Page 51

Rowan

“I’m going to drag that futon mattress out here,” Harrison says as he hands me the last of my printouts. “I’ll sleep right in front of the stairs.”

I want to tell him that’s not necessary. And that playing the role of a martyr won’t get him back into my good graces. Except I don’t think I could deliver that speech convincingly when I’m scared out of my mind.

Should I have taken Natalie to my father’s house tonight? Or even out of town?

“Ro,” he whispers. “Are you okay?”

I’m so tired, but I refuse to cry on him again. “I’m fine,” I murmur. “I’m sorry about earlier. That was stupid.”

“Stupid?” He takes one of my hands in his and begins massaging it, pinching the flesh between each of my fingers in turn. He used to do this when my hand cramped from drafting. I’d forgotten. “Stupid is a strong word.”

“Impulsive, then. I wasn’t thinking,” I whisper.

“You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

He trades hands, massaging the other one as thoroughly as the first. Then he lifts my hand to his mouth and kisses it softly, his beard tickling my palm.

“Harrison...” If our daughter decides to come downstairs, she’ll get the wrong idea. “Not here.”

“All right.” He stands and tugs me off the couch.

It takes my sluggish brain a moment to realize he’s pulling me into the den and closing the door. “What are... ?”

“You said not here, so we’re somewhere else.”

My back hits the door, and he steps into my personal space, gray eyes blazing. He runs one rough thumb over my cheekbone and then tilts his head to kiss me.

It’s not a polite kiss. It’s the stuff of my passionate, twenty-year-old daydreams. All tongue and hands and hunger.

I take two seconds to wonder if I’m making yet another mistake as my hands grip his T-shirt for the second time today. But Harrison’s kisses are still capable of making me forget myself. As one of his hands tangles in my hair and the other makes a naughty trip down the back of my sweatpants, the only thing on my mind is a fervent wish that he’d yank off my bra and suck on my nipples until the point of pain.

Then he scoops me up off the floor with one clever arm and pins me against the door, and I wrap my legs around his hips. My kisses are urgent, because I know I can’t stop and think. That way lies the abyss.

Harrison doesn’t give me a chance to reconsider, either. He rocks his hips forward, showing me exactly how much he wants this.

Until he gets carried away and bangs my ass against the old door. Loudly. And Lickie, on the other side, chooses this of all moments to bark out a warning.

We both freeze, mid-kiss, instantly transformed back into exactly who we really are—two strangers, old enough to know better, in a compromised position. In the midst of a crisis, too, in a house where the dog’s bark at zero dark thirty is enough to bring our nervous teenager out of her bedroom.

“Mom?” comes Natalie’s distant shout. “Why is Lickie barking?”

Harrison quickly releases me, and my feet connect with the chilly floor. He opens the door a crack and calls out, “I’m moving the futon around, and I bumped the door. Go to bed, hon.”

“Is Mom coming up?”

“In a sec. She’s just helping me.”

What I’m really doing is finger combing my hair and trying to find my misplaced dignity.

Harrison moves calmly toward the futon couch and rolls the mattress burrito-style before lifting it.

“What are you doing?”

“Moving this. Just like I said.”

I step out of the way so he can carry it awkwardly to the wood floor between the stairs and the back of the couch.

When he returns, I’m still standing in the den’s doorway, red-faced, wondering what’s wrong with me.

Harrison picks up his pillow off the floor and gives me a grin. “To be continued.”

“Not a chance,” I whisper. “And why am I the only one who looks contrite?”

“Because I don’t have anything to be contrite about,” he says in a low voice. “I’ve loved you as hard as I can since the first time you let me talk you into a beer after work. I love you still. It’s not a crime to care.”

My jaw slams shut as I scan his features. His gaze is steady, and his well-kissed mouth is drawn in a serious line. He means what he’s just said.

“I realize that not everything that happened in the past was really your fault. But you can’t just walk back in and expect me to pick up where we left off. It’s not fair to me. And it’s really not fair to Natalie. She’s wanted a normal family for her whole life. Do not toy with her emotions.”

“I would never,” he whispers. “And I love her, too, which is also not something you can control. Now go up to bed before you’ll have to step over me to do it. Or I might just grab you when you pass by. Like a troll under a bridge.”

I stalk by him without a word, because I believe that he might actually try it.

And the stupid thing is that I’d probably let him.