“Then unmake it.”
He shut the door behind him and strode into the darkness, and her heart beat faster in response.
“I can’t unmake it,” she said, her voice raspy. Her throat was aching and she thought that the night of no sleep yesterday and the marathon to get everything set up today had just set her up to fall ill. “Look, I made up my mind. I can’t stay here.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m unhappy, Garrett. I’ve got everything I ever wanted, and yet don’t. I make money for myself, I’ve got great friends, and Molly, and I’ve got you and your family...and I’m so unhappy.”
The mattress squeaked as he sat down, and suddenly she felt his hand patting the bed as though to find her. “Why are you unhappy?” he asked. He found her thigh over the covers, and when he squeezed, her stomach tightened, too.
She couldn’t remember ever being in a dark room with him, or maybe she could, decades ago, when he had been sick and she would help Eleanor nurse him and feed him soup. But now she was no longer a girl. Her body was a woman’s, and her responses to this man were purely feminine and decidedly discomforting. Her blood raced hot through her veins as her body turned the same consistency of her pillow behind her. Soft. Feathery. Weightless.
“Why are you unhappy?” he murmured. She felt the mattress squeak again when he edged closer. He seemed to be palpating the air until he felt her shoulder; then he slid his hand up her face. The touch of his fingers melted her, and she closed her eyes as he cupped her jaw and bent to her ear. “Tell me what makes you unhappy and I’ll fix it for you.”
He smelled of alcohol. And his unique scent.
She shook her head at his impossible proposition, almost amused, but not quite. More like unsettled. By his nearness, his touch.
She had promised herself, when she’d decided she had to move away, that she would forget this man. And now all she could think of was reaching up to touch his hair and draw his lips to hers. She couldn’t see him in the darkness, but she knew his face by memory. The sleek line of his dark eyebrows. The beautiful tips of his sooty eyelashes. The strikingly beautiful espresso shade of his eyes, dark brown from up close and coal-black from afar.
She knew his strong face, with that strong, proud forehead, as strong as his cheekbones and jaw, and she knew the perfect shape of his mouth. She might not have touched his face with her fingers in her life, but her eyes had run over those features more than they had touched any other thing on this earth.
“You can’t fix it. You’re not God,” she sadly whispered. Her throat now ached with emotion, too.
“You’re right. I’m a devil.” He cupped her face in both hands and stroked his thumb across the flesh of her lips, triggering a strange reaction in her body. “Why did you wear lipstick tonight? You look prettier bare.”
Her breath caught as she realized he was stroking her lips with his thumb like he wanted to kiss her. He’d called her pretty. When had he ever called her pretty? Decades ago, maybe by accident, he’d blurted it out. But it had been years since he’d ever complimented her. Or touched her.
He’d just done both.
And suddenly the only thing moving in the room was her heaving chest, and his thumb as it moved side to side, caressing her lips, filling her body with an ocean of longing. She swallowed back a moan.
“You’re right to want to leave here, Kate.” His voice thickened as he bent his head, and he smelled so good and exuded such body warmth and strength, she went light-headed. “You should run from here.”
It took every ounce of willpower for her to push at his hard shoulders. “You’re drunk, Garrett. Go away and get out of my bed.”
His hands tightened on her face as he nuzzled her nose with his, the timbre of his voice rough with torment. “Kate, there’s not a day I don’t remember what I took from you—”
“Garrett, we can talk about all this tomorrow.”
“There’s nothing to discuss. You’re staying here. Here, Kate. Where I can take care of you and I know you’re safe. All right, Freckles?”
“Even if I’m miserable?”
He dropped his hands to her shoulders and squeezed. “Tell me what makes you miserable, Kate. I’ll take care of it. I’ll make it better for you.”
Kate wanted to push him away, needed to push him away. He was drunk and she didn’t have the energy to deal with him tonight, not like this. But the instant she flattened her palms on his shirt, they stayed there. On his chest. Feeling his hard muscles through the fabric, his heart beating under her hands. Between her legs, she grew moist and hot.
When she was little, she’d wanted him because he was strong and protective, and her favorite boy of all the boys she’d ever met. But now she was older and a new kind of wanting tangled up inside her. Her breasts went heavy from the mere act of touching his chest through his shirt, and her nipples puckered against her nightshirt.
“Do me a favor, Kate?”
His voice slurring even more, Garrett sounded drunker by the second as he stroked her face with unsteady fingertips. Every pore in her body became aware of that whispery touch, causing shivers down her nerve endings.
“Stay with us. My mother loves you. Beth loves you, and so does her son.” He seemed to wrack his brain for more to say. “And Molly. Molly loves you, Kate. She needs you. Julian, Landon, hell, everyone.”
But not him?
She didn’t know if she wanted to laugh or cry or hit him for excluding himself, but she already knew that she was a weight on him, a responsibility to him. That’s what she’d always been. Forcing her arms to return to her sides, she sighed. “Garrett...”
“What will that obsessed client of yours, Missy Something, do without your currant muffins? What will I do? Hmm, Kate? It’s a tragedy to think about it.”
“I don’t want to argue about this now, Garrett.” She rubbed her temple.
“All right, Katie.”
She blinked.
“All right?” she repeated.
Confused by his easy concession, which was not like Garrett at all, she suddenly heard him shift on the bed and spread his big body down the length beside her.
Eyes widening in horror, she heard him plump one of the two pillows.
“All right, Katie. We’ll talk about it in the morning,” he said in that deep, slurred voice.