be June.”
He had a point. She just wasn’t prepared to concede it. “Is there a particular bracket you noticed?”
There was. The one at the front of the garage that would keep water from pouring over her and Tyler when they came and went from the car. He’d noticed it yesterday and had meant to walk around the garage and the main building to see if any other gaps were visible. But this wasn’t about a bracket. It wasn’t about a gutter. From the uncertainty underlying her quiet defensiveness, he’d bet his business this wasn’t about anything but what had happened between them last night.
Not totally sure what he felt about it himself, not sure what to do about any of it with Tyler wandering over in search of cereal, Erik decided it best to just go do what he’d planned to do anyway.
“I’m going to get the ladder from the basement. I’ll be back when the coffee’s ready.”
It took eight minutes to brew a full pot of coffee. It was another ten before she heard the rattle of the ladder being propped against the wall in the mudroom and the faint squeak of the door to the kitchen when it opened.
Tyler had just handed her his empty bowl and was on his way past the island to go get dressed when she heard him tell Erik he’d be right back.
“Take your time, sport.” Ruffling the boy’s hair as he passed, Erik looked to where she again stood at the sink.
Still holding the bowl, she watched his easy smile fade to something less definable as he pushed back the navy Merrick & Sullivan ball cap he’d taken from his truck. It looked as if he’d shaken the rain from his cap and swiped what he could from his leather jacket. Beneath it, the charcoal pullover he’d pulled on before he’d gone out was dry, but the darker spots on the thighs of his jeans and the hems looked damp.
“You have two broken brackets,” he told her, conscious of Tyler still moving up the stairs. “I’ll pick up new ones and be back with them in the morning. I leave for my folks’ house in San Diego tomorrow afternoon, so that’s the only chance I’ll have.”
She set the bowl in the sink, picked up the mug she’d taken out for him and poured him his coffee.
Tomorrow was Christmas Eve.
She held the heavy mug out to him.
“You know, Erik,” she said as he took it, “you really don’t need to come all the way over here to fix those brackets.”
The mug settled on the counter beside her.
“I know I don’t. And I don’t need you telling me that,” he insisted, and skimmed her cheek with his knuckles.
The small contact compounded the anxiety knotting behind her breastbone.
Taking a small step back, needing to break his touch as much as the hold he’d gained on her heart, her voice dropped to an agonized whisper. “I can’t do this.”
Even as his hand fell, his shoulders rose with a slow, deep breath. His hard, handsome features were suddenly impossible to read.
“By ‘this’ you mean the sex.”
“No. Yes.” Shaking her head, she shoved her fingers through her hair. “I mean, it’s not just that. Making love with you was amazing,” she admitted, because it had been. “It’s that I can’t let myself feel what I’m starting to feel for you.” What she already did feel, she thought, and which totally terrified her. “I can’t let myself count on you to do things for me. Or for you to be around to talk to. Or for you to be here. If I do, it would be too easy to rely on you even more.”
Apparently nothing she’d said explained why she was withdrawing from him. If anything, Erik just looked a little mystified. She figured that was because of what she’d admitted about the sex part. But then, she always had had a problem filtering what she said to him.
His eyes narrowed on hers. “Why not?”
Crossing her arms over the knot in her stomach, her voice dropped another notch. “Because I’m not going to set myself up to lose something I don’t even have. It doesn’t make sense to do that,” she admitted, not sure she was making sense to him. “I can’t do that to myself. And I definitely can’t do it to my son. It will only hurt Tyler if I let him grow any more attached to you than he already is, Erik. I know people will come and go from his life. People already have, but I’ve never seen him take to anyone the way he has to you.” She’d done a lousy job of protecting herself. That failing would not keep her from protecting her son. “Since the arrangement between us is temporary anyway, it just seems best to back away and keep business...business.”
Her heart hurt. Rubbing the awful ache with her fingertips, she watched his jaw tighten as he stepped back.
Erik wasn’t at all sure what he felt at that moment. He wasn’t even sure what he felt for this woman, beyond an undeniable physical need and a sense of protectiveness he wasn’t familiar with at all. All he knew for certain was that they had stepped over a line she clearly had not been prepared to cross.
Recriminations piled up like cars in a train wreck. He’d known all along that it would be a mistake to get involved with her. He’d known from the moment he’d met her that she was dealing with far more than he’d gone through when his marriage had ended. What he didn’t understand was how he could have forgotten that his sole goal in agreeing to help her was to have no reason to return to this place once his obligation to Cornelia had been satisfied.
The fact that he hadn’t considered any of that last night had his own defenses slamming into place. Having done enough damage already, he wasn’t about to complicate their relationship any further. Or let her push him any farther away.
“Just answer one question for me.”
“If I can.”
“Last night. The tears. Were they because you were thinking of Curt?”
He figured he had to be some sort of masochist for wanting to know if that was what really had been going on with her while they’d been making love. No man wanted to think a woman had another man on her mind while he had her in his arms. Still, for some reason he couldn’t begin to explain, he needed to know.
For a moment, Rory said nothing. Partly because the question caught her so off guard. Partly because it was only now that she realized her only thought last night about the man she’d married was how Erik had lessened the void he’d left.
She couldn’t begin to explain everything she’d felt last night. Or what she felt now because of his question.
It seemed easiest to just go to the heart of what he really wanted to know.
“The only person in that bed with me was you, Erik.”
He heard something a little raw in her quiet reply, something that made her look as if he’d just totally exposed how absorbed she’d been in only him—which was no doubt why she stood there with her arms crossed so protectively and her eyes begging him to go.
He could hear Tyler racing down the stairs.
“We’re supposed to meet with Phil after the first of the year.” He spoke the reminder quietly, as conscious of the child coming toward them as he was
