only said the words to her when it suited his strategy for manipulation.
She no longer had such naïve illusions about love, but sex wasn’t a simple slaking of physical needs for her, either. It never could be. She needed to know that more than Angelo’s hormones were engaged. She wasn’t giving her body to another man without being sure he saw her as more than an occasional bed partner.
Angelo switched off the ignition.
“I’m not going to ask you up.”
He tensed and turned to face her, his jaw set, surprise making his eyes darken. “Why not?”
Time for total honesty. She sensed any attempt at prevarication would only give him the final leverage he needed to bring about her surrender. “Because if I do, we’ll make love and I’m not ready to do that yet.”
He reached out and cupped the back of her head, his thumb tracing the shell of her ear and making her tremble even more. “You want me.”
No way could she deny it. “Desire isn’t enough.”
“What is enough?”
She stared at him, nonplussed by the question. She hadn’t expected him to want to discuss the intricacies of a relationship. Most men shied away from that sort of thing.
But, goodness knew, Angelo Gordon was unlike any other man of her acquaintance. “I don’t want to be treated like a one night stand.”
Which was as far as she’d gotten in her thought process…or as far as she had allowed herself to go.
“I want more than one night.”
“How much more?”
“How much more do you want?”
“I’m not sure.”
“That’s not good enough.”
“I can’t quantify it.”
“Sure you can. What do you want? Protestations of love?”
She, who no longer believed in love, felt her heart rate double at the mention of the word. Was he saying he was falling in love with her? How could he be?
“What do you want, Tara? A promise of fidelity, or do you want more?” he went on relentlessly. “Perhaps an offer of marriage. Is that what you need to feel good about giving yourself to me? Commitment with a capital C?”
Was he saying he would give those things to her, or was he testing her, pushing to figure out the parameters of the deal?
“I just realized I wanted to pursue a relationship,” she said, frustration at being put so firmly on the spot lacing her voice. “How am I supposed to know what form I need it to take before I’m ready to be intimate with you?”
“You’re too smart not to know your own mind.”
Only right now, her mind was muddled by desire and the need to conquer fear. She doubted he ever got muddled in his thinking. Probably, he thought he was being extremely reasonable asking her to define what she needed, but he wasn’t the one with doubts. Somehow, she couldn’t see this man ever being the one with the doubts.
Her only defense against his relentless logic was more honesty. “Look, you were right, Angelo. I have been letting my past control my present. I don’t want to do that anymore, but that doesn’t mean I’m ready to jump into bed with you. I need time.”
His smile was all sensual, predatory, and it confused her, because it wasn’t the expression of a man who had just been turned down. “Oh, you’re ready all right, but you’re hesitating because you don’t know where it will lead.”
She throbbed low in her womb and she knew he was right. “Fine. You’re right. There aren’t a lot of options for where sex between us could go.”
“This is always true. Those options do not change over time.”
“Some of them become less palatable.”
“You do not want a one night stand, but I gather you also don’t want a few long weekends with us both moving on to other partners?”
The mere idea made her shiver with revulsion. She’d never taken sex casually and the idea of going into a relationship that intimate with the expectation of ending it repelled her. “No.”
“That leaves two other outcomes…we move in together—”
“No,” she practically shouted.
His brow raised in question.
She took a deep breath and let it out. “I stupidly went that route once before…even after watching my mom make the same mistake over and over again. I won’t be controlled by my past, but I won’t refuse to learn from it, either.”
“Then there is only one alternative left: marriage.”
“I—”
“You see, it was not so hard to define. In order to give yourself to me, you want a lifetime commitment.”
“I’m not angling for marriage.” But her words came out a mere whisper of sound, the direction the conversation had taken shocking her to the core.
“Aren’t you?”
“No.” She wasn’t, darn it. Frustration welled up in her. “If you weren’t trying to go so fast, this wouldn’t even be an issue, so don’t try putting all the blame back on me. I only said I’m not keen on having casual sex with a man who will disappear from my life very soon.”
“I wasn’t aware I was trying to blame you for anything and I agree, casual sex is not what I had in mind.”
A maelstrom of emotion churned through her. “We can’t get married just because you want to have sex with me.”
“People do it all the time actually, but I think we’ve got a lot more than sexual desire going for us.”
“Let me get this straight,” she said, feeling more bewildered than she ever had in her life. “Are you saying you want to marry me?”
“Yes.”
Suddenly she felt claustrophobic in the interior of the car. She couldn’t get enough air and the world was going black around the edges. “You didn’t say that,” she breathed.
“I don’t just want you, I like you, Tara. It’s been a long time since I felt that way about a woman. I’m thirty years old and I’ve never been in love. I don’t think I’m wired that way. There are a lot worse things I could do than marry a woman I want as much as I want you.”
She couldn’t think of a single thing to say in response. Baron had put off making any major commitments with a constant stream of excuses. So had her mother’s boyfriends. She’d never known a man like Angelo that wanted to jump feet first into long-term commitment…except Darren.
Her stepdad had asked her mom to
