Saving the Best for Last (5 page)

“Why did you do what you were doing?” he asked as they watched her car disappear around the corner behind the AAA tow truck she’d called for.

She sighed. “I think I’d like that cup of coffee first.”

* * * * *

“I was angry,” she said, wrapping her hands around the coffee mug when he set it in front of her. “It’ll be a year next month since my parents were killed in a car accident.” She waved away the milk and sugar he offered. “It was icy, they were out late and some stupid sixteen-year-old girl texting during an ice storm lost control and hit them. They were in a little hybrid car, just trying to get home from one of their church friend’s birthday party. The girl was driving her father’s SUV and walked away with nothing more than a couple of stitches where her head hit the driver’s side window when she spun around and hit the guardrail.”

“Jesus,” was all he could think to say. He took the stool next to her.

She gave him a wan smile when she looked up. “Five months after that, my fiancé was killed when the Humvee he was riding in drove over a land mine in Iraq.” She looked away again and was quiet for a long minute. “All my life I’d grown up feeling like my life was going to go one way. I was going to meet my future husband through the church, we would have the same values and beliefs and raise our children with the same strength of faith.” She took a deep, shaky breath. “I’d waited to find him. I’d saved myself for marriage. He was a virgin too.” A small smile touched her lips and she looked up at him shyly. “Can you imagine it, two twenty-something-year-old virgins in this day and age?”

His stomach turned. “Don’t tell me you gave yourself to some stranger after…”

“No, no.” She cut him off with a slight shake of the head, gave him another heartbreaking look with those big blue eyes and smiled. “We didn’t quite make it to marriage.”

After all the things they’d done to each other,
that
made her blush.

“You were supposed to be my last hurrah,” she said.

His eyebrows went up. “Last hurrah?”

“One last fling before I gave up the game and moved on with my life.” She lifted the cup to her lips, blew on it, sipped. “I realized I’d stopped being so angry a long time ago and that I was only hurting myself by doing what I was doing. But a big part of me wasn’t going to be able to just quit without satisfying one really big curiosity.” She slid him a look and the innocent, wounded girl ducked behind the vixen again.

He was pretty sure he liked both sides of her.

“Why me?”

She hunched one shoulder. “Among other things, you being outrageously handsome not the least of them, you’ve always been kind to me, George, whether you realize it or not. You’ve never come across as passing judgment on me for what I was doing.”

He took a drink of his coffee. Had he judged her? He supposed he hadn’t given her a whole lot of thought until she’d shown up naked with her sights on him that night.

“There hasn’t been anyone since you,” she said without waiting for his response.

He hated to admit it, but the relief he felt at hearing it again—without being coerced, not just something she thought he needed to hear in the heat of the moment—was enormous.

“I wanted to just walk away. Be that girl one more time. Get my kicks and never look back.” She laughed, shaking her head again, this time at herself. “I had no idea how much I was going to like being with you.” When she looked at him, she was neither wounded nor seductive—just Sarah.

Yep, he was starting to like the whole package. A lot.

“I don’t think one hour has passed since that night that I haven’t thought about you.”

The honesty in her statement caused something warm to bloom inside him.

“You know I’m probably old enough to be your father, don’t you?”

She sort of rolled her eyes. “I’m twenty-seven.”

Still young, but older than he’d thought she was.

“And you’re what? Forty-two, forty-three?” she asked.

He was tempted to just leave well enough alone.

“Forty-seven,” he corrected.

“My father was sixty-five when he died and almost as many years older than my mother as you are to me. That’s not a wide age gap where I come from.”

Was he really negotiating the terms of dating this girl? The prospect of it, and the wholly unexpected rush of hope he felt at the thought, made him smile.

“This isn’t strange to you?” he asked.

“As long as it’s not strange for you after the shit I’ve pulled the past few months.” She tried to come off as casual, but the shame she was feeling showed when she blushed again.

He set his coffee mug aside, took hers and put it next to his so he could pull her onto his lap, straddling him. “Our time, yours and mine, no one else’s, started the night you came in here naked and stuck your hand down my pants.” He smiled when the red in her cheeks went another two shades darker. “No sooner.”

Her hands come up to frame his face and she wrinkled her nose. “You’re not going to ask me to rewind to the holding hands and chaste good-night kisses part of dating, are you?”

He laughed. Hard.

“I’m okay with adding dinner and movies to what we’re already doing,” he assured her.

She slid her fingers into his hair, leaned in close for a kiss and whispered, “Good.”

About the Author

Jayne Kingston was born, raised, and has always lived in the Northwest Ohio area. Her job gives her lots of free time to let her imagination run wild—it’s boring, but she rather likes that freedom of thought—and unlimited access to paper so she can jot down ideas as they pop into her head. (Seriously, the office supply nerd in her loves that part.)

She’s an avid fan of erotic romance and erotica of all genres who’d been writing rather vanilla contemporary love stories for years. She hadn't thought to combine the two elements in her own writing until asking herself the question 'what would happen if she showed up and put her hand down his pants?' helped un-stick the rather boring plotline of a short story she wanted to write. She was off and running after that.

Jayne welcomes comments from readers. You can find her website and email addresses on her
author bio page
at
www.ellorascave.com
.

Tell Us What You Think

We appreciate hearing reader opinions about our books. You can email us at
[email protected]
.

Discover for yourself why readers can’t get enough of the multiple award-winning publisher Ellora’s Cave. Whether you prefer ebooks or paperbacks, be sure to visit EC on the web at www.ellorascave.com for an erotic reading experience that will leave you breathless.

www.ellorascave.com

Table of Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six