Page 52 of Untouchable

His breath actually hitched in his throat.

“Do you want to take a little walk?” he asked, instinctively shifting the moment to something more familiar. Sex. He reached his hand down toward her and nodded toward the woods. “We could revisit the scene.”

She obviously picked up the seductiveness in his tone, but a strange expression flickered on her face as she glanced back toward the woods. “I don’t think so. I’m still working on Ralph.”

Her response was so unexpected that Caleb felt compelled to follow it up. He lowered himself to sit beside her on the grass, looking over at the sketch, which was very well done and almost complete. “Maybe we can revisit the scene when you’re done.”

She didn’t answer, focusing instead on the page.

He drew his brows together. Her cheeks had paled a little. Even though her expression was perfectly natural, something underlying it was almost skittish. “You did enjoy that first time, didn’t you?”

Her eyes shot up to his face. “Of course I did. You know very well that I did.”

He relaxed a tension he hadn’t been aware of before. “That’s what I thought. But it seems like something is bothering you about going back there.”

Putting down the sketch pad, she gave him a resigned look. “Yeah. I’m sorry. It wasn’t the sex at all. It’s just that… that I don’t like the woods.”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t like the woods. Any woods. They make me nervous.”

“Are you serious?”

“Yeah.” With a sheepish smile, she leaned back against the boulder. “It sounds stupid I’m sure, but it’s just this weird fear I have.”

“Did something happen in the woods to make you scared of them?” His mind was mulling over this new piece of the puzzle that was Kelly, and he couldn’t help but be pleased by the information since she so seldom talked about herself.

“No. I was just always scared of them as a kid, and the fear never went away. Kids are scared of all kinds of silly things.” She reached over to rub his chest. “What were you scared of when you were little?”

He thought about the question, staring out into the distance for several moments. With a little intake of breath, he turned back to her and admitted, “I can’t even remember.”

She snorted. “Right. You’re just pretending to be all fearless and manly. But I’m sure you were scared of something. But, even as a boy, I bet you didn’t admit it.”

“I didn’t.” He smiled and repositioned himself, wrapping an arm around her shoulder and pulling her closer. “I’ve probably blocked any childhood fears out now, along with any other trace of weakness. I know as a boy I never admitted to being scared of anything.”

“Or as a man either.”

He thought about that. Recognized it as true.

“Or as a man.”

“What were your parents like?”

“They were… were busy a lot.”

“Were you close to them?”

“I don’t even know. I was never conscious of not being close to them, but sometimes I would watch other families—that were affectionate with each other—and I’d wonder what that would be like. My dad was a classic workaholic. He started Reliant from nothing and made a fortune purely because he was brilliant. I always loved him, of course, but he didn’t have time for us to hang out. And my mom was always… involved in family drama. They were—” He paused, trying to sort through the years of memories from his childhood, most of the milder memories overwhelmed by the one year of hell he’d lived through and later by the guilt he could never shake off. “They were fine.”

A silence followed his conclusion, making Caleb suddenly self-conscious. He never spilled like that. He never revealed himself in any real way. And he didn’t know what Kelly was thinking now.

When he looked over, he saw she wasn’t even focused on him. She was staring off in the distance. But her hand was still stroking his chest, and the touch felt comforting somehow.

“What were your parents like?” he asked, wanting to change the subject.

She lifted one shoulder. “They were kind. They were older and often busy like yours were, and we never really bonded the way other kids do with their parents. But they did right by me.”

“That doesn’t sound much like a family.”