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aware enough to come and find you. But I didn’t then. I thought I was doing the right thing, but I was wrong. I’m not losing the opportunity now.”
    “You are pretty damn arrogant, do you know that?” Olivia nearly snarled.
    “You’re acting upset to deny yourself, honey, hiding from yourself,” he answered implacably. “I think I knew it about you then, but as I said, I wasn’t sure enough about myself to trust it.” Olivia pushed her bowl away with shaky hands. She wanted to flee and hide. With just a few words, Cameron had stripped her of all those carefully constructed walls she’d erected over the years.
    Cameron continued, “I’ll bet the farm that you weren’t satisfied in your marriage either, no matter how good a man your husband was.”
    “Stop it, stop it,” she nearly shrieked, remembering to modulate her voice at the last instant. “You don’t know anything.” He caught her wrist just as she slid from the booth and pulled her down to sit tightly against his side. His heat nearly burned her, and her knees grew weak. She had to get away, but she felt compelled to stay. She felt herself calm down as he placed his arm across her shoulders and stroked her arm gently. Except then the feel of his fingers against her skin and their soft motion began to make her stomach tighten and her vulva moisten, not to mention the throbbing state of her breasts. Everything that she had denied for so long was now shrilling for attention. She hadn’t seen a ring on his left hand, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t married or that he wasn’t in a relationship.
    She wanted to ask him, but held the unknown as a little bulwark against the pull of this man.
    “But I want to know everything, Olivia, and I’m going to. I promise you I won’t hurt you, at least not in a way that you won’t want. You’ll beg for it, honey. It’s what you need, and I so badly want to give it to you.”
    “What exactly are you proposing?” she asked flatly. “I am not going to play games, Cameron. Just tell me now.” 36
     
    “I want you to spend the night with me, and probably tomorrow. I want you to trust me not to hurt you but to awaken your whole sexuality. You can call it an experiment, a fling, whatever you want, but…”
    She cut him off. A fling. That sounded like a man looking for a tryst while on a business trip. She winced at how that thought pricked her. “And if I want more?”
    Cameron paused and she laughed bitterly. “So, you get to have sex with me, teach me things that you like and hope I’ll like, and then you go away. Again. Where does that leave me , Cameron? What if I discover a part of myself that I didn’t know I had or have denied?
    Then what? You are simply irresponsible in your attitude, and I’m not going to allow that.”
    * * * *
     

    Cameron wished he could take back his previous words about experiments and flings. He had thought the idea of this being nothing permanent would make it easier for Olivia and had planned to capitalize on her initial agreement and afterward convince her to pursue a relationship. He was that certain of her, and himself. He should have known that she wasn’t the kind of woman to have brief affairs of any sort. Hell, he did know, somehow. The thing was, he could see them together forever. But how to repair things now?
    Stupid, stupid, stupid. Cameron also fought the green monster.
    Hearing Olivia talk about her dead husband shouldn’t have bothered him, but it did. He fiercely envied those years the man had had with Olivia. Although that was his own fault, he ruefully reminded himself.
    He had pushed her away, albeit believing it then to be in her best interest.
    Olivia was talking again. “And what if you wanted to continue this, this thing, and I didn’t? Or are you that heartless that you hadn’t considered you might get hurt, too? That I could hurt you ? And you
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    haven’t mentioned a significant other! How would she feel about your fling?”
    Cameron