Overload Read online

  “I’d have opted for killing him,” Quinlan said tonelessly. “I may yet.”

  “After that, it was all so easy,” she murmured, ignoring him. “I just packed my suitcases and walked out. The doorman saw me and reached for the phone…and then stopped. He looked at my eye and let the phone drop back into the cradle, and then he opened the door for me and asked if he could call a cab for me. When I told him I didn’t have any money, he pulled out his wallet and gave me forty dollars.

  “I went to a shelter for abused women. It was the hardest, most humiliating thing I’ve ever done. It’s strange how the women are the ones who are so embarrassed,” she said reflectively. “Never the men who have beaten them, terrorized them. They seem to think it was their right, or that the women deserved it. But I understand how the women feel, because I was one of them. Its like standing up in public and letting everyone see how utterly stupid you are, what bad judgment you have, what horrible mistakes you’ve made. The women I met there could barely look anyone in the eye, and they were the victims!

  “I got a divorce. It was that simple. With the photographs taken at the shelter, I had evidence of abuse, and Eric would have done anything to preserve his reputation. Oh, he tried to talk me into coming back, he made all sorts of promises, he swore things would be different. I was even tempted,” she admitted. “But I couldn’t trust my own judgment any longer, so the safest thing, the only thing to do was stay away from romantic relationships in general and Eric Landers in particular.”

  God, it was so plain now. Quinlan could barely breathe with the realization of the mistakes he’d made in dealing with her. No wonder she had pulled away from him. Because he’d wanted her so much, he had tried to take over, tried to coddle and protect her. It was a normal male instinct, but nothing else could have been more calculated to set off her inner alarms. When she had needed space, he had crowded her, so determined to have her that he hadn’t let anything stand in his way. Instead of binding her to him, he had made her run.

  “I’m not like Landers,” he said hoarsely. “I’ll never abuse you, Elizabeth, I swear.”

  She was silent, and he could sense the sadness in her. “How can I trust you?” she finally asked. “How can I trust myself? What if I make the wrong decision about you, too? You’re a much stronger man than Eric could ever hope to be, both physically and mentally. What if you did try to hurt me? How could I protect myself? You want to be in charge. You admit it. You’re dominating and secretive. God, Quinlan, I love you, but you scare me to death.”

  His heart surged wildly in his chest at her words. He had known it, but this was the first time she had actually said so. She loved him! At the same time he was suddenly terrified, because he didn’t see any way he could convince her to trust him. And that was what it was: a matter of trust. She had lost confidence in her own ability to read character.

  He didn’t know what to do; for the first time in his life he had no plan of action, no viable option. All he had were his instincts, and he was afraid they were all wrong, at least as far as Elizabeth was concerned. He had certainly bungled it so far. He tried to think what his life would be like without her, if he never again could hold her, and the bleakness of the prospect shook him. Even during these past hellish months, when she had avoided him so totally, even refusing to speak to him on the phone, he hadn’t felt this way, because he had still thought he would eventually be able to get her back.

  He had to have her. No other woman would do. And he wanted her just as she was: elegant, acerbic, independent, wildly passionate in bed. That, at last, he had done right. She had burned bright and hot in his arms.

  He suspected that if he asked for an affair, and only that, she would agree. It was the thought of a legal, binding relationship that had sent her running. She had acted outraged when he had mentioned marriage and kids, getting all huffy because he hadn’t included her in the decision-making, but in truth it was that very thing that had so terrified her. Had she sensed he had been about to propose? Finding the file had made her furious, but what had sent her fleeing out the door had been the prospect that he wanted more than just a sexual relationship with her. She could handle being intimate with him; it was the thought of giving him legal rights that gave her nightmares.

  He cleared his throat. He felt as if he were walking blindfolded through a mine field, but he couldn’t just give up. “I have a reason for not talking about myself,” he said hesitantly.

  Her reply was an ironic, “I’m sure you do.”

  He stopped, shrugging helplessly. There was nothing he could tell her that wouldn’t sound like an outrageous lie. Okay, that had been a dead end.

  “I love you.”

  The words shook him. He’d admitted the truth of it to himself months ago, not long after meeting her, in fact, but it had been so long since he’d said them aloud that he was startled. Oh, he’d said them during his marriage, at first. It had been so easy, and so expected. Now he realized that the words had been easy because he hadn’t meant them. When something really mattered, it was a lot harder to get out.

  Elizabeth nodded her head. It had gotten so dark that all he could see was the movement, not her expression. “I believe you do,” she replied.

  “But you still can’t trust me with your life.”

  “If I needed someone to protect me from true danger, I can’t think of anyone I would trust more. But for the other times, the day-to-day normal times that make up a true lifetime, I’m terrified of letting someone close enough to ever have that kind of influence on me again.”

  Quinlan took another mental sidestep. “We could still see each other,” he suggested cautiously. “I know I came on too strong. I’ll hold it down. I won’t pressure you to make any kind of commitment.”

  “That wouldn’t be fair to you. Marriage is what you want.”

  “I want you,” he said bluntly. “With or without the legal trappings. We’re great in bed together, and we enjoy each other’s company. We have fun together. We can do that without being married, if that’s all that’s making you shy away from me.”

  “You want to have an affair?” she asked, needing to pin him down on his exact meaning.

  “Hell, no. I want everything. The ring, the kids, all of it. But if an affair is all I can have, I’ll take it. What do you say?”

  She was silent a long time, thinking it over. At last she sighed and said, “I think I’d be a fool to make any decision right now. These aren’t normal circumstances. When the power is back on and our lives are back to normal, then I’ll decide.”

  Quinlan had always had the knack of cutting his losses. He took a step toward her. “But I still have tonight,” he said in a low tone. “And I don’t intend to waste a minute of it.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  It was much as it had been that other night, and yet it was much more intense. Quinlan made love to her until she literally screamed with pleasure, and then loved her past her embarrassment. The darkness wrapped around them like a heated cocoon, suspending time and restrictions, allowing anything to be possible. The hours seemed endless, unmarked as they were by any clock or other means that civilized man had developed. The streets outside remained dark and mostly empty; he didn’t turn on the radio again, because he didn’t want the outside world to intrude, and neither did she.

  It was too hot to sleep, despite the high ceiling in the lobby that carried the heat upward. They lay on the cushions and talked, their voices not much more than slow murmurs in the sultry heat. Quinlan’s big hands never left her bare body, and Elizabeth suspended her thoughts for this one magic night. She became drowsy, but all inclination to sleep fled when he turned to her in the thick, heated darkness, pressing down on her, his callused hands stroking and probing until she writhed on the cushions. His lovemaking was as steamy as the night, as enveloping. In the darkness she had no inhibitions. She not only let him do as he wanted with her, she reveled in it. There wasn’t an inch of her body that he didn’t explore.

&n