CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
VELVETWASSTANDINGat her kitchen counter, pouring a glass of wine, when she heard a car pull up outside. She looked out the window, wondering who would be visiting. When she saw it was Jaye, a smile of surprise touched her lips at the same time shivers of excitement rushed through her body. She hadn’t been expecting him back for a week. When they talked on the phone last night, he hadn’t mentioned anything about returning home early.
She nearly jumped when she heard the firm knock on her door. What had he done? Taken her steps two at a time to have made it to her door so quickly? She set the wine bottle on the counter and didn’t waste any time moving through her living room. After looking out the peephole to confirm it was him again, she opened the door.
“Jaye, I wasn’t expecting you back until Sunday.” She smiled and stepped aside to let him enter. This was her first time seeing him since leaving the Keys.
“That had been the plan until I found out I’d need to remain in Birmingham a little longer to take care of a few more issues.” He closed the door behind him. “And I was missing you like crazy.”
She’d been missing him, too. This house had seemed so lonely without him. During the evenings, she’d sat in her rocking chair on the porch, but it hadn’t been the same. Their nightly phone calls had been nice, but there was nothing like seeing each other in the flesh. And speaking of flesh...
She needed to feel his and moved toward him. The moment she’d opened the door, her body had responded to his. Sometimes she wished her body wasn’t so needy and greedy where he was concerned, but it couldn’t be helped. Her body recognized the one and only man who’d ever touched it. Pleasured it.
He pulled her into his arms and, as usual, his kiss made her weak in the knees and his unique scent enveloped her.
She was lifted off her feet and she knew exactly where he was taking her. Instead of placing her on the bed, he set her on her feet beside it. He began removing his clothes and, likewise, she began removing hers. By the time she stepped out of her panties, he had finished undressing.
Easing down to his knees, he rubbed his face against the juncture of her thighs. He lifted his head to look at her. “You are all woman, Velvet. Every inch of you and every part of you.”
The eyes staring up at her were filled with heated lust and seeing that look, along with what he’d said, swamped her entire being with sensuous sensations. “And you, Jaye Colfax, are all man.”
He smiled, then lowered his head between her legs and the instant she felt the invasion of his tongue, she moaned as tremors of pleasure began running all through her. “Jaye...”
Being a thorough man, it was a while—specifically two orgasms later for her—before he stood, picked her up and placed her on the bed. He joined her there and proceeded to take her the way she needed to be taken. It was utterly irrational to want a man this much, and the way he was pounding inside her let her know the intensity of his desire. He might not love her, but he wanted her.
Moments later, orgasms struck them simultaneously. When he threw his head back to holler her name just when she screamed his, she had a feeling it was only the beginning. By morning, they would have given her bed one heck of a workout and then some.
“I LOVEYOU, VELVET.”
Velvet slowly opened her eyes and peered up at him. From her facial expression, Jaye could only assume that she thought she’d misunderstood his words. In that case, he had no problem saying them again. “I love you.”
When he saw tears form in her eyes, he wrapped her in his arms and she buried her face in his chest. He hadn’t expected his words to make her cry.
“Shh, Vel. I didn’t mean to make you cry, but it was something I needed to tell you. I couldn’t keep it to myself any longer.”
She pulled back to swipe at her eyes and shook her head. “Please don’t say words you don’t mean, Jaye. That’s worse than you never saying them at all.”
He reached for her, but she moved back. She stood from the bed and slid into her robe. When she wouldn’t look at him, he said, “I take it you don’t believe me?”
She made eye contact then. “Of course I don’t believe you. I was with you for three years and they were good years. Yet you didn’t love me then, so why should I believe you’d be in love with me now?”
He drew in a deep breath and held her gaze. If she needed a timeline, he would give her one. “We need to talk, Velvet.”
“No, we don’t.” She shook her head, frowning. “You’ve never lied to me about anything, Jaye, and I’m asking that you please don’t lie to me now. Especially when you don’t have to.”
He sat up in bed. “Why do you think I’m lying?”
She crossed her arms. “Why wouldn’t I think that? If you’re not lying, then you’re delusional and getting love mixed up with lust.”
Now that made him mad. He stepped out of bed and pulled on his jeans. “We need to talk, Velvet. Outside. In our rockers.”
“Outside?” She glanced at the clock. “Jaye, it’s close to three in the morning.”
“It doesn’t matter. You get the wineglasses and I’ll grab the wine.”
She stared at him for a long moment and then said, “Fine.”
“WHATISHEupset about?” Velvet muttered as she went into the kitchen and grabbed two wineglasses from the cabinet. She of all people knew Jaye was incapable of loving a woman, so why was he pretending otherwise? Like she’d told him, he was getting lust confused with love.
By the time she opened her back door and stepped out, he had placed a bottle of wine near the rocking chairs and was firing up the pit. It was a gorgeous night, and the sky overhead was beautiful as usual.
She knew his eyes were on her as she sat in the rocking chair next to his. She handed him both glasses and watched as he filled them. “Easy on mine,” she said. “I have to go to work tomorrow.”
Without a word, he handed her a wineglass. She took a sip and then asked, “So, what do we need to talk about, Jaye?”
“Why don’t you believe I love you?”
“Maybe it would be easier to state why I know you don’t love me.”
“Well, then, tell me what you think you know.”
She frowned. “First of all, I was gone for two years. If you loved me, you would not have let me go at all.”
“I didn’t let you go, Velvet. You left on your own, without my knowing.”
She held up a finger. “Then let me restate that. Had you loved me, I would not have had a reason to go. And you certainly wouldn’t have let two years pass without coming after me.” She took a sip of her wine, then continued, “Second, you’re a man who enjoys sex from women. No emotional entanglements. Stupid me, I thought I could be different, but you proved me wrong. And, number three is the fact that all you feel toward me is lust. I can tell the difference. Nothing has changed. You want me as much as you did before, and I’m nothing more than your lover until you leave Catalina Cove. Need I go on?”
He tilted his head. “There’s more?”
“Of course.”
OFCOURSE? HONESTLY, JAYE had heard enough. Everything she’d said was all wrong and there were a few things she didn’t fully understand. A dark scowl covered his face. “First of all, the reason I didn’t come after you was because I had no idea where you’d gone. I admit, for a while I was mad that you left me, especially when you knew how I felt about love and marriage. But then, after my anger dissipated, I understood why you did it.
“Second, nobody, and I mean nobody, would tell me where you’d gone. Not Ruthie or the teachers you knew at school, and not your corporate executives. It was as if you’d vanished off the face of the earth.”
“So, it wasn’t easy to find me, and you gave up,” she snapped. “I bet it was shocking when you discovered, after you’d gotten on with your life, that I was living here in Catalina Cove. The last place you thought I’d be.”
He turned in his rocker to face her. “No, it wasn’t. I knew you were here.”
She glared at him. “There’s no way you knew.”
“There is a way because I hired a private investigator to find you.”
It was a good thing she’d finished her wine because when she jumped from her chair, she nearly dropped the glass. After placing it on the table, she said, “You didn’t do anything of the sort.”
He stood as well. “An invoice from Douglas Investigations says otherwise. And once I discovered where you were, I devised a plan to get you back.”
“Devised a plan? What are you talking about? What plan?”
“I bought Barrows Bank for starters. Then I made sure your neighbor leased me this house so I could be your neighbor.”
“You did what? How dare you manipulate things just to get me back in your bed, knowing I meant nothing to you,” she snapped. “Did you do it for revenge?”
“Revenge? Of course not. I did it because I realized that I loved you.”
“And just when did you realize this, Jaye? After you decided you were missing me as a bed partner? After your close friends began falling in love and you felt left out, and decided to give love a try yourself?”
His jaw tightened at her words. “I realized it when I came to terms with what you meant to me and the depth and intensity of my love for you.”
She scoffed. “If everything you say is true, then you should have told me upfront, and not tried to manipulate me by coming up with some plan.”
“If you recall that night when I came here to talk to you about my moving to the cove, you joked about me deliberately buying the bank upon discovering this was where you were living. Then you said that you knew I hadn’t because it wasn’t in my makeup to care that much for any woman. I decided to prove how wrong you were and that it is in my makeup to care that much. For you.
“And you’re wrong in thinking I don’t know the difference between love and lust. I wanted to court you properly, Velvet. To share more of myself, especially my emotions, than I did before. And I have. You know about my mother now and we spend more time out of the bedroom than in it. That’s a deliberate move on my part. I didn’t want you to think all I wanted from you was sex. As much as I wanted you, I held back and only made love to you when you wanted it and asked for it. I was determined not to sleep with you until I proved there was more between us than sex. You don’t know how many times while we made love that I came close to telling you how I felt. How much I loved you.”
A part of Velvet wished she could believe him, but something was holding her back. Namely, that part of her heart she’d vowed to protect. The pain had been so hard before that she’d pretty much convinced herself that Jaye was a man incapable of loving any woman, including her.
“We didn’t make love, Jaye,” she said. “For it to be making love, both parties need to be in love. We had sex.”
“That’s not true and you know it,” Jaye countered. “We made love even those times I convinced myself it was just sex.”
Then, Jaye picked up on something she’d said, whether intentional or not. Since she didn’t believe he loved her, was she saying that she still loved him? He had to believe that she did.
For a long moment, Velvet just looked at him. Finally, she said softly, “I think it’s best for you to sleep the rest of tonight at your place, Jaye.”
He shoved his hands into his pockets. He remembered his brother’s advice not to push, and to give Velvet time to think. That she would eventually come around. But what if she didn’t? What if he’d told her so many times he wasn’t capable of loving a woman, that she still believed it? The thought of losing her was a pain he just couldn’t bear.
“If you want me to leave, then I’ll do that, Velvet. But you’re wrong about how I feel about you because I do love you.”
She didn’t say anything. Instead, she turned and walked into the house and closed the door behind her.