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“No, of course I didn’t load it,” Grant snapped. “I wanted her to feel like she had some control over her situation; I wasn’t asking her to end her life or mine.” He went on, describing the difficult first night and the breakfast she had made the next day. He warmed slightly at the thought, and he realized what he felt was pride. This is a new one. He never got invested enough to feel prideful of a woman.
“We went for a walk and she got nailed by a dead branch.” He winced at the memory as well as his choice of words. “My fault. I took her out in a damn snowstorm. I got her back here and kept her by the fire on the couch. She slept on and off, but when she’d wake up we’d...talk,” he finished lamely. “We both slept out here. Me on the floor, her on the couch. Then the next day we talked more, and—”
“What is this, a soap opera?” Paul interrupted. “How did you get from kidnapping to sex-a-thon?”
“That’s what I’m trying to tell you,” Grant shot back. “I’ve never talked to a woman so much in my damn life. There’s something different about her, but I can’t figure it out.”
“Perhaps it’s that you couldn’t wait until you got home to sleep with her, and you had to do so in my home away from home.” Paul shook his head. “I’m going to have to sell this place,” he said, more to himself than to Grant.
Grant waved him off.
What was it? What couldn’t he shake? Maybe that she didn’t need anything from him. She wasn’t vying for anything. She wasn’t looking for a matador or a hero, and that made him want to be exactly those things. He wanted to save her, to earn her trust, to wake up the parts of her that had gone to sleep, to rekindle life where it had gone dormant.
So then why did he feel rooted to this chair?
He closed his eyes.
“This is most entertaining,” Paul intoned. “I certainly hope you’re enjoying your meditation.” Grant raised his head to see Paul staring at him over the pyramid of his joined fingertips.
“Go to hell,” Grant said without heat. Then, almost as an aside, “How do I know if she’s the right one?”
“Do you feel like you want to puke?”
“Uh, yeah,” Grant said, surprised. “Yeah. I thought it was the breakfast at first, and then the adrenaline of you guys showing up, but the nausea hasn’t gone away. Why is that? And why do you ask?”
“It’s because she’s the one,” Paul said without affect. “What you’re feeling is fear at the potential loss of selfhood.”
“Are you kidding me right now?”
“I picked up some things from Mel’s—” Paul stopped to correct himself. “I suppose we’ll need to adjust our nicknames, won’t we? I picked up some things from Melisa’s therapist. The vagal response can be triggered by stress and its symptoms include nausea. Feel a little warm? Light-headed?”
Grant stared at him. “If you think I’m going to call you Dr.DiMario, you’ve got another thing coming.”
Paul laughed, and there was a smile at his eyes. “You’ve had a lot of stress for the past four days, but it sounds like the physical discomfort and fear of mortality are taking second place to your anxiety over the introduction of this woman into your psyche. I agree, she seemed quite engaging.”
Grant narrowed his eyes.
“Relax, friend.” Paul’s platitude was kind. “I’m trying to be supportive. Do you really think I could compromise my Melisa by hinting at an encounter with your lovely Melinda?”
No, Grant didn’t. He just didn’t like Paul thinking more clearly than he was or pointing out what should have been obvious.
“But like you said, what if she just cozied up to me out of self-preservation?”
“Does that appear to be true?” Paul asked.
Did it?
Grant stared at the fire, imagining Melinda laughing in the snow, the softness of her face as she talked about her family, the way she watched him as she listened to his stories. No. It couldn’t be true. She wouldn’t have slept with him—twice—in some masochistic attempt to save her own life, would she? His heart hoped for that answer, while his mind was quick to point out that his heart was an idiot.
“I haven’t been serious with anyone in ten years,” he said. “There’s something about her that scares the hell out of me. There’s also something about her that I need now, like food. There’s the chance I’ll end up in jail. I haven’t got a clue of what to do.”
