ProvokeMe (32 page)

“So what are your intentions toward our daughter?” Cathy
Crossman asked him shortly before the bill was delivered.

He glanced across the table to Kelly for help—somehow he’d
ended up seated between her parents—but she only sipped her white wine and
shrugged.

Spencer reached up to loosen his tie.
Here goes nothing.
“Well, I’d like to…date her.”

“Mighty big plans there, son.” John Crossman laughed and
tipped back his beer.
“I figured you as the type to go bigger than that.”

“We didn’t really date the first time.”

“So we’ve heard.”

He suffered a pang of momentary panic at what exactly Kelly
had shared with her parents.
A glance her way netted him only another one of
her mercurial little smiles.

“I’d like to do things differently this time,” he continued
after draining his water.
“To that end, I’ve drawn up a contract.”

“A contract.” Cathy and John exchanged glances with their
daughter.
“Sounds like a business deal.”

“Part of it is.
I have a proposition for Kelly, something I
think she may be interested in.”

“I spent one week with you and ended up jobless and in a
severe depression.” She said it lightly but even in the candlelight he could
see the pinched lines of her face.
“What makes you think I’d entertain your
proposition for longer than the time it takes to rip up your contract?”

He almost argued that everything wasn’t his fault but he
caught himself just in time.
Learning to take your lumps was harder than it
looked.
“Because you’re smart.
You’ll see it makes sense.
All of it.
And us.”

“She had a nice date with a fellow the other night,” Cathy
said cheerfully.
“He wasn’t as handsome as you, but in my experience the
good-looking ones are more trouble.
So what are you offering her that the guy
from the other night doesn’t have?”

“I love her.” Out of the corner of his eye he saw Kelly set
down her wineglass but he didn’t divert his attention from her mother.
“And I
intend to prove it.
No matter how long it takes.”

Kelly didn’t comment and her mother didn’t get mushy-eyed.
His
mother would have, but apparently hippies were made out of sterner stuff.
“Love’s all well and good, but if you’re not there when someone needs you,” she
reached out to hold Kelly’s hand, “then you might as well not bother.
Love
isn’t just a word, Spencer.
It’s something you commit to every day.
It means
sticking around for the long haul.”

“I’m not going anywhere.”

John clapped his back.
“That’s the spirit.”

Afterward Kelly walked out with him to his car but she
didn’t bring up what he’d said.
He fully expected her to say good night and
leave him to wonder if he’d lost his only chance to be a part of her life.

They stopped by his car and stared at each other in the
moonlight.
The gentle September breeze stirred her hair.
He loved it longer.
So
pretty.
He wanted to run his fingers through it, feel its weight on his skin.
But this dance was one he’d have to let her lead.

“Your parents are nice.
Are they back permanently from Sedona?”

“Yeah.
They’ve been home for a couple months.
They’ve been
great, surprisingly enough.
They stuck close when I needed them, backed off
when I didn’t.
Who knows how long they’ll stay.
The traveling bug hits them
pretty often.”

“It never hit you.”

“No.
Vacations are one thing but I need a home base.
Someplace I can belong to.”

“And someone?” he asked quietly, wishing to every deity
there was she’d let it be him.

She leaned up on her tiptoes and brushed her mouth over his.
Suspecting it was a test, he didn’t react when she did it again.
By the third
time, he groaned and wrapped his hands around her upper arms, hauling her
against him.
She didn’t melt or fall into his embrace.
She kissed him back but
it was restrained, the opposite of every other kiss they’d ever shared.

That, more than anything else, broke him.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered, and there was no denying the
huskiness of his voice.
“You’ll never know how much.”

“I don’t want you to be sorry.
I want to know why.
You
didn’t suddenly discover you loved me after you left.”

“No.” He rubbed his thumb over her damp lower lip, amazed he
could even speak with his heart lodged in his throat.
“I knew it that night in
my office.
I probably knew it even before then.
How could anyone not love you?”

She laughed hoarsely and tilted her head back to look at the
starry night sky.
“I’m loud and brash and say way too much without thinking.
I’m impulsive and rebellious and refuse to listen to what anyone tells me—”

“You’re perfect.
Perfect for me,” he added when she shook
her head.

“So perfect that you slept with another woman hours after
you were with me.
Or you wanted me to think you did.
I don’t know which is
worse.”

He glanced around, thankful that at least they were in a
secluded part of the parking lot.
“I didn’t sleep with Diana that night.
But I
agreed to.
I tried.”

“You tried,” she repeated.

“Yeah.” He rubbed his eyes.
He’d prefer to skip right over
this part, but there was no avoiding it.
“She blackmailed me over my job.
She’d
given it to me in the first place, five years ago.
She was married, we had an
affair.
She got pregnant.”

“You should’ve been a journalist.
That was the most
dispassionate retelling of a story I’ve ever heard.”

“I’ve had a lot of time to distill it to the bare bones in
my head.” And he had, during the myriad nights he couldn’t sleep, both before
and after Kelly.

“She had your baby.” Now she was the dispassionate one, her
expression cool.

“I didn’t know if it was mine, but she lost it.
By that time
she’d given me her position as regional manager so she could go home to patch
things up with her husband.
She wanted to save her marriage.”

“So you were collateral damage.”

“I was a willing participant.
I got what I wanted.”

“You wanted your baby to be raised by another man?”

He clenched his jaw.
Leave it to Kelly to get right to the
heart of the matter.
“No.
I would have wanted my child.”

“Even if it was inconvenient.”

“Hell yes.
The timing didn’t matter.”

“But you didn’t push for a paternity test.”

He shrugged.
“I wanted her job.”

She turned away and pulled her keys out of her purse.
“When
you can be honest, give me a call.”

“Kelly, wait.” She let him grab her arm but she didn’t look
at him.
“No, I didn’t push.
She begged me to give her a chance with her
husband.“

“And you loved her so you let her go.”

He shoved his hands in his pockets.
“They had a good home.
They were settled, stable.
He or she would’ve had a brother and sister.
What
the hell did I have to give a kid?”

“Their father.”

“I didn’t know for sure,” he said, closing his eyes.

That, more than anything, was what haunted his nights.
Had
he really traded the possibility of his child for a fucking job?
He almost
wished he could say he had, because the alternative was that he’d loved Diana
enough to want her happy at his own expense.
And look at the kind of woman
she’d turned out to be.

Clearly his judgment sucked.

Kelly came back to him and wrapped her arms around his
waist, pressing her face against his neck.
“You could have told me.
I wouldn’t
have asked you for anything more than the truth.”

Except those rare times he lucked into judging someone
exactly right.

“The truth’s too much sometimes.” He gave in to his urge to
thread his fingers through the ends of her long hair.
“I didn’t feel as if I
deserved you.
For God’s sake, I made you suck off another guy at a sex club.
Two guys, actually.”

“Made me?” She shook her head.
“I know you haven’t been
sleeping much so maybe you’ve forgotten some of the finer points of those
particular nights.”

“I haven’t forgotten anything.” Spencer stroked her cheek.
“Not one minute, Kelly.”

“Me either.” She turned her head and kissed the tips of his
fingers.
“I liked going to Kink.
It took me time to warm up, but when I did…”
She grinned.
“It worked for me.
I’m not saying I want to go there every
weekend.
But I definitely want to go back.”

“With me?”

She reached up and brushed his hair out of his eyes, drawing
her hand down to cup his jaw.
Her touch held the tenderness only she could
offer him.
“I want to do everything with you.
Don’t you get that yet?”

“If the situation was reversed, if you were standing here
asking for my forgiveness…I don’t know if I could do it.”

“Tell me what happened that night.
With Diana.”

“My job was on the line.
My own fault.
I’d gotten it through
dubious means so it made sense I’d lose it that way too.
She wanted me to sleep
with her, to see if we still had anything left between us.
One night.” He
wouldn’t allow himself to look away, as much as he wanted to.
“If I’d walked,
Marcia wouldn’t have gotten my job.
I wanted you to have Marcia’s.
And it
turned out neither of you took those positions anyway.”

“Apparently Marcia wasn’t too keen on working for Diana.”

“Because of me.” He still couldn’t believe that.
His sister
had bailed on the store shortly after Kelly and had been looking for a new job
for the last two months.
“Marcia was in line for a promotion way before me, but
I wasn’t content to wait.
I owed her.
Or at least I felt I did.
I busted my ass
to prove to everyone I was the best person to run those stores.
And in the end,
I didn’t even care anymore.”

“What do you mean, you didn’t care?” she asked.
“The store
was your whole world.”

“Just like it was yours,” he reminded her gently.
“But the
world stops turning eventually.”

“That sounds like a bad soap opera.”

“If the suds fit…” He slid his fingertip around her hoop
earring, beyond grateful she was listening.
That was more than he’d had any
right to wish for.
“Part of me hoped I could just sleep with her and nothing
would have to change.
I told myself you might never have to know, that we could
just go on.”

“Yeah, this is the part where your murky motives poison the
waters,” she muttered, making him laugh despite himself.

“I’m no saint.
I never claimed to be.
But I couldn’t do it.”

Her head lifted.
“You couldn’t sleep with her?
What did you
do, back out at the last second?”

“Not exactly.” He winced.
“I sort of, ah, couldn’t perform.”

“What?”

“Please don’t make me repeat that.
My ego’s shriveling even
as we speak.”

She covered her face with her hands, shoulders shaking with
suppressed laughter.
“No fucking way.
You couldn’t get it up?”

“Oh I got it up.
It was the staying up that was an issue.”
He cleared his throat and tried to chase the memory from his mind.
“She wasn’t
too happy.”

“Did you explain that sort of thing sometimes happens to
older men?”

“I’m glad you find this so amusing.”

She doubled over, tears of mirth streaming from her eyes.
“Oh my God.
I never thought I’d enjoy almost being cheated on so much.”

Spencer crossed his arms over his chest.
“Let me know when
you’re finished.”