His mouth dropped open in surprise. “I thought you loved it. You said you did. You always had such great stories to tell about those weird old Hollywood movie stars. I always pictured you wandering into some Gothic Hollywood mansion and meeting up with Gloria Swanson–type Sunset Boulevard loons, telling them how they could save a buck or a million on their taxes.”
She shifted her head and stared at the fire, not wanting Rill to see the tears that sprang into her eyes. Why was she always trying to convince the world she was so happy and fulfilled when she wasn’t? Once she’d begun the role, it was so difficult to break out of it. She’d had no one to blame but herself for her typecasting. She’d wanted to do something different with her life for years now—something meaningful—but it was so damn difficult not to play the role everyone expected of her. Even when she volunteered for charities, she couldn’t get it right, coming off like a spoiled Hollywood golden girl who assuaged her guilt by sacrificing a pittance of her time to the needy.
Maybe part of her identity was associated with being an affluent, educated white woman from Southern California, but she was more than that. She was.
Why wouldn’t anyone believe her?
“Katie?” Rill asked in a quiet, firm voice.
She turned her chin reluctantly and met his stare. One of his eyebrows crinkled in concerned puzzlement when he saw the tears in her eyes.
He reached for her.
She couldn’t understand why she felt this compulsion to cry when it felt like heaven to rest her cheek on Rill’s hard chest while his hands moved up and down her arms and over her back, soothing her. Katie just stared at the fire and absorbed everything Rill offered her: his compassion, his strength . . . his heat.
“I’m sorry,” she mumbled wetly after a few minutes. “I don’t know where that came from.”
“Yeah, you do,” she heard him say, his voice rumbling straight through his flesh into the ear she pressed next to his chest.
She lifted her head and looked at him in surprise. “You mean aside from the two glasses of wine?”
He gave her a hard glance and stretched, hooking a box of tissues sitting on the end table with his finger.
“Why don’t you just tell me about it?” he suggested as she wiped her face with a tissue.
Despite the tempting invitation, Katie hesitated. She knew what she wanted to do with her life—in a general, very vague sort of way. The thing she most dreaded was the reaction she’d get from her friends and family, and Rill counted as both.
He had once, anyway, Katie thought as the earthshaking memory of him consuming her with single-minded intent last night in the darkness smashed into her awareness. Something shifted in his expression and she wondered in a flash of panic if he’d recalled those volatile moments at the same second she had.
It was all so confusing. Just because her own life was chaos, did she feel some inner need to throw everyone else’s life into disarray, as well? Not that Rill’s life was running like clockwork, but Katie surely wasn’t making things any smoother for him with her presence.
“I . . . I’m thinking about changing careers. My work isn’t very fulfilling,” she said, desperate to deflect that sudden hard gleam in Rill’s eyes, wild to ignore the way her right breast was crushed against his ribs, how she could feel the rise and fall of his chest as he breathed. She pressed her face against his sternum.
“I know you think I’m a mess,” she said in a choked voice. For a tension-filled moment, he didn’t speak or move. Her head rose as he inhaled deeply.
“I don’t think you’re a mess, Shine,” he said quietly. She
clamped her eyes shut to suppress a flood of emotion when she felt his hand move in her hair. “I think you’re impossible, and I don’t know what the hell I’m going to do with you, but I know from firsthand experience you don’t even begin to qualify as a mess.”
She couldn’t hold it in anymore. She gasped for air and shook. Rill just held her and touched her hair while she cried out the past few years of uncertainty and self-doubt.
When her tears had quieted and she’d succeeded in soaking Rill’s T-shirt, he placed his large, open hand on her back. She felt the heat of his palm soaking down through her blouse. She wasn’t sure how to interpret the gesture, but she sensed he wanted her to look up at him and knew she was right when he spoke.
“I need to talk to you about something, Katie.”
She remained completely still. It struck her that he was going to tell her to leave again, and not in the self-destructing, bitter manner she’d grown used to since arriving in Vulture’s Canyon, but in the old, sweet, thoughtful Rill way. It terrified her to consider it. She’d have no defense against a kind rejection.
When he didn’t speak again, she took the coward’s way out, and fell asleep in his arms.
Ten
The sensation of Katie’s even, slow breath lulled him until Rill, too, drifted off into sleep. He wasn’t sure how long he was out of it, but when he awoke, he had a hard-on that was difficult to ignore. He sat there on the couch with an armful of soft, fragrant woman and wondered how he could have gone for so many years without having this profound of a physical reaction to Katie. He grimaced as he tried to shift into a more comfortable position without waking her, but his erection continued on its merry way.
His cock must be making up for lost time.
Lost time, he thought disgustedly. The only thing lost between Katie and him except for the old security of their friendship, the once-familiar structure of their relationship.
He’d been planning on telling her when he saw her again that he’d thought things over and come to a crucial conclusion. Things weren’t irreversible. They’d crossed the line, but the line was still within their vision. They still could creep back over it to their separate territories. Sure, it’d take some effort, and effort required energy and care, and those were two resources Rill had been in short supply of lately.