Chapter 11 #2
If he’d been a kind man or a sensitive one, he would have let the topic drop since her tension now made it clear she wasn’t comfortable with this conversation.
But for the first time since that very first day, he felt close to getting her, reaching her, understanding her, and he wasn’t going to lose the advantage.
“Why don’t you trust people?”
“Because they let you down.”
Her voice was small, tight, clearly trying for casual, and it evoked the most unexpected response in him. He reached out to pull her against him again, holding her snugly. She buried her face against the side of his chest, clinging to him with a strange sort of tension.
He didn’t understand it at all, but she felt uncharacteristically needy. After a minute, he asked, “Everyone in your life has let you down?”
“Not everyone. But if they don’t, they get taken away anyway.”
His throat suddenly tightened so intensely, so powerfully, that he couldn’t breathe for a moment. Because he knew—he knew—he knew how she felt.
It had happened to him too.
She might look beautiful and soft and untouched, and she might be secretive and sensual and damaged, but she wasn’t all that different from him.
He understood her. Knew her. The way he knew himself.
Maybe she sensed some of what he was feeling. Maybe she felt it herself. Because, after a minute, she raised her head and stared down at him in the dark. “What about you? Do you trust people?”
“No.” Just the one word, the one truth.
“I didn’t think so.”
It felt like she was drawing away from him, so he tightened his arm around her. She didn’t resist, settling against him again.
“What about your mafioso lover?” He’d been putting pieces together about her in his mind.
She jerked.
“What?”
“The guy who’s after you. If you just do casual sex, how did you get involved with him?”
After a brief hesitation, he felt her shrug. “I was just trying something out with him, and obviously it didn’t work. Plus what makes you think he was Italian mob?”
“You said he was connected.” He stiffened as he processed this new idea, the puzzle distracting him from his intense, softer feelings before. Maybe… He sucked in his breath as a different thought crossed his mind. “If you’re going to tell me you got involved with someone?—”
“Oh, just shut up. It’s none of your business who I got involved with. Let it go.”
He didn’t respond, knowing she was really annoyed now so the conversation would be fruitless, but he was worried in an entirely new way. Some wannabe gangster from Atlantic City would be one thing. A Russian or Albanian would be entirely different. The stakes would be much, much higher.
He was mulling over this new avenue of investigation when she shifted beside him, stroking his bare belly with her hand. “Sorry,” she murmured.
“Don’t be. It’s fine.”
“I know you’re just trying to help, and I don’t want to sound ungrateful. But it’s my mess.”
“I know you don’t like to depend on other people, but sometimes we can’t get out of our own messes without help.”
“I know.”
They lay in silence for several minutes. She started to stroke his chest and belly again, and he couldn’t help but like the feel of it.
Finally she said, “I should probably start figuring out what I’m going to do with my life now. I can’t stay here with you much longer.”
He tensed involuntarily for just a moment. “Why not? I’ve told you that you can stay for as long as you need.”
“I’m not your mistress, you know.”
“Damn it, Kelly,” Caleb snapped, responding to a surge of resentment and—very strangely—defensiveness. “Of course you’re not my mistress. You’re staying here because you’re in danger, and we also happen to be having sex.” He wasn’t sure why he was reacting this way. It wasn’t like him at all.
It must have to do with how vulnerable he’d felt a few minutes ago.
“You’re supporting me, and I’m fucking you. You go to work and I lie around here all day. It feels like being a mistress to me.”
“You are under no obligation to fuck me. I’m not going to kick you out if you’ve gotten bored with it. The sex is not the reason I’m letting you stay.”
It was part of the reason, he had to admit to himself. He found it unlikely he would be this interested in her, this invested in her, if they hadn’t been having sex, if the sex hadn’t been some of the best he’d had in a long time. But he was bothered by the implications of her words anyway.
She asked, “So why are you letting me stay? This situation is kind of crazy. We were strangers two weeks ago, and all of a sudden I’m living with you and sleeping with you. It makes me feel… weird.”
Caleb had no idea she’d been feeling that way, and he didn’t like things that he didn’t know. “So we won’t fuck anymore.”
Kelly groaned. “Would you stop it? I’m not saying I don’t want to fuck you anymore. You must know how… how much I enjoy it. But I don’t like to feel dependent, and that’s how I feel with you.”
He was silent for a long time, recognizing that he liked her being dependent on him. He liked that, right now, he was the only person in the world she was relying on. What that said about him, he didn’t really know.
“So what are you planning to do?”
“I don’t know.”
“I can understand why you might not want to live with me indefinitely, and honestly, I can’t keep staying here myself. It’s becoming inconvenient for me to keep commuting to the city every day for work. But surely you don’t expect me to just let you walk away when you have no resources.”
Kelly tried to pull away, but he wouldn’t let her. So she grumbled, “I never said I didn’t have any resources. I’m hardly destitute. I can hire help if I need it. I can take care of myself.”
“Then what are you waiting for? Leave. Tomorrow morning if you want. And take care of yourself.”
“Is that what you want? Me to leave?”
He let out a brief, frustrated exclamation. “No. Damn it, Kelly. Haven’t I just said so? I want to help you. I don’t want you to leave.”
It was true, but he couldn’t believe he’d just admitted it out loud.
The words seemed to have a good effect though.
She sighed deeply and was silent for a long time.
She pressed herself up beside him again, burrowing under the crook of his arm.
“All right. I’ll stay a little while longer, just because I feel a lot safer with you.
But I’m not going to just let you support me. I’ll start figuring things out.”
“You can pay me rent if it makes you feel better.” He intentionally made his tone very dry.
He was rewarded with a little laugh. “Thanks. I might take you up on that.”
Midmorning on Saturday, Caleb found Kelly on the patio, drinking coffee and drawing something on a sketch pad.
“What are you drawing?” he asked, trying to catch a glimpse of it.
She gave a little twitch since he’d obviously surprised her, and she ducked the pad away from his view. “None of your business.”
He frowned, but such a small secret felt too petty to pursue. “I’m taking Ralph to the park. Do you want to come?”
Closing her sketch pad, she stood up with a smile.
“Yes. I’d love to. I was wondering why?—”
“You were wondering why what?”
She gave a pretty little shrug. “Do you take him there a lot? I’ve been wondering why you took him to the park in the first place since your place here is so big and there’s plenty of space to run.”
“We usually go every Saturday, although I’ve missed the past couple of weeks. I’ll show you why.” He jangled the lead he held in his hand and called out, “Park!”
A couple of seconds later, Ralph was bounding toward them at full speed. Kelly laughed as the dog skidded to a stop, nearly plowing into Caleb’s legs.
“I have no idea why, but playing around here doesn’t come close to going to the park for him.
It’s his favorite thing in the world. You should hear him crying as we get close to it in the car.
” He felt a strange sort of pleased pride as Kelly laughed again and leaned down to pet the dog, obviously very fond of the animal.
When she straightened up, she said, “I’m going to bring my sketch pad. Maybe I’ll work on a drawing of him.”
“Sounds good to me.” He slanted her a teasing look. “It’s about time you started working for your keep around here.”
She gave him a little push against the arm, clearly not offended. He was sure she’d been serious about not living off him indefinitely, but it was nice that she wasn’t too uptight about it.
They drove to the park with Ralph whimpering louder and louder as they approached, until Kelly hushed him and told the dog he should be more like his owner and act cool and collected about things he was excited about.
When they arrived, Ralph ran ahead with his Frisbee to the corner near the woods where Caleb always took him. He and Kelly walked more slowly in a pleasant kind of silence.
He had never brought a woman to the park with him before. It had been a weekly ritual for a long time, and part of the pleasure for him was that he went alone with only his dog. But he didn’t regret bringing Kelly.
She was walking beside him, looking around, smiling at Ralph whenever she focused on the dog, who was now running circles in pure joie de vivre .
Another woman would have moved closer to him, tried to deepen the connection between them, taken his hand as some sort of claim to their closeness.
Kelly didn’t though. She did nothing to get nearer to him even in a casual way.
For some reason, he kept noticing it.
When he edged toward her as they walked, she edged the other way to keep the same distance. It didn’t seem to be purposeful. It was completely unconscious—like her instinct was to pull away rather than move close.
As an experiment, he reached over to take her hand in his as they walked.
She gave him a quick, startled glance but then smiled and didn’t pull her hand out of his grasp.