“If anyone else gave me that answer, I would instantly accuse the man of hedging, but I suspect you’re asking because you genuinely want to know. Am I right?”
He nodded. She wanted to talk aboutthem.About their potentially mutual goals and desires. He didn’t have either—at least none that included a normal relationship with a very nice woman.
She pressed her lips together. “I’m going to take a wild guess here and say that I think you’re out of your element with me. Am I right?”
He nodded again. Now it was his turn to settle onto his back.
“Jeff, is there anyone special in your life?”
He knew what she was asking. “No. I wouldn’t be here with you if there was.”
“That’s what I thought but I had to be sure.” She slid her hand toward him under the covers and lightly touched his arm. “Has there been anyone special recently?”
He thought about the question. Recently there had been no one. “No. There hasn’t been anyone in my life since Nicole.”
And in an odd way, Nicole hadn’t been in his life at all. The young man she’d married had disappeared in a matter of months. By their second anniversary, it was as if that Jeffrey Ritter had never existed.
He saw now that he shouldn’t have married her. Or having married her, he shouldn’t have gone into Special Forces. He’d changed so much so quickly. Their marriage had never had a chance. As for other women since then, they had existed but not the way Ashley meant. They had been nameless, faceless companions of the night. Strangers who welcomed him for an hour or a day. One woman had hung on for nearly two weeks.
“I haven’t been with anyone since Damian,” Ashley confessed. She shifted, curling against him. “There were a few guys before I met him, but I was pretty young then. It didn’t really count.”
“You’re still pretty young.”
“Jeff!”
He looked at her as she raised herself up on one elbow. “I’m twenty-five. That’s hardly a baby.”
“I’m thirty-three.”
“So what? That makes you an old man?”
He was older than she could know. He’d seen so much that no one should ever see.
She sighed and settled back against him. He could feel her bare breast pressing against his arm. “You make me crazy,” she murmured. “You’re not that old.”
“If you say so.”
“I do. Besides, that wasn’t the point. Damian was the first man I’d ever been with, which makes you the second.”
Her words stunned him. He heard them and turned them over in his brain without having a clue as to what to do with them.
“Ashley?”
“Yeah, yeah, I get it. More than you wanted to know.”
“Why did you tell me?”
“Because...” She pressed her lips to his bare arm. “Because I want you to know that I think what we have is very special. I thinkyou’respecial.”
She thought they had something. A relationship? Was that possible? He wanted to tell her that he didn’t know how, that he wasn’t safe. Thatthiswasn’t safe. Not for either of them.
“I didn’t want this,” she continued. “Getting involved, I mean. Based on how you live your life, I’m guessing you didn’t want it, either. Which means we should probably assume it’s just hormones and that whatever it is will pass.”
He risked looking at her and nearly lost himself in her beautiful eyes. “What didn’t you want?”
She smiled. “The complication. The attraction. I spent yesterday being completely schizophrenic—bouncing between grinning like an idiot and promising myself I would end this immediately.”
So she’d been feeling the same things he had. “If you planned on telling me it was over last night, the lace nightgown was a mixed message.”
