3 BOOK BUNDLE "Her Last Love Affair", "Her Last Love Affair: Breathing Without You" AND "Her Last Love Affair: The Final Journey" (15 page)

“I’ll make it up to you,” he assured her, wriggling his
eyebrows as his fingers wrapped around her knees and kept her legs spread wide.

“It’s okay,” she said, carefully pushing his hands off her
body and shuffling off the bed. “I’ve got an early start tomorrow,” she added
by way of explanation. “And you did more than enough for me earlier.”

“Well,” he chuckled, edging off the bed with weak legs.
“There’s plenty more where that came from.”

Allie didn’t turn to look at him, as she picked her dress up
from the floor and slipped her slender figure back into it. “Thanks,” she
spoke. “But I really do have to go.”

“Okay,” he relented, bending to scoop his pants from around
his ankles. “Can I see you again?” he asked, peering down as he carefully
removed the condom, before buckling his belt.

“I thought you said, you wouldn’t call?” she asked, assuming
that he was joking.

“We could do that again though, couldn’t we?” he stated,
straight-faced and with a hint of desperation. “I mean...Damn, Allie, that was
fucking fantastic.”

“Umm, things are pretty hectic,” she quickly responded.
Deciding she didn’t want to take her panties home, she kicked them under his
bed with the toe of her red stiletto.  “This was fun, though,” she assured him,
leaning forward and kissing his cheek. “It was good to see you again, Patrick.”

With that, she exited the bedroom. He followed her, watching
from the doorway as she strolled down the hallway, made a quick detour to the
living room to retrieve her purse and then headed straight out the front door.
“Wow,” he breathed, as he watched the door swing closed behind her. He smiled,
shaking his head. Many was the time he’d gotten straight up and left after a
one night stand, but the tables had never been turned on him before. It
appeared to Patrick that Allie McLaren had a dark side she kept hidden from
most people.

Guilt

I
t was a little after two in the morning when
Allie got back to her apartment. Sighing, she closed the door and leaned
against it. Her eyelids drifted shut and she breathed slowly, trying to calm
her jangled nerves and figure out why what she’d done that night felt so
wrong.  After several seconds, she felt no better and had no answers.

Peeling her eyes open, she pushed herself away from the door
and began to kick off her shoes. She flicked them off her feet not caring that
one landed beneath the coffee table and the other whistled dangerously near the
TV screen. Moving with purpose across the room, she strained behind her back
and yanked the zip of her dress.

When she reached the kitchen, she paused briefly to tug the
dress down, then stepped out of it and turned to her right, continuing her
stride to the bedroom. She didn’t stop, moving her slender, naked body through
to the bathroom and immediately stepping into the tub. She leaned forward,
turning on the shower and let the freezing cold jets strike her chest and
abdomen. Flinching under the chilly water, she forced herself to remain there,
before dipping her face beneath the stream.

As the temperature began to lift, she stood motionless,
hoping to find absolution in the water. However, she kept replaying the night
in her head, wondering desperately why she felt so differently from the other
one night stands she’d experienced. Patrick didn’t do anything wrong; he was
sweet, if a little driven when they actually got to the bedroom. Nevertheless,
he’d been keen to make up for the speed with which he’d climaxed. And, in
fairness, he’d made her come before he’d even got her clothes off. She couldn’t
lay the blame at his feet. She couldn’t claim he was a bad lover, because that
simply wasn’t true. He wasn’t a fantastic lover of course, but he had been
considerate and had given her an incredible orgasm.

So, the problem hadn’t been his technique. She wondered
whether it was just that she wasn’t as attracted to him as she had been.
Briefly she contemplated the possibility that the night felt like an anticlimax
because she had several years to imagine what it would have been like. But then
she was quickly forced to remind herself that was true of every encounter she’d
had over the last few weeks.

Inhaling steadily, she opened her eyes and tipped her head
back so that it was no longer directly in the shower’s stream. Deep down, she
knew exactly what the problem was, knew the precise moment things that night
had begun to turn from thrillingly exciting to a gnawing sense of wrongness:
the second she’d let her thoughts slide to Reece. Allie’s instinctive response
was to blame him, although logically she knew that was ridiculous.

Leaning against the frigid tiles, she felt a heaviness in
the pit of her stomach and a rising lump in her throat. Slowly, the tears came
and, as they did, she sank to the bottom of the tub. Drawing her legs up, she
wrapped her arms around her knees and gently rocked herself while she sobbed.
She wept because she missed Reece and wished she didn’t. She also cried
because, for the first time since she’d found out about her cancer, she was
angry at whatever had caused her to be sick. If she’d been religious, she would
have railed at God. As it was, she merely wept hot, bitter tears at fate or
dumb luck.

***

It was a very different Allie McLaren,
who emerged from her bathroom, wearing only a terry robe. There was no trace of
her earlier emotion. She was, she’d decided, done with feeling sorry for
herself. Her life was what it was, and no amount of rage against the world
would change that. Instead, she chose to get straight back on the horse. After
her tears had drained her of all volatile emotions, she’d come to the
realization that whoever she’d slept with after Reece would have affected her
in the same way. After all, she’d admitted she loved him. The fact that a
relationship with him would be impossible couldn’t alter her feelings
overnight. She was expecting far too much to hope that she’d be able to simply
pretend the previous two weeks hadn’t happened. So, naturally, sex with Patrick
was tainted by that.

What she need, she decided at half past three in the
morning, was to rinse the taste of Reece from her mouth. She needed to get back
in the game, so to speak. However, after an hour on Facebook, thirty minutes on
her college’s alumni website and a halfhearted ten minutes flipping through the
two professional newspapers she’d worked for since her internship, she had come
up dry. There were a few men she would have liked to have hooked up with, but
they were either married or in long-term relationships. Whether or not that
would affect those men’s decisions to sleep with her, she didn’t know, she
suspected in at least one of the cases that it wouldn’t, but she wasn’t
prepared to be the ‘other woman’, even if it was just for one night. The single
men she came across, she either barely remember, or remembered well enough to
know that she didn’t want to see them again.

A part of her wondered whether she was being deliberately
pickier than she would have been in previous weeks, because somewhere in her
subconscious she didn’t want to continue with this. She quickly shook that
feeling away, though. Yes, she was being picky, but she had always been picky.
The idea of finding sexual freedom was never about having sex with just any
man. The problem perhaps was that she’d shunned a social life and, therefore,
hadn’t met as many men as she otherwise would have. Still, she found it
difficult to believe that she’d already had sex with every unattached man she’d
ever been attracted to. There had to be someone else.

Slamming the lid of her laptop down, Allie pushed herself
off the couch and padded through the darkened room. Rubbing her tired eyes,
which had bright spots dancing in front of them, she dragged her leaden feet to
the bedroom and flopped face down on the covers. She remained that way for a
minute, until she awkwardly, tugged the sheet and blankets down while lifting
small sections of her body at a time. Once she’d found her way into the bed,
she rolled onto her back, unfastening the bathrobe, slipped out of it and
pushed it toward her feet. Finally, she sat up just enough to grip the bed
clothes and yank them up around her chin, curling into the fetal position as
she did so.

She didn’t expect to sleep; felt sure that she would spend
the entire night, just as she’d done after her fight with Reece, staring at
either the wall of the ceiling. However, her heavy lids were quickly drooping,
and it wasn’t long before she was slipping into a delightful and soothing form
of unconsciousness.

Comforting arms were encircling her from behind and she felt
protected and warm. The palm of a hand was stretched out on her abdomen, moving
in small circles while the fingers of the other hand were stroking up and down
the curve of her waist and hip. Her name was whispered tenderly, reverently and
she could feel the soft breath on the nape of her neck. Allie would also have sworn
that she could feel the weight of a head resting against hers, the warmth of a
body stretched out along the length of her own and the scent that she could
never quite define, but would recognize until the end of time.

The dream was bittersweet. It was a balm that she so clearly
needed, and yet, even in sleep, she was aware of the pain that awaited her upon
waking. A pain that would be even more acute after spending a night in his
arms, albeit nothing more than the fantasy of his arms. However, Allie was in
no hurry to sweep the dream from her subconscious. In fact, she was quite happy
for it to run and run. And Reece stayed with her that night, continuing to hold
her, to caress her and whisper nonsense in the dead of night.

When Allie awoke, bright sunshine was streaming through the
window and she could tell by the level of light that it was at least
mid-morning, perhaps even midday. And indeed, she would still have been asleep
if it wasn’t for the harsh ringing of her phone. She never bothered to have a
phone in her bedroom, but the one she kept in the living room was quite loud
enough to be heard from anywhere in the apartment. In fact, she suspected it
could be heard from anywhere in the apartment building. Grant had once told her
that there was a way to adjust the volume, but she’d taken little notice. As
she grumbled and pulled the sheets over her head, she wished she’d paid more
attention to his rambling.

She refused to get up, but the bedclothes did little to
muffle the sound. Eventually, the ringing did cease and she heard a beep
followed by the distorted sound of her own voice, “This is Allie McLaren, I
can’t come to the phone right now, so leave a message or call me on my cell.”
Another electronic beep followed.

“Hi, Allie,” Reece’s deep voice echoed around the apartment.
“Listen, I probably should give you some space, I know that. But I’ve been
thinking about you and I wanted to know how you’re doing. Give me a call or
something; just let me know you’re okay, all right?” he asked, there was a brief
silence on the line, as though he wanted to say something else. However, no
more was said, and after a few seconds the recording ceased.

Peeling the covers off her head, Allie rolled onto her back
and stared blankly at the ceiling. “I’ve been thinking about you, too,” she
whispered. She was torn, she wanted to talk to him; desperately wanted to talk
to him, but knew that she shouldn’t. However, Reece seemed concerned about her
and it would be selfish in the extreme to let him worry unnecessarily.

With an exhausted huff, she tossed the bed clothes off and
sat up, before sliding naked from the warmth of her mattress. Not bothering to
put anything on, she began scouring the floor for her cell phone, before
realizing it was probably in her purse, which she’d dumped in the living room.
Sure enough, there she found it. Without leaving the time or opportunity to
talk herself out of it, she typed a quick text message, believing that to be
the easiest solution to her predicament. The message read, ‘Reece, thanks for
being worried about me, but I’m fine really. I’m sorry, but I can’t talk at the
moment. You know I want nothing but happiness for you, so do me a favor and
find someone who deserves you. I don’t and maybe never did.’

By the time she’d sent it, she wished she hadn’t. For one
thing, she suspected that it would open the door for further conversation
between them and, for another, it was just another agonizing reminder that he
was out there somewhere and she couldn’t be with him. However, the minutes ticked
by and he didn’t respond. Allie took a shower and got dressed, and still there
was nothing from him. She poked around the kitchen, looking for something to
eat and found her fridge and cupboards sparse to say the least. Eventually, she
found a loaf of stale bread and made a slice of toast. She ate it bare and dry,
while hovering over her iPhone. “This is exactly why you shouldn’t have done
this,” she muttered to herself. It wasn’t until she’d finished her meager
breakfast; almost an hour after she’d sent him the text, he finally returned
one of his own.

‘Thanks for letting me know you’re okay. I don’t want to
make anything harder for you. So, I’ll respect your wishes from here on out, I
promise. But you have to know that stuff about not deserving me was BS’

She smiled sadly, as she imagined him saying those exact
words to her. She could envisage the expression on his face, she knew where
he’d pause and exactly which syllables he’d place emphasis on. The sound of it
played in her head as surely as the message he’d left on her answer machine. 
She allowed herself to daydream, just for a moment, about what life would be
like with him; if they could live together, get married, and maybe even have a
family one day. She knew one thing, if that had ever happened, he would have
kept her smiling. He’d certainly always been able to make her smile when they’d
been dating all those years ago.

Shaking herself from that torturous reverie, she forced her
brain to focus on the present; on what was and what
could
be. Except she
came up blank and with a growl of frustration, she threw herself down on the
couch. “Shit,” she cursed, immediately regretting the force with which her
weight had been tossed onto the furniture. Pain shot through her butt and
jarred her spine. She suspected that would leave another set of new bruises on
her fragile skin. “Great,” she groaned. An even greater moan of frustration
came from deep in the pit of her belly when a knock at the door demanded she
get up again.