Page 100 of Strictly Business : A Lesbian Romance
liquid. And then, she knew. Or at least she could admit why she’d been
holding a nasty grudge towards Christina. Why she tried to push her away.
Why she was prickly and combative. It wasn’t because she blamed
Christina for rejecting her proposal. It wasn’t even that she didn’t like her. It
was the exact opposite.
It was because Taylor was attracted to her. How could she not be?
From the very first time she’d seen Christina, Taylor thought that the other
woman was breathtaking. She’d never been able to stop thinking about her.
When she wasn’t at work, she was thinking about her. Taylor had been
lying to herself, excusing those thoughts and keeping them at bay with
bitterness and annoyance, passing them off as related to the business only,
but when she allowed herself to truly think about it, she had to admit to
herself that it was so much more than that.
Taylor realized that she’d been fighting the fact that her body
wanted Christina long before her mind was even willing to go there. She’d
burned and ached and yearned for Christina even before she realized that
she was available. Once Taylor found out that Christina was a lesbian, she’d
so very carefully shut down her emotions that she could almost deny they
were there at all. It was just little twinges, little aches, her body betraying
her subtly even though she’d gone for full on denial.
There was nothing subtle about how Taylor’s head cranked up.
There was no subtlety whatsoever in how Christina was looking at her.
“Are you alright?” Christina asked. She set her glass down on the
coffee table and studied Taylor with concern.
Was she alright? No. Taylor knew that she wasn’t. She wasn’t even
close. She’d been lonely for so long. The kind of lonely that shreds a person
in half. She’d dreamed for so long about finding someone, but then, when
she first felt a spark of anything at all piercing through the haze, she’d
stamped it out. She’d ignored it. She told herself it wasn’t real. She invented
ways, excuses, anything— to protect herself from the facts. What she felt
