Free Four Weddings and a Fireman by Jennifer Bernard Page A

a big boy. I can take the hurt. Fuck, I have taken it. Now you owe me something. You owe me the truth.”
    Her gaze fell away from his, color coming and going in her cheeks. She fiddled with the long fringe of the shiny silk scarf, then bent forward to gather up her clothes.
    Bull’s-­eye. He was on to something. No doubt.
    She clambered off the couch and bunched her clothes in front of her like a shield. “I’ve told you. It’s not that I don’t ‘want’ you, you know that. I don’t think we should get married.”
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œBecause I don’t want to get married. We’re very different. We have different goals in life.” She took a shuffling step backward. “I should go change before the boys get back.”
    He’d come this far, he wasn’t going to let her off the hook now. Especially when her right eyelid was twitching. “What goal do you have that means we can’t be together?”
    â€œI have responsibilities. Students. All my jobs take up a lot of my time.”
    True, she held down about six part-­time jobs at any given time. She was always running from one class to another, one shift to another. But it wasn’t as if he didn’t have responsibilities too. “I have no problem with all your jobs. I think it’s great that you do all that stuff.”
    Her gaze darted here and there, everywhere except his direction. “Look, Vader, you know I care about you. You know I enjoy . . . getting intimate with you.”
    His mouth quirked. At least her eyelid didn’t twitch when she admitted that part. “Yeah, I got that. I enjoy it too. But it doesn’t make me turn into a crazy person who has to call it quits every week or so. I want to know what’s really going on. Because I know something is. I may be a big, dumb guy who doesn’t know how to tango and has trouble watching Brokeback Mountain , but I’m not blind.”
    â€œYou’re not dumb, Vader.” She blinked, as if chasing away tears. “You’re not anything bad. There’s nothing wrong with you. And you’re pretty darn good at tango, considering you just learned it today. And you did watch Brokeback Mountain , because I wanted you to. And I was wrong about you and my brother. You didn’t mind that he’s gay. And you know what? You are handsome and virile and irresistible and all those things you said before. And if there was anyone I could—­” She broke off, biting her lip. “But I can’t—­and I can’t explain—­if I could tell you everything, I would—­” She took a long, shuddering breath, then cried, “Why are you doing this? Why are you putting me on the spot? I don’t want to hurt you. I hate hurting you! It’s the worst thing in the entire world and I don’t want to do it ever again . . .”
    â€œOkay, okay, shhh.” He stood up and pulled her into his arms. “Don’t worry. You’re not going to hurt me. We’re friends, right? No one’s hurting anyone. We’re friends, we care about each other, and we’re not going to hurt each other.” He said the words soothingly, the way he would speak to a child in a medical crisis. She trembled, then slowly relaxed against him. He blocked out the delicious sensation of her half-­naked body against his entirely naked self. Not the right moment for another hard-­on, though really, he had only so much control around Cherie.
    Firmly, he set her away from him, at a safe distance of at least two feet. “Friends probably shouldn’t do naked hugs.”
    â€œRight.” She wiped a trembling hand across her eyes. In the blue twilight illumination filtering from the window, he caught a silver flash of moisture on her fingers. Damn it, he’d made her cry. As always, he’d taken the direct, head-­on, balls-­out approach. He should have