“Who cares,” he asked, leaning back and watching her as she collected her clothes. She had a damn fine ass.
“I care,” she said. “I need to be taken seriously and not...”
“What makes you think being a woman who has a sexual relationship will keep you from being taken seriously?”
“Theeverythingabout the world?”
He shrugged. “Okay. But what is it you want? Why is it important to be taken seriously?”
She stopped. “I don’t know. I... I have to do something. So I should be good at it.”
“I didn’t realize that innkeepers were required to be chaste.”
“I just don’t want... I don’t want anyone to say anything bad about me. I don’t want... I don’t want to cause trouble.”
An odd expression crossed her face, and she finished dressing and ducked out of the room. His impulse was to go after her, but they didn’t have that kind of relationship, and they weren’t going to. It was easy to feel like... He had a nice afternoon with her. But it didn’t need to be more than that.
Hell, it couldn’t be more than that.
TIMEWASMOVINGby too quickly. Violet hated it. She was trying to will the days to move slower, but even as she did that, she knew that it was... Well, it was a mistake. Time needed to pass, and she needed to... She needed to be okay with it. Because on the other side of this two weeks was a future without Wolf.
Wolf, who filled up her days, and her nights.
Wolf, who was every thought in her head. She actually burned a batch of cookies, which she hadn’t done since she was seventeen years old. But she was thinking about him constantly. Even while she was talking to her stepmother, her dad, everybody, she had a running montage of him in her head.
She was being deliberately distant from her family, and she knew she was beginning to mystify and irritate them. Only Clara knew.
And Clara gave her a warning glance every time she got a faraway look in her eye. “Just be careful.”
She lost track of the amount of times Clara had said that to her.
Which was ridiculous, because Clara was the one who had told her to indulge. Clara was the one who had told her she deserved this.
But she also understood why Clara was getting concerned about her.
Violet was getting concerned about herself. Because it was beginning to become something of a giddy obsession, and while it seemed fair enough on the one hand...it was also potentially ruinous. She knew that. She did. Except being with him was so much better than...thinking about being without him. And glorying in what they had... Well.
He was an accomplished teacher, she would give him that. Except, she couldn’t really think of it as lessons. Because when she was with him...she just got lost in him. It was like shattering every time he took her to the point of release. Like being broken apart and put back together again. But slightly different each time. As if each and every time she came apart in his arms she was then remade, a slightly different version of herself. And each and every time she felt like pieces of him seemed to fill the cracks. And that was perhaps the biggest concern of all. But... What was to be done? She was in too deep already. He was staying at the bed-and-breakfast; there was no question of cutting off their affair while he was within arm’s length.
She was committed. Committed to the heartbreak. And she could see it coming. Like a truck barreling down on her and her lying on the straightaway. She could see it coming, but there was no way to stop. She had no brakes. And if she swerved she would just hit a tree. Pain now, pain later. It was all pain. So she was seeing it through to the end.
Even though it made her melancholy.
The last thing she expected that day was for him to come in right when she was closing the bakery. But he did. Big and broad and standing in that space, and making her heart beat just like the first time she’d seen him. Except now...there was this intensity between them. This deep connection. Except now...she felt like she knew him in ways she didn’t know another person, after only knowing him a week and a half.
“What are you doing here?”
“I thought we could take a walk.”
He helped her close up the bakery, and when they left, her hand slipped effortlessly into his. And her heart jumped into her throat. They walked down to the beach, and she took his hand, lacing her fingers through his and letting him take her down to the edge of the water. She leaped back as a wave encroached, and then sat down, the damp sand soaking through her jeans. She shivered. But took her shoes off, anyway, rolling her jeans up. “Come on,” she said.
“It’s fucking cold,” he said.
“I know,” she said.
But he still didn’t take his shoes off, and didn’t join her splashing in the water. So she shoved him. Right to the edge of the waves, and one of them went directly inside his cowboy boot.
“Woman,” he said, his voice a warning, “you’re asking for trouble.”