most of the letters on the neon sign were burned out. All I remember clearly is that the waitress was sweet and the music was sad.”
“So you had a drink,” he said in that same soothing voice that had become so easy to respond to.
“I don’t even like alcohol,” she said, sighing in remembrance. “I hate the taste and the stuff kills brain cells. I’ve always figured I needed every one of mine. The last drink I had before that night was a sip of champagne at my wedding.”
“But that night you drank more than a sip.”
“Oh yeah. After four Screwdrivers, I was feeling no pain. Of course, that was the whole idea. I told Todd about losing Paul. He told me about losing his mother. She had died a couple of months before, in a plane crash. They’d been very close. He hadn’t been able to write the goodbye letter to her, either. Hearing that made me feel a lot less like a failure. I really liked him for telling me.”
“Enough to become intimate with him?”
“Hardly. Sex was the last thing on my mind. That only happened because…”
Dear heavens, how could she explain to David what she still didn’t understand herself? Why did she want to? She normally didn’t care what men thought of her. But for some reason, she was beginning to care what David thought.
“Whatever you can tell me will help,” he said.
“He walked me back to the community center sometime after eleven,” she said, doubting any of what she had to say would really help. “The lot was deserted except for my vehicle. Todd told me he’d arrived late for the seminar and had parked on a side street somewhere. Neither of us was in any condition to drive home. He offered to use his cell phone to call me a cab. But I couldn’t leave my vehicle parked there overnight. All my camera equipment was inside. I couldn’t risk someone breaking in and stealing something.”
“So you spent the night in your SUV?”
She nodded. “I always carry a sleeping bag. Part of a nature photographer’s essential equipment. Todd helped me to unroll the bag, and I was out like the proverbial light as soon as I lay my head down. Next thing I knew I was having one of those vivid dreams of Paul. I could feel him beside me. He was snoring away.”
She paused, clasped the wedding band on her finger, stared at it in the room’s soft lamplight.
“You can tell me what happened,” he said.
There was something so soothing and accepting in his voice that she suddenly believed she could.
“When Paul snored, I would kiss his cheek so he’d wake up, roll onto his side and go back to sleep. But when I kissed him that night, he woke up and kissed me back. Then he started to make love to me.”
“But it wasn’t Paul,” David said quietly. “When did you know?”
She wanted to say afterward. She wished she could say afterward. But she had done something for which she was ashamed, and she wasn’t going to make herself feel even more ashamed by lying.
“I was still pretty smashed. But at one point I sensed something was different, opened my eyes and saw Todd’s face. I realized then that he must have passed out beside me. When I kissed him, he must have awakened and thought…”
“That you wanted him,” David supplied when her voice faded.
She gave a long exhale. “Todd kept whispering my name over and over. I closed my eyes and let it happen.”
“And in the morning?”
“When I awoke, Todd was gone, much to my relief. I don’t think I could have faced him. Because the truth is, I don’t know why I slept with him.”
“Hard to know why we do things sometimes.”
She looked up to see he was watching her, that calm acceptance still on his face. He was telling her that he wasn’t judging her. She appreciated that, more than she could say. But she was judging herself.
“I’ve always known why I’ve done things,” she said. “I may not always have been thrilled with the reason, but at least I’ve known. Now, not knowing…not knowing is very unsettling. I can’t tell you how unsettling.”
“You don’t have to even try,” he said, getting to his feet. “I’ve been there. Thank you for dinner and for your honesty.”
“You’re leaving?” she said, surprised.
He nodded. “I know what I asked of you tonight wasn’t easy to give. But what you’ve told me has been important, and will help me to find out about Todd. I hope that will be worth the pain you went through. I’ll call you tomorrow.”
He headed toward the front door. She followed. When he paused to lean down and give Honey one last head pat, she smiled. David was turning out to be quite nice and not nearly as unapproachable as she’d imagined.
Maybe now was the time to ask the question that had plagued her since she first saw him in the White Knight offices.
“What bothers you about me?”
David straightened. “What do you mean?”
“When we first met,” she said, “I could tell you didn’t like me.”
He stared down at her. They were barely a foot apart. She was suddenly very aware of him.
“There is nothing about you that I don’t like,” he said in a soft whisper. “Good night.”
He pulled open the door, stepped out into the dark night and shut the door behind him.
The breath whooshed out of Susan’s lungs as she stood facing that closed door, stunned to her toes. She could barely believe what her senses were telling her. David had just said there was nothing about her he didn’t like. She’d seen the truth of his words in his eyes, heard that truth in his voice.
He was attracted to her.
She felt a sharp quickening of her pulse and an undeniable response deep inside her—a response she hadn’t felt in a very, very long time.
CHAPTER FOUR
DAVID LAY IN BED that night thinking over what Susan had told him. When he’d checked into her background and discovered her husband had died, he’d visited the fire station where Paul Carter had worked. A memorial picture of him hung on the wall. Paul was blond, five-ten, slender, with light eyes. That was exactly how Susan had described Todd.
She’d gone to the seminar seeking closure to some unresolved issue that had her dreaming of her dead husband. Instead of a resolution, she had found herself under the lethal influences of a terrible sense of failure and a potent dose of alcohol. And there was Todd, a sympathetic, fellow sufferer, looking enough like Paul to pull all the right heartstrings.
David could understand why Susan had let him make love to her. But what he still wasn’t clear about was Todd’s motives. Was he really grieving? Or was he an opportunist who had seen her pain, plied her with alcohol, and, then, when she was most vulnerable, taken advantage of her?
A man who took advantage of a vulnerable woman was scum. If he found out that Todd had done that to Susan—
David punched his pillow and turned onto his other side. No. No matter what he found out, he wasn’t going to get physical with the guy. This was just a case like any other. She was just a client. And David was a civilized, educated man in full control of his impulses. All his impulses.
When she had asked him what he didn’t like about her, he’d been very tempted to show her how much he liked everything about her. But he’d held back and left without laying so much as a finger on her.
Even if he had stood too close to her and gazed into her eyes a little too long.
David punched his pillow again and turned to