“My … my leg’s a little sore,” she lied.
His arms tightened around her. “Let’s go sit somewhere for a while,” he said, and led her from the dance floor.
* * *
The next morning, Lucy woke up later than usual, rich sunlight pouring through the bedroom of her condo. With a long, shivering stretch and a yawn, she turned onto her side, and blinked with surprise at the sight of Sam sleeping beside her.
Combing through her recollections of the previous night, she remembered Sam bringing her back home. She had been cheerfully tipsy after one too many glasses of champagne. He had undressed her and put her to bed, and had laughed quietly as she had tried to seduce him.
“It’s late, Lucy. You need to sleep.”
“You want me,” she had crooned. “You do. I can tell.” She had loosened the knot of his silk tie, and had used it to pull his head down to hers. After a smoldering kiss, she had succeeded in drawing the tie free of his collar, and she had given it to him triumphantly. “Do something wicked,” she said. “Tie me up with this. I dare you.” She lifted her good leg and wrapped it around him. “Unless you’re too tired.”
“I would be dead before I was too tired for that,” Sam had informed her, and he’d kept her busy well into the night.
Apparently after those pleasurable exertions, the temptation of sleep had overridden Sam’s rule about never staying all night with a woman.
Lucy let her gaze travel over the long, powerful limbs, the sleek expanse of his back and shoulders, the tempting disarray of his hair. His face looked younger in sleep, his mouth relaxed, the thick crescents of his lashes flickering infinitesimally as dream images chased through his mind. Seeing the faint notch gather between his brows, Lucy couldn’t stop herself from reaching out to smooth it with a gentle fingertip.
Sam awakened with a quiet sound, disoriented and drowsy. “Lucy,” he said in a sleep-roughened voice, reflexively reaching out to gather her close. She snuggled against him, nuzzling into the light mat of hair on his chest.
But in the next moment, she felt the jolt of alarm that went through him.
“What … where…” Sam’s head shot up, and his breath stopped as he recognized his surroundings. “Jesus,” she heard him mutter. He sprang out of bed as if it had just burst into flames.
“What’s the matter?” Lucy asked, startled by his reaction.
Sam stared at her with an expression of near-horror that she found distinctly unflattering. “I never went home last night. I slept here.”
“It’s okay. Renfield’s at the kennel. Holly is with Mark and Maggie. Nothing to worry about.”
But Sam had started to snatch up his discarded clothes. “Why did you let me fall asleep?”
“I fell asleep too,” Lucy said defensively. “And I wouldn’t have woken you up anyway—you were exhausted, and I didn’t mind sharing the bed, so—”
“I mind,” Sam said forcefully. “I don’t do this. I don’t stay until morning.”
“What are you, a vampire? It’s no big deal, Sam. It means nothing.”
But he wasn’t listening to her. He took his clothes into the bathroom, and in a minute she heard the shower running.
* * *
“… and then he just took off,” Lucy said to Justine and Zoë later that morning, “like a scalded dog. He barely said a word to me on the way out. I couldn’t tell whether he was pissed off or scared shitless, or both. Probably both.”
After Sam had left, Lucy had gone to the inn to see her friends. The three of them sat in the kitchen with mugs of coffee. Lucy wasn’t the only one with problems. Zoë’s usual sunny disposition was dampened with worry about her grandmother, who was having health problems. Justine had just broken up with Duane, and although she was trying to be nonchalant, it was clear that the situation was difficult for her.
When Lucy had asked what had caused the rift between them, Justine had said evasively, “I, er … accidentally scared him.”
“How? Did you have to take a pregnancy test or something?”
“God, no.” Justine waved her hand in an impatient gesture. “I don’t want to talk about my problems. Your problems are way more interesting.”
After telling them about Sam’s behavior, Lucy leaned her chin in her hand and asked with a scowl, “Why would someone freak out over spending one night in a bed? Why is it that Sam has no problem ha**ng s*x with me, but the idea of literally sleeping with me sends him into a tailspin?”
“Think about what a bed is,” Justine said. “The place where you sleep is where you are most vulnerable. You’re helpless. You’re unconscious. So when two people sleep in one bed in that ultimate state of vulnerability, it’s an enormous act of trust. It’s a different kind of closeness than sex—but just as powerful.”
“And Sam won’t let himself be close to anyone,” Lucy said, swallowing against the needling pain in her throat. “It’s too dangerous for him. Because he and his brothers and sister were hurt repeatedly by the people who were supposed to love them the most.”
Justine nodded. “Our parents teach us how to have relationships. They show us how it’s done. Kind of hard to rewire yourself after that.”
“Maybe you could talk to Sam,” Zoë suggested, laying her hand on Lucy’s tense arm. “Sometimes if you bring something out into the open—”
“No. I promised myself I wouldn’t try to change him or fix him. Sam’s responsible for his own problems. And I’m responsible for mine.” Lucy wasn’t aware of the tears that had slid down her cheeks until Justine handed her a napkin. Sniffling, sighing, she blew her nose and told them about having been awarded the art center grant.
“You’re going to take it, right?” Justine asked.
“Yes. I’m leaving a few days after Alice’s wedding.”
“When are you going to tell Sam?”
“Not until the last minute. I want to make the most of the time we have left. And when I tell him, he’ll say I should go, and that he’ll miss me … but inside he’ll be incredibly relieved. Because he can feel it too, this … thing that’s happening to our relationship. We’re becoming involved. And it has to stop before it goes too far.”
“Why?” Zoë asked softly.
“Because Sam and I both know that he’ll hurt me. He’ll never be able to say ‘I love you’ and surrender his heart to someone.” She blew her nose again. “That last step is a doozy. It leads to a place he has no intention of going.”
“I’m sorry, Lucy,” Justine muttered. “I never would have encouraged you to get together with Sam if I’d known it would make you unhappy. I thought you needed some fun.”
“It has been fun,” Lucy said earnestly, wiping her eyes.
“I can see that,” Justine said, and Lucy gave a watery giggle.
As Lucy worked in her studio later that afternoon, she was interrupted by a knock at the door. Setting aside her glass-cutting tools, she reached up to tighten her ponytail as she went to see the visitor.
Sam stood there with a mixed bouquet of flowers, including orange roses, yellow lilies, pink asters, and gerbera daisies.
Lucy’s gaze went from his inscrutable face to the vivid bouquet. “Guilt flowers?” she asked, trying to bite back a smile.
“Also guilt candy.” Sam gave her a rectangular satin box, weighted with what had to be at least two pounds of premium chocolate. “Along with a sincere apology.” Encouraged by her expression, he continued. “It wasn’t your fault that I slept with you. And after thinking about it, I’ve realized I wasn’t actually harmed by the experience. I’m actually glad it happened, because it was the only way I could ever have found out how beautiful you are in the morning.”
Lucy laughed, a tide of pink rising over her face. “You give great apologies, Sam.”
“Can I take you out to dinner?”
“I would like that. But…”
“But?”
“I’ve been doing some thinking. And I was wondering if we could just have the friendship without the ‘benefits.’ At least for a few days.”
“Of course,” Sam said, his gaze searching. Quietly he added, “Can I ask why?”
Lucy went to set the flowers and chocolate on a table. “I just have a few things I’m trying to work out. I need a little personal space. If that changes your mind about dinner, I understand.”
For some reason that seemed to annoy him. “No, it does not change my mind about dinner. I”—he paused, casting about for the right words—“want you for more than just sex.”
Lucy smiled as she returned to him, a warm and unforced smile that seemed to bemuse him. “Thank you.”
They stood facing each other, not quite touching. Lucy suspected they were both grappling with the puzzling contradiction that something was wrong between them, and something was equally right.
Sam stared down at her intently, his gaze causing the hairs on the back of her neck to lift. His features were austere, still, except for the twitch of a muscle in his cheek. The silence became acute, and Lucy fidgeted as she tried to think of a way to break it.
“I want to hold you,” Sam said, his voice low.
Flustered, aware of her light blush deepening to crimson, Lucy gave a nervous catch of laughter. But Sam wasn’t smiling.
They had shared the most intimate sexual acts possible, had seen each other in every possible stage of dress and undress … but at this moment, the simple matter of a casual embrace was positively unnerving. She stepped forward. His arms went around her slowly, as if any sudden move might frighten her. They drew together in cautious increments, curves molding against hard places, limbs fitting just so, her head finding its natural resting spot on his shoulder.
Relaxing fully, Lucy felt every breath, thought, heartbeat adjust to his, a current opening between them. If it was possible for love to be expressed purely between bodies, not in a sexual union but in something equally true and whole, then it was this. Here. Now.
She lost track of time, standing there with him. In fact, it seemed as if they had slipped outside of time altogether, lost in each other, in this mysterious quintessence they had become together. But eventually Sam pulled away and said something about picking her up at dinnertime. Lucy nodded blindly, gripping the door frame to keep herself upright. Sam left without looking back, walking along the path with the slightly overdone caution of a man who wasn’t quite certain on his feet.
* * *
When Lucy called Alan Spellman to tell him that she would accept the art center grant, she asked him to delay the announcement until the end of August. By that time, Alice and Kevin would be married, and Lucy would have finished all of her current projects.
She set aside a portion of each day to work on the stained-glass window for the house at Rainshadow Vineyard. It was a complicated and ambitious piece, demanding all her technical skills. Lucy was possessed by the urgency to get every detail right. All her feelings for Sam seemed to pour into the glass as she cut and arranged the pieces in a visual poem. The colors were all natural shades of earth, tree, sky, and moon, glass fused and layered to give it a three-dimensional quality.
After the glass had been shaped, Lucy stretched the lead came using a vise and pliers. She assembled the window carefully, inserting glass pieces into lead channels, then cutting and fitting the lead around them. Once all the interior leading was completed, she would use the U-shaped perimeter came to finish all the outside edges. Next would come the soldering, and the application of cement for waterproofing.
As the window took shape on her worktable, Lucy was aware of a peculiar warmth in the glass, a glow that had nothing to do with heat transferred from soldered metal. One evening as Lucy was closing up shop, she happened to glance at the unfinished window, lying flat on the worktable. The glass glowed with its own incandescence.
Her relationship with Sam had remained platonic since the night he’d slept with her at the condo. Platonic, but not asexual. Sam had done his utmost to seduce her, with sweltering kisses and passionate interludes that made them both feverish with unsatisfied desire. But Lucy was afraid of the very real possibility that if she were to have sex with him now, she would blurt out how much she loved him. The words were there, in her mind, on her lips, most of the time, desperate to be said. Only her sense of self-preservation gave her the strength to refuse Sam. And although he had received her refusals with good grace at first, he was obviously finding it more difficult to stop now.
“When?” Sam had asked after their last session, his breath hot against her mouth, a dangerous flare of heat in his eyes.
“I don’t know,” Lucy had said weakly, shivering as his hands stroked her back and hips. “Not until I can be sure of myself.”
“Let me have you,” he had whispered, resting his forehead on hers. “Let me make love to you all night. I want to wake up with you again. Just tell me what you need, Lucy, and I’ll do it.”
Make love. He had never called it that before. The two words had clamped around her heart like a vise. This was the torture of loving Sam—that he was willing to get so close, but not quite close enough.
And since the thing that she needed most—for him to love her—was impossible, she refused him once again.
* * *
Lucy finished the window two days before Alice’s wedding. People had started to arrive from out of town, most of them staying in cottages at the Roche Harbor resort, or taking rooms in the Hotel de Haro. Lucy’s parents had arrived that morning, and had spent the day with Alice and the wedding coordinator. Tomorrow Lucy would have lunch with them, but tonight she was going to have dinner with Sam. And she would tell him that she was leaving Friday Harbor.
Her thoughts were interrupted by a knock at the studio door. “Come in,” she called. “It’s unlocked.”
To her surprise, it was Kevin.
Her former boyfriend gave her a vaguely sheepish grin. “Luce. Got a couple of minutes?”
Lucy’s heart sank. She hoped this would not be an attempt to make peace, to discuss their shared past and smooth things over so that his wedding day with Alice was untarnished. It was entirely unnecessary. Lucy was over him, thank God, and she was willing to let bygones be bygones. The last thing she wanted to do was to autopsy their past.
“I’ve got a couple of minutes,” she said cautiously, “but I’m kind of busy. And I’m sure you must be even busier with all the wedding stuff going on.”