Page 41 of Tell Me Again
“I was jealous,” Trevor said after a moment.
“I don’t want to hear it.”
“Please,” he whispered. She could feel the heat of him at her back, but he didn’t touch her, as if sensing that was too much for the state she was in right now. She hated who she was at the moment—weak and sad—almost as much as she hated the woman she’d been when she modeled. “Please let me make this right.”
“Where’s Grace?”
“Asleep. I told her I had an errand to run after she went to bed.”
“You’ve said your piece. Bye-bye.”
“I haven’t said half of what I need to.” She could hear the frustration in his voice and hoped he felt like crap. Misery really did love company. “Will you look at me?”
“Nope.” She straightened, grabbed the door handle, and pulled it farther open. “Since you got me out of bed, I’m having ice cream. Feel free to let yourself out.”
There was a snowball’s chance in hell he’d leave, but if she continued to ignore him long enough, maybe he’d give up. He’d certainly given up on her years ago.
She headed for the kitchen and Frank scrambled to his feet to follow. The dog might not be the best security system, but he could do double duty as a garbage disposal any day of the week.
She opened the freezer and stuck her head in for a few extra moments, hoping the frigid air would cool her nerves. When it didn’t work, she grabbed a carton of ice cream then took a spoon from the drawer.
“I’m guessing you aren’t offering to share,” Trevor said, his voice low and soothing. Another thing to add to her long list of annoyances tonight was the way it melted over her like warm caramel, sweet and thick.
“Nope.” She opened the carton and dug in with the spoon.
“That’s not ice cream,” Trevor said, moving closer. It was as if the small container had diffused some of the tension between them. He seemed genuinely interested in the food in her hand. She realized that despite how much they knew about each other, she and Trevor were virtual strangers at this point.
The fact that they were strangers who’d gotten naked with each other made her blush a little, but she tried to ignore it. What would have happened if he was just a man she’d hired to repair Bryce Hollow? There was no denying how attractive he was. Even here in her kitchen, wearing a tattered long-sleeve T-shirt and faded jeans, his dark blond hair a rumpled mess, he was the most gorgeous, masculine man she’d ever seen.
When awareness zipped along her skin, she shoved a spoonful into her mouth. “It’s a frozen soy dessert,” she answered as it melted on her tongue. “I limit dairy.”
“Since when?”
She shrugged. “Almost five years.”
“Why?”
“It’s healthy for me.” She took another bite. It wasn’t the same as real ice cream, but she’d gotten used to the difference by now. “Is that so hard to understand?”
“No,” he admitted. “It’s just not how I remember things.”
Right.
“Do you still drink?”
He asked the question softly, as if this were simply a friendly conversation.
“A glass of wine with girlfriends on occasion,” she told him. “Otherwise, no. If you’re asking if I drink like I used to the answer is no. You don’t have to worry about Grace driving with me or anything like that.”
She made the reference to the very publicized DUI she’d gotten in her early twenties. Her mug shot had made the cover of several tabloid magazines and even landed a small spot on one of the national morning news shows. She wished she could have told him that wrapping her car around a telephone pole had been rock bottom, but she’d had several more years of bad behavior after that before she’d pulled herself out of the abyss.
“I’m not worried about Grace driving with you,” he said quietly.
“Only about me seducing her band teacher?” she shot back.
He let out a long sigh. “Again, I’m sorry. It was my jealousy fueling those idiot words, not anything you did.”
“What do you have to be jealous about?”
