REBECCA CONSIDERED massage to be very therapeutic. She believed the right kind of touch could heal people on more than one level. She also knew that touching some people affected her differently than touching others—and touching Josh Hill seemed to have the greatest impact of all.
Drawing a bolstering breath, she gazed down at his smooth bare skin, gleaming with oil in the candlelight, and wondered how it had come to this. Just two days earlier, she hadn’t spoken to him in ages—other than that August 16th and an occasional “how do you do.” Now he was in her bed, and the massage she performed so mechanically on others felt more like a labor of love. Her hands actually shook with the desire to explore the rest of him….
Buddy. Think of Buddy. He was a kind, gentle lover. A good man. So what if they’d never enjoyed the same type of mind-blowing sex she’d almost had with Josh? So what if during those few unguarded minutes in Josh’s arms last summer, she’d fancied herself so deeply in love with him she thought she’d drown? She’d been dazed, confused, drunk. Tonight her body’s response stemmed from the music and the candles.
Or maybe she was as flawed as everyone said she was.
Wiping the oil from Josh’s back, she got up and put her things away. She was stupid to have agreed to this friendship. All it did was shine a bright light on her weak character. She was engaged and yet, when she came into contact with Josh Hill, she lost sight of the small, neat house she imagined sharing with Buddy.
Fortunately nothing had happened that she needed to be ashamed of. She hadn’t been disloyal or unfaithful to Buddy or anyone else. All she had to do was stay on the straight and narrow course that would lead her to marital bliss and not moral ruin. And that shouldn’t be too hard, she reasoned—not if she kept her perspective. If Josh wanted her at all, he wanted her for only one thing. It wasn’t as though he could ever fall in love with her or marry her, as Buddy was willing to do. She wasn’t about to destroy her engagement for a cheap, unfulfilling fling, despite the desire that dogged her so tenaciously. She was better than that, smarter than that.
In the morning, she’d tell Josh that she didn’t want anything more to do with him, that he was to leave her alone beginning immediately—
“Rebecca?” he murmured.
She froze at the entrance to her closet. “Hmm?”
“I’m sorry I didn’t trust you,” he said. “I should have taken off my pants.”
Rebecca’s shoulders slumped as she dragged a blanket out to the living room. Cutting him off wasn’t going to be easy. As much as she wanted to believe that what she felt for him was strictly a physical response, the one he inspired in most women, she knew she was starting to really like Josh Hill.
“I DON’T WANT to be friends anymore,” Rebecca announced as soon as Josh stumbled out of her bedroom the next morning. She’d been up for several hours already, scrounging boxes from various businesses in town and packing. She’d just finished telling herself that she was going to wait for the right time to spring her change of heart on Josh. But there didn’t seem to be a good time to wreck a friendship. And when her first glimpse of him made her heart pound and her body grow warm, even when he was looking sleepy and unshaven, she knew sooner was better than later.
“What?” Obviously not quite coherent yet, he scratched his head and glanced around as though trying to find his bearings.
“I said I don’t want to be friends with you anymore.”
He was still wearing only his blue jeans, which were zipped but not buttoned. Yawning, he walked toward her. “Was it just last night we loaded up all your furniture?” he asked, sprawling on the floor a few feet from where she was packing dishes. “It seems like eons ago. What time is it?”
“Nearly noon. Didn’t you hear me?” she asked.
He propped himself up on his hands. “Yeah, I heard you. You don’t want to be my friend. I assumed you were joking, of course.”
She gathered what she could of her remaining nerve. “Well, I wasn’t.”
He met this statement with several seconds of wary silence. “I don’t understand,” he said finally.
Rebecca wrapped newspaper around a plate and put it in with the other dishes she’d already packed. “It’s simple. I want to call off the deal we made last night.”
His eyebrows shot up. “Why?”
“Because I don’t like the change, that’s why. I don’t want your help moving. I don’t want your truck in front of my house. I don’t want you spending the night.” She hesitated. “How are you feeling? Can I get you a glass of juice?”
He shook his head. “You don’t want to be my friend and how am I feeling? God, you’re confusing. What did I miss between last night and this morning? I’m sorry I got sick while I was here, if that’s what has your panties in a bunch.”
“It has nothing to do with you getting sick. I just want things to go back to the way they were.”
“What’s so appealing about being enemies?”
“Nothing. It’s just more appealing than being friends.”
“That doesn’t make any sense.”
She kept packing so she wouldn’t have to look at him. “It does to me. We made a mistake trying to turn our relationship into something it can’t be.”
He sat up and crossed his legs. “Do you mind telling me how I’m supposed to react here? Because I’m at a complete loss. I’ve never had anyone decide they don’t want to be my friend anymore, at least not out of the clear blue and without a reason.”
“Can’t we just pretend the past two days never happened?” she asked. “Then you can say goodbye and go, and after another hour or two, I can pat myself on the back for doing the right thing.”
“How can you say that’s the right thing? You’re being mean to me!”
“I’m engaged!”
“I know that. But we’re only friends. We haven’t done anything wrong. I mean, there was last summer, which was—” he let his breath go all at once “—crazy good, I’ll admit. But that was before Buddy and you—”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” she interrupted, taping up the box she’d filled.
He sat without moving and watched her search for the marker she’d been using to label everything, and Rebecca thought if he didn’t leave soon the butterflies in her stomach might make her lose the donut she’d had for breakfast. “Well?” she said.