Page 50 of Captivated
Slow down, Kirkland, he warned himself uneasily. Sure, she was important. He cared about her. But that didn’t mean he was going to start thinking about love. Love also had a nasty habit of leading to marriage.
Frowning, he stood in the middle of the room he’d set up with benches and weights. Sweat trickled unnoticed down his face as he cautiously took a peek at what was in his heart. Okay, yes, he cared about her. Maybe more than he’d ever cared about anyone. But that was a long way from orange blossoms, station wagons, and a cozy cottage for two.
Rubbing a hand over his heart, he geared himself up for a closer look. Why did he think about her so often? He couldn’t remember another woman intruding on his daily routine the way Morgana did. There were timeswhen he stopped whatever he was doing just to wonder what she was doing. It had gotten so that he didn’t sleep well unless she was with him. If he awakened in the morning and she wasn’t there, he started the day with a nagging sense of disappointment.
It was a bad sign, he thought as he grabbed a towel to wipe his face. A sign he should have picked up onlong before this. How come there’d been no warning bells? he wondered. No quiet little voice whispering in his ear that it was time to take a long, casual step in retreat.
Instead, he’d been moving forward in a headlong rush.
But he hadn’t gone over the edge. Not Nash Kirkland. He took a deep breath and tossed the towel aside. It was just the novelty, he decided. Soon the immediacy of the feelings she brought out in him would fade.
As he walked off to shower, he assured himself, like any addict, that he was still in control. He could back off anytime.
But like fingers reaching for an itch, his mind kept worrying the problem. Maybe he was fine, maybe he was in control, but what about Morgana? Was she getting in too deep? If she was as tied up as he was, she could be imagining—what? A life in the burbs, monogrammed towels? A riding lawn mower.
The cool spray of water blasted his face. Nash found himself grinning.
And he’d said he wasn’t sexist. Here he was worrying that Morgana was harboring delusions of marriage and family. Just because she was a woman. Ridiculous. She was no more interested in taking that deadly leap than he.
But as he let the water sluice over his head, he began to imagine.
Interior scene, day. The room is a jumbled heap of toys, clothes overflowing out of plastic hampers, dirty dishes. In a playpen dumped in the center of the room, a toddler squalls. Our hero walks in, a bulging briefcase in his hand. He wears a dark suit and a strangling tie. Wing tips. There is a weary cast to his face. A man who has faced problems all day and has come home to more.
“Honey,” he says with an attempt at cheer, “I’m home.”
The baby howls and rattles his cage. Resigned, our hero sets his briefcase aside and goes to pick up thescreaming baby. The child’s wet diaper sags.
“You’re late again.” The wife shuffles in. Her hair is a tangled mess around a face set in stern, angry lines. She wears a ratty bathrobe and a pair of fuzzy slippers. As our hero bounces the wet, screaming baby, the wife slaps her hands on her hips and begins to rattle off a list of all his shortcomings, punctuated by announcementsthat the washing machine has overflowed, the sink is clogged, and she’s pregnant—again.
Just as the scene he was creating began to ease both Nash’s conscience and mind, it faded out, to be replaced by a new one.
Coming home with the scent of flowers and the sea in the air. Smiling because you were almost where you wanted to be. Needed to be. Starting up the walk, carrying a bouquet of tulips. The door opens, and she stands there, her hair pulled back in a sleek ponytail, her lips curved in welcome. She cradles a pretty, dark-haired child on her hip, a child who giggles and holds out its pudgy arms. He cuddles the child, smelling talc and baby and his wife’s subtle perfume.
“We missed you,” she says, and lifts her face for a kiss.
Nash blinked. With a wrench of his wrist, he shut off the water, then shook his head.
He had it bad, he admitted. But, since he knew that second scene was more of a fantasy than anything he’d ever written, he was still in control.
When he stepped out of the shower, he wondered how soon she would be there.
***
Morgana punched down on the accelerator and leaned the car into a curve. If felt good... no, it felt fabulous, to be buzzing along the tree-lined road with the windows down and the sea breeze blowing through her hair. What made it fabulous was that she was going somewhere to be with someone who had made a difference in her life.
She’d been content without him. Perhaps she would have gone on being content if she had never met him. But she had, and nothing was ever going to be the same again.
She wondered if he knew how much it meant that he accepted her for what she was. She doubted it. She hadn’t known how much it could mean until it had happened. And, as for Nash, he had a habit of looking at things at a skewed angle and seeing the humor in them. She imagined he saw her... talents as some kind of great joke on science. And perhaps they were, in a way.
But the important thing, to her, was that he knew, and accepted. He didn’t look at her as if he expected her to grow a second head at any moment. He looked at her as a woman.
It was easy to be in love with him. Though she had never considered herself a romantic, she had come to appreciate all the books, the songs, the poetry, written to celebrate the caprices of the heart. It was true that when you were in love, the air smelled clearer, the flowers sweeter.
On a whim, she wished a rose into her hand, smiling as she sniffed the delicate closed bloom. Her world felt like that, she realized. Like a rose that was just about to open.
It made her feel foolish to think like that. Giddy, light-headed. But her thoughts were her own, she reminded herself. Until she made them someone else’s. It occurred to her that, sooner or later, she would have to share them with Nash.
She couldn’t be sure how long it would be before complications set in, but for now it was glorious simply to enjoy the soft spread of emotion glowing inside her.
