“We aren’t casual anymore, Adara,” he said, grasping her chin and forcing her to look at him. “You’re mine.”
“I don’t want to see you anymore, Chris. Please respect my wishes and leave. My no means NO.”
She wasn’t looking away now. He couldn’t tell whether she was bluffing, but he prayed that she was.
After a moment of silence, while she held herself stiffly in his arms, Chris let her go. He turned and began walking away. But before he got too far away, he turned back and called out Adara’s name.
“This is far from over, Adara. Don’t think for one second that it is.”
She gasped at him, opened her mouth, then closed it again, and sent him a withering stare. What did everyone say about discretion and valor? He decided he’d better leave before he said anything more.
Hell if he knew what he was going to do next. But there was one thing he did know for sure. Adara was the one. And he would prove that to her in one way or another. …
Chapter Two
Adara refused to turn around and watch Chris leave. Her heart was shattering into thousands of pieces, but there was no possible way she could allow him to see that. She refused to crumble.
Don’t be weak! If you show weakness, then you are nothing, and will never be anything but pathetic. You will go nowhere in life.
Those were the words of her dying mother, a woman who had passed away with a scrub brush in her hands. Okay, not literally, but she might as well have.
Adara packed up her charts and her telescope and put them carefully into her car before climbing inside and making the journey back to her childhood home — a very small two-bedroom house that was severely outdated.
It was her only inheritance. But she wouldn’t complain. It was so much more than many people got.
Until she was twenty, she and her mother had lived there together, and then Adara had been there all on her own, working part time to pay the bills while she finished her undergraduate degree and her master’s program in astronomy. Thank goodness she’d won full scholarships for her schooling, or she never could have finished.
Her mother, Irene, had struggled all her life. And though she’d been the best mom she could be, she had also struck fear into Adara’s head, fear about men and about relationships. Adara’s father had walked out the moment he’d discovered that her mother was pregnant — he wanted nothing to do with any babies. Too much like work.
Adara didn’t learn all of that until she was a teenager and begging to meet her father. Only then did her mother tell her the sad family history, and insist that no woman could ever count on a man, that eventually men would fail her, abandon her.
And then Adara had met Chris. She’d been swept off her feet by his looks, his charm, and his smile. Oh, that smile. The man had a smile that sent warm fuzzies deep down inside her. But she’d promised herself never to become romantically involved. She’d never end up the way her mother had.
So when he’d suggested a casual fling — though he didn’t put it so crudely — she’d been quite up for that. She was twenty-three, and that was long past time to have her first sexual experience. And, oh man, if she’d only realized how truly great sex was, she wouldn’t have waited that long. Men had their uses after all.
But Chris had now changed the game, and Adara was left with no choice but to break things off with him. He never should have uttered the commitment word. She couldn’t commit to any man, not even to this prime specimen. Not even if deep down inside she knew she was falling in love with him.
She really couldn’t bind herself to him now. If she lost who she was in him, that would be when she lost everything, just as her mother had.
Once Adara parked in front of her house, she collected her things from the car and made her way inside. At least she didn’t have to deal with memories of him at her place. That was another lesson her mother had given her — never bring a man home. Because then it would be too easy for him to find you again, and use you again.
She and Chris had spent all their time together at his ultramodern condo. She’d been burning with curiosity over who he was, what he did for a living, but she’d never asked any questions. Still, she’d given him far too much information about herself.
He hadn’t pressured her to stay the night with him after she’d first succumbed. After they were done making love, she wouldn’t cuddle; she would simply climb from his bed, clean herself up, and leave.
They exchanged no words of adoration, no small talk, no uncomfortable silences. In the beginning, at least. Then, after about a month, she found herself lingering once they had done the dirty deed, though not for too long — maybe just fifteen minutes, then thirty, and then once for two hours. But as she felt herself beginning to drift off, she would drag herself from his bed, and skitter away.
Last month, he’d told her she didn’t need to go out into the cold night, that she really should sleep over. She hadn’t made a big deal about it. She’d just told him that she had homework to complete, and then she’d headed for the hills as usual. He’d tried only twice more to get her to stay, the last time a few days ago.
It had taken all the willpower she had within her to refuse him that last time. She’d desperately wanted to lie there in his arms, wanted him to run his fingers down her back, tell her that everything was going to be okay in life. But because she’d wanted that so badly, she’d picked herself up, as always, and left once more.
Why hadn’t she ended things with Chris right then? Adara had been making excuses to herself for a while. She’d been telling herself she wasn’t really attached to the man. But tonight, he’d pushed it to a point where she couldn’t lie anymore.
She would miss him so freaking much.
The first tear of regret fell as she locked her door and wandered off to her bedroom and flopped down on the pitiful bed. The next tear fell out of anger at herself and her weakness. Adara hadn’t cried since the day her mother had died more than three years ago.
You will never be as strong as you need to be if you let petty emotions rule you, her mother had said. And her mother’s daughter had sucked in the tears, then stood stiffly beside the grave as the coffin was lowered into the ground.
For her to cry now for something as simple as ending a r
elationship that hadn’t really been a relationship was stupid and wrong. She would pull herself together, and she would do it right now.
She rose determinedly from her bed, moved into the cramped bathroom — the only one in the house — and scrubbed her face with cold water and a washcloth. As she looked in the mirror, she couldn’t help but notice the dark circles that were forming beneath her eyes. Damnable lack of sleep, and silly emotions. Her normally straight brown hair was mussed and definitely not ready for prime time, and her cheeks looked more hollow than usual. She’d been overextended, obviously, and she needed to take more time to eat.
And she would.
She had her master’s degree now, something she’d worked hard to get. Now it was time to live the life she was meant to live. No ties, no emotions, just science and work.
A knock on her door startled her into dropping the ragged washcloth that she’d been running on her neck. Who in the world would be knocking at almost ten at night?
She wasn’t living in the greatest neighborhood in town, but neither was she in the worst.
It wasn’t as if Ithaca, New York, was a bad place to live. It was pretty great, actually, though you got a lot of exercise with all those steep hills.
“Who’s there?”
No answer. Just silence.
What should she do? Pretend to have a husband who would come to her rescue? That was the standard dodge, but the attacker might well know that she lived alone. People could learn almost everything on the Internet.
“If you honestly think I’m going to open the door this late at night, you’re crazy,” she said. “Go away before I pull out my gun.” The intruder probably didn’t know that she didn’t own a gun.
“Open the door, Adara. We need to talk.”
More silence, for about thirty seconds. He wasn’t speaking for now, but she felt him on the other side of the door. He clearly wasn’t leaving.
“I don’t have anything else to say to you, Chris. We’re done.”
