her thinking.
Because whatever she thought she knew, she was wrong.
“Because if you felt even half of the intensity I feel for you, you wouldn’t be asking me just to stay in touch, you’d be asking me to share your life with you.”
He’d known she was wrong—just not what about. He felt the intensity. It was burning through him. Eating away at him. It just didn’t prompt the result she thought it should. Didn’t mean it wasn’t there.