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can go home tomorrow whenever you like. But please, don’t drive tonight.”
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What She Needs
Maybe she was just being stubborn. She really was as limp as those dried cornstalks
in the field, and her eyelids seemed to be getting heavier and heavier now that all the
adrenaline had dissipated.
“Delia, I’m sorrier than I can say. I broke your trust, and for that I profoundly
apologize. Please, I need to see for myself that you’ll be okay.”
She felt his lips press against her temple. “Please stay here tonight. You can sleep
here on the sofa bed, or in the master bedroom, or in the lounger, wherever you want,
and I’ll be hunkered down on the floor nearby. I just need to know you’re…”
His voice trailed off and Delia gritted her teeth. Safe. He was going to say he
needed to know she was safe. Would she ever feel safe with him again?
“I have an idea,” Kurt said, obviously wanting to distract her. “Why don’t we go
downstairs and I’ll warm up some soup for you. And maybe a cup of tea or something.
Then, after you have some food in your stomach, we’ll see how you feel.”
“All right.”
He breathed out a long sigh and stood, still holding her in his arms as though she
weighed no more than a stack of firewood.
“I can walk.”
“It’s okay, I need to do this. I need to hold you. Please?”
Rather than answer, she closed her eyes and rested her head on his shoulder, her
hands clenched together in her lap. He seemed to take that as affirmation, because she
felt herself descending the stairs.
She opened her eyes when he carefully set her on her feet on the tiled kitchen floor.
“You sit right here,” he said, pulling out one of two stools at the center island.
She watched as he moved like an orchestra conductor, a flick here, a gesture there,
and soon the smell of some kind of vegetable soup filled the kitchen.
Her stomach rumbled. “Pavlovian response,” she said. It did smell good and she
realized she was hungry.
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Cris Anson
He set a steaming, earth-toned bowl in front of her, then a chunk of crusty bread
he’d popped in the toaster oven to warm.
“Good soup. Tastes homemade.”
“It is. I pay my housekeeper big bucks to keep my larder stocked with healthy stuff.
During the week, I usually stay in the city, but weekends? I eat like a farmer. She lives
in that yellow house on the street. The one I told you to look for as a landmark? Her
husband farms my fields. They’ve lived there for thirty years. I don’t know what I’m
going to do when they retire.” He gave her a rueful smile. “Probably starve.”
“You don’t cook?”
“I do at the condo when I have to, and I can do a pretty fair stir-fry. To say nothing
of omelets. But Helen spoils me. ’Course, I pay her to spoil me. It’s a fair trade.”
He was trying to put her at ease, she could tell. But she still had mountains of angst
to work through.
She finished the soup, nodded when he offered seconds. He ladled some for himself
and sat in the other stool. They ate, surrounded by a silence that she welcomed.
“Want a cup of tea?”
“No thanks, the soup warmed me sufficiently.”
“Dessert? Chocolate truffle?”
“I’m fine.”
He turned in his stool to face her, a look of intense scrutiny on his face. “Are you,
Delia? Are you really?”
Her gaze lowered to the floor. “I guess you think I acted like a silly little girl. But I
can’t help it.”
“You don’t have to apologize, Delia. On the contrary, I’m the one who needs to ask
your forgiveness. I apologize again. I overreacted. But in my defense, there’s a reason.”
Delia stilled. “Yes?”
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What She Needs
Kurt slid off his stool, paced around to the opposite side of the island and turned to
stare through the night-blank window. After a moment he spun around to face her and
placed his hands, palms down, on the counter, although he looked just to the left of her
eyes, as though seeing something else.
“Gina was my wife. We’d been married five years and yes, I loved her. She was…
she was very submissive. The kind of slave I thought I wanted, someone to cater to my
every whim, to be available for me body and soul. To anticipate my every need.”
He breathed deeply, lifted his eyes to the ceiling. “It was mid-summer. She wanted
to please me, so she decided to do ‘my’ job of starting the fire. She filled the hibachi
with charcoal, used one of those long matches to start them burning. I was in the
kitchen, I don’t remember what I was doing. But I looked out the window and saw…I
saw the same thing I did today.”
His eyes closed a moment. A visible shudder ran through his body. “Gina was
holding a can of lighter fluid and began squirting a heavy stream of it on the charcoal
because she obviously hadn’t seen any flames. The stream caught fire and she jerked
away.” He shuddered. “Spilled flaming lighter fluid all over her.”
His voice trailed away. She could see his Adam’s apple working up and down.
“I understand, Kurt. I really do.”
Another shudder went through him. “The smell of burnt flesh, her screams, I felt so
helpless. It seemed like forever before I got all the flames out.”
Head down, arms hanging at his sides, he looked defeated. “I couldn’t let that
happen to you. I couldn’t bear it if you died too.”
It was a tragic story and Delia really did understand why he’d yelled at her. Maybe
she even understood why he’d punished her.
But she wasn’t sure she could forgive him for the particular punishment he’d
inflicted.
Because she knew she couldn’t trust him not to do it again.
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Cris Anson
Chapter Five
“I don’t know whether to forgive him or not.” Delia paced her bedroom floor as she
talked to Judith on the phone. Since they’d met in person, Judith had become her closest
confidante. Especially since she also knew Kurt. “He’s certainly acting contrite. He’s left
me half a dozen messages of apology on my voice mail. I’ve gotten fifteen yellow roses
at home and a box of artisan chocolates at work.”
“Hey, that was sensitive of him. Sending flowers at work might raise some
eyebrows. Especially fifteen yellow roses. You do know that yellow roses convey a ‘let’s
start over’ message. And the precise number of fifteen. That’s universal for ‘Please
forgive me’. The guy knows his roses.”
“Probably did an advertising campaign for a florist shop.”
“Don’t put him down. I’m not sure a man closer to our age would know that or be
that caring. They tend to take us for granted.”
“Robert never took me for granted.” Her heart gave a little bump on thinking of her
late husband, but it was with love and nostalgia, not grief, that she remembered him.
“Still, Kurt is giving you the message in every way he can think of. Ask yourself,
Delia, deep down, what are your feelings for this guy? Don't let one wrong move end
the relationship if you think there’s more there. We all deserve a chance to learn from
our mistakes.”
Delia sighed and toyed with a lock of her hair. “I was really coming to care for him.
He’s smart and funny, easy to talk to, thoughtful, he’s both tender and forceful in bed. It
was so enjoyable just walking through the woods with him, it felt like we were really
meant to be together. It’s just that single, humongous stumbling block.”
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What She Needs
“If he’s that smart, mightn’t he have learned a lesson? After all, from what you told [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]