Heather Graham by Hold Close the Memory Page B

managed to stutter. “I can’t just tell someone that I—I’ve been seeing for three years to go to hell!”
    His hands moved slowly around to her nape. One locked into her hair while the other moved down to the small of her back, and she suddenly found herself pressed against him, feeling the heat that radiated from him, the steel pressure of his chest and thighs. She could even feel vividly the self-control that riddled his muscles, as if there were something within him that was ready to erupt but was held back, carefully held back. And when it did erupt, it would be a maelstrom so volatile, so flaming and wild that it would sweep away all before it. It ignited within her, sensations as yearning and wild as the violence within him, sensations that made the world blur before her, that left her weak, as helpless as a log in a storm-swept sea, and shivering, quivering, with fear, with uncertainty.
    She swallowed, trying to keep her eyes open and steady against the indigo tempest of his. He didn’t know how she could feel him with every fiber of her body, how she felt that both the terry of her outfit and the velour of his robe were nonexistent, how she felt his vibrant pulse against her, more and more as the seconds passed, burning, demanding.
    “The point of it is,” he murmured darkly, the thread of his fingers through her hair tight, “is that you don’t know what you want. You came very close to this Keith, and you’re afraid to give him up. You’re not sure about me, but hell, you’re a good American, you have to be decent to a guy who was rude enough to turn up alive after you had accepted him as dead. And of course, you’re a good mother! How can you deny the kids a father? Or maybe it even goes a little deeper than that. You’re afraid of the boys’ reaction if you take a step too far in the wrong direction. So you want to put life in a limbo, watching me very carefully and tiptoeing along just in case I prove to be insane or dangerous while keeping both Mr. Norman and me in little hold cubicles till you make up your mind. Sorry, Kim. I’ve been on hold too long. I’m trying to remember that I’ve become a stranger to you. I’m trying to give you time. I don’t condemn you for having had an affair—not rationally at any rate. And I’m not insane, Kim, but I am human. Don’t push me too far. You trot out that door right now and get yourself a lawyer or resign yourself to me. Because I’ll sleep in that spare bedroom until you’re ready, but I also promise I’ll behave just like any normal, healthy, red-blooded man and half break your neck if I find out you’re cheating on me now.” She stared at him speechlessly, knowing he meant every word he said yet powerless to defend herself. She had been given choices, if they could be called choices: Brian or Keith. So cut-and-dried. It all was too sudden. She somehow had to play for time….

CHAPTER FIVE
    K IM DIDN’T GO ON the picnic. She needed a little distance from Brian, and she also felt that the boys should have time alone with him. No one protested her decision to stay home, and she wasn’t sure whether to be grateful or insulted.
    She had told Brian and her sons that she had a million little things to do, but she didn’t do any of them. For most of the day she sat by the pool, staring at the water, seeing nothing. She felt a bit like a drowning victim as her life, year after year, kept flashing by her. And she still didn’t know what she wanted.
    The days that followed didn’t help any either. She didn’t go to work, but neither did she accompany Brian and the boys down to the Circus Museum, or to Disney World, or out boating. She spent her days staring at the pool.
    On the seventh day, while sitting before the pool, she admonished herself for her lack of decisive action but then tried to assure herself that she was still a victim of shock. She kept thinking she should take the opportunity while she was alone to call Keith, but she