Free At Your Service (Silhouette Desire) by Amy Jo Cousins Page A

reminded us of a new day.” He paused, and she waited silently. “But I want you badly enough to want more than one night. I’m afraid that you’d wake up tomorrow feeling like you’d made a mistake, and decide to disappear.
    “And that is not something I want.”
    His words frightened her.
    She turned her back to him and finished buttoning her blouse. Shoving the tails ruthlessly back beneath her waistband, she considered what to do next. Tyler’s footsteps echoed lightly on the quarry tile floor as he walked back behind the bar and shut off the last of the lights. In the dark, she could admit to herself that he was right.
    If she’d gone home with him—
    She interrupted her own thoughts. Let’s be honest. If we’d finished what we started, right there on the chair in the middle of a deserted restaurant, I would have regretted it. And regretting it, might have walked away from it.
    I walked away from my own family, didn’t I? My so-called fiancé, even. Why on earth should Tyler be any different?
    But he was, even if she refused to acknowledge why. She couldn’t have walked away from him. And that would only make things worse in the end.
    She felt him approach, a physical source of warmth at her side, as he returned to her. He handed her oversize leather purse to her. She slung it over her shoulder. She still hadn’t said a word to him.
    “Come on. I’ll walk you to Sarah’s.”
    She nodded her assent and they left the bar together and walked home in the dark.
     
     
    She’d been afraid to fall asleep.
    Afraid that in her dreams she would see herself again, sliding onto his lap. Wrapping her arms around him and watching him undress her. Afraid that in her dreams, she would cover his mouth with her own and stop him from saying the words that broke the spell and instead let herself fall all the way into the ecstasy of him.
    She’d been afraid of waking up and wanting him even more.
    She dreamed, instead, of the walk they shared in the night.
    Their footsteps on cement had sounded loud in the utter stillness of the neighborhood streets at 3:00 a.m. The arching limbs of trees overhead caused the streetlights to cast shifting shadows in the yellow light. It was strangely intimate, this wordless walk past the houses of sleeping families and people alone in their beds. When they passed a honeysuckle bush, its sweet scent resting heavily on the warm night air, he snapped off a stem of blossoms and buried his face in their bloom before passing them to her.
    She inhaled and breathed in both the honeysuckle and him. The flowers would soon be gone, she knew.
    In her dream, she felt his voice like a physical force surrounding her.
    What happens next, Grace?
    Nothing, she answered and felt an unbearable sadness. Nothing happens next.
    As Grace tumbled out of sleep and into wakefulness, gradually becoming aware of the sun lying in stripes across her body where it shone through the blinds, higher in the sky than it ought to be, she remembered with fading dream warmth his answer to her.
    Not possible. And when you change your mind, I’ll be right here.
    So she woke with a smile on her face. Of disbelief, admittedly, that the man could be so unbelievably arrogant, but a smile nonetheless. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d done that.
    She could, however, remember the last time she’d awakened and felt safe in her bed. On this morning she was incredibly grateful to feel such simple comfort again.
    The night before she hadn’t even turned on the lights in her new room before falling on the bed, fully dressed, and most of the way to sleep before her head hit the pillow. She rolled over now to take a look at her temporary home and her smile broadened in gladness at the sight.
    The room was small, tucked under the eaves on the third story of an old house built like a clapboard castle, with turrets and all. The ceiling sloped sharply above her bed, creating an atmosphere of cozy warmth. Someone had painted the walls