Chapter 14
A
manda let him pull her down onto the couch so they were facing each other. He wanted her to tell him about her marriage to Lance, but what woman wanted to admit to such a colossal failure? She let her gaze travel up his strong, broad chest to his face.
His expression was filled with a compassion she had never expected to receive. “Tell me what that bastard did to you.”
“How can you be so sure he
did
anything?”
Simon's laugh was harsh. “I would have to be a blind idiot not to know that something had happened to you. You are the most beautiful woman I've ever known and you act like your body is grotesque.”
“It's not that bad!”
“Maybe, but you sure as heck don't have a clue how lovely and sensual you are.”
Maybe that was because she'd never been sensual with anyone but him. Part of her wanted to tell Simon about her past, but for him to understand her marriage, she had to tell him about her family. “My brother introduced me to Lance during my junior year in college. I didn't date. I was too shy. Too serious. Too sure I was as awkward and unattractive as my mother claimed. Besides, I didn't fit in with my Southern California peers.”
He reached out and took both her hands, letting his thumbs rub soothingly over the backs of them, but remained silent.
She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Lance got along really well with my family. He was a lawyer with an impressive client list. My parents were both surprised he was interested in me. My brother told me how lucky I was.”
“Did you love him?”
“I thought I did. I wanted so much for our relationship to work. I wanted to feel like I belonged to someone.”
“But your family . . .”
Memories of her childhood still had the power to hurt. So, she usually suppressed them, but she wanted Simon to understand. “I was an âoops' baby. My brother, Brice, is ten years older than me and the only child my parents wanted to have. My mother planned to have an abortion, but unfortunately for her, Grandfather's housekeeper had caught on to the fact she was pregnant. He threatened to cut her out of his will if she got rid of me.”
Simon had gone rigid beside her. She could imagine. He'd lost his mother when he was a child, but from what he'd said, she had loved him. No one had loved Amanda in her entire life except for Jillian.
“I was three years old when Grandfather died. Alive, but not wanted. The only time my parents ever gave me even the least bit of approval was when I caught Lance's interest. I married him believing I would finally be accepted into my own family with the added bonus of having one of my own. I was on a euphoric cloud for the entire ten months of our engagement. Lance didn't even protest waiting until we were married to make love for the first time.”
“You never slept with him?”
She shook her head. “I read a lot as a child. My sense of morality came from my books, not my family because they ignored me or criticized me.
Little Women
,
Anne of Green Gables
,
The Five Little Peppers
, and other classicsâbooks that weren't exactly peopled by your typical Southern Californian.”
She turned to stare out over the water, loving the peacefulness of the scene all over again. “My wedding night was a disaster. Lance wanted me to do things I'd never heard of. I was scared and embarrassed. Sex hurt. But that wasn't the worst of it. The most painful part of my wedding night was having Lance turn out the light so he could fantasize I had a different body.”
“He told you that?”
She didn't look at Simon. “Yes. Over the two years of our marriage, he pestered me to have breast reduction surgery, watched every calorie I consumed, and nagged at me if I didn't work out at least an hour every day.”
“Why did you stay with him?”
“Because I was used to not being loved, I guess. I'm not really sure. It hurt being married to him, but no more than it had hurt living at home. I kept trying to make my marriage work, but nothing I did could fix the problem.”
“Your ex-husband is a bastard. That's not a problem you could fix.”
She laughed hollowly. “He didn't want me and I was convinced that was my problem. I tried everything to seduce him, but it didn't work. Looking back, I don't know why I bothered. It wasn't as if I enjoyed being intimate with him. He was an extremely selfish, perverse lover.” She shivered at her memories. “The last year we were married, we didn't have sex at all and, other than feeling like a total failure as a woman, I didn't care.”
“You thought I didn't want you either.”
Remembering the pain of Simon's rejection, she nodded.
“Why?”
“That day we had the sparring session, I thought you were going to kiss me. I leaned into you and you backed away. I was humiliated. It felt like Lance all over again. Only this time I really wanted to kiss, not just to prove that I could attract you as a woman, but because I
wanted
you.”
“I wanted you too, but our relationship is complicated.”
She turned her head and met the silvered gray of his gaze. “It's still complicated.”
He didn't deny it. “But I can't keep my hands off you regardless.”
She smiled a little. “Making love with you is so different.”
“From the sounds of things, sex with your husband was less about intimacy than it was about control. He used his supposed lack of desire for you to make you do the things he wanted.”
“I don't know what you mean.”
“He controlled what you ate, how much you exercised. I'm damn glad he didn't talk you into that surgery. I find your breasts so sexy, just looking at them makes me want to come.”
She threw herself in his arms and kissed him all over his face. “You make me feel good, Simon. Thank you.”
He hugged her to him, settling her into his lap where she could feel the rigid proof of his words against her hip.
“Jacob found your pajamas in the guest room's bathroom garbage yesterday.”
She tensed. “Did he?”
“I thought they must have landed there by accident, but Jacob didn't agree.”
Jacob was too astute for his own good, she thought wrathfully.
Simon's hand rubbed against her back in a soothing motion. “Tell me why you threw away your pajamas.”
She nestled against his chest. “I'd rather not. It was just a misunderstanding and it's over now.”
“Does it have something to do with you thinking I didn't want you?” He sounded really disturbed by the prospect and she wished she could lie to him and say no, but she didn't want to lie to Simon. Ever.
“When Jacob told me you wanted to meet me in my room, I thought that was your unique way of setting up an assignation. You've got to admit your mind doesn't work like other people's,” she said by way of an explanation for her folly.
“And when I came downstairs expecting you to tell me about the proposal, you were embarrassed.”
“Humiliated. I'd got it wrong again.”
“You didn't have it wrong. I had erotic dreams all night long about you in those sexy things. When I came down to breakfast and found out you were gone, I was ready to howl at the moon in frustration.”
“The moon isn't out in the morning.”
“Details.”
“When I went into the bathroom, I stripped off the lingerie and tossed it away in a fit of angry despair. Lance had once told me how ridiculous I looked in sexy nightwear and I couldn't stand the thought you believed the same thing.”
Suddenly she was being held away from him. The compassionate, understanding Simon had been replaced by a furious man. He shook her shoulders. “How could you think that? I told you I wanted you! It was all I could do to keep myself from ripping those silky things off your even silkier body.”
“How was I supposed to know that, with you rabbiting on about the proposal?”
“You moved in to my house for the express purpose of presenting that information to me, damn it.” He sounded even angrier by that fact. “And the only reason you agreed to stay was so you could keep trying to convince me.”
An incredible thought struck her all at once. It hurt Simon that she had stayed for business. “But you never let me know there could be anything between us but the merger.”
“I told you I wanted you.”
It was the second time he'd reminded her of that and this time she laughed. “Lance told me he loved me, but he showed me he didn't.”
“Are you saying I showed you I didn't want you?” Simon's voice was dangerously controlled.
But she wasn't going to deny the truth. “Yes.”
“Because I didn't put my desires for you above the business that is so all-important to you?” Each biting word came out with the power of a bullet.
And she knew, absolutely knew, in a blinding flash of clarity, that what he said was exactly right. She wanted Simon's feelings for her to come before everything else in his life and that was not going to happen. Not ever.
If she kept pushing, she could very well lose what they did have.
She did something she had vowed she'd never do again. She tried a bit of seduction. Rubbing the breasts he said he liked so much against him, she said, “I know you want me now.”
It worked.
With a growl, she found herself lying full length on the sofa under Simon with his mouth devouring hers.
Â
Â
“You're sleeping with him?”
Jillian's incredulous shriek blasted Amanda from the mobile phone's earpiece.
“You told me I should,” she reminded her friend, who was taking the news of Amanda's affair with Simon in a completely unexpected way.
“I told you to go out with my friend, Dave, too, but you didn't do that!”
“I didn't want to go out with Dave.” Or any of the other numerous men Jillian had tried to fix Amanda up with since the divorce.
“But you
wanted to go to bed
with Simon? I don't believe it. According to you, sex is God's joke on unsuspecting women.”
“I was wrong about that.” Remembered pleasure had Amanda's eyes flicking toward the closed lab door.
He'd said he would answer the door if she knocked. It was tempting, but she couldn't interrupt his work just because at the age of twenty-six she had finally discovered her female libido. Besides, she wasn't ready to risk the possibility of his rejection. She'd initiated that kiss on the sofa the other night, but Simon had already been aroused. She wasn't sure she'd ever have the confidence to approach him cold with seduction on her mind.
“Amanda?”
“Huh?” Indistinguishable words echoed in her mind telling her that Jillian had been talking the entire time she had been caught up in her thoughts of Simon.
“Do you really think this is a good idea?”
“That is a
really surprising
question coming from you.” Jillian had been pushing her to start dating since before the divorce was final.
“I know.” She could almost hear her friend doing that thing she did with her hair while she was thinking. “It's just that you're not into casual
amore
.”
No, she wasn't. Casual love, sex, whatever you wanted to call it, wasn't something in her makeup. “It's not casual,” she bit the bullet and admitted, “but it
is
love.”
She'd called Jillian because she had to talk to someone about the overwhelming feelings Simon engendered in her, but saying the words out loud had been harder than she expected. It had also left her feeling stripped naked emotionally. She didn't even want to think how much worse it would be if she told
Simon
the truth about her feelings for him.
“You're in love with him?”
Jillian was back to shrieking.
“Yes.” No use prevaricating or trying to take the words back. They were true and Jillian would not be fooled by an attempt at retreat. “Do you really think I could have risked
making love
with him otherwise?”
“No. That's what has me worried.” Her friend's voice dropped an octave with concern. “Sweetie, you pretend to be so tough, but you're not. You're one of the most fragile people I know and I'm scared to death this guy is going to hurt you.”
“I'm a little nervous about it myself, but I don't seem to have a choice.” She started doodling on a piece of paper. She needed Jill to see how potentially devastating, but equally inescapable this relationship with Simon had become for her. However, she didn't know if she had the words to make her friend understand.