The Other Side of Us (Harlequin Superromance) (13 page)

“Don’t. I get it. It’s not a problem,” she said.

“Easy for you to say.” He offered her the ghost of a smile
before sitting and sliding the chocolates toward her.

He started talking about the local shop where he’d found them,
but he was so palpably making an effort it was almost painful to watch. She
waited until he’d wound down to silence before she spoke.

“Listen, if you need to vent or rant right now, let off a bit
of steam, I am totally open for business,” she said.

After all, he’d been on the receiving end of a pretty
comprehensive gut-spill from her not so many days ago. It seemed only fair to
return the favor.

“Thanks, but everyone knows there’s nothing more tragic than
the cuckolded husband bleating on about his ex-wife.”

“I must have missed that memo. But if you don’t want to bleat,
that’s fine, too. Just wanted you to know the option was there.”

He looked at her for a moment, as though trying to assess if
her offer was genuine or not. She raised her eyebrows expectantly.

He set down his cup. “Edie had a minor car accident and she
needed to know where I’d filed our insurance information. Not a big deal.”

Except it was, because he was desperately trying to move on
from his ex’s terrible betrayal. Every contact was a reminder of what he’d lost,
of what Edie had thrown away.

“Okay.” She studied the tense set of his shoulders for a beat.
“A question for you—who are you more angry with, her or yourself?”

His gaze was arrested. As though she’d goosed a raw nerve.

“I mentioned I’m divorced, right?” she said. “I’ve played this
game before.”

He nodded slowly. Thoughtfully. “Yeah, you did.”

“I spent the first year after my divorce kicking myself around
for having married Patrick in the first place, it being pretty obvious by that
point that it hadn’t been my best move ever. It took me a while longer to
appreciate the joys of twenty-twenty hindsight. No one gets married thinking
it’s going to fail. No one.”

“I appreciate the get-out-of-jail-free card, but I’m not about
to let myself off the hook for failing to notice that my wife betrayed me nearly
every day of our marriage.”

“Why? Was she a bad liar? Did she leave clues all over the
house? Did you willfully ignore the bread crumbs she dropped for you?”

His smile had hard edges. “She was a great liar and a
consummate sneak. And I still should have known something was wrong.”

She could hear the contempt for himself in his voice.

“This is not your fault, Oliver. You trusted her. You believed
the two of you shared the same values. How does your trust and faith make you
the guilty party here?”

The stubborn angle of his jaw told her he wasn’t about to
concede the point.

“So this is a pride thing, is it? An ego thing?”

“Yeah, it is.” His gaze was challenging. “She played me for a
fool, and I let her.”

“Maybe it wasn’t as cut-and-dried as that. She stayed with you
for six years. No one hangs around that long without a compelling reason.”

“I have no idea why she stayed for so long, since Nick was
obviously the one she wanted all along.”

Mackenzie processed his words. “She knew him before you were
married?”

“He was her ex. In the very early days of the band, he was our
manager. They had two shitty years together before they broke up the last time
and we got a new manager. At least, I thought it was the last time.”

Mackenzie was silent for a moment, thinking about what he’d
revealed.

“Sometimes, even though you know something is a mistake, you
can’t stop yourself from going there,” she said slowly.

She could tell from his expression he needed a deeper
explanation.

“I’m not making excuses for her, don’t get me wrong,” she said.
“It just seems to me that the why of all this is killing you as much as the fact
that it happened at all.”

His gaze gravitated to the fire. “Yeah. Maybe.”

He looked so alone, so hurt.

“It was like that for my ex and me,” she said. “We were happily
divorced. So happily we became friends. Then, somehow, being friends turned into
something it shouldn’t have. Even though we’d been there before and we both knew
it was a dead end.”

“What happened?”

“I had the accident and Patrick made it pretty clear that he
would
not
be around to pick up the pieces. Backed
off at a million miles an hour. Not that I expected him to suddenly become
someone he wasn’t, but still...”

She swallowed past the lump of emotion in her throat, a little
surprised by how much it hurt to publicly acknowledge Patrick’s abandonment.

“He’s a dick,” Oliver said with feeling.

“He is. But he’s a charming dick.” She paused. “Sometimes, even
when you know someone is a hundred different kinds of wrong for you, you get
sucked into old patterns and behaviors. Maybe that’s what happened with Edie.
Maybe she loved you but couldn’t resist him. Maybe she spent six years yo-yoing
between the two of you, trying to work it out.”

He was silent a moment. “That’s a very generous
interpretation.”

“Maybe.” She set her empty teacup on the coffee table and
stood. “I’m going to leave you to it,” she announced. She’d said more than
enough.

He stood, too. “Thanks for the fish-gutting guidance.”

“Thanks for the fish.”

She clicked her tongue to get Mr. Smith’s attention. When he
came to her side she slipped his lead on, then turned to face Oliver again.

There was something she wanted—needed—to say to him before she
left. Otherwise she might never have the opportunity to do so and it was
definitely something he needed to hear.

“It’s her loss, Oliver. You know that, right?”

“You haven’t met the other guy.”

She wasn’t about to let him shrug off her words with a
joke.

“I don’t need to,” she said, holding his gaze. “As you are very
rapidly going to discover, there are a lot of women who would give their
eyeteeth and probably a couple molars to have a man like you in their life.
Don’t let Edie’s mistake become a judgment on you, okay?”

His cheeks were a little pink by the time she’d finished.
“Thanks.”

She could feel the heat in her own face but she was glad she’d
said it. “I’ll get off my soapbox now. Thanks for a great meal.”

She stepped forward, one hand landing on his shoulder to steady
herself as she pressed a kiss to his cheek. It was the second time she’d kissed
him like this, the second time she’d felt the rasp of his five-o’clock shadow
beneath her lips, and she had to fight the very inappropriate urge to linger
over the task.

He smelled good, like warm skin and amber and spices, and his
shoulder felt very solid beneath her hand.

She let her hand drop to her side. His hand reached out to
catch it before she could withdraw. Their gazes locked as his fingers wove with
hers. For a long beat they simply stared at each other.

“Mackenzie Williams,” he said, so softly it was barely more
than a whisper.

Then he leaned forward and pressed his lips to hers.

The world stood still. Her heart stuttered in her chest. She
forgot to breathe. Then his mouth moved against hers and heat exploded in her
belly and breasts and between her thighs. In that fraction of a second she knew
how it would be between them—hot and wild and desperate.

It was too much. Too fast, too real, too confronting. She
jerked backward so fast she lost her balance and would have fallen over if the
door hadn’t been a mere foot behind her. As it was, she cracked the back of her
head against it, the pain vibrating through her skull.

“Are you okay?” Oliver asked, reaching out to steady her.

She couldn’t look him in the eye, could barely force herself to
lift her gaze to the middle of his chest.

“Yes. Fine, thanks. All good.”

“You didn’t hurt yourself?”

She could feel heat rushing into her face and chest. “No, no.
I’m fine. Honestly.”

She reached behind herself and gripped the knob. It twisted
beneath her hand, and she stepped around the door and out onto the porch.

“Mackenzie—”

“Good night.”

She didn’t look back as she disappeared into the cold darkness,
her mind on one thing and one thing only—escape.

* * *

O
LIVER
STARED
at the empty
doorway, trying to work out what the hell had happened.

He’d kissed his first girl when he was fourteen years old. In
the twenty-five years between now and then, he’d like to think he’d improved his
technique a bit. He’d definitely like to think he was a little smoother, a touch
more suave than the sweaty-palmed, horny dude who had led Diane Leeds into the
corner at the school dance and stuck his tongue down her throat.

Apparently, however, if tonight was anything to go by—and he
figured it was—he had more in common with his fourteen-year-old self than he’d
like. Because he’d misread Mackenzie so spectacularly he’d sent her running from
the building.

But not before she’d banged her head against the door, she’d
been so eager to escape his attentions.

He mouthed a four-letter word and pushed the door shut. The
crazy thing was, he’d had no intention of making a move on her when he’d invited
her over for dinner tonight. Yes, he was attracted to her, but that didn’t mean
he’d been primed for seduction. He’d simply been looking for some good
conversation, a bit of company, a few laughs. But then she’d kissed his cheek
and he’d looked into her eyes and seen what he thought was awareness—the same
awareness he’d been feeling—and it had seemed natural and right and good to kiss
her.

Yeah.

Mackenzie had all but left a vapor trail she’d hightailed it
out of here so fast.

Good one, Romeo. Excellent
work.

Clearly, kissing him had been the last thing on her mind. Not a
stunning revelation when he considered that he’d spent the last hour of the
evening going on about his ex. Sexy stuff, that. Nothing said
Let’s get it on
like a bitching session about your
failed love life and how you’ve been done wrong.

Oliver let his breath out on a disgusted sigh. Honestly, he
wasn’t fit to be out in public.

“Come on, Strudel. Bedtime.”

He patted his thigh and Strudel followed him through the house
as he switched off lights. She leaped onto the end of the bed when they got to
the bedroom and began sniffing around for the best spot to make camp for the
night. He went to brush his teeth.

There was an echo of embarrassed color in his face when he saw
his reflection. No surprises there—he’d been in the grip of a full-body blush
from the moment Mackenzie had pulled away from him and the uninvited kiss.

Bloody hell, what a night.

He squeezed toothpaste onto his brush and cleaned his teeth
with grim determination, unable to escape the live-action replay his brain
insisted on feeding him on an endless loop: Mackenzie, jerking away from him,
her head hitting the door with a resounding thud.

Stupidly, he’d thought the evening had actually been going
okay, too, up until that point. Okay, Edie calling hadn’t been a highlight, but
Mackenzie had given him some things to think about, some new perspectives. She’d
challenged him and made him laugh and asked all the right questions.

When he’d come back into the living room with dessert to find
her dozing by the fire, there had been that moment when she opened her eyes and
looked at him and he could have sworn he’d seen desire in her eyes....

But apparently he knew dick about desire.

He was going to have to apologize to her. Preferably tomorrow,
before things got too weird between them. She probably wouldn’t be signing up
for dinner again anytime soon, but he would kick himself if he’d drawn a line
through their burgeoning friendship with his ham-fisted attempt at seduction.
Their normal lives might be a thousand miles apart, but she was the most
interesting woman—the most interesting
person
—he’d
met in a long time.

Spitting and rinsing, he gave his reflection one last disgusted
glare before heading to the bedroom. Strudel looked at him from beneath her
eyebrows as he got beneath the covers.

“Yeah, I know. I screwed up.”

Strudel closed her eyes and rested her chin on his shin. He
crossed his arms behind his head and stared at the ceiling and wondered how a
person apologized for an unwanted, unsolicited kiss. On bended knee?
Matter-of-factly? Wryly?

It would be great to be able to pull off wryly, but luck hadn’t
exactly been running his way lately.

He closed his eyes. He would fix things with Mackenzie
tomorrow. If it killed him.

And if he couldn’t... Well, he would rue the day his libido
ruined a friendship that already felt pretty damn unique.

CHAPTER EIGHT

M
ACKENZIE
SPENT
a good hour mulling
over her own ridiculousness after she got home, trying to understand
herself.

Oliver had kissed her. He’d looked into her eyes and said her
name as though it was a mystery and a wonder to him, and then he’d laid his
mouth against hers and kissed her. It had been a good kiss, too, full of
potential and promise.

And she had backed off so quickly she’d smacked her head
against the door.

She’d never backed away from anything in her life. She was a
grab-life-by-the-scruff-of-the-neck kind of woman. A carpe diem kind of woman.
And she liked sex. Not that she’d had much opportunity to enjoy it lately, all
her energies having been focused on her recovery, but that was beside the point.
She also liked Oliver. A lot.

She’d spent half the evening ogling his thighs and admiring his
handsome face and generally basking in his reflected glory. She’d dressed nicely
for him and worried about her limp hair and lack of makeup. Yet when he kissed
her she’d been so overwhelmed by the experience that her only panicky thought
had been to escape.

She winced as she pulled on her pajamas, thinking about how he
must be feeling right now. God, she was such an ass-hat.

She climbed into bed and punched her pillow a few times. She
needed to apologize to him, of course. Somehow she would have to make it clear
to him that her out-of-proportion reaction was all about her and had nothing to
do with him. She’d have to explain that under normal circumstances she would
have been all over what he was offering.

The problem was, she was having trouble locating normal right
at the moment. Her career was in limbo, her body a work in progress. She’d lost
sight of so many of the things that used to be important to her, that used to
define her. Maybe that was why she’d reacted so strongly. Maybe some deep, wise
part of her brain had understood that she had enough on her plate right now
without helping herself to a big slice of Oliver, as well. Maybe that was what
her precipitous retreat had been about.

Maybe.

Not entirely convinced, she continued to chew on the subject
until her tired brain finally loosened its grip and allowed her to slip into
sleep.

She woke several hours later feeling hot and oddly unsettled.
She flipped her pillow in search of the cool underside, remnants from her dreams
licking at the edges of her mind.

A warm bed. A hot body. A man whispering in her ear. The
insistent, wet pull of a mouth at her breasts. The delicate, questing slide of a
hand between her legs...

Desire throbbed low in her belly. She realized with drowsy
surprise that she was wet with need, her nipples hard against the soft fabric of
her pajamas. She may have retreated from Oliver in real life, but in her dreams
she’d apparently welcomed him with open arms.

How...confusing.

Still half-asleep, she allowed the images from her dream to
wash over her. Warmth turned into heat as she remembered the dream. Oliver’s
strong, dexterous hands roving her body. Cupping her breasts. Sliding down her
belly.

She stirred against the sheets. Her heart was racing, her
breathing shallow. It had been a long time since she’d felt this way, a long
time since she’d thought of her body as anything more than a damaged machine she
needed to rebuild and repair.

Tentative, she slid her hand onto her stomach. Behind her
closed eyelids, she imagined it was Oliver’s hand as her fingers slipped beneath
the waistband of her pajamas. It had been a while since she’d done this,
too, but she wasn’t about to question the urgings of
her body. She felt too liquid and needy and ready.

She allowed herself to think about the way Oliver’s face had
looked tonight, lined by firelight. She thought about the way the soft, worn
denim of his jeans had showcased his long, strong thigh muscles. She thought
about the breadth of his shoulders, the angle of his jaw.

She remembered the taste of him, the warm, firm press of his
lips against hers. She let her imagination fly as her hand slid lower—and
stilled as her fingers found the ridge of scar tissue that ran between her hips
and round to her right buttock.

The fantasy unrolling in her mind stalled. Her eyes opened.
Suddenly, she was wide-awake.

Funny, but in the scene in her mind, her body was whole. Her
hair was long, a sensual sweep over her shoulders, and she was confident and
strong and empowered.

That woman didn’t exist anymore. Certainly that body didn’t. If
something happened with Oliver, it would be this body he would sleep with, not
the one in her imagination. There would be no silken, sexy hair to drape over
his body and hers. There would be other issues to contend with, too. Physical
limitations. She’d broken her pelvis and her hip, after all, and she still
didn’t have a normal range of movement.

She freed her hand from her pajamas, all the urgent heat of her
fantasy draining away as she understood—finally—why she’d retreated so strongly,
so instinctively from Oliver’s kiss.

She was scared.

Scared that her new body wouldn’t be desirable to a man once he
saw it in all its scarred, stitched and stapled glory. Scared that sex would be
different, maybe even bad, thanks to her injuries. Scared that she didn’t know
how to be sexy in her new body. Or how to be confident or sassy or brave.

Everything in her wanted to reject the admission. She’d built a
career, a life, out of being brave and bolshie and ballsy. She didn’t do
afraid.

But she knew she would be doing herself a disservice if she
pretended otherwise. She needed to face this head-on, the way she’d faced
learning to walk again, the way she’d faced so many of the challenges in her
postaccident world.

Very deliberately, she retraced the path beneath her pajamas.
She found the scar on her belly by touch, following it with her fingertips,
absorbing the hard smoothness of it. There was no denying that it was not a
pretty, delicate thing. Where once her belly had been flawless and soft, it was
now bisected. The section where the ridge of tissue curled over her hip was
puckered, an artifact of the healing process that the doctors had assured her
would become less obvious with time. In broad daylight, it was nothing short of
shocking, a violent slash across her body. It had saved her life, though, this
slash. The surgeons had pieced her hip and pelvis back together and removed her
damaged spleen and repaired her liver via it. Without it, she would be dead.

The same went for the mess on her shoulder. She ran the fingers
of the opposite hand over the scar tissue there, reading the history of her
injuries with her fingertips. Without this scar, she wouldn’t have the use of
her shoulder and arm. Her life would be infinitely more complex and difficult.
Yes, it was messy and ugly, thanks to the postoperative infection that had
required an extra surgery to rectify, but the bottom line was that her arm and
shoulder worked.

Finally, she lifted her hand to her hair. Her fingers found the
scar on her scalp unerringly, tracing the wicked curve of it across the front of
her head. This scar had enabled the surgeons to repair her fractured skull and
stop her brain from swelling and damaging itself. Without it, she would be lost.
Pure and simple, the best part of herself—the very essence of Mackenzie
Williams—damaged beyond recognition or recall.

She let her hands rest on her belly again, palms flat. Probably
it was only human to be self-conscious about the changes her injuries had
wrought in her body. After all, most women had been trained and indoctrinated
from a young age to find fault with their own appearance. It was practically a
national pastime. But she’d worked hard for this body. She’d fought alongside
the doctors to keep it alive. She’d struggled against pain and expectation to
become strong again. She’d survived and thrived in this body, and she refused to
be ashamed of it.

A surge of defiance curled her hands into fists. If she wound
up getting naked with Oliver and he balked at her scars, then so be it. He would
have revealed something about himself that it would be important and good to
know before she made the mistake of allowing him inside her body. And if he
didn’t...well, she’d cheated them both out of what had promised to be an amazing
experience when she ran away from him tonight.

Next time, she promised herself. The next time Oliver kissed
her, she would hang on to the pleasure and push away her doubts and
insecurities. She would see this thing through.

Except, of course, that Oliver is about as
likely to kiss you again as fly to the moon on the back of a winged
pig.

She closed her eyes as she remembered the expression on his
face after she’d retreated from him. A man would have to be pretty damned
insensitive or just plain deluded to risk that kind of rejection again—and
Oliver was neither of those things.

Which meant if she was ever going to kiss him again, she would
have to be the one to initiate it.

She made a sound in the back of her throat. As much as it ran
against the grain to admit it, the thought of taking the initiative with Oliver,
of being the aggressor, made her feel dizzy with anxiety.

She stared at the ceiling, momentarily filled with despair. Not
so long ago, making a move on a man like Oliver would have been an exciting
challenge. Right now, it seemed scary and fraught with peril. Everything after
the accident had been hard, but she hadn’t expected sex and desire and romance
to fall under that heading. Perhaps stupidly, she’d assumed that that part of
her life would work as it always had. She was nearly forty, after all. Hardly an
ingenue.

Maybe it really is a case of simply not
being ready. Maybe you need to give yourself a break. Maybe being nervous
and scared and self-conscious is only a stage you need to go through, like
all the other stages of rehab.

She sighed and rolled onto her belly. Sometimes, the sensible
voice in her head was simply too damn cool and rational and pragmatic.

Burrowing her head into the pillow, she closed her eyes and
once again sought the oblivion of sleep.

* * *

O
LIVER
WOKE
with the knowledge that he needed to apologize
to Mackenzie at the top of his mind. For five minutes he lay in bed constructing
the right words and phrases in his head, then he rose and headed for the shower.
The sooner he got his self-appointed mission out of the way, the better.

It wasn’t until he was dressed and in the kitchen waiting for
the kettle to boil that he registered it was still dark outside.

He checked his phone. It was barely six o’clock. Awesome. Now
he would have to cool his heels for a couple of hours while he waited for a more
civilized time to call on his neighbor.

“Come on, Strudel,” he said, grabbing the flashlight from his
tool kit and heading for the back door.

He strode through frost-damp grass to the shed and tucked the
flashlight under his arm while he struggled with the lock. It gave grudgingly
and he opened the door and played the beam around the dusty interior. He
immediately realized how futile his task was—there was no way he could
effectively sort through the dark, overcrowded space with only the aid of a
flashlight. He’d have to wait until daylight and bring each piece out onto the
lawn to assess it properly.

So much for occupying himself with something constructive for a
few hours. He shut the door and pushed the rusty bolt home, then contemplated
the house. As though pulled by a force beyond his control, his gaze moved over
the fence to Mackenzie’s place. Light spilled out of the kitchen window,
signaling she was up already, like himself. For a moment he toyed with the idea
of throwing convention to the wind and going next door to say his piece despite
the early hour. Anything to get past the moment where he had to look into her
eyes and acknowledge his own poor judgment.

He teetered on the edge of temptation for a few seconds before
sanity prevailed. Arriving on her doorstep at this hour smacked of desperation
and preoccupation. Turning off the flashlight, he trudged toward the house.

“Oliver. Is that you?” Mackenzie’s voice traveled clearly over
the fence.

He stopped in his tracks, ankle-deep in wet grass.
“Mackenzie.”

“You’re up early,” she called.

“So are you.”

He moved toward the fence and stepped up onto the first
crossbar. Thanks to the reach of both their exterior lights, he could see her
quite clearly. She stood on the other side looking at him, arms tightly crossed
over her chest. She wore sunny yellow flannelette pajamas and an oversize navy
cardigan, the sleeves rolled up several times to accommodate her small frame.
Her hair was flat on one side, spiky on the other and her eyes looked tired.

“Hi,” he said.

Not great as openers went, but it would do.

“Hi.”

“Cold out.”

“It is.” She rubbed her hands over her biceps as though to
generate some warmth. “Listen, Oliver. About last night...”

His belly tensed.
Here goes...

“Yeah. I was going to come see you about that.”

“You were?” Her cheeks were pink, her chin tilted so she could
look him in the eye.

“Yeah. Wanted to clear the air. So things wouldn’t get weird.
If I upset you last night... I didn’t mean to leap on you or anything.”

“Oh, you didn’t. I mean, I didn’t feel leaped on. Far from
it.”

Her cheeks were very pink now and she seemed to have trouble
meeting his gaze—reactions that perfectly mirrored his own. Jesus, since when
had being an adult gotten so hard?

“In case you hadn’t noticed, I’m a little out of practice with
this stuff,” he said. “Which I guess is why I got my signals all wrong.
So...sorry about that. Won’t happen again.”