Her Fictional Fling: Scandals in Scotland Contemporary Romance Series Book 1 (12 page)

She smiled as he handed her one of the simple chicken salad sandwiches he’d packed, along with a glass of his favorite white wine. “Plus, since our little arrangement seems to be working, I have plenty to write about.”

Her statement about getting paid to write broke the heady spell she’d put him under. As much as he hated to ruin the fun he was having with her, it was time to talk business. “Can we discuss something, Andi?”

“Sure.” She stopped fiddling with her camera and gave him her full attention. Her eyes had gone from bright blue in the sun to a dark blend of indigo and gray, almost identical to the water.

“I just want to make sure we’re on the same page about the phony engagement.” The term felt strange and thick leaving his tongue.

She tugged at her sweater and the urge to touch her, to comfort her, consumed him. The more time he spent with Andi, the more difficult it became to be away for long.

After he’d dropped her off at her hotel the night before, he’d gone straight to the gym at the condo and sweated through miles on the treadmill and countless sets of weights until he’d been gasping for air. She was doing something to him that he knew he didn’t need, now or ever; all the same, he craved her presence like a drug.

Letting her in—really letting her in—simply wouldn’t do.

He needed to make sure the wall between them was thick and wide if this was going to work.

Andi took a sip of the delicious wine, letting delicate hints of lemon and green pear roll over her tongue as she steeled herself for whatever Colin might throw at her next.

She’d agreed to do this thing, and she wasn’t going back on her word, but she wished she had more time to…to talk to Lily, to prepare, whatever that would entail, to spend time with this man who had opened her up to a new world of possibility. She wanted more of him, but she knew better than anyone that wishing was a futile activity.

“Go on,” she said, setting down her empty glass, folding her hands in her lap and raising her chin to look him in the eye. She’d tried so very hard to convince herself that she didn’t want this man, but the walls she’d built to keep out men like Jared were crumbling fast around Colin.

If she was going to do this sham engagement, then she would give it all she had.

This was a chance to experience a total fantasy—an opportunity unlikely to present itself twice in a lifetime. Besides, it was only work. As a romance writer, it was her job to give women modern-day fairy tales, even if—for her—it wasn’t real.

Colin stopped busying himself with packing up their sandwich leftovers and moved nearer, sitting directly in front of her so that their faces were only inches apart. She struggled not to touch him, softened by the distant, enigmatic shade in his eyes.

“Look. I’m not the type of guy to propose fake engagements to strangers. I realize that the whole thing might get a little weird for you, once we put it out there. I just want to make sure that you’ll be okay. And I want you to know you can call it off at any time if it gets uncomfortable.”

Andi tried not to let him see that he’d stung her by calling her a stranger. Maybe it shouldn’t matter, but the things they’d done together, the things he’d done to her, meant they were anything but strangers. Perhaps it was just old-fashioned of her to want true love and not just sex. Perhaps she was nothing but a childish fool for going headfirst into this, knowing full well what it could cost her. It was a risk she had to take, or she’d regret it for the rest of her life, and she had enough regrets already. He was right about it being uncomfortable—just not in the way she’d imagined.

“You don’t have to explain any further, Colin –”

“Yes. I do. I owe you as much.”

Andi held up a palm to stop him from saying any more. “Stop saying you owe me something,” she blurted with more vehemence than she’d intended. “You don’t owe me anything.” She lowered her eyes and toyed with the camera strap. “The truth is…you’ve given me more than enough already.”

Colin opened his hands in the space between them. “I haven’t given you anything. At least not any more than this arrangement has the potential to take from you.”

She shook her head before forcing herself to look at him. “If that’s what you think, then you don’t understand.” She put her palms on his and he circled his fingers around her wrists. “You’ve helped my writing, and you’ve given me back my body, and my confidence.”

He studied her with a puzzled expression. “How do you mean?”

She’d promised herself she wouldn’t bring this up. Colin wasn’t interested and she wasn’t going to be that girl that spouted on and on about her pathetic history with men. “Never mind,” she said, focusing on the mossy boulder behind him. “It’s not important.”

He pulled her hands into a ball and wrapped his large ones around them. “It is important,” he said. “It’s important to me.
You
are important to me.”

Andi felt as though she’d fallen and had the wind knocked out of her, and Colin looked even more surprised at the words that had come out of his own mouth than she did.

“Don’t say things like that. It just makes everything worse.”

He took a deep breath, as if carefully measuring his next words. “It matters to me that you know how I feel…that you know I’m not asking you to do this to hurt you, and I don’t take it lightly. I know it’s a lot to put someone through, especially when we barely know each other.”

She shrugged her shoulders, desperate to appear as nonchalant as possible. “It’s not that big of a deal, Colin. I’m a grown woman. I know what I’m getting into and I’m making a conscious, adult decision. You’re the one who told me not to overthink things, so now I’m giving you a dose of your own advice. Stop deliberating and just let it go. I know what I’m doing here, and it’s not going to hurt me.”

Her stomach dropped as the lie sunk in like lead. Not only was she lying to Colin, she was lying to herself as well if she thought she could pull this off without any lasting damage. But she couldn’t seem to stop herself. It was like being at the top hill of a roller coaster that she’d never wanted to ride in the first place—the only way to get off was to head spiraling down toward the end.

“Fine,” he said. “If it doesn’t mean anything, then tell me what happened to you. Tell me what he did to you.”

Colin’s demand caught her off guard and she paused to think a minute. She’d never spoken to anyone except Lily about her pitiful life with Jared, not because she was afraid, but because she was ashamed. It was too embarrassing to admit that she’d given herself to someone as terrible and damaging as Jared. She’d simply been tired of working so hard to still have nothing, and Jared, with his smooth words and enviable lifestyle, had presented what seemed like an easy way out. How could she admit that to Colin?

“It was just a bad relationship. Nothing more, nothing less.”

Colin didn’t seem satisfied with her explanation. “Come on, Andi. It was more than that. I can see it every time I touch you.”

She pulled her hands away from his.

“See,” he said. “Something went wrong with the two of you—physically, I think. I don’t want to push, but if it’s all the same to you, I’d like to know.”

There was nothing but sincerity in his words.

Against her resistance, Andi felt a twinge of embarrassment at the way he’d called her out. After that, though, she felt something else…something like…relief. There was only a hint of it, but it was enough to spur her to open up…just a little.

“It’s hard to put into words,” she said slowly. Colin’s eyes were on her, kind and nonjudgmental, so she went on. “When we slept together, Jared and I…I never—"she forced herself to say the words, accepting the humiliation that was certain to come—"I never had an orgasm.”

She checked Colin’s face again, but it was just as tempered and even as before, if a little sad now.

“And that in itself wasn’t the real problem, although it definitely sucked. I realize now that it was just a symptom of a ton of other issues.” Anger rose in her chest as she recalled the verbal abuse and ruthless denigration. “He had a way of knowing exactly what to say to cut me down, and nothing I ever did or said was adequate to Jared, which he made sure I knew on a daily basis. He called me fat, ugly, and stupid—constantly. He just used fancier words.” She closed her eyes, searching deep for the fortitude to continue.

“You see, I didn’t go to college for a lot of reasons, one of which was my dyslexia.” She swallowed before continuing. “That’s the reason I ran into you the other night at the hotel—I was supposed to give a reading but, to make a long story short, I had trouble with the words. I know that they have programs and help for that, but my mom never had the kind of money it would have cost for that sort of thing. Jared was a very successful attorney, so he picked at my vocabulary and criticized the way I spoke on a regular basis, and berated me for not being what he would consider well-read.”

She took a breath, not daring to look at Colin again. She knew if she did, she might not be able to continue.

“He took every opportunity to make fun of me at parties with his work friends. I guess it made him feel superior or something, and even though they never joined him I could always tell they felt sorry for me, which really just made it worse; they didn’t dare say anything because he was so respected in his firm, he could ruin their connections if he wished.”

Even as she spoke, she hated herself for pouring all of this on Colin, but he’d opened something up in her and she just couldn’t seem to stop.

“Anyway, the reason I have trouble with physical intimacy is because he blamed me for our crappy sex life. He said it was my fault I couldn’t be satisfied because I was too rigid and cold, that there was something wrong with me. In his way of thinking, it had nothing to do with him.”

Colin spoke, the words tight and stiff. “But you’re anything but cold, Andi. I’ve only known you for a couple days, but any idiot can see that about you.”

Andi looked up, surprised to see anger all over Colin’s features.

“I wasn’t always the way I am now. I let him turn me into a person you wouldn’t have liked very much. Not only that, but I let him push all of my friends out of my life. I allowed him to destroy everything I cared about while I watched, all for selfish reasons. After my dad left, it was just Mom and me, and finances were tight. I met Jared one night while cleaning his office and he seemed interested in me. I was flattered, and he promised to take care of us.”

Colin tucked a finger under her chin and pulled her face close to his. “Andi, Andi. What happened wasn’t your fault. You fell in love with an asshole, is all.”

She giggled in spite of herself. Leave it to Colin to make light of a serious conversation. Though it wasn’t really that. She could tell with every bone in her body that he did actually care—or at least he had convinced her he did. It was more that he seemed to want her to laugh, to be happy, and that part of him—among so many others—was responsible for how quickly she’d begun to admire and enjoy him.

Colin laughed along with her, though there was still a glimmer of wild heat in his dark eyes. “What I don’t get, though, is that anyone can see that you’re incredibly smart.”

“Well, after I left Jared, and after I got my life sorted out and back on my feet, I found a therapist to help me with my dyslexia. I learned tricks and ways to make reading easier.”

“Is that when you started writing?”

“No,” she said, smiling at the memory of those hard, character-forming years, when stringing a few words together had felt like drawing blood. “I’d been writing for years—just not very well before Lily got hold of my work, helped me polish it, and made me think about trying to publish. But the reason I started was because I wanted to beat the dyslexia. I wanted to show the world that it wasn’t going to stop me from doing something I love.”

She turned serious. “Writing saved me, in a lot of ways. It gave me a place to pour out and work through all the confusion I’d experienced in my bad relationship, and over time, I started to heal.”

“But not physically,” Colin suggested.

“Right,” she said, amazed again at how astute he’d become at gauging her feelings. She swallowed. “You’re the first since Jared, and I was nervous that I wouldn’t be able to…you know.”

“Yeah,” he said, his tone oddly pensive. “I know. It all makes a lot more sense now.”

He was silent for a moment before continuing. “You didn’t do anything wrong, Andi – you need to know that. As far as I can tell, your only offense was having a good heart, and a lot of optimism in spite of having some real garbage thrown at you. Maybe you went into it for a less-than-ideal reason, and maybe it didn’t serve you well in the end, but it’s his fault for treating you like shit.”

Tears pricked at the back of her eyes and her nose tickled, but she fought to keep from crying. A girl could only stand so much humiliation in a few days’ time before she became a sensitive wreck. This was cutting it close.

“Thank you for that,” she said, relieved that her voice was much stronger and clearer than she felt.

He shook off her gratitude. “No need for thanks. It’s just the truth.”

Chapter Eleven

“I’ve been going on and on,” she said. “Your turn.”

“My turn for what? Did I miss out on a game we’re playing?” he asked, feigning innocence.

“Typical man,” she teased. “Don’t play dumb with me. You know what I mean.”

He looked out at the water and Andi took the opportunity to admire the strong features of his profile. He truly was a stunningly beautiful man.

“There’s nothing to talk about, really,” he said, but Andi remained patient and didn’t speak, hoping the silence would eventually cause him enough discomfort to keep going.

“We have more in common than I initially thought—you and I,” he said finally, still staring into the sea.

The sun, which remained perched behind the clouds, had dropped lower toward the horizon, washing the land in rich, warm shadows that reminded Andi of Catherine on Heathcliff’s moors.

“We both got caught up with people we thought we knew, who and it turns out we didn’t after all.”