Chapter 8
Grant didn’t move, didn’t blink, didn’t breathe. “You want me to do what ?” he asked, not quite believing that he’d heard her correctly.
“Kiss me,” she breathed. “Just once. Please.”
Damn, she was killing him. He’d tried, and failed, to keep her at arm’s length, the pull between them stronger than it had ever been.
Of course he wanted to kiss her. Desperately.
For five long years, he’d dreamed of kissing her.
And now he stood at a crossroads between his honor and his desire, the last thin edge of his restraint rapidly crumbling beneath him.
He studied her face for a long moment. She wore her hair in a messy bun, a slight flush in her cheeks from the wine.
She’d thrown on her college sweatshirt again, complete with matching sweatpants this time, and she was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen.
He reached out and tucked a stray piece of hair behind her ear, then trailed his fingers along her jaw.
She inched closer, and he tilted her chin until she was looking up at him with those deep green eyes. Her breath hitched.
“Are you sure about this?” Grant asked, his mouth a whisper away from hers.
She nodded. A birthday gift. This was a birthday gift, and nothing more, he repeated to himself.
He would give her one chaste kiss, and then he was done.
He lowered his head and touched his lips to hers in a feather-soft caress.
The sensation that streaked through him when their lips met was enough to make him forget everything he’d just told himself.
Electricity zapped along his nerve endings as Everly curled her hand around the back of his head, pulling him close and opening her mouth against his. He reared back at the shock.
“Grant,” she whispered, and his name on her lips was enough to make him forget all of the reasons that kissing his best friend’s widow was a terrible idea.
Desire won out, and he finally gave in, pulling her into his arms and fully capturing her mouth with his.
Their breath mingled as his tongue slipped over hers, and he tasted the wine she’d drunk all evening.
She whimpered, her body molding to his, and he savored the feel of her against him, warm and firm and trembling slightly.
Her hands slid down his chest, and cool fingers brushed against his belly, fumbling for his zipper.
Some small logical corner of his mind shouted that this was about to go too far.
They couldn’t do this, especially when she had been drinking and might be in a clouded state of mind.
Even if every inch of his body ached to have all of her.
He separated himself from her as gently as he could and sat back against the couch, raking a hand through his hair, trying to find his equilibrium again. “We can’t do this,” he finally said, turning to Everly.
She leaned back against the arm of the couch, eyes heavy and lips flushed. “Why not? No one’s here to see. To stop us.”
He blew out a breath and stood, knowing full well the evidence of how he felt was on display. Nothing he could do to hide it now. “You know what I mean, Ev. We’ll end up doing something we’d both regret.”
“I wouldn’t regret it. I’m the one who wanted this, remember? But…you don’t. You were humoring me.” Hurt blossomed in her eyes, and he cursed.
“Believe me, Everly. I want to do more, so much more. But we have to stop. It’s wrong. Jeremy wouldn’t want this.”
“Oh, fuck Jeremy!” She stood up, angry red slashes now coloring her cheeks. “I’m not going to let a dead man dictate who I have sex with. And neither should you.”
Grant would have been less shocked if she’d slapped him across the face. “That man died defending the country he loved. The woman that he loved,” he told her, ice flooding his veins. “He trusted STAG to take care of you if the worst happened. I’d be insane to break that trust.”
She stared at him for a long moment, and when she finally spoke, her voice was deathly quiet.
“I wish I could share your delusion, Grant. That I could believe that promises mean something. But unfortunately, I’m not that naive anymore.
” Her shoulders slumped. “Jeremy…he didn’t…
ugh.” She threw her hands up in defeat. “Forget it.” She turned and hurried down the hall then, shutting the door silently behind her.
Grant stared at the closed door, his jaw working and mind spinning.
What the hell had just happened? The fruity taste of wine lingered in his mouth, the memory of the way she’d opened up for him at odds with her sudden anger.
He got the feeling that, like yesterday, he and Everly had been arguing about two very different issues.
With a sigh, he gathered up the dishes from the coffee table. Posie emerged from under the couch and trotted after him at the sound of plates clanking against each other. He deposited the stack in the sink, then shook a few treats into her bowl so she could eat while he washed dishes.
“Looks like it’s me and you tonight, Posie,” he told the cat as she crunched on her food.
Everly’s words looped through his mind as he washed and dried the few dishes left in the sink.
She’d said promises didn’t mean anything.
That he shouldn’t let Jeremy, or the memory of him, dictate his actions now.
She was partly right—at some point, she would have to move on with her life.
And so would he, Grant supposed. But she was wrong about one thing.
Promises did mean something to Grant, and he’d vowed to Jeremy that he’d take care of Everly if the worst ever happened.
Kissing her like that felt like a betrayal—one that felt damn good, to be sure, but one that couldn’t happen again.
A yawn cracked his jaw, but he headed for the couch instead of the bed where he’d spent the last two nights.
Lying next to each other in bed was the last thing they needed to do after kissing like that.
Posie curled up beside him as he pulled a blanket over himself and settled in.
“Let’s hope your mama and I can patch things up in the morning,” he told her as he switched off the lamp and prepared for another restless night.
◆◆◆
She’d been a fool to ask Grant for a kiss. Everly took a sip of coffee and let the fresh air and birdsong wash over her as she nursed a headache on the screened porch. She’d had more to drink yesterday evening than she realized, and she could see now that the wine had definitely gone to her head.
But what a kiss it had been. Even now, she couldn’t bring herself to regret it.
Grant was as skilled a kisser as she’d imagined him to be, and her body had lit up instantly.
At least one of them had possessed enough self-control to pump the brakes before they’d gone any further.
As if she would have regretted that, either.
She stiffened as the back door creaked open, and Grant stepped out with his own cup of coffee. “Morning,” he said as he sat down in a chair next to the wicker sofa. So casual. As if he hadn’t had his mouth on hers last night and then pushed her away.
“Hey.” She sipped from her mug and debated ripping off the bandaid here and now. To ask Grant to take her back to Atlanta, DropKom be damned. Pick up whatever broken pieces of her life were left among the mess that Jeremy had left. Start over fresh somewhere completely new like she’d intended.
Posie leapt off the couch and then flopped in the patch of sun near Grant’s feet. He chuckled and bent to pet her traitorous cat, then straightened and fixed her with his calm, cool gaze.
“I’m sorry about last night,” he told her.
Everly shook her head. “You don’t have anything to be sorry about. I was the one who asked you. Guess I let the wine talk for me when I shouldn’t have.” She rubbed her forehead.
“It won’t happen again. I meant what I said about promising to take care of you. I intend to keep my word, whether you believe in promises or not.”
Okay, she probably deserved that. Everly drew a breath. “I respect that. And I meant what I said about not allowing the specter of another person to determine what you do with your body. Or who you do it with.”
“Isn’t that splitting hairs in this situation? Jeremy factors into this, whether you want him to or not.”
“Grant, you don’t understand.” Everly plunked her cup down on the side table harder than she intended, coffee splashing over the side.
He’d gone still again, like he had last night when she asked him to kiss her. “Then help me understand,” he told her quietly.
She took another deep breath. Words bubbled just under the surface, words that only her therapist had heard. Words she wasn’t sure he was prepared to hear.
“You can tell me,” he assured her, as if he could sense her hesitation. “Whatever it is, you can tell me.”
Everly clasped her hands between her knees and fixed her eyes on the floor, just as she’d done on her first day in Dr. Schafer’s office.
“Jeremy and I…our marriage was not what you think it was,” she began, her belly already roiling.
“When things were good, they were good. But when things were bad—” she shook her head.
“I realized early into our marriage that he had an anger problem. He’d get upset and punch a hole in the wall, throw things.
But he blamed it on the stress of the Army, and I believed him. Like a fool,” she added softly.
She got up and paced the length of the porch, Grant watching her silently, waiting.
“His behavior got worse as time went on. But it was so gradual that I didn’t realize what was happening.
I told myself it was just a bad day, a bad week, a bad month.
Then before I knew it, years had passed and nothing had changed for the better. ”
“What did he do?” Grant asked quietly.