Learning to Love Again (9 page)

“I realized that I was fond of her, I loved things about her, but I wasn’t
in love
with her.  She was comfortable to be around, she put up with my schedule, but…”  Jason broke the silence.  “Anyway, I started talking about moving to a small town, like Waketon, and she didn’t want to leave Houston.  So we parted ways.”

“And that was it?” 
If he didn't pick up on the jealousy before now, that tone of voice was sure to clue him in.

“That was it,” he gave her a crooked smile.  “She wasn't the one, Cole.”

Her heart stopped and then restarted at twice the normal pace.  She bit her lower lip and tried to smile back. 
What the hell does that mean?  Is he thinking I’m the one?  What the hell do I do with that?
  She laid her fork down and pushed her plate away as he did the same.

The waiter approached and offered dessert, but they both turned it down.  He cleared their plates and brought the check.  Jason didn't even glance at it, just handed over his credit card.  He started to say something, but then paused.

She reached her hand across the table and touched his arm.  “Now it’s my turn to remind you to be honest,” she told him.

“I wanted to marry
you
, Cole.  When it came down to it with Sara—like I said, I realized I was fond of her, comfortable with the way things were.  I had no desire to change things,” Jason’s eyes were full of the same fear, confusion, and hope that had her so tied up in knots.

Her breath hitched at the depth of his emotions. 
I’ve got to tell him.  Before this goes too far.  I can walk away now, but I won’t be able to if we keep going.

The waiter returned with the charge slip which Jason scrawled his name across before grabbing his copy and standing up.

“Come on.”  He held his hand out to her and led her out of the restaurant and into the cab of the pickup.  He cupped her face with his hand.  “Come home with me?” he asked, holding her gaze.

She lowered her head, away from his searching eyes.  She had to tell him the rest of her story.  But she couldn't go back to his place if he was thinking something else would be happening.  Reaching over, she placed her hand on his chest, his heart beating out its steady rhythm.  “I’m not…”

“I’m not asking you to, I just want to spend some time alone with you.  I’m not ready for the night to end, Cole,” he laid his hand over hers, trapping it against his heat.  Pressing her lips together, she nodded.  He brought her hand up to his mouth and kissed her fingertips, stepped back and shut her door, walking around to the driver’s side.

“So where do you live?” she asked.

“I bought a condo out by the lake.  It’s small,” he navigated his way through the parking lot and headed for the highway.  “But it suits my needs for now.  I’ve thought about buying up some land, building my own house, but haven’t found the right spot.”  He reached over and took her hand, interlacing their fingers together.  “I’m giving you fair warning, Nicole.  We are going to finish that conversation.”

“Which one?”  She glanced over at him. 
Did he already know?

“I want to know everything about you, even if you think it is going to hurt me.”  He entered the condominium complex through the gate and parked in front of his garage.  “Home sweet home.”

He led her inside and took her into the living room, turning on a single lamp which cast a very soft glow across the room.  “Have a seat.  I’m just going to get a bottle of wine,” he indicated the sofa and headed for the kitchen.  She stood in the middle of the room and looked around.  The room was very impersonal, similar to her apartment in Austin.  She stepped over to the large window that overlooked the lake.  Lost in her thoughts she wasn’t aware he had returned until he set the wine down on a table and stepped up behind her.  He wrapped his arms around her waist from behind her and pulled her back against him, just holding her in his arms, letting her feel his strength.

“I warned you I had hang ups.”  She sighed, relaxing against him, laying her arms over his.

“Tell me what you need, Cole.  I’m not going anywhere.”  He nuzzled her neck.

“If you want my story, you’ve got to stop that.  I can’t concentrate…”  Nicole warned, although she tilted her head to give him better access.

He chuckled and dropped his arms.  He reached for the wine and the two glasses he had brought out and turned to her.  “Come on, sit down and relax.”  He took her arm and led her over to the sofa, waiting for her to get comfortable before removing the cork from the wine bottle and pouring them each a glass.  He handed her a glass and then sat down beside her, wrapping his arm around her shoulders and pulling her against him.  “So, now that you don’t have to look at me while you answer me, tell me about your personal life.”

She took a fortifying sip of the wine. “There is so much about me you don't know.  Things no one outside of this town knows about me."  Glancing at her wine glass, she leaned forward and set it on the coffee table.  As much as she wanted to guzzle it, this was one conversation that needed to be had without the influence of alcohol.

“I mentioned earlier that the police thought my mom was trying to leave my dad the night they died."  She paused, collecting her thoughts.  He set his own wine glass down and wrapped both arms around her, offering support.  “Someone called the police saying they’d heard gunshots coming from an old feeder road that ran behind their property, so Sheriff Parker went out to check it out.  My mom's car and my dad's truck were there, mom's had a couple suitcases in it with a bunch of her clothes…” Nicole had to stop and swallow hard before she could continue.  “She'd been shot in the chest, up close.  And then he turned the gun on himself.”

“Your dad—”

“They said he must've found out she was leaving and followed her.”  She closed her eyes against the memories of what the police had told her.  “A crime of passion, that’s what they called it.  Probably more passion in that moment than had been between them in years.”  She gave a bitter laugh and allowed her head to fall onto his shoulder.  Feeling his arm tighten around her, she drew in a shuddery breath. “She hadn’t left a note, not even to say she was leaving us.  And he wasn’t around to say why…” her voice broke and she struggled to get herself back under control.  She was afraid to move her head, to see his reaction.  Other than his arm tightening around her, he’d been silent and unmoving.

After a slight hesitation, she continued.  “From that point on, I stayed on the ranch as much as possible.  I hated going to town and having people look at me and talk about me as if I didn't know what they were thinking.  I would have quit going to school if they’d have let me.  And dating was out of the question.”  Her hand was on his chest and her restless fingers smoothed over the fabric of his shirt.

He laid his hand over hers on his chest, stilling her fingers. “So was I your first date?” he smiled at her as he asked.

With a soft laugh, she shook her head.  “No, not my first date.  Jack, Mitch, and Carly made sure I went out enough to keep from being a hermit.  But you were my first boyfriend,” she admitted as she laced her fingers with his.  “You know what life was like for me in Austin, you were there.  I pushed myself to get through undergrad so I could go onto law school, and then after graduation, I took that job in California and headed out there as fast as I could.”

Needing to see his face, she sat up and turned her body to face him.  “I wanted to forget you, forget everything about Texas.  I worked my ass off for that law firm, taking on extra duties if it meant I didn't have to think up a flimsy excuse as to why I couldn't go out.  Once they started sending me on the trips, that part was easy.  It’s hard to have a personal life when you travel three weeks out of a month.  Most of the guys I met were ones I worked with, and I was careful about dating any of them. It’s hard enough to get ahead in the corporate world without everyone talking about you behind your back.  I didn’t want them to imply that I slept my way to the top.”  She hesitated for a second, closing her eyes and taking a deep breath. 
Keep going.

“But most of them didn’t make it past the second date, if they even made it to the first date.  But I wanted to know what it was like, what I was missing out on, so I let one of the other girls in the office set me up with another attorney she knew.  And he seemed nice and we had a lot in common, so I decided one night that I was going to just go for it and have sex.  But I had to drink a lot before I could, um, do it.”  As she felt him tense, she laid a hand on his arm.  “Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t rape.  I knew what I was doing, I wasn’t passed out drunk, or anything like that.  I just couldn’t relax enough to have sex.  I’d tried before…I’d get to a certain point and I’d freeze up.  But even with the alcohol, all I did was just lay there…” She averted her eyes, the shame and embarrassment welling up in her again, as she remembered that night and the names she’d been called after it was over.  “Let’s just say the experience didn’t instill any faith in my abilities to please a man and I never tried after that.

“I would remember how I felt when I was with you, how you made me feel with your touches, and I knew something was wrong, that there was something missing and I should have been able to enjoy it…no, don’t say anything.  I need to get this out all at once, or I may chicken out again.”  She felt him jerk at her admission, and she squeezed his arm to keep him quiet.

With a deep breath, she forced herself to finish.  “Nothing ever came close to what we had and I wasn’t willing to settle for less, I guess.  Plus there was the whole issue of my childhood.  I’d be with a guy, and he’d being doing all the right things, saying all the right things, but I’d have a panic attack.  I’d feel like I was suffocating and I’d feel like I couldn’t breathe.  The last guy I was seeing, somehow he managed to stick around longer than any of the others.  He was another attorney for the firm, but not in my department, so I thought it might work,” she paused to collect her thoughts.  “I was beginning to think
he
might be worth it and I was trying to talk myself into sleeping with him, to try trusting in someone else for a change.  I knew he was getting frustrated, waiting for me…He had turned on the charm and wined and dined me when I moved back to Austin, but I froze every time he tried to…And then I found out that he was messing around when I was out of town, or even not out of town.  So I broke up with him, the day of the accident.  I had walked in on him with one of the paralegals from the office, in a very compromising position.  I told her she could have him, told him not to bother calling me, and I walked out the door,” she finished.  “Four weeks later, I was discharged from the hospital and I came home to Waketon.”

“And here we are,” Jason whispered.

“And here we are, again,” she agreed, her heart racing.

He was so quiet during all of that, what is he thinking?  I shouldn't have told him.
  “And now I am terrified.”  Her heart felt like it was going to jump out of her chest.

“Of me?” he reached out and wrapped both arms around her again, and she nestled close, sighing. 
At least he didn't jump up and shove me out the door.

“Yes and no.  What if we can’t recapture what we had or if it all falls apart?  I walked away once but it almost killed me,” she admitted.  “I can’t go through that again.”

His arms tightened around her.  “Neither can I,” he replied.  “I can’t tell you what the future holds for us, baby, but I can tell you this.  I’d rather have this second chance with you than to never know and have to live with the ‘what might have been’s.”

“Jason…”  She was toying with one of the buttons on his polo shirt, so he waited, giving her the time he knew she needed to sort through her thoughts.  “I need you to know that I think I made the biggest mistake of my life walking away from you, and I knew it about nine years and a half years ago, but I was too confused and ashamed to come back.”

He leaned away from her, and with his finger under her chin, forced her to look up at him.  “I knew it the second you walked away, but I was too hurt and angry to come after you.  I wish you had trusted me enough to talk to me like this, back then.  It took a long time for me to let go of that anger, Cole, but I think I can understand better now what was going through your mind and the confusion you must have been feeling.  Hopefully, we’ll both be better able to deal with our feelings.”

He kissed her lips, and she reached up to cradle his face in her palm.  He adjusted her so that she was lying across his lap.  Supporting her with his left arm, his right hand was gripping her hip.  She could feel the heat through her dress.  She reached up and wrapped her arms around his neck, begging him to deepen the kisses without words.  Soon, they were stretched out on the sofa, the front of her dress unbuttoned, and his shirt tossed to the floor.  She teased the mat of dark hair on his chest with her fingertips while his fingers played at the edges of her bra and he nuzzled her neck.  His body moved against her and she could feel his erection through his jeans.  She shifted, allowing the contours of her body to align with his, rubbing against him.  Gasping at the sudden heat pooling between her thighs, she pressed herself closer.  Groaning he kissed a path down to the swell of her breasts.

“Still think we can’t recapture what we had?”  He whispered as he reached down and undid the front closure of her bra, parting it and looking at her.

She stiffened and he bent his head to kiss her again, keeping his left hand on her breast, not moving. She felt herself relaxing, and as he felt it, his fingers began to move on her breast.  Using his fingers, he teased her nipple.  His lips started retracing their earlier path down her neck, his right arm under her, holding her close to him.  A moan escaped her as his lips closed over her nipple and her arms slipped around him.  Her fingernails were digging into the muscles of his back.  Her leg drew up and over his hip when his thigh insinuated itself between her legs.  His fingers bit into her hip as he drew her up against him, letting his erection pressed against her.  Her dress had ridden up her thighs, and she became aware of his hand, stroking her thigh and moving up higher, to the edge of her panties.  The old familiar feeling of panic overtook her and like a bucket of ice water, extinguished the flames of desire.