Free The Heart of the Matter by Muriel Jensen

we have any control?”
    He smiled wryly. “Unless you’re me, then there is nothing in your life over which you have control.”
    She dismissed his denial with a wave of her hand. “Nonsense. Your life seems to be full of all sorts of difficult elements, and yet you seem to have all of it well in hand. Kids who seem to adore you and are very happy, friends who think a lot of you, a reading public that thinks you’re brilliant. You have everything—even if it doesn’t feel like you have control of it.”
    “Well.” With him sitting and her standing, he had to look a little way up into her eyes. “You’ve only seen the daytime me,” he said quietly, seriously. “You have to see me wandering around in the middle of the night with a glass of bourbon because I can’t sleep, because although I appear to have everything a man could want, I don’t have…”
    “Lucy,” she supplied, her own voice quiet, grave.
    He knew that wasn’t precisely it anymore. He’d mulled it over that night in the hot tub when he’d thought he was mad at her for making him think about the past, then realized he was mad at himself for not seeing the present.
    “She was beautiful, wonderful…remarkable,” he said with all the sincerity with which that truth would live with him forever. Then he sighed, accepting another truth. “But she’s gone. No matter how desperately I’ve wished her back—like your parents’ reconciliation—it isn’t going to happen. So I have to.start again.”
    She turned to sit on the railing, but he caught her armand pulled her in between his knees instead. He looped his arms around her waist and pulled her in closer.
    She didn’t resist but rested her hands on his arms.
    “So, are you looking for a man you can control, as well?” he asked lightly. “I’m not sure how many of those you’ll find.”
    She smiled. There was a bright pool of light near the French doors, but the railing was in shadow and he could see the brightness of her eyes and the smooth ivory of her skin. Even as close to him as she was, the little black dress made the rest of her disappear into darkness.
    Though he could feel her unconscious inclination against the inside of his leg, and had to fight that distraction to hear her reply.
    “Only in so far as he’d be faithful,” she said. “That seems to be a problem for me. I’ve had a few relationships I thought were going well only to discover they were going even better—and in other directions—for the men.”
    He couldn’t imagine a man ever holding her this close and being able to think about another woman. She seemed to fill his mind, his sensory awareness.
    “Then you didn’t want them, anyway,” he said. “They were obviously inferior.”
    “Are you sure?” The wind ruffled her bangs, and it must have ruffled his hair as well because her hand went to it. He felt the gentle smoothing gesture down to the marrow of his bones. “My experience seems to indicate that all men are unfaithful. Or, at least, most men.”
    He pulled her closer. He saw uncertainty flicker in her eyes for an instant, then she looped her arms around his neck.
    “You haven’t experienced me,” he said softly, drawing her closer still. “I’m as faithful as the day is long.”
    Laura felt just an instant’s panic. She wanted desperatelyfor him to kiss her, but it was going to change everything. She was sure of it. This easy little friendship would change into something underlined by sex and overseen by expectation—two serious relationship busters.
    Then he stood and opened his mouth over hers, and she realized that she wasn’t as afraid it wouldn’t work between them as she was reluctant to risk the possibility that it would.
    But it was already too late. The instant he took confident and possessive control of the kiss, the cautious friendship was gone. What they shared was already something else, metamorphosing second by second as he dipped his tongue inside her mouth, crushed her