AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Fuck… I don’t know. Maybe I thought you’d be mad,” hesaid.
“Have I ever been mad when you’ve had to travel?” she asked, crossing her arms over herchest.
“No,” hesaid.
“Then why would I be madnow?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “Why areyou?”
His own anger was rising like a kettle about to whistle. He stuffed it down. He and Jenna didn’tfight.
Well, they rarely fought, and when they did fight, it was quickly resolved, followed by frenzied make-up sex that obliterated everything but their love for eachother.
“Maybe I don’t like it when you keep things from me,” shesaid.
Her cheeks were flushed, her chest rising and falling with anger. He had to resist the urge to stalk across the room and tear off her clothes, kiss her until she was quivering for him, until she was begging him to takeher.
He drew in a breath. “I’ve apologized for not telling you sooner. I should have. We’ll only be gone for theday.”
She turned her head to avoid looking at him. “So you’vesaid.”
He suddenly felt the distance between them as greater than the number of feet separating them in the room. He thought back, trying to remember when it had gonewrong.
Had he been in denial all this time, thinking they were happy? Was the ring and the proposal, his rose-colored vision of Jenna as his wife, a fantasy he was indulging to stave off thetruth?
He didn’t thinkso.
They’d been fine when they leftTuscany.
Better thanfine.
It had only been in the past few days that there had been a shift. That the unsettling tension had risen between them like a current, pulling them into the depths of resentment that seemed to have no source and nosolution.
He walked toward her and stopped when he was only a couple inches away. He could feel the heat off her skin, could smell the musky undercurrent of her body under the lavender lotion she’d applied to herhands.
He reached up, took her chin in his hands, forced her to look at him. The light in her eyes was unfamiliar — a mixture of anger and sadness and something else he couldn’t quitedefine.
“Why are you so angry,love?”
He asked the question softly, fighting the feeling that he might spook her if he said the wrongthing.
She held his gaze for a long moment before her eyes skittered away. “I don’tknow.”
She sounded so sorrowful, so defeated. The familiar protective instinct rose in him, the desire to protect her from anything remotely unpleasant, to surround her only with beauty and joy andlove.
He pulled her into his arms. “Jenna… Jenna…” She lay her head against him and he breathed her in. “I love you. You know that, don’tyou?”
She nodded against his chest. “I’msorry.”
He pulled back to look at her. “Sorry? Forwhat?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t know why I’m acting this way. It’satrocious.”
He shook his head, smoothed the hair back from her head. “Never,” he said. “You’re under a lot of stress, and I haven’t helped the situation by being such atosser.”
She laughed a little and shook her head. “You’re not atosser.”
Tears shone in the corners of her eyes. He reached up, touched her face. “I should have told you about Greece. I’m sorry. I’ll miss spending the day with you andLily.”
