“No, it’s not who I am. I do the opposite.”
“Why do you care about Wade?”
“I don’t.”
“What do you care about,” I asked, “or is there a who?”
“There’s not a who. I told you, I’ve never proposed.”
I shook my head. “I don’t believe you. Everyone has a who.”
“You can learn my past as you write my story.”
I held tightly to the ribbon and crossed my arms over my breasts. “I’ve been a pawn in the McGrath-Butler connection for too long. And that makes me leery. This whole recent chain of events seems calculated.”
Van stepped closer, cupped my chin, and lifted my eyes to his. The power I’d felt the first time we touched, sitting before the blazing fire, came back with a vengeance, sending small detonations throughout my circulation.
I was undeniably attracted to this man in a way that was new to me.
“The recent chain of events does seem unbelievable,” Van agreed. “I’ll give you that, but calculated, no. The last thing I planned on doing the other night was to find a beautiful, half-frozen woman in a snowstorm.” He reached out to my cheek. “Or for the two of us to—”
I interrupted, “I don’t regret the sex. You said I would. I don’t. Regardless of my better-thought-out answer to your proposal, I’m not sorry for one minute about what we did. I told you then I had no expectations and laid no claims to you or to a future.” As Van began to speak, I placed a finger on his full lips. “That night helped me more than you’ll ever know. Being with you gave me a glimpse into what’s beyond the constraints I’ve allowed to be placed on my life. That night with you, I broke free, and even in a snowstorm, I proved to myself that I was capable of surviving beyond the road map that had been drawn for me. Sex was another barrier that I broke that night.”
Van reached for my hand, moving it away from his mouth as a smile came to his lips. “Technically, I think I was the one who broke...” He let the sentence end as his eyebrows moved up and down.
“I didn’t come to Ashland looking for sex, to give away my virginity, or for another marriage proposal. I came here because of your job listing. All the coincidences...” I took a step back and away from his magnetic pull. “They seem...” I wasn’t sure how to describe them.
“That listing has been open for three months,” Van said. “You’re the first candidate to show for an interview. The rest have all been frightened off by the unknown.”
“Should I be frightened?”
Van nodded with a striking grin. “Very, but not in a bad way. You, Julia, should be exhilarated, excited, and filled with anticipation about the unknown. You said you were looking for a new life. Here it is. All you have to do is jump in with both feet. I’m not going to deny that the chain of events has occurred quickly. Call it fate, destiny, or cosmic irony. Whatever the greater power is that brought you to me and me to you was beyond either of our control. I believe my grandmother called it red sin.”
My head tilted. “Red sin?”
“She said it was an old legend. Red is the color of blood, sacrifice, danger, and courage. It’s also associated with heat, passion, and sexuality. When two people meet unexpectedly with an unexplainable attraction that defies common understanding, it’s called red sin.”
“Does that make it bad?” I asked, intrigued.
“My grandmother would say that bad is what you make out of what you’re given. So is good. I never believed in red sin before you. Now, I can’t deny that it’s real. What we do with it is what will eventually define its goodness or badness. Am I alone, Julia? Do you not feel the same thing?”
“I do.” I took a deep breath. “I’m attracted. I don’t love you.”
“Is that instrumental in marriage? Do you love Butler?”
I took another step back and spun in a slow circle. “That’s not a fair question. Skylar and I have known one another our entire lives.”
“Yet you were going to marry him, a man you’ve known your whole life, were never intimate with, and can’t admit to loving.”
“We were intimate. We just never—”
Van stepped closer, reaching for my waist and holding my hips against his hard, muscular body. “Any man who has spent his life near you, Julia, and hasn’t wanted or pursued the divine pleasure of being inside you isn’t a man who’s honest with you or with himself.”
“We had an agreement.”
“An agreement. We could have one of those too.”
Julia
Van’s hold of me was distracting as he pulled me into his orbit. It would be too easy to stay within his gravitational pull, to give into the red sin. Thoughts of everything we’ve said cycloned within my mind. One thing in particular came to the top of my thoughts. I laid my hand on his chest, my fingers splaying over his satin tie. Beneath my touch, I felt the steady beat of his heart.
“Regardless of how attracted I am or how much I enjoyed the sex, I don’t want to marry you simply because I’ll regret the decision to marry you less than I would if I’d married Skylar. That’s what you said. The lesser of two evils isn’t the best choice.”
With one arm snaked around my waist, Van tugged my hand with the ribbon and pried open my fingers. “Maybe it isn’t red sin, but as you said, the white ribbon. One thing you should know about me is that I’m not the lesser of anyone or anything, including evils. I am that wolf you heard howling at the moon. Skylar Butler is an infant in the world of business. His father is a faltering piranha and Skylar is learning.”
I stared at the ribbon lying in a twist on my palm and back up to his gaze. “How do you know so much about the Butlers?”
“I pay attention. The world of high finance has relatively few significant players.”
“The Butlers are significant.” I wasn’t sure if I was stating or asking.
“No. They want to be.”
“My family?”
“Are they significant? No, but they could be.”
I tilted my head and looked up at Van. As his vibrant green stare searched mine, I shook my head and handed the ribbon back, placing it in his large palm. “I’m still sticking with my second answer. I can’t jump with two feet into what I just escaped.” Taking a step away, I freed myself from the warmth of Van’s hold and I took a seat at the long table. “Tell me more about the job, about writing your memoir.”
Van’s gaze narrowed as he pulled out another chair and folded himself into the seat beside me at the head of the table. It was impossible not to notice how handsome Donovan Sherman was in his expensive suit covering the muscles and toned body that only a few nights ago had been against mine.
“Are you saying,” he asked, “that you want the job, but not the proposal?”
“I’m not sure what I want,” I answered honestly. “You read me right the other night in the cabin. You said that somewhere there’s a man who did me wrong. You said that I was searching for a life that wasn’t planned out, and in the process, I ended up stranded in a snowstorm.