Once and Again. Brenda Harlen

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СКАЧАТЬ his gaze lingered on the doorway through which she’d disappeared.

      Jessica was washing up the few dishes in the sink when Nick came back through the kitchen. Now that most of the cleanup was finished, she expected that he would make an excuse and be on his way. Instead, he took the carafe from the coffeemaker and brought it over to the sink to fill it with water.

      His hand brushed against her arm as he reached for the tap. The contact was obviously accidental, as his hastily mumbled apology attested, and yet the fleeting contact stirred unwelcome memories, unwanted yearnings.

      She wiped a soapy sponge around the inside of a bowl and fought back the unexpected sting of tears. This was exactly why she’d stayed away for so long. Because being with Nick inevitably made her feel things she didn’t want to feel, want things she’d always known she could never have.

      Still, she hadn’t expected the pain to be so raw, the longing so intense. It had been eighteen years, and yet she still couldn’t forget how it felt to be in his arms. She couldn’t forget the hopes and dreams they’d briefly shared. And she couldn’t forget, had never forgotten, the overwhelming emptiness that had nearly consumed her when all of those hopes and dreams had fallen apart.

      He measured coffee grounds into the filter as Jessica fought to get her emotions under control. She was more tempted than she wanted to admit to get into her car and head back to New York. And maybe she would have, except she refused to give him the satisfaction of doing what he so obviously expected.

      After he’d set the coffee to perk, he picked up a tea towel and began drying the dishes she’d set in the drainer. “There is a dishwasher,” he said, indicating the appliance beside the sink.

      She shrugged. “There weren’t that many, and I didn’t have anything else to do.”

      They worked in silence for a few minutes, but with each second that passed, she was more aware of him beside her. The scent of him—not a cologne or aftershave, but the natural male essence of him; the heat emanating from his body, a body that had once merged with hers as if they were two halves of a whole, each incomplete without the other.

      He’d once been everything to her, and when she’d lost him, she’d lost everything.

      She rinsed the last dish, set it in the rack, then drained the soapy water.

      “Coffee’s ready,” Nick said.

      She hesitated to accept the implied invitation. The last thing she wanted was to spend any more time than was absolutely necessary in Nick’s company. But after so many years of avoidance, maybe it was past time they did learn to coexist with one another again. Maybe she needed to face those memories to get past them.

      So she nodded her head and said, “Coffee sounds good.”

      He grabbed two mugs from the cupboard, filled them both with the fresh brew, and passed one to her.

      “Thanks.” She moved to the refrigerator to get the cream, then carried it to the table. She added a generous splash to her cup along with a heaping teaspoon of sugar.

      Nick took his own mug and pulled out the empty chair across from her. She noticed that he drank his coffee black.

      She also noticed, as it was his left hand wrapped around the mug, that his wedding ring was gone. The last time she’d been home, he’d worn a simple gold band on his third finger and a gorgeous blonde on his arm. She wondered at the absence of both, and more so, why it mattered.

      “How long were you planning on staying in Pinehurst?” Nick asked. “A couple of days? A week?”

      “I don’t know.”

      “Don’t you have some hotshot job you need to get back to?”

      She knew he was baiting her, but forced herself to respond coolly. “Yes, I have a job. But even hotshot attorneys are entitled to days off.”

      “I’m sure they are,” he agreed. “Except that you don’t strike me as the type of woman to take any.”

      And she never had before. In all the years she’d been at Dawson, Murray & Neale, she’d never taken a single personal day or sick day. Still, it rankled that he’d guessed this about her.

      “What type of woman do I strike you as?” she challenged.

      “Ambitious. Focused. Committed.”

      She could be all of those things—had been all of those things. But lately she’d started to question her ambitions, lose her focus. And although nothing could have kept her away from Pinehurst after she’d learned of Caleb’s accident, she couldn’t deny that she was hoping a few days away from her job would give her a chance to reevaluate her choices, her life.

      “Except that dropping everything to come back here seems both reckless and impulsive,” Nick continued, then he smiled. “Which almost reminds me of the girl I used to know.”

      The smile was her first real glimpse of the Nick she remembered—the carefree boy who’d laughed easily and had made her laugh. If she’d been reckless and impulsive, it was because she’d been with him, because she’d trusted him implicitly and loved him completely.

      “I’m not that girl anymore. I haven’t been for a long time.”

      “I think you haven’t let yourself be.”

      She shook her head, even though she knew there was some truth in what he’d said. She’d gone to great lengths to build an orderly and structured life for herself, because she was afraid of the impulses that had led her into his arms and terrified of the emptiness that had almost overwhelmed her when he’d gone. “You don’t know anything about me or my life.”

      “I know that you can change your appearance but not your nature. I know that beneath the fancy suit and cool disdain, your blood still runs hot and your heart still beats faster when I’m with you.”

      She drained the last of her coffee, pushed her chair away from the table and stood up. “And I know that you’ve always been arrogant and delusional.”

      She started to turn away, but he grabbed her arm. She felt a jolt of heat as his hand came into contact with her bare skin, and her heart leapt in response to the touch.

      “I’m not imagining the way your pulse is racing right now,” he said.

      “Let go of me.”

      “That’s a mistake I made once before.”

      She tugged her arm out of his grasp. “I didn’t come here to play games with you, Nick.”

      “It doesn’t matter why you came,” he said. “It doesn’t matter that I don’t want you here. What matters is that there’s still a powerful chemistry between us.”

      “Maybe it’s just animosity,” she shot back over her shoulder as she exited the room.

      “There is that,” he agreed.

      Nick watched her walk away, wondering what it was about her cool, hands-off attitude that made him want to put his hands all over her. Maybe it was lust, a need to sate the physical СКАЧАТЬ