Page 60 of Empowered
“Do you know how painful that office is sometimes? I walk in and see the same people I did back then. It’s the same sounds and smells. Then there’s Alice, pregnant with her husband’s baby, and I think… I could’ve had my baby by now. I could’ve had him and been happy. I didn’t even think of it as my boss’s sibling. It wasn’t about that. It was about making that choice. Those people took all my choices away. They took away my ability to choose whether or not I had my baby, what I did with our lives, if I could even keep myjob.I feel like an indentured servant, because if I walk away from that stressful place, my brother and I will end up on the street. What do we do? Go back to our mother? She wouldn’t understand.”
“I didn’t know it was that intense.”
“I mean, I don’t resent them. They didn’t do anything.” Sarah shrugged. “But they remind me. They trigger those memories whenever I see them.”
“If you could quit Monday morning, would you?”
“You mean hand in my resignation and walk right back out again?” Sounded like a dream. “Absolutely. But I’m not about to do that without a contingency in place.”
“So what do you want?”
“You keep asking me that.”
Lucas leaned forward, his blue eyes full of a determination Sarah had yet to witness. “Because you haven’t given me a straight answer since I first asked it. You’re holding back.”
“I’ve never been dishonest about what I want from my life.”
“Then perhaps you don’t quite know what it is you want.”
Sarah wanted to be offended, but discovered she didn’t have the energy to expend on such intense emotions. “You know what I want right now?”
Lucas didn’t take his eyes off her. “What?”
“I want to curl up in bed and pretend the world doesn’t exist.”
A small smile tugged on the corner of Lucas’s mouth. “That sounds nice.”
Nice? That’s all you have to say about it?Sarah was on the verge of inviting him back to her hotel room. Maybe not for sex. (Okay, for sex.) But some of that lying in bed and pretending that the world didn’t exist. Not beyond the two of them, anyway.
Nice, though? Come on, this was his chance to make a move. Unless he didn’t want Sarah anymore… which was preposterous. He wouldn’t have told her half his life story if he wasn’t in the market to take her home.
“Know what I want right now?”
Sarah could not contain her flirtatious glance. “What?”
She should have anticipated his answer. “You.”
“Even after all that?”
“Listening to you open up only makes me understand you more. Which makes me want you more.”
Sarah wanted to call him ridiculous, but she was too flattered to respond with anything but a brush of her hand against his skin. After that, going home with anyone but him felt sacrilegious.
