date.’ A flash of vulnerability, of bravery, ghosts her eyes and I want to tell her she can gatecrash all my dates.
Whoa... I haven’t spent all the years I’ve known her keeping her at arm’s length just to screw it all up in one move.
‘You didn’t. It was pretty much over.’ She interrupted the tail end of a satisfactory evening of good company, excellent food and the potential for meaningless sex. Pity a five-minute conversation with Kenzie eclipses a hundred meaningless encounters, as evidenced by the surge of testosterone I’m currently battling, my body as attuned to her presence as high-voltage power lines to an approaching rainstorm.
I force my mind to the mundane, willing my libido to obey orders. Sharing army barracks and tents with thirty other men helps to master control of the body parts that have a life of their own. And the technique, one I’ve practised a thousand times in her presence, reminds me of the first time I saw her, a mere thirty seconds before my best mate caught her eye.
I swallow the bitter taste with a silent curse. I’ve tried, but I’ve never been in control of my feelings for this woman—the intervening years, her falling for and then marrying Sam, and then losing him, may as well count for zilch.
I want her.
I’ve always wanted her.
And it’s never been an option.
That’s why I’ve stayed the hell away. Not only have I always coveted my best friend’s woman, but Sam is no longer here to punch me in both of my two faces, as I deserve.
And what I definitely don’t deserve is Kenzie.
The guilt and self-disgust turning my stomach deals with my hard-on. Yeah, not happening, bud.
The lift arrives and we step inside the brightly lit and mirrored cell. I lock down my trapped-inside emotions behind the neutral facial expression of my reflection while I wonder how the fuck I’m going to manage the next thirty minutes until I can get rid of her without taking a cold shower.
‘Have you and Ashley been dating for long?’ she asks, leaning up against one wall, her beautiful eyes huge and tinged with doubt. ‘I hope she’ll forgive you for cutting things short to...deal with me.’
Deal with her...? Can she read my fucking mind? See all the filthy ways I’d like to deal with her? Does she know that she stars in dreams that jerk me from sleep, leaving me soaked in sweat and harder than steel? I’ve had stern words with my subconscious, but it’s persistently twisted.
‘We’re not dating. Just casual.’ All my interactions with women over the years can be classified that way. Anything more serious would have demanded comparisons I knew deep inside would only highlight the gaping chasm between reality and the fantasy of what might have been with this particular woman.
I look away, feigning fascination in the digital display that tells me I only have thirty more seconds to endure being this close to her in an enclosed space, which may as well be a torture chamber. I slow my breathing to ward off the head rush and slide my eyes over the source of every erotic fantasy I’ve had since the day we met, forcing myself to look beyond the perfection of her combination of features.
‘You’re pale.’ With cold, fatigue or something else? I curl my fingers into fists to stop me from pulling my jacket tighter around her frame and buttoning it up to the neck to protect her from my lecherous stare. I grip the handrail. I only have so much self-control—another reason staying away was easier.
She shrugs. ‘I’m okay.’
I scour her face for clues. Then my stomach plummets as if the lift were descending, not ascending. Is she ill? Is that what she’s come to tell me? She could be dying for all I know. Outside what I struggled to ignore while Sam was still alive and what I’ve pieced together through social-media stalking in the three years since his death, she’s a stranger.
Because I’ve kept her that way in order to atone and for self-preservation.
Panic subsides as I remember the dessert. She came with a mission. I know she had a passion for cooking. But she and her autistic sister, nine years her junior, live in Bath. A long way to deliver dessert.
Another surge of adrenaline traps my breath. Is Tilly sick? Do they need help? Money? Am I the only person she can turn to? I swallow razor blades. Have I neglected her? She must miss Sam. She’s far too young to be a widow. And too fucking beautiful.
My heart stutters frozen as another thought occurs: I have no idea if she’s seeing someone. Three years is a long time for celibacy. I fight the urge to make fists, the idea of some worthless bastard laying his hands on her souring a perfectly satisfactory Michelin-starred dinner.
Enough.
One glimpse of McKenzie Porter and my regimented life turns to chaos. I suck it up. Repeat the mantra: thoughts, eyes and hands off. She’s Sam’s.
I’m about to bang my head against the wall of the lift to knock some sense into my libido-ridden brain when it slows, releasing an electronic ping so welcome, I’m mentally fist-pumping the air at surviving the journey.
‘We could have talked downstairs in the bar, you know,’ she says, a flash of admonishment in her pretty eyes reminding me of the times she bawled out Sam for some bawdy, barrack-room joke.
The doors glide open.
‘Three years is a long time.’ A lifetime. ‘I’d say that warrants a...private reunion, wouldn’t you?’ I hold out my arm for her to exit.
Her mouth thins with censure. ‘I’ve only just moved to London; if you’d wanted to find me sooner, you knew where I was.’
The urge to kiss that sensual mouth slams into me with previously unexperienced force. How can this woman do that to me? Is it just the forbidden thing...? I never considered myself such a puerile arsehole, but hey...anything that helps me keep my hands off her.
She pauses outside the lift. I indicate the direction, and she precedes me down the hallway with a sexy flounce of attitude.
‘I did.’ She’s right. I’ve known where to find her all these years, but couldn’t be a part of her life. ‘And if you needed me, you could have called.’ The lash of guilt slashes between my shoulder blades. Have I punished her, too, in punishing myself for wanting her, for keeping secrets, for plunging her into a life without Sam? I bite back a wince, my jaw aching where my teeth grind together.
By castigating myself and avoiding temptation, I’ve neglected my obligations—the promise made to Sam when neither of us believed it would need to be honoured.
It was better to keep my distance. Better for her because she wouldn’t have wanted to hear what I had to say, and better for my unscrupulous conscience. Because even when I oh, so briefly held a sobbing McKenzie in my arms while she grieved for another man—a man we both loved, a man I made promises to, a man I kept secrets for—my thoughts weren’t wholly innocent.
At the suite door, the only one at this end of the corridor, she turns, big eyes finding me in the gloom, burrowing through my self-protective skin. ‘Yes, well, I wouldn’t be here either if I wasn’t desperate, believe me.’ She flushes and blinks, looking away.
Desperate?
