The door was propped open. Emmitt must’ve forgotten to shut it when he left. Careful to leave it open, she stepped into the chill of the limestone-floored room. The scent of cork and wine hung in the air. Stocked wooden racks and steel-and-glass coolers lined the walls. At the center of the room, under an abalone chandelier, stood a tasting table.
Her eyes landed on the lacquered mahogany surface, knots and nicks marking the single piece of wood. The height had been just right for—
“Ayesha?”
She stumbled back, hand pushing against the door as she caught her balance.
The click of the lock filled the silence that followed the sound of her name in his voice.
No, no, no! She spun around and rattled the handle. It didn’t budge. He came up behind her, their hands meeting on the cool metal, the impact making her so light headed she pressed her head into the door.
His hand trembled over hers, his body looming beside her, his presence wrapping around her. They were locked inside.
She pulled away. From the door, from him, from the riot of feelings. How was this happening? How was it that seven years had changed everything, except this?
“What are you doing here?” she asked for the second time that day, hands gripping the polished tabletop. The memory of the cool wood against her heated skin when Emmitt had lifted her onto it flashed inside her.
Why had she come down here? Why had it felt so essential?
“Ayesha.”
“Stop saying my name.” It came out a scream. Or maybe it was a whisper. Her ears were ringing too loudly for her to know.
“Okay,” he said, his voice too quiet, too soothing, too much.
They were close enough that if she stepped back, she’d be in his arms. The space between them vibrated with the possibility of it. A matching trembling started inside her.
“I forgot my cell phone and came down looking for it.” His breath fell on her hair, dislodging her curls, scattering arousal across her skin. The mundaneness of his words twisted against the pull of their impossibly stubborn connection. “Why are you down here?”
I missed you, she wanted to say, but couldn’t.
I miss us, she wanted to say.
I miss me, she wanted to scream.
“Say what you’re thinking, Ayesha.”
She stepped around the table, circling it until she was facing him across it. “I need to be upstairs.” She looked at the phone she was clutching like a lifeline. No service. “Does your phone have service?”
He threw a quick look at it, his focus squarely on her. “No. Maybe your doctor will miss you and come looking for you.”
Nope, she couldn’t respond to that either.
“Ayesha!” He sounded livid. “What is this? What happened to you?” In quick steps he circled the table and reached for her, worry crinkling his forehead.
She shook her head so vehemently that curls spun and spilled around her face.
He drew back, but that didn’t stop his gaze from grabbing her and digging up everything she couldn’t say.
“You used to say everything. You were fearless.” Regret spilled from him. So much regret that it rose around her like water, filling her lungs. He blamed himself, and she couldn’t bear that. “Ayesha, answer me.”
“Fine!” The anger in her voice felt good, a pressure valve releasing. “Is that why you locked that poor man in the bathroom? Because you thought he was mine?”
He opened his mouth to deny it. But then he smiled. Of all things. His almost-smile, the one she’d lived to turn into laughter.
Then, just as fast, he got serious again. “If I believed he was really yours, I wouldn’t have done it.”
Every ounce of her resistance shook on its foundation, cracks ripping open inside her.
“He had to crawl out of a window!” She felt a smile nudging at her lips too.
The sapphires of his eyes brightened as they caught it. The luminous blue pierced her relentless exhaustion. Need blossomed inside her, even as the numbness she’d embraced warred against it.
“Is that what you want? A limber doctor.” He studied her reactions, missing nothing of the storm that twisted her.
“It’s what Amma wants for me.” As soon as she said it, she wanted to take it back. “Don’t look at me like that. Don’t pity me.”
He stepped closer, and every molecule in her being lit with awareness. “What I’m feeling right now is not pity,” he said roughly.
“What you’re feeling is memories.” He wanted her to say what she was thinking. Fine. Here it was. “What you’re feeling is the past. If you hadn’t come back here, it wouldn’t exist. Two hours ago it didn’t exist.”
He tipped her chin up, meeting her eyes. His first conscious touch after seven years. Just a fingertip, and she felt it with her entire treacherous body.
“Do you really believe that? That we didn’t exist two hours ago. That this thing between us has ever not existed?”
The girl who’d always raced after what she wanted nudged back to life somewhere deep inside her. The girl on whose shoulders her mother’s happiness rested pushed her away.
“It’s been seven years, Emmitt.”
“I know.” A breath. “In those seven years, has a single day gone by when you haven’t thought about us?”
Pulling away from him, she went to the door and wiggled the doorknob so hard her fingers hurt. When it didn’t budge, she turned and studied the room.
“How did we never notice that there is no place to sit in here?” Unless you counted Emmitt setting her on the table when they made out as sitting.
She lowered herself to the floor and leaned back on the door, struggling to rein in the restlessness inside her.
Stride deliberate, he crossed the room and dropped down next to her. Close enough that her body ignited with sensation. Not so close that she’d have an excuse to move away.
Hugging her knees, she watched his face. Kind eyes, generous mouth, determined jaw. She had missed the sight of him, missed being seen, missed what being near him did to her. So very much.
Suddenly she wanted to know everything. She had to put words between them so she could breathe through the thick swirl of emotions that had once defined her. Slowly, one by one the words eased out of her. “Seven years,” she said. A lifetime. A moment. “Tell me what you did for seven years.”
Chapter Five
The way Emmitt watched her had always been one of Ayesha’s favorite things. The golden light of the cellar lit his sable hair and turned it into a bronze halo as he leaned back into the door and studied her. His hair was shorter now, but it still flopped in spikes over his forehead. So different from her riot of curls.
Everything about him was just a little bit different. His angular jaw had widened. His cheekbones had sharpened. At twenty-four he’d been less soft than other guys his age. Now there was a ruggedness to him that sliced through her heart. Her Emmitt had weathered, and she hadn’t been there to witness it.
Feelings flashed in his eyes as he contemplated her question. How much he’d missed her. How endless it still felt.
She knew.
Finally he answered. “The first year was hell. I barely remember anything but numbness. Then this restlessness took over.”
That too she understood.