Read As If You Never Left Me (Crimson Romance) for Free Online Page B

until that moment, when his fingers touched hers on the bottle of spice, that she realized what was happening. How automatically it had happened. Old rhythms, picked up as if not a day had passed, much less over a year. She swallowed hard, thinking about the implications. About other rhythms, other rituals. His body and hers, moving together, taking, giving —
    She didn’t pass him the basil until he asked. Twice.
    • • •
    “Just like I remembered it.” Rey pushed his chair back from the table, leaving a scraped-clean plate behind. He meant everything had been just like he remembered it, not just the chicken cacciatore, which admittedly had more going for it in terms of sentiment than in gourmet quality cooking. But the way they’d cooked it …
    Joely swept up his plate as well as her own, carrying them to the sink. “Glad you liked it.”
    “Remember when we used to both get home from work and make that for dinner?”
    She didn’t look at him. “Yeah, I remember.”
    He smiled, taking advantage of the fact she couldn’t see him. He got the impression she was remembering a lot of things. That was good. He wanted to remind her of the good times, so she could forget the bad times. And do the same for himself. When he remembered what he had done, how he had, in so many ways, just thrown her away, it hurt. He wanted to stop hurting.
    But what should his next move be? He didn’t want her to get dinner wound up and decide it was time for him to leave. Desperately scanning the living room, his attention lighted on a CD player on a shelf by the TV. “Music?”
    “Sure, why not.” She sounded like she hadn’t even heard him.
    He picked out a CD from the stack next to the player — a female artist whose name he didn’t recognize. The music started with a soft arrangement of guitars. That would work. He let it play and sat down on the couch.
    “Leave the dishes,” he said. “Come sit down.”
    She turned off the tap. Bubbles had risen in the sink. “You’re going to do the dishes later?”
    “I just might. It seems fair, doesn’t it?”
    She almost smiled. He saw it form at the corner of her mouth, then watched regretfully as she caught it and forced it back where it had come from. But she left the dishes, and sat down beside him on the couch. Stiffly, though, and as far away from him as she could manage.
    “Thanks for dinner,” he said.
    “Dinner’s not much.”
    “It was plenty.”
    She softened a little, her stiff spine relaxing. She seemed closer to him suddenly, though she hadn’t changed position on the couch. She started to speak, then looked away. Finally she said, “I missed you.”
    “I missed you, too.” He paused, watching her profile as her mouth, too, released much of its tension. “Once I got my head out of my ass and realized what I’d done.”
    She laughed lightly, the sound almost hiding the pain he knew lay behind it. “Took you long enough.”
    He edged toward her, his arm along the back of the couch. “Why didn’t you answer any of my letters?”
    “Because I never read them.”
    That stung. “Why not?”
    She took a moment to answer. He thought he saw a crystalline glint in her eye, a tear poised on the edge of her lower lashes. “Because I knew how much it would hurt.”
    He could say nothing to that. He’d caused that hurt, and in that moment, he realized how monumental a thing it was for him to ask her to forgive him. How could he have believed it might be possible? Was he really that arrogant, to think she could let go of all that pain, just to have him back?
    But he leaned closer, because he also realized how empty he’d become over the last two years, how much he needed her. In the background, the music had become more strident, the female vocalist singing harsh words against a former lover. Appropriate, he thought, though he’d hoped for something sweeter. Joely seemed not to notice.
    His eyes drank in her face, the porcelain skin flushed with emotion, the