Page 21 of Captivated
Now that he could afford to buy himself whatever he liked—and Nash would have been among the first to admit that adult toys were a terrific source of entertainment—he was still content with the fluidity of imagination.
He could happily close himself off from the real world and real people for hours at a stretch. It didn’t mean he was alone, not with all the characters and events racing around in his head. His imagination had always been company enough. If he occasionally indulged in binges of parties and people, it was as much to gather grist for the mill as it was to balance out those solitary times.
But lonely? No, that was absurd.
He had friends now, he had control over his own destiny. It was his choice, his alone, whether to stay or to go. It delighted him that he had his big house to himself. He could eat when he was hungry, sleep when he was tired, and toss his clothes wherever it suited him. Most of his friends and associates were unhappily married or bitterly divorced and wasted a great deal of time and effort complaining about their partners.
Not Nash Kirkland.
He was a single man. A carefree bachelor. A lone wolf who was happy as a clam.
And what, he wondered, made a clam so damn happy, anyway?
Nash knew what made him happy. Being able to set his laptop out on the patio table and work in the sunlight and fresh air, with the drumming of water in the background. Being able to toy with the treatment for a new screenplay without sweating about time clocks or office politics or a woman who was waiting for him to snap back and pay attention to her.
Did that sound like the lament of a lonely man?
Nash knew he’d never been meant for a conventional job, or a conventional relationship. God knows hisgrandmother had told him often enough he’d never amount to anything remotely respectable. And she’d mentioned, more than once, that no decent woman with a grain of sense would have him.
Nash didn’t figure that that stiff-necked woman would have considered penning occult tales remotely respectable. If she were still alive, she’d sniff and nod her head smugly at the fact that he’d reached the age of thirty-three without taking a wife.
Still, he’d tried the other way. His brief and terrible stint as a desk jockey with an insurance company in Kansas City had proven that he would never be a nine-to-fiver. Certainly his last attempt at a serious relationship had proven that he wasn’t suited to the demands of permanence with a woman.
As that former lover, DeeDee Driscol, had sniped during their final battle, he was... How had she put it again? “You’re nothing but a selfish little boy, emotionally arrested. You think since you’re good in bed you can behave irresponsibly out of it. You’d rather play with your monsters than have a serious adult relationship with awoman.”
She’d said a lot more, Nash remembered, but that had been the gist of it. He couldn’t really blame her for throwing his irresponsibility at him. Or the marble ashtray, if it came to that. He’d let her down. He wasn’t, as she’d hoped, husband material. And, no matter how much she’d altered and stitched during their six-month run, he just hadn’t measured up.
So DeeDee was marrying her oral surgeon. Nash didn’t think it was overly snide to chuckle at the idea that an impacted wisdom tooth had led to orange blossoms.
Better you than me, he told the nameless dentist. DeeDee was a bright, friendly woman with a cuddly body and a great smile. And she had the arm of a major-league outfielder when you ticked her off.
It certainly didn’t make him lonely to think of DeeDee taking that long, slippery walk down the matrimonial aisle.
He was a free agent, a man-about-town, unattached, unencumbered, and pleased as punch. Whatever the hell that meant.
So why was he rattling around this big house like the last living cell in a dying body?
And, much more important, why had he started to pick up the phone a dozen times to call Morgana?
It wasn’t their night to work. She’d been very firm about giving him only two evenings a week. And he had to admit, once they’d gotten past those initial rough spots, they’d cruised along together smoothly enough. As long as he watched the sarcasm.
She had a nice sense of humor, and a nice sense of drama—which was great, since he wanted both for the story. It wasn’t exactly a sacrifice to spend a few hours a week in her company. True, she was adamant about insisting she was a witch, but that only made the whole business more interesting. He was almost disappointed that she hadn’t set up any more special effects.
He’d exercised admirable control in keeping his hands off her. Mostly. Nash didn’t figure touching her fingers or playing with her hair really counted. Not when he’d resisted that soft, sulky mouth, that long white throat, those high, lovely breasts....
Nash cut himself off, wishing he had something more satisfying to kick than the side of the sofa.
It was perfectly normal to want a woman. Hell, it was even enjoyable to imagine what it would be like to tangle up the sheets with her. But the way his mind kept veering toward Morgana at all hours of the day and night, making his work suffer in the process, was close to becoming an obsession.
It was time to get it under control.
Not that he’d lost control, he reminded himself. He’d been a saint. Even when she’d answered the door wearing those faded, raggedy cutoffs—a personal weakness of his—he’d slapped back his baser instincts. It was a bit lowering to admit that his reasoning had had less to do with altruism than with self-preservation. A personal entanglement with her would mess up the professional one. In any case, a woman who could knock him sideways with a single kiss was best treated with caution.
He had a feeling that that kind of punch would be a lot more lethal than DeeDee’s deadly aim.
But he wanted to call her, to hear her voice, to ask if he could see her for just an hour or two.
Damn it, he wasnotlonely. Or at least he hadn’t been until he’d shut off his machine and his tired brain to go for a walk on the beach. All those people he’d seen—the families, the couples, those tight littlegroups of belonging. And he’d been alone, watching the sun slide down into the water, longing for something he was sure he didn’t really want. Something he certainly wouldn’t know what to do with if he had it.
