“Are you angry?” She sure as hell was.
“I was for a while. I didn’t know what I could do next, but I’ve been thinking about it a lot. Just because one door closes, it doesn’t mean another one can’t open.”
“How can you be so positive? Don’t you ever want to shout and blame someone else—anyone else?”
“Yeah. I already went through all of that. But I’m an adult, Taylor. I can’t change what’s happened, so I just move forward.”
“You’re so reasonable. I don’t know . . .” She wasn’t ready to talk about the racing circuit yet. She was still determined to get back to the track eventually. No one was going to tell her she couldn’t, not even the so-called experts.
“It’s not that I’m reasonable; it’s just that it is what it is. I can’t change what happened. Sure, I went through the circumstances surrounding that accident about a million different times in my head, and I thought of a thousand what-ifs, but the reality is that it did happen. I can’t change that, so I can either dwell on it or I can push forward and make a change in my life.”
“It’s really easy to say that, but actually to believe it is something else entirely,” Taylor said as she sat up, her eyes straying to his chest for only a moment. There wasn’t a single second while they were lying there that she wasn’t painfully aware he was naked.
“Time heals all wounds, Taylor.”
She didn’t miss the extra meaning in his use of the maxim. “Some wounds aren’t repairable, Travis.” Suddenly she was exhausted. This was all too much—the loss of her career, her dreams being shattered, being holed up in some cabin in the woods with her first love.
Just too much.
Slipping on her clothes with her back to Travis, she didn’t turn to find out whether he was doing the same. She just began walking back toward the cabin. When he joined her a few minutes later, their steps cushioned by the moss-covered ground, silence reigned.
It was bound to be a long day and an even longer night.
Tossing on the uncomfortably small couch in the too-warm cabin, Taylor glared up at the dark ceiling. She should have stood her ground and not let Travis have the bed, but when he’d crawled in beside her—commando, no less—she’d practically flown from beneath the covers to the safety of the couch.
She actually didn’t know how Travis had managed to sleep on the thing because she wasn’t comfortable and she was a good six or eight inches shorter than him and a heck of a lot more slender.
Her day at the lake with him had been wonderful, too wonderful, and then nerves and fear had stolen through her much sooner than she would have liked. But the longer she lay there, unable to sleep, the more she thought about the past, something she certainly didn’t want to do.
It was history, ancient history, and to dwell upon it would do her absolutely no good, so why did she find her eyes closing and the memories bubbling up? Probably because Travis was only one thin door away from her, and that night with him six years prior had shaped her, changed her from a girl to a woman, and no matter how much she said she hated him, what she felt about him was anything but antagonistic.
Taylor stopped fighting the memories, and a dreamlike smile appeared on her face as she slowly drifted off, taking her back to that party, to the night Travis had finally given her everything she’d ever wanted from him—right before he’d pulled the rug straight out from under her.
“WHAT ARE YOU
doing at a grown-up party, squirt?”
Taylor turned to find Travis Montclave standing behind her in a pair of dark jeans and a polo shirt molded to his chest. Add to that the megawattage smile and twinkling eyes and she was about to melt into a puddle right there at his feet.
“In case you haven’t noticed, Travis,” she said with her most practiced purr, “I’m all grown up now.” Though her hands were trembling, she lifted her glass of wine and took a sip, then licked her bottom cherry-red lip while giving him her most come-hither smile.
The intake of breath and slight narrowing of his eyes were all the reward she needed.
“Ha! You’ll always be twelve,” he said, though his eyes took a sweep of her twenty-year-old body.
She may not have been the curviest woman at the party, but she had a woman’s body, and she intended to use everything she’d been given to finally seduce Travis.
“Why don’t you take me for a dance and see if I move like I’m twelve,” she challenged him.
Travis said nothing as he threw back the rest of his drink before setting the glass down and looking as if he was having an internal struggle. If he turned her down, she would be humiliated, but what were the odds she would be at the same place at the same time as her childhood crush? It was now or never.
“Fine. One dance,” he said. This was her window.
One dance turned into two, and then five, and in between each dance, Travis drank just a little bit more. Soon he wasn’t fighting her as they stepped out onto the dance floor and she rubbed her curves against him. Soon the passion in his eyes was more than obvious.
“We shouldn’t be doing this, Taylor,” he said as she brushed her lips across his neck.
“Why not, Travis? We’re both adults. I want you,” she said before pushing against his obvious bulge. “And you want me.”
A shudder passed through him. “You’re my best friend’s little sister. I can still see you in pigtails,” he said, though he didn’t pull away from her.
Taylor wasn’t backing down. When they finally made love, he would see her as a woman, not a little girl. He would see what he had been missing out on the last few years. Sure, he couldn’t have dated her before she’d turned eighteen, but she was nearing twenty-one now, and she knew what she wanted, and she wanted Travis.