James
I couldn’t stay away from her. I had resolved not to fall for her again if we decided to work together, to be the bigger man and put our past behind us.
Looking at her, standing out there on the balcony, there was no way I could do that.
The dress made her look breathtaking. It accentuated her curves and showed off how well she’d aged. When I’d seen her last she was still soft in the middle, the way girls were when they weren’t women yet. She’d been beautiful then, but now she was astonishing. She had come into her own, her body taut and slender – a woman.
The material of the dress traced her in just the right places and her bare shoulders were enticing. It was all I could do to stop myself from walking over to her and kissing her skin. I could almost remember what she tasted like, too. Salty, like she spent a lot of time in the ocean, warm because of the sun, and something that belonged to Ava alone.
“Ava,” I said.
She looked over her shoulder. When she saw it was me, her face closed – had she expected Caleb? – and she turned around to face me. I walked toward her. Her body was rigid like she was stopping herself from running away. This wasn’t how I wanted her to be around me. She used to be so carefree. Where had that woman gone?
“Don’t run away from me,” I said. “Just hear me out.” It sounded very demanding, stern. “Please,” I added.
She shook her head. “I’m not one of your many employees that have arrived tonight,” she said in a thin voice. “Don’t tell me what to do.”
Her face was stern, her eyes dark and serious.
I nodded. “I’m sorry. That’s now how I meant it.” I took a deep breath and blew it out slowly. “Please, just give me a chance to explain myself.”
She shook her head, again. “Let’s not do this. Please, not tonight.”
It was the closest she had ever come to pleading. She had never asked me something sincerely; not when she’d asked me if I could stay with her back in Apalachicola when we were kids, and not when I’d told her off over the phone a few weeks later. It made me want to protect her against whatever it was that was hurting her.
The thought occurred to me that maybe, the only person she needed protection again, was me.
I nodded and looked out over Amanda’s garden. I had been on this patio many times for business meetings. It had never been this beautiful – maybe Ava had something to do with it.
“The garden looks beautiful in the summer,” I said.
Ava nodded and looked out over the garden as well. “The grounds are as spectacular as the house itself,” she said. “It’s so different from my home.”
“Chicago, right?” I asked. Caleb had mentioned something. Ava nodded. I couldn’t imagine a woman as bright as Ava end up in a city that seemed so dreary in comparison.
“Are you happy there?” I asked.
Ava nodded. “I have a job I enjoy, an apartment of my own. I’m happy.”
I didn’t want to believe it. I didn’t want to know that she was happy without me. I hadn’t been happy without her – not entirely. I’d been falling from one woman to the other until I’d given up on love altogether and only gone for call girls and dancers. I’d thrown my heart out there so recklessly there was very little of it left now. It was unfair that I had dumped her and I’d ended up being the one that was so unhappy.
“How are you enjoying your stay here?” I asked.
Ava nodded again. The conversation was so painfully shallow. “I like it,” she said. “What I’ve seen of the city so far is lovely. It’s like a holiday destination but people live and work here.”
“Is it as you imagined it would be?” I asked. The words slipped out before I could stop them. Once upon a time, we had spoken about her joining me here in Tampa once she finished school and could leave her parents. Having her here with me, finally, was surreal.
She turned her dark eyes to me. I noticed that the makeup she wore had concealed her freckles. Her skin was smooth and blemish free. I didn’t like it.
There was something about Ava in her raw state that I loved, something wild and free about her that I had never been able to reach by myself. Not even now that I was the ruler of my own domain, the top dog in my own company and my father was dead.
She still had that freedom I envied.
“Well, no,” she said tightly. “It’s not quite like I’d imagined it.” She hesitated as if she was considering her words. “I’d always imagined that when I came here, you would be here to love me.”
My words had tumbled from my mouth and I hadn’t been able to catch them before it was too late. Her words, on the other hand, felt very carefully chosen. She had thought about them, turned them over in her mind and decided to say them anyway.
The words, as well as her intentions, stung.
“That’s not fair,” I said.
She laughed without expression. It was almost sarcastic.
“Fair?” she asked. “I didn’t realize ‘fair’ was an option. I don’t remember anything being fair when you told me on the beach that we would make it work and then you broke your promise. I don’t remember it being fair when you told me that I wasn’t good enough for you, that I would never fit into your life. I don’t remember it being fair at all.”
I opened my mouth, looking for the right words. Ava was always so controlled, so pulled together, I hadn’t known that any of those emotions were hiding behind her professional mask. Aside from her shock when she’d realized I was one of the partners that owned Quad Corp, she’d been so controlled I’d thought I was the only one that didn’t know how to handle myself around her.
It turned out that she still had a lot of hard feelings.
She turned to walk away, her hand up against her mouth like she was going to cry. I caught her wrist. She glared at me with glassy eyes. She was closer to tears than I’d thought. Had I done all of this?
“Hey,” I said, softly. “Don’t run from me.”
“Are you the only person that’s allowed to run?” she asked. I let go of her wrist when I was sure she would stay.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “For all of it. I hurt you, I know. I’m so sorry.”
I didn’t know how to explain it all to her if she wasn’t willing to hear me out. I didn’t know how to show her how sorry I was. I was just a man and my words were few and not very efficient.
She looked into my eyes, her eyes so dark and deep I felt like I could fall right into them.
“I believed you,” she said, her voice breathy and soft. “I believed you when you told me that you loved me. I was a fool. I felt like it was goodbye when you left but I trusted you when you told me that it wasn’t over, that you wanted to make it work with me.”
I nodded. “I know,” I said. “I was wrong.”
Her face closed again, the emotion from a moment before gone again.
“Wrong? How?”
“By getting involved with you.”
The words came out wrong. Anger flickered across her face, her eyes fiery.
“That came out wrong,” I said. I’d meant that I was wrong to fall in love with her and hurt her when I’d known that my father would never approve of anyone he didn’t choose out for me himself.
“No, I get it,” she said. “A waste of your time, right? A whole summer, lost on a girl that was stupid enough to get attached.”
I was getting irritated. Everything was coming out wrong and I couldn’t tell her what had really happened. I could see how she saw it, how it must have come across. I wasn’t making matters any better the way I was saying things. It was a curse, communication with women.
“Will you just stop it?” I asked.
“What are you talking about?”
I grabbed her cheeks in both my hands. “I don’t know how to get it through to you. I never meant to hurt you. I loved you, goddammit.”
Her breath hitched in her throat and the atmosphere charged around us. It wasn’t angry anymore. I was aware of her breathing, fast and shallow now, her body close to mine. I slid my eyes down to her lips. God, I wanted to kiss her.
For a moment, it looked like it was what she wanted, too. Her eyes darted to my lips, too, her pupils dilated. Her hands were on my wrists but she wasn’t stopping me from touching her. She was so close…
I lowered my face, inching closer to hers. God, I could taste her again, I knew what it would be like to kiss her. Soft and urgent and hot and gentle all at the same time. She closed her eyes when I eased closer to her. She was going to let me do it.
I’d wanted this for years and years. I felt like I’d been drowning and with one kiss from Ava, I would finally be able to break the surface and breathe again.
A throat cleared behind us. The sound was distinctly female and I froze. I let go of Ava and we bounced back from each other like a current of electricity had ripped through us. I whipped around. Amanda stood at the double doors, looking at us.
Ava dipped her head and walked away. When she walked passed Amanda and disappeared, Amanda looked at me with disapproval.
“Really?” she asked. “You couldn’t stop yourself from getting into Caleb’s date’s pants?”
I shook my head, confused.
“She’s Caleb’s date?”
If she was with Caleb I didn’t know what I would do.
Amanda folded her arms over her chest. “Well, she arrived with him, they’re working together and with you and Caleb being as fond of women as you are, I don’t see how he wouldn’t have stayed away from her until now.”
Amanda looked me up and down. “You disgust me sometimes, you know that?”
She turned and walked into the house again. I stood alone on the balcony, my mind reeling. Was it true? Would Caleb sleep with Ava? He knew about our history. Surely, he wouldn’t…? But he’d known her long before he knew about my history with Ava, and he did go to Hush with me often. He knew what he was doing and he could pull women as easily as I could.
My hands were sweaty and somewhere in my chest was an itch I couldn’t scratch. If Caleb was sleeping with Ava I didn’t know what I was going to do.
I wanted Ava. I wanted her all to myself. And, by God, I was going to have her. Before it had been a matter of the heart. Now, it was a matter of pride.