The Ex Factor. Nancy Warren
door, but he shifted, too, so his finger continued to trace the hem of her skirt which had, naturally, ridden up when she sat down. She could smack him away, but that would make an issue of something she preferred to ignore. Besides, what he was doing felt so good, and it had been so long.
“It was summer and you wore a red sundress.” He was right about the season, but she’d worn a blue cotton dress. She never wore red with her hair color. His wandering finger had reached the crease of her closed legs and he paused for a second. “Is any of this familiar?”
“Not ringing any bells yet.” Ha.
His voice grew husky. “We took a drive, didn’t know where we were going, didn’t care. We found ourselves down by the river. It was quiet, nobody around.”
Because he’d obviously carefully done a reconnaissance mission beforehand. When he’d pulled out a bottle of wine from his briefcase along with two glasses, she’d known it.
“Do you remember what happened then?” he asked, his voice so close, so deep and low, that she knew he’d moved closer.
“No,” she lied.
“That’s too bad. I’ll never forget that night as long as I live.”
The touch of his finger doing no more than trace her hem, running along her upper thigh, was so erotic it was an act of will not to squirm, not to push his hand higher, where she needed release so desperately, or at least depress the handy button that would recline their seats. Or even better, act as they had that night he was describing, and simply crawl into the backseat where there was more room.
“I’m sure you’ve made lots of new memories since then,” she snapped.
“Don’t you want to know what happened?” he asked her, as though she’d never spoken.
“It was a long time ago.”
“Not that long.”
Maybe she could force her body to remain still while that one finger played at her hem, never going higher or doing anything that would make it necessary for her to slap him down, but she couldn’t seem to control her breathing. Even as she tried to pretend she felt nothing, remembered nothing, a combination of his finger stroking her skin, his nearness, and the sweet, painful pull of memory was causing her breathing to speed up along with her pulse.
“We talked about my new job, and a new event you were organizing, and it seemed like we could do anything. We were young, smart, ambitious and we had each other. What an unbeatable team.” The finger stalled for a moment and she felt the tension in his hand as though a spasm of emotion had hit him. It felt like anger, but she had to assume it was guilt for throwing everything they’d had away.
Then the moment passed and the back-and-forth exploration of her thigh continued. He tugged her skirt up a full half inch, torturing her again with a slow track back, his finger pad tracing a line of heat across her skin.
“All the while we talked, I did this. Played at your hem, and you pretended you didn’t notice, like now.”
“I think your memory’s playing tricks.”
“And then, suddenly, you parted your legs and turned toward me.” He swallowed. So did she. Heat flooded her body as she remembered what came next.
“I thought I was so in control, touching you, turning us both on, but you were the one in control, weren’t you? You were the one with the secret.”
“No,” she whispered, but she wasn’t telling him she hadn’t had a secret, she was trying to stop the flood of memory that was as warm and thick as desire.
“When I got up to touch your panties, you weren’t wearing any.”
Oh, how she remembered. The feel of the air wafting up her skirt, the wanton knowledge that she’d stood by while he’d finalized paperwork at a car dealership, while they’d driven public highways, and all the time, underneath her cotton sundress, she’d been bare-assed.
“We were in the backseat so fast I ended up with bruised elbows and knees. We never did take off our clothes, did we? I ended up flipping that skirt up, pulling down the top of your dress to reach your breasts. You were always so sensitive there.” He laughed softly. “We were like a pair of kids going at it.” He sighed, obviously realizing that this little trip down memory lane wasn’t working. Her thighs didn’t ease open, though he couldn’t possibly know what torture it was to hold them closed against him. “God, I loved you.”
“But not enough,” she said, her voice so soft she wasn’t sure if he’d heard her.
“Do you think we rushed into marriage too fast?”
She turned her head, wondering where he was going with this train of thought. “We knew each other a year. I guess I wish we’d waited. Long enough for me to realize you weren’t the kind of guy to stick with one woman.”
He pulled his hand back into his own lap and she fought the urge to grab it and put it where she needed, so urgently, to be touched.
“I wish I’d waited long enough to get a handle on those demons you carry around with you.”
“What demons?” she snapped. How like a man to cheat on her and then try and pretend she was the one with the problem.
“The demons that stopped you being able to trust.”
She was not going to have this conversation again. She’d moved on. “If I’m so full of demons, what are you doing still trying to get into my pants?”
A sigh of pure frustration rolled through him. “Hell if I know.”
6
THE READING TERMINAL MARKET was crazy. Naturally. It was a Sunday afternoon and every yuppie with a craving for organic arugula or some fresh monkfish had made tracks down here. Karen had a love/hate relationship with the market. While she loved this place simply for the fun of people-watching, she also suffered as only a woman who loves food and tries to live on fifteen hundred calories a day can suffer.
Since she’d barely slept thanks to Dex and his antics in her car last night, she felt weaker than usual. The worst part had been driving him to his hotel, with all the steamy atmosphere between them churning around with a lot of emotions. Anger, frustration, and a bitter kind of longing that hurt more than all the other feelings put together. How could she still want the man so much?
Dex was her ex. He had to remain that way if she had any chance of hanging on to her hard-won self-esteem.
She’d half thought he’d invite her up to his room and was ready to let him have it when he did. Somehow, the fact that he didn’t say any more than, “Thanks for the ride. Night,” was an added insult. He didn’t even ask her up to his room so she could annihilate the guy with a few well-chosen words that she’d been practicing for blocks.
How unfair was that?
The bakery smells were so good. There were blocks of cheese bigger than house steps and she wanted to buy one and gobble every succulent morsel. She loved cheese, every fat-saturated ounce. Hard cheese, soft cheese, runny cheese, blue cheese. Oh, stop it. She averted her eyes. She really shouldn’t be here.
But Ron had suggested the locale for their first coffee date and, under instruction from Dee, she’d agreed without quibbling. Now she was here she wished she’d quibbled big-time. She wanted to turn tail and head home. Apart from being exhausted, cranky and cheese-obsessed, she’d probably dressed all wrong for a first date with a stranger. Her jeans were casual, but she’d pushed her feet into high heels instead of giving them a well-deserved Sunday rest, and she was worried that the green sweater was too low-necked. The last thing she wanted to do was stick her boobs in some poor man’s face, so she’d added a scarf at the last moment, and now wished she could go home and start over.
Dee had made her promise to let her hair down, which she’d first assumed was some kind of veiled allusion to being open for sex with