His parents head to bed shortly after dinner, and as I follow Tahoe upstairs, my breath catches in my throat as I look around the upstairs living room.
The room has sleek floors, white and gray marble, and huge windowed walls. I can practically see all of the Hill Country from here; white, yellow, and blue lights twinkle at us from below.
A quiet fireplace stands to my right, and to my left, a huge wall is plastered with black-and-white pictures of oil fields.
I scan the room and my eyes stop on the man who stands directly in front of me.
He looks warm. Rumpled. Strong. Hard muscles, soft skin and scruff. He has a wineglass in his hand, accounting for his wet pink lips and narrowed blue eyes.
We don’t say anything. He just nods his head to the right, gesturing for me to follow him.
He leads me down a long corridor, where I can see his room through a cracked door at the end. We stop just before his door at a room on the left.
Past the door, a big white bed with light blue accents stares back at me. Silk and cotton sheets beckon me to sleep for decades on them.
“You can sleep here then,” he rumbles. “Towels are right there, you’ve seen the living room, kitchen is downstairs—”
“Where will you be?” I hear myself ask. I regret it the moment it comes out of my mouth. I feel myself blush, and then force myself not to take it back. I force myself to stay silent until he answers.
“I’m right next to your room.” He smiles, gesturing behind me to his room, peeking at me through the cracked door. Tempting me to go in and see where the T-Rex spends his nights.
I just nod.
He looks me up and down, his eyes burning a path from the top of my head to the tips of my toes. He clears his throat. “Well, uh, I’ll be in my office if you need me.”
He exits the room quickly. Too quickly. I couldn’t ask him where his office was.
Come on, Regina, you don’t need to know that.
I shake my head, take off my shoes, and lie down on the bed.
* * *
Fifteen minutes later I’m still in the guestroom bed.
Except I can’t sleep.
I get up. I don’t know where exactly I’m going, but I don’t really care.
I wander out of the room, my bare feet and red nails peeking at me under the material of my silky nightgown. I navigate my way through the house and his office is empty. I then head back and stand at the door next to mine and tap lightly. It’s partly open, so I peer inside.
Every sharp angle and smooth curve of his face is beautifully outlined in the dark. His blue eyes practically glow.
His feet are bare. He’s only in jeans and a soft white T-shirt. Hair rumpled.
The way he sits at the edge of the bed with those massive shoulders hunched tell me he’s tired.
I peer around his room. An old picture sits on the nightstand. He takes it and puts it facedown, then stares at the back of the frame, his jaw working.
“Who is she?”
He startles at the sound of my voice then softly says, “My wife.”
* * *
“She’s your Lisa? The woman you loved?”
“She was the nicest human being I’ve ever known.”
“Now you like the dicks like me?” I try to joke.
He just looks at me, and his eyes flood with tenderness, but most of all, I especially like that I manage to make his dimple peek with a light smile.
I laugh. “I’m sorry. I can’t help it.” I sit down next to him. “What happened?”
“She died seven years ago.”
I sense he wants to be alone. He’s a wall, impenetrable as steel. I move to get up. He leans and whispers something in my ear. “Stay.” He sounds intense. His facial expression matches the intensity of his voice.
I can barely stand the chiseled angles in his face. He is a man, human, and in so many ways he’s just like me. You were dealt a bad hand and you stopped playing the game. What if we got dealt a new game…would he play for it?
I’m struck with the realization that he loved her, and unlike my situation with Paul, because she was taken early, she will always be the object of his love.
His raw, primal, male love.
A pain blossoms in my chest and I’m afraid that it’s jealousy that I’m feeling. I don’t know why, because I sure don’t expect anything from him of that sort. “You see her in every woman, don’t you?”
He laughs, then scrapes a hand over his beard. “That’s right.”
I hold his hand. It feels natural to, like a friend move in a moment like this. But there’s fire streaking up my arm as his hand encloses mine completely and he holds me firmly in his grip. “Tell me about her.”
“She used to say the oddest things. She’d notice things nobody else did. Always see the good in people.” He looks in the distance, his eyes gaining a rebellious glint. “I never was good enough for her.” He eyes me. “Just like I’m not good enough for you.”
His eyes start dancing like a bad boy’s, and I love the playful sensuality in his lips—like he doesn’t take anything too seriously. Except maybe this moment with me right now. Because there, right under the playful sensuality, is a heat I’ve never seen shine quite so brightly. A heat that looks like the churning, burning, boiling need inside me now.
He drags a hand over his face. “She was my girlfriend when she was diagnosed. Leukemia. A rare form, PCL. The prognosis was two years, and even now, treatment is still experimental. I married her because I didn’t want her to feel alone. She got sick while still a teenager. I was barely eighteen too. We were just kids.”