His Wedding Date (The Second Chance Love Series, Book 2) (19 page)

"I don't think I'll be able to sleep at night, wondering about what's going to happen to poor Marion. What would they do to her if there's no money to pay her bills?"

"I don't know, Shel."

"I guess I need to call tomorrow and see when the next payment is due and to tell them... I don't even know. What am I going to tell them?"

"We'll work something out," he said. "Surely Charlie has some assets."

The last key she tried fit the door, and Shelly pushed it open, but hesitated to go inside. She felt as if she'd been to hell and back in the past week. The trip with Brian, the plane crash, the wedding night, Charlie's death.

She hadn't had time to get used to one disaster before the next one hit.

Brian's hand came up against her back, and she was too tired to try to escape from his touch right now.

"We don't have to do this tonight," he said.

"I know. I just want to gather up some of his papers to look over tonight at my apartment."

She knew she wouldn't sleep. And she didn't know how much time she had until the next payment was due to Marion's nursing home.

Shelly forced herself to walk across the threshold and search for the light switch. The lights illuminated a sparsely furnished living room, a hallway and a staircase.

"It's not much to look at, is it?" Brian said.

"No."

"I was hoping we'd at least be able to find some equity in his home, but this place... "

"He sold their home three years ago, and I'm sure that money's already gone. This house was just... a place to sleep, sometimes to eat a meal."

Brian walked through the living room to the worn roll-top desk that sat against the wall separating the living room from the kitchen. The top rolled up easily, revealing stacks of letters and papers in the wooden slots along the back of the desk's surface. Two big file drawers on either side of the legs wouldn't budge, however.

"Locked," he said. "Why don't you try the keys on the ring while I look around for a box to put some of this stuff in?"

"Okay."

Shelly tried each of the six keys she'd been given, but none of them fit. She supposed she should search for another key, but now that she was here, she found herself reluctant to start rummaging through Charlie's personal things just yet.

She still remembered how difficult it had been to sort through all her father's possessions and close up his house. So many memories had been piled into the boxes and the drawers and the closets, so many emotions churned up by the process.

She wasn't sure she was up to doing it for Charlie, but she couldn't walk away from it, either. She'd simply have to find a way to do it. He was counting on her, and this was one of the last things she'd ever do for him.

She opened the middle desk drawer, just to prove she could do it. She found papers, paper clips, rubber bands, postage stamps, ink pens, a stapler, everything but keys.

Shelly shoved the drawer back into place and shivered, wondering if it was really that cold in the house or if she was simply chilled from the inside out.

"Found a box," Brian said. "Did you get the drawers open?"

"No. Maybe the keys are at the office."

He started piling the papers from the wooden slots into the cardboard box, pinning together the ones from the same slots with paper clips.

"That's odd," he said, looking down at the locked drawers. "He lives alone. Why would he lock up his own papers in his own house?"

"I don't know. Habit, maybe?"

Brian's look said he doubted that.

"He was a good man, Brian."

"I know, but sometimes good people get caught up in very bad things."

* * *

They emptied the desk of the papers they could access and decided to worry about the rest later. Shelly had more than enough to keep her busy for the evening, so they headed back to her apartment. Brian carried the box in and set it on the table.

"How about a cup of coffee?" he asked, as he took off his coat and loosened his tie.

And Shelly knew then that it was going to be a battle to get rid of him tonight.

"I'm really tired, Brian." She didn't sit down. She didn't invite him to stay. She just waited there by the door, hoping he would take the hint and go. Of course, he didn't.

"Then you sit down," he said, coming to help her slip out of her coat. "I'll make the coffee."

She knew the man was deliberately misunderstanding her, but it was going to take a while before she had the strength to challenge him.

And as she sat there, tired to the bone and mentally exhausted, she realized for the first time what Charlie Williams had done to her. He'd tied her life together with Brian's for months to come. It took a long time to settle even a simple estate. She knew that from when her father had died. Charlie had a business. It was bound to be even more complicated.

She'd be working more closely with Brian than she ever had as they tried to salvage something from Charlie's estate to help his poor, sick wife.

She'd counted on being gone from Naples for good very soon, as soon as some kind of job offer came through, but she couldn't do that now.

"Oh, God," she said.

He walked into the living room as she stood up from the sofa, and her distress must have been evident on her face. He was watching her intently.

"I'm really tired, Brian, and I think it's time you went home."

He shook his head. "I really don't think you should be alone tonight."

"I'm alone every night," she said, hoping she didn't sound bitter about that.

"But you don't bury a good friend every night."

No, thankfully, she didn't.

"I'll be fine," she insisted. "I'm used to being here by myself."

"Well, you don't have to be, not tonight."

He put his hand on her arm, touching her easily, testing her reaction. She forced herself to move slowly as she pulled away. She heard him curse with barely veiled anger, and she flinched at the sound.

"I know I'm not supposed to do that," he said. "I'm supposed to stand back and watch while you're hurting like hell. I'm supposed to do nothing. So, sue me. I happen to have this irresistible urge to take care of you. I always have, and it's so damned hard to turn it off, especially now that you're hurting so badly and I'm part of the reason."

Shelly didn't know what to say. She didn't have the strength. She didn't have the will.

"Could I just hold you?" he said. "Just for a minute."

She shook her head.

"It helped," he said. "Didn't it? Just a little, back at the cemetery?"

A little, she admitted, but only to herself. It had helped, and it had hurt, both at the same time.

As much as she wanted to lean on him right now, she couldn't. She'd leaned on him her whole life, and she simply couldn't do that when she was determined to put him out of her life and out of her dreams.

"I don't want to cry anymore, Brian. I don't want to lean on anyone, and I don't want anyone to hold me," she said, trying to mean it. "I just want to be left alone."

"Shelly—"

"Listen to me," she insisted. "I'm not your responsibility. I never have been. I don't want you hovering over me or worrying about me or taking care of me or feeling sorry for me. It's not your job."

"I never saw it as a job or a responsibility. It's just... the way things have always been."

"No," she said, more strongly than she had realized she was capable of at that moment. "It's the way things were a long time ago between us. But not anymore. It's been years, Brian. Years. Things have changed. I've changed."

"I know," he said.

"Then please don't make this any harder for me."

"Shelly, I care about you a great deal. You do know that, at least, don't you?"

"Yes," she admitted.

"I want so much to make things easier for you, but you won't let me."

"Maybe I can't. Did you ever think of that? Did you ever think that it's hard just to be with you? Just to be in the same room with you?"

"Why?" he said flatly.

She had nothing else to lose, so she simply told him. "Because you can't give me what I need."

"How do you know? You've never told me what you need from me."

She would have laughed, but it would have sounded so ridiculous. As if all she had to do was ask for what she wanted from him...

"I just need to be left alone," she said.

"No, you don't. That's the last thing you need tonight."

And, obviously, it was the last thing she was going to get from him. What in the world was she going to do? She was so tired of fighting herself and him both, so tired of trying to hide all her feelings from him.

"Come on, Shel." He was quietly serious now, his eyes intent on her and his mouth set in a firm, thin line. "We've been dancing around this for days. We can't dance forever."

God help her, she'd seen it coming from the time of that awful morning-after scene at the hotel, and she simply hadn't known how to stop it. "I just... I don't see the point in going into this."

"I do. We almost made love that night."

She shook her head, coming closer to hating him than she ever had in her life. Why did he have to talk about this? Why did it mean so much to him, anyway? Was his conscience bothering him? She'd gladly forgive him for what he'd done, if only he'd let her feelings remain her secret and not theirs to share.

"Did you really think we could hide from it forever?" he asked.

Shelly didn't say a word. This was so humiliating, even more so than the night it had happened, because his memory of tonight would be crystal clear. And it would always be between them.

"Did you really think that once my head cleared I wouldn't realize the differences between you and her?"

Shelly felt ill, just as she had during that long night. She'd sat curled up in a chair in the living room of the suite all night, trying to figure out what to do next, while he slept like the dead in the other room.

It had been the worst night of her life—until now.

"Don't do this to me, Brian."

"I know it happened," he said. "Your scent was still clinging to my skin the next morning."

Just as his had clung to her. She'd been trembling badly as she scrubbed it off.

"I may not remember the whole night in my mind, but my body remembers," he said. "It remembers just how your body felt beneath mine. It remembers—"

"Keep it up." She dared him with all the bitterness in her soul. "You might just make me hate you."

"We very nearly made love that night," he insisted.

"You made love to Rebecca that night."

And with that admission she was deadly calm, her mind cleared in an instant of everything else but what she had just done.

Shelly closed her eyes and wondered if it was too late to catch the last plane out of Naples tonight. And she wondered if he'd come running after her again, with his guilty conscience driving him on.

She didn't want his guilt. She didn't want his pity. She wanted the passion he'd shown her that night. It was the stuff that haunted her dreams. Except, of course, in her dreams his passion was for her.

"Damn you, Brian!" she said, wishing she could forget all he had shown her that night.

She should never have allowed it to happen. She could have stopped it. He hadn't forced her. But she hadn't been able to bring herself to stop him. She'd known that it was the only chance she'd ever get to be with him. She'd known, too, that she'd regret it.

What woman could come face to face with her fantasy man and turn him away?

Certainly not her.

Well, she thought, she'd gone and done it now. Too late to retreat. Maybe it always had been. She didn't see now how she could have hoped to hide it from him for long, anyway, and it made her furious.

She went with the anger, letting it bubble up inside her. "There," she told him. "You got it out of me. Are you satisfied now?"

Perversely, she took some pleasure in seeing that she'd been the one to hurt him now.

But the pleasure didn't last. Nerves overrode it.

He looked... dangerous, she decided. Like a lion who'd sighted his prey, he started closing in on her. He came closer and closer. She stood rooted to the spot, knowing she should run, yet knowing it wouldn't do any good.

Just when she was sure he wouldn't stop until he had his body flush against hers, he did.

He was still leaning over her, his eyes blazing down into hers as her back pressed against the wall in a vain effort to get away.

"Satisfied?" He spit out the word in disgust, with him or with her, she couldn't say. "Not by a long shot."

And, in a move for which she'd be eternally grateful, he reached around her right side, opened the front door and left.

* * *

Brian could have kicked himself right then and there, especially for that last line, but the whole situation was so damned frustrating. He sat in the car outside Shelly's apartment, watching the lights go off one by one, wondering if she was sitting alone in the dark and crying because of him, again.