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But she scrambled through the door right behind him. “Don’t run when you’re finally getting to the truth!”
He whirled to face her, so angry heat emanated from him. “What I think you’re missing is that this is none of your business.”
“And what I think you’re missing is that I understand exactly what you’re telling me. The real bottom line is that you feel inadequate.”
“And you understand because you felt inadequate when you were left at the altar?” he mocked.
But it didn’t deter her. Instead she stepped into his space again, crowding him, confronting him, forcing him to face demons he wanted to pretend didn’t exist. “What else do you think I would feel? Basically, the man I loved told me I wasn’t good enough. What we had wasn’t important. Having children with me wasn’t an incentive to settle down.”
Their situations were worlds apart. It amazed him she couldn’t see that. “That’s not how to look at it, Audra. He wasn’t running from you. He simply couldn’t let go of his lifestyle because it’s who he was.”
“Oh, yeah? Then why’d he marry somebody else?”
For a few seconds Dominic absorbed that, because it didn’t make sense. Try as he might to reassemble the words or think through the concepts to find the inherent logic, he couldn’t force it to make sense. “He married somebody else?”
“Yes. And he bought a big house in the country. And according to our mutual friends he’s in wedded bliss.” That was the part that hurt Audra the most. She could see David marrying somebody on a whim. She could also see him buying a huge mansion to play house with the new “love” in his life. But when she heard through the grapevine that he loved his new life and wanted children, a knife had twisted in her heart. David wasn’t afraid of marriage. He simply hadn’t wanted to be married to her.
She took a cleansing breath and stepped back, away from Dominic. “Sorry.”
“No, I’m sorry.” His voice softened.
“Don’t be.” She tried to muster some righteous indignation so she could at least appear strong. She couldn’t. Instead she licked her lips and forged on—for Joshua. “We’re both in the same boat. You feel inadequate because you can’t do all the jobs thrust on you and you have to listen to people praise your brother, knowing his load was lighter. I feel inadequate because my fiancé left me, then married someone sort of like me but different enough to make me feel I could have been her if I had tried just a little bit harder.”
She swallowed. Told herself to move off her fiancé and get back to Joshua. But the suffocating sense of inadequacy couldn’t be shaken, and, being with someone who understood, she longed to just let it all out.
Dominic stepped close again. “Whoever your fiancé was, he was an ass.”
Audra laughed in spite of herself. “Don’t. You don’t have to make fun of him to make me feel better.”
“No. I don’t. You’re a smart, beautiful woman. You most certainly don’t need a man who didn’t appreciate that.”
Sliding his hand under the hair at her nape, he pulled her an inch closer and angled her head so he could kiss her.
When his lips touched hers, the breath froze in Audra’s lungs, the blood in her veins stopped moving. He slanted his mouth over hers, coaxing her back to life, and everything inside her seemed to melt with longing. Her hands slid up his arms, absorbing the smooth feel of his tux and stopped on his shoulders as he nudged her against him.
Though Audra had genuinely believed she shouldn’t get involved with him, the pieces of his life—his personality—that he’d shown her tonight caused her to reconsider that. He might seem like the prince in the ivory tower she had believed him to be, but he was actually a real person, and she was tasting him, holding him. And from his kiss she could tell he didn’t merely consider her the woman caring for his child. She was a person, too. There was more between them than the job she held in his life. They had a connection.
But just when the kiss would have become interesting, would have passed the boundary from emotional to sexual, Dominic pulled away. He stared at her for a few seconds and then took a step back.
Gazing into her eyes, he said, “Sorry.”
Audra took a breath. Not quite sure what to say. Suddenly everything between them was different.
But she didn’t have to say anything. Dominic had turned and left her standing alone in the silent corridor.
CHAPTER EIGHT
AUDRA FELT the air virtually crackle when Dominic entered the nursery the next morning. One simple kiss had changed everything. They’d connected when they both knew they shouldn’t have. He’d said he wasn’t going to flirt with her anymore, but when they’d talked openly and honestly about things they couldn’t tell anybody else, he hadn’t had to flirt. They’d connected and he hadn’t been able to help kissing her.
