Read Between These Walls for Free Online

In the meantime, I’ll start the day tomorrow by following up with other irons I have in the fire.”
    Kara squinted again, then shook her head. “No, it’s not today. You’ve seemed, I don’t know, distanced lately. Everything’s okay?”
    Despite his inner conflict, Hunter hadn’t faked his fondness for Kara. He harbored deep feelings toward her and felt comfortable around her. Without exaggeration, he loved Kara, in the sense that he cherished and cared for her in a profound way. He just couldn’t find a way to give his whole heart to her.
    One piece short of a puzzle. The most critical piece, unfortunately.
    Without a cornerstone, a building would end up lopsided or angled wrong, perhaps even implode.
    A tiny rudder can guide an enormous ship. The flicker of a flame can set an entire forest on fire.
    Sometimes little things matter. A lot.
    But Hunter had had years of practice. He’d learned when he needed a surge of passion, he could incite it within himself, like drawing on a car’s reserve tank for fuel. The key, he’d discovered, was to relax and melt into the moment.
    Hunter focused on Kara’s face. He felt intensity begin to rise and willed it into his stare. The moment the doubt in her eyes broke, Hunter discerned it. He laid his lips upon hers and kissed her deeply, as though to draw air from her lungs into his own.
    With his hand on her arm, he felt her muscles relax as she closed her eyes and dissolved into their kiss.
    Hunter brushed his lips against hers. He moved his mouth along her cheek, laid a kiss behind her earlobe, which he knew she enjoyed, then swept down to her neck. He slid his hand down to her waist, where he placed his other hand on the opposite side.
    They shared one more kiss.
    “Stop,” Kara gasped, then kissed him again.
    “Stop what?” he whispered. Another kiss.
    Kara pulled back and grinned. “We’d better stop while we’re ahead. The no-sex-before-marriage policy, remember?”
    Hunter was a Christian and believed in saving sex for marriage. He held to the concept as a core component of his faith. And it wasn’t pious showmanship; he believed positive results would follow if he saved himself for another, giving himself to another as a gift. The concept served as an anchor for his heart.
    But in light of his personal struggle with attraction—or lack thereof—to women, the concept of saving sex for marriage had also proven convenient. Not that Hunter had planned it as such; it had merely worked out that way. But it had brought him refuge over the years. By its nature, waiting revolved around time, and this particular wait afforded him an abundance of time to find his way out of his struggle.
    Kara glanced at her watch. “I should head home anyway. I started typing up a summary on the plane and want to have it ready for tomorrow morning.”
    “What about your need to relax after the flight?”
    “I wish I could.”
    She gave his arm a squeeze, got up from the sofa, and flicked her hair behind her shoulders. Hunter followed her into the kitchen, where she rummaged through her purse and retrieved her keys. As with all of her business trips, she had left her car in the second spot in Hunter’s garage. Airport parking lots made her nervous, the way people in a hurry tended to bang against car doors, and she preferred not to leave her car at her apartment parking lot around the clock.
    “You could stay in the guest bedroom and save yourself time,” he suggested.
    “I’m eager to get my bag unpacked and climb into my own bed. Thanks anyway, though.” She jingled her keys and shot him a wink. “I’ll lock the door behind me.”
    Hunter had known Kara for years through a friend from church. A few weeks ago, when their relationship hit the five-month mark, Hunter had gone ahead and given her a key to his house. That way, if a coworker picked her up from the airport instead of Hunter, she could get her car. In the years Kara and Hunter had known each other, he’d learned