suggestion hadn’t taken for him. It had worked for Becca, but it hadn’t for him. So his response to her, at least, had been genuine. Not that he needed reassurance about that. He already knew he’d been making love to Becca because he loved her. She just hadn’t been making love to him for the same reason.
“Turner?” he heard Dorcas ask now.
But her voice seemed to be coming from a million miles away. And he had no idea how to respond to her. Too many thoughts were whizzing through his head at the moment, ricocheting off each other and crashing into each other, and mixing with each other, until he couldn’t begin to figure out what he was thinking. What he was feeling.
Oh, wait. Yes, he could, too, figure out what he was feeling. Bad. Really, really, really bad.
“Turner?” he heard Dorcas say again.
But he only shook his head numbly and told her, “I gotta go.”
“Turner, wait,” she said, curling her fingers over his forearm. “There’s something you need to know.”
“No, I gotta go, Dorcas,” he repeated, gently shaking her off. He took a few steps backward. “I’m late for…something.”
“But—”
“Really late,” he assured her, completing a few more steps.
“But, Turner—”
“Later than I realized,” he said. “I really gotta go.”
And without awaiting a reply from her, not that any reply was necessary—or even forthcoming, because all Dorcas kept saying was his name over and over again— Turner pivoted around and made his way down the street in the snow, the red jeweler’s bag still dangling from his fingertips. The bag that held the ring that was so perfect for Becca.
Too bad the guy carrying it couldn’t say the same thing about himself.
WHEN HE ARRIVED BACK at his apartment, Becca wasn’t there, but he found a note on the table telling him she’d gone to her own place to take care of a few things, and that she’d be back by dinnertime. So Turner put the little red bag holding the ring on a shelf in his bedroom closet—way in the back, where he wouldn’t have to look at it until it was time to return it, and flopped onto the bed that Becca hadn’t bothered to make. The bed that still smelled like her and their recent coupling. The bed he would never be able to sleep in again without thinking of her and all the things they’d shared together.
And not just the sex things, either. Everything else, too. The fun they always had together. The way they were so comfortable together. How they could say anything to each other without fear that the things said would be misconstrued or used as a weapon.
And he thought about what Dorcas had said, too, and tried to make better sense of it. Not that the sense he made was better in any way. He’d liked it more when he was confused and befuddled and none too sure about what was going on. Now that he was mulling things over and figuring out what was what, he felt like crap.
Becca didn’t love him. Becca had never loved him. If Dorcas had never planted that posthypnotic suggestion in Becca’s brain, she and Turner never would have created the sparks they’d been creating together. They’d still be just friends. Well, Becca would still be just friends. And Turner would still be carrying a torch for her that was in no danger of ever going out.
Now they might not even be friends again, he realized. Once Becca knew what was going on, once she realized the real reason she’d been behaving the way she’d been behaving, she was going to feel pretty embarrassed. Worse than embarrassed. Horrified. She might never want to see him again once she knew the truth. He might lose her for good.
How was he going to explain this to her? Because he was going to have to explain this to her. She’d have to go back to see Dorcas so that the hypnotherapist could rehypnotize her and excise the posthypnotic suggestion that had her jumping into his arms every time she heard the word underwear. Right? He had to tell Becca the truth because that would be the moral, ethical, decent thing to do. Right? That’s what a friend would do. Right?
He actually had to pause a minute to think about that. Maybe…
Maybe nothing, he told himself. What the hell was he thinking, wanting to keep Becca under the influence just so she’d keep making love with him? Had he really sunk so