Resisting Molly (4 page)

“You’re going to spoil me for other men,” I teased as I scooted up to the table.

His lips twitched. “You ought to have higher standards. Much higher standards.”

“As if.”

“We’ll just have to agree to disagree about that.”

I buried my gaze in the menu, unable to bear the focus of those intense eyes on me any longer. “Brynn seems to be doing well,” I said, trying to change the subject to something safer so I could get my composure back.

We chatted about her while the waiter brought us drinks and appetizers.

“She really does like College Station,” Jonathan noted. “I’m surprised you aren’t following after her.”

“Oh, no. That’s not for me.”

“No? I thought everyone was dying to get out of here as soon as they graduated and head off for the big city and better things.”

I shook my head. “Not me. I’m happy here. I’ve been to cities and I hate the noise and the crowds and the bustle. This is where I fit.”

He blinked at me in bemusement. “Really?”

“Brynn was always the one with big dreams, too big for this place to hold her. You know how she was. Well, when she was pretending to be an astronaut or rock star I was playing at keeping house and taking care of babies, and after a while I realized that my dream was to be a teacher and a mom.” I gave a deprecating laugh. “I’m afraid I’m not very exciting.”

“Where would we be without teachers? Or mothers?” He ran a finger along the moisture condensed along the side of his glass before looking back at me with frank curiosity. “Do you ever worry that you’ll feel like you missed out later? Regret not going out to experience the world and have adventures before you settle down?”

I shrugged. “I never felt like anything was missing from here. I’ll get my degree and then teach kids at the same school where I went when I was little. Somewhere along the way I’ll probably get married and have a home and kids of my own.” I did have one other dream, one that I had never even told Brynn. Something made me want to tell him, though. “Someday,” I murmured, “I’d like to try writing a children’s book, just to see if I can.” I regretted saying it instantly. He was a doctor and his daughter was going to be a vet, and suddenly my ambition sounded incredibly trivial. He probably thought I was a total loser. I sighed and looked down at my glass. “I guess all that seems pretty silly, huh?”

“It doesn’t seem silly at all, Molly. I think it’s a dream that suits you.”

His hand rested on mine for an instant, his palm burning against my skin, and I didn’t dare look up at him. “It’s all silly. I’ll probably end up an old-maid schoolmarm who dresses her cats up in ridiculous costumes and goes her whole life without ever doing a single thing that anyone would consider remotely interesting.”

His deep burst of laughter startled me into glancing up at him. “That will be the day.”

“What?”

“You an old maid? No way. Some guy is going to come along before you know it and…” He laughed again, more gently. “Women as beautiful as you don’t end up as old maids, Molly.”

I blinked. Beautiful? He thought I was beautiful? And that’s when I saw that look again, the one I had been slowly dying inside to see—a whole life’s worth of wanting compressed into one single instant. He did want me, wanted me every bit as badly as I wanted him, and was fighting it every step of the way. I desperately hoped he’d lose, even while the thought scared me half to death.

Heart fluttering, I gulped down a big swallow of my tea. “What about you? Do you have any dreams?”

Jonathan shook his head with a mocking little smile, his eyes gone gray and hooded. “I’m too old for dreams.”

But that look I had seen in his eyes told me he was a liar.

After that he resumed his teasing until the mood lightened again and we both relaxed, and with an effort he almost managed to conceal the desire simmering in his eyes. It lurked just beneath the surface though, an undercurrent that tinged all of our banter with a charge of sexual danger that made my blood sing.

As I had told Jonathan, I had never been given to extravagant dreams or particularly longed for excitement. What I most wanted was the sense of knowing that I was where I belonged, of being home. Brynn always laughed and told me I was solid and down to earth, the most eminently practical person she knew, but for the first time in my life I had a craving for something more, something dangerous and exciting.

Jonathan was my adventure. This man of depth and experience I couldn’t begin to fathom drew me to him, fascinated me the way flames would a small child. And I was just as likely to be burned; he could consume me without thought, probably without realizing what he had done, and leave my heart a lump of ashes to be scattered by the wind. I really didn’t care about after, though, if only he would hold me in his arms just once while he looked at me with that intense desire burning in his eyes. If he would, I’d carry that memory with me all my days because there could never be a man who wanted me more than that.

“So,” Jonathan said as we strolled back to his car after dinner. “How about a movie?”

I could put off saying goodnight to him, avoid bringing the evening to an end for another couple of hours. “Careful,” I warned him. “You’ll have everyone thinking this is a date.”

“I don’t care what everyone else thinks,” he muttered, but when he opened the car door for me there was hardly any green left in his eyes. There was only gray, stormy with everything he was holding inside.

 
So we went to a movie, and for ninety-seven minutes I endured the sweet torture of sitting right next to him him, scant inches separating us. Heat from his body lapped against my skin, his spicy cologne an erotic caress that whispered to my body of desperate longings. I sat there, every sense heightened, aware of every tiny movement, every single breath of the man beside me, and knew that if I shifted my arm just slightly my bare skin would touch his hand on his armrest. I didn’t dare move, just the knowing was enough, but it kept me on edge through the whole film so that by the time the final credits rolled my nerves were ragged as broken glass.

On the car ride home both of us sat quiet, alone in our thoughts. My mind raced with possibilities, but grudgingly I dismissed them all. In the end I had to admit that what I wanted could never work and was only going to end up with someone—most likely me—hurt. And so we sat with the silence piling up between us until it threatened to overwhelm us in an avalanche of unspoken words.

There was a cautious dance into the house, neither of us daring to get too close, but both of us clinging to the intimacy we had shared during the evening. We both felt it, both wanted it, but wary of the dangers it held we circled one another at a prudent distance. I was never sure which of us broke that fragile truce, but it didn’t matter. It was only ever a matter of time before one of us crossed the line.

Whoever started it, I found myself in Jonathan’s arms pressed up against the wall of the foyer with his lips a tantalizing breath from my own, looking up into eyes which burned with a hopeless passion. My heart broke for him; he so desperately wanted to do the right thing, but he wanted me just as desperately and the choice was eating him alive.

Velvet lips whispered against mine and I held utterly still, quivering, waiting for him. He dipped again, a question, answered when I didn’t pull away from his touch. It simply wasn’t in him to hesitate past that. Ardent lips roved across my mouth, tasting, exploring. Raw passion swept me up, a summer’s wildfire that blazed through me, carried me along with him. This—this was what I had wanted, had dreamed of, and Jonathan gave it without any understanding of what it meant to me, without knowing that I had come to want this moment more than anything else in my life.

Without hesitation I surrendered to him, opened my lips and met his tongue with shy eagerness. Nothing held back, I responded to him on instinct alone, his for the wanting and he knew it, felt it in my kiss. He had only to take my hand and pull me upstairs. Bright moments passed as he took his time to savor, patiently learning each part of me with a calm thoroughness that suggested we had all the time there was. And just then perhaps we did—for that brief interlude there was no one else but us in the whole world.

An eternity later his lips pulled away and he gazed unseeing down into my eyes. “Molly,” he sighed, and I pulled myself closer in his arms and buried my face against his chest. It was all about to end and I wanted to cling to our stolen moment for a while longer. However long I might.

“You’re so sweet and so very beautiful and god how I wish…” He trailed off, but I knew what he wished. I wished the same thing, but we both knew it wouldn’t work. Fingertips brushed my jaw, lifted my chin so he could look into my eyes again. “You make me feel fifteen and in love for the very first time again,” he told me, his voice gravelly with emotion, “and I’d forgotten how much that hurts. It tears my heart out to look at you every single day and know that I can’t have you. But thank you for it. I never believed I’d get to feel anything like that ever again.”

“You can have me tonight,” I whispered. Please.

“It could never be just one night with you. Once I had a taste do you think I could ever give you up? That wouldn’t be fair to you; I’m too old, for one thing. And for another there’s Brynn.”

“You’re not old.”

“Then you’re too young. However you want to look at it. And either way there’s still Brynn to consider.”

“I know.”

“Don’t think for so much as a heartbeat that this is easy. I’d rather have to go through med school all over again than look into your eyes and let you go. So this can’t happen again—I don’t think I’m strong enough to make myself stop a second time.”

I sighed. “It was so wonderful while it lasted, though.”

“It was.” His arms loosened, fell to his sides. “Goodnight, Molly.”

Even though he was just down the hall, mere seconds away if I decided to walk down and tap on his door, I had never felt more utterly alone than that night while I stared up at the ceiling and prayed for sleep to release me from the memory of him still burning on my lips.

Oddly enough, despite the kiss and the intimacy of that night afterwards things went mostly back to normal and we settled down into a comfortable routine. Neither of us brought it up, and we both kept a rein on our passions—or at least we tried to. Still, sometimes a look would slip through, or maybe we’d touch without intending it, and for a moment it would all come crashing back at once to batter at our carefully erected defenses like a hurricane slamming against the shore. But we both knew better; no one would understand, especially not Brynn.

After a couple of weeks my load at school eased up and I went back to doing the grocery shopping and cooking. I was just as glad of it. As wonderful as Jonathan was in most ways he had a tendency to miss things on the shopping lists and while he wasn’t a bad cook his range was pretty limited. Was it weird that I found him even more attractive because he wasn’t quite so utterly perfect after all? Maybe it made him feel more accessible, that he was a real person instead of just a dream of the perfect guy I had created in my head or something.

It was almost November when I realized he had changed. He was coming in earlier, leaving work on time more often and heading home rather than hanging out with his friends afterwards. Without consciously planning it we had started to spend more time together. Two or three nights a week now we watched movies in the den, and we had taken a few long drives through the country to enjoy the cooler weather and the leaves turning fall colors. All of it had happened gradually, without any intent or planning, and we had become so comfortable together that it scared me. It would have been so easy to just let go and allow myself to fall head over heels for Jonathan, and I knew that if I really pushed him he wouldn’t be able to resist. He’d kissed me once and he’d never make the first move again, but if I did… I had to be strong for both of us.