Free An Irresistible Impulse by Barbara Delinsky Page B

day. And as for sex…” she raged, “as for sex…Sean Hennessy just doesn’t turn me on. Besides,” she added on a note of spite, “these are modern times. If a woman needs a bedmate, she takes one…with or without a wedding band!”
    Her hair flew out behind as she whirled onher heel and headed for the inn. Her blood pounded in her ears, her chest heaved. She’d never been as irate in her life. Irate…hurt…disappointed.
    Storming up the front steps, she was filled with dismay that Ben could have said what he had. Security…kids…sex…bah! Typically masculine point of view. No love…never love. Was it exclusively a woman’s emotion?
    True, Sean believed he loved her…. But he, too, seemed to feel that a marriage could survive without that one element. And what had his love consisted of? He said she was bright, hard-working, and wonderful with kids. The perfect little wife and mother, she fumed as she slammed through the front door and attacked the stairs at a jogger’s pace.
    But Sean had never pushed her physically. Now she wondered why. Oh, he’d kissed her and crooned sexy thoughts to her. They’d even indulged in a little petting. But when Abby pulled back, he never complained. Did he too feel that something was missing? Was he reluctant finally to accept the fact that the chemistry was all wrong?
    Rounding one flight and loping up the next, she reran Ben’s words. Security…she had it. Kids…perhaps there was more to the issue there. It was one thing to find pleasurein other people’s children, quite another to experience the joy of one’s own. She wasn’t blind to her deep maternal instincts, nor did she doubt that one day she would want a child. But motherhood was no reason to rush into marriage with Sean…particularly when something deep within told her she could have it all….
    And sex. The big S. First and foremost on every man’s mind. With an angry scowl and a low-muttered oath, she slammed the door of her room and leaned back against it. There, too, she’d only told half the story. Modern women were freer than ever in satisfying their own desires. And she hadn’t reached the age of twenty-eight a virgin. But she demanded something beyond the purely physical, something to give meaning to those joys of the flesh. Not marriage, nor promises, she mused, but love. Very simply. Love.

Four
     
     
     
    B en gave Abby time to lick her wounds. He saw her at meals, ran with her in the morning, sat beside her in court. But other than a cordial greeting or a brief passing remark, he made no attempt to seek her out personally as he’d done that Thursday night.
    It wasn’t that Abby wanted an apology. When she thought about it, Ben had done no more than probe her feelings about marriage in general, and Sean in particular. And he hadn’t actually said that he believed in marriage without love, had he?
    With the passage of time her anger eased, and she became more concerned with why it had arisen in the first place. When it came to Ben Wyeth, she reflected, everything about her seemed to react strongly. Even now, despite the subtle barrier between them, she felt his presence every time he came near.
    In a way she was grateful for the trial, which demanded her complete concentration. During those hours, and the periods of slow unwinding immediately after, she was preoccupied, thinking neither of Sean, nor her patients, nor her house, her mail, her friends…nor Ben. As fate would have it though, Ben was always the first to reenter her thoughts.
    The blame rested, she told herself, on the nature of their bizarre adventure. To be locked away from the rest of the world, with thirteen strangers, several guards, and a handful of inn personnel…it was unusual. Under the circumstances, it would be perfectly normal for a woman like her to be drawn to a man like Ben. When the trial was over and they were all back in the “real world”…that would be something else. She’d go her way, back to her