Beyond Business. Elizabeth Harbison
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But she wasn’t sure she believed him.
“Let me try this one,” he said after a couple of moments had passed. “Have you been married? Engaged?”
This was so weird to be talking to Evan about this. “I was engaged once,” she said, though part of her didn’t want to confess it to him for some reason. “But it didn’t work out.”
“Why not?”
She looked out the window and gave a dry laugh. “He wasn’t ambitious. Didn’t have solid plans for the future. I was afraid he might not be … reliable.”
The single moment that passed before Evan spoke was so rife with tension that she had no doubt he understood the irony of her failed relationship.
“Maybe you just expected too much of him.”
“Certain expectations are so basic that to call them ‘too much’ is ludicrous.” She kept her gaze fastened on the road, watching the yellow lines on the black street disappear under the car. But inside she was thinking, Please give me a good explanation for what you did, please make me understand.
“Sometimes people can’t fulfill basic expectations for really good reasons,” Evan said. “Sometimes things are different from what you think.”
“All I know is what I see,” she countered, wishing it was enough to believe him but knowing she needed something more. Something concrete. “It’s hard to speculate about ‘theoretically’ when the facts are slapping you in the face.”
He took a deep breath. “If they’re really the facts. In our case, I just.” He lost the words and shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. We’re not talking about us.”
Meredith stiffened in her seat. She felt her face flush hotly. She was far too ready to talk about them. It just wasn’t healthy. He’d moved on. And she’d thought she had, as well.
She just needed to remind herself of that now and then. “Of course not. That was a long time ago. It has nothing to do with now.”
“Right.”
She couldn’t help goosing him a little. “Despite how defensive you seem to be about the past sometimes.”
A mile passed.
“Look,” Evan said. “I’m sorry. We were talking about your fiancé, and I turned it into my own postmortem defense. It really wasn’t appropriate and I apologize for that. I was … just remembering.”
“I remember sometimes, too, Evan.” Please make me understand, please make it believable.
He swung the car in past the Sophie’s sign at the entry to a dingy parking lot and slowed to a halt. Then he turned in his seat and said, “Do you?”
She gave a half smile. “I’m not senile.”
“Do you ever have any regrets?”
“No,” she answered firmly.
They eyes locked, then slowly Evan moved toward her. Meredith sat still, not drawing back, even though her mind screamed for her to run.
Okay, don’t make me believe. Just kiss me and make me forget.
His lips grazed lightly across hers, suggesting the satiation of a desire that had gone unanswered for much too long.
A moment rested in stillness, then Evan’s mouth descended on hers again, but this time it was more fervent. He moved his mouth across hers in a hungry, almost urgent, way, drawing her in by the sheer force of his passion.
His tongue touched hers, and the taste of him sent a shock of remembrance through her core.
She trailed her hands across his upper back and curled them around his neck, resting her arms on his broad shoulders. He pulled her closer, moving his hands across her body and hungrily exploring her mouth with his own.
The sound of their mingled breaths increased as their ardor grew.
Evan ran a strong hand down to the small of Meredith’s back, and she arched toward him, hitting the hard console between them. She didn’t care. The pleasure outweighed the pain by a hundredfold. His fingertips dipped lightly inside her panties, and an explosion of excitement arched Meredith’s back and she gasped against his mouth.
“I want you,” he whispered to her.
“I want you, too,” she said, ignoring the tiny voice of conscience that insisted this was a mistake.
Evan’s kisses deepened and a pulse throbbed in the pit of Meredith’s stomach, extending to her core. It was an ache that only he could reach and she was half ready to let him do it right here and right now.
Evan slipped his hands under Meredith’s shirt and swept them across the bare skin of her back and down again. Her breath caught in her throat. She wanted him.
Oh, how she wanted him.
And she’d told him so.
She realized with sudden horror what she was doing and how crazy it was. She drew back, nearly slamming her head into the window behind her.
“We can’t do this,” she gasped.
“Yes, we can.” He reached for her again and kissed her.
She gave in to it for one languorous moment, then pushed back again. “No, we can’t. I don’t want to.”
“I don’t believe you.”
She took a short breath that betrayed her truth. “You have to.”
“I have to respect the word no,” he said. “I don’t have to believe you mean it. Even if I didn’t know you before, Meredith, what we just had spoke volumes. Your body told me everything you’re not willing to admit.”
“That—” she gestured lamely “—what just happened was … it was meaningless. Curiosity, nothing more.” She swallowed, then continued. “Now that we’ve gotten it out of our systems, it must never happen again.”
“It sure as hell isn’t out of my system,” Evan said. “In fact, ever since I saw you again, you’ve been slowly working your way right back into my system. It’s almost like—”
“Don’t say it.” She raised a hand. She didn’t want to hear it was like old times or that it was as if nothing had changed or, worse, it was like they were meeting for the first time. “Don’t say it. There’s no way you can finish that sentence without sounding like a line from every melodramatic movie ever made.”
Evan gave a sharp laugh. “Thanks.”
Warmth washed over her face. “You know what I mean. Don’t you?”
“Maybe. What I don’t know is why you’re so damn eager to ignore what your heart is telling you.”
“Who said my heart was involved in this transaction?”
“Okay, your body.” He gave a rakish grin. “I’ll take that.”
No you won’t. I’m not giving it again. “No way. There’s nothing to gain by getting involved in something that we both know can never work.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I do. Look, Evan, you left once without saying a word. I wasn’t enough for you then, and there’s no reason to think things would be different now.”
He straightened his back and looked out the window in front of him. “I didn’t leave because you weren’t enough for me. It was nothing like that.”
“Then what was it?”
He looked at her, his face shadowed by the twilight. “It was complicated.”
“Too complicated to explain?”
“What’s