Learning Curves - By Elyse Mady Page 0,59
said, seeming to understand the struggle Brandon waged within himself. He glanced at his watch and grimaced. “They’re probably done with the speeches. I don’t think I’m in the mood to hear them toast the happy couple and I doubt you are either. Sandra won’t want to leave but I’m sure you and Leanne can sneak out early. At least one of us will be able to salvage the evening.”
Chapter Twelve
The ride back to Leanne’s had been difficult. The combination of frustration and emotional upheaval formed a potent cocktail that left him drained and uncertain. Raw and vulnerable.
Gillian had ignored him when he’d finally reappeared in the dining room but Leanne had accepted his excuse of fatigue without argument and made their escape.
He’d caught her glancing at him from time to time during the drive home, her face a picture of concern, but he’d pretended not to see it, preferring to look out the window at the passing scenery.
The photographs that hung on her living room walls caught Brandon’s attention. Typical tourist landscapes and landmarks, snapshots of holidays and friends. And in them all, Leanne, her face open and smiling, eyes alight with the enthusiasm he had come to realize was as natural to her state of being as breathing.
His attention was snared by one photograph taken, by the looks of the setting, in London’s Piccadilly Square. Standing with a large group of traveling companions, she’d been captured on film, laughing, as she tried to reclaim a flyaway strand of hair. It had been taken several years ago. Her hair was longer and she looked younger. But her eyes were unchanged, gazing out from the frame with a frank interest that simultaneously called to and unsettled him.
An unfamiliar sensation flooded through him. He couldn’t account for the sense of rightness he felt waiting for a woman who’d already made it abundantly that she was only interested in a temporary affair.
Her position should have set his mind at ease. After all, he’d never sought out a long-term relationship and he certainly didn’t want one now. But the newly felt and as-of-yet-unidentified feelings churning inside him didn’t elicit that familiar feeling of distance and cynicism that he usually experienced whenever he entertained the notion of letting someone get close.
He didn’t know how to classify exactly how he felt—even to himself—but he knew he didn’t want something temporary.
He wanted permanence.
He wanted tomorrows.
He wanted…
Brandon didn’t know what he wanted and he certainly was in no mood to figure it out. The panic rising ever higher in his throat, he nearly jumped out of skin at Leanne’s gentle touch. Her hand rested on the small of his back and he could barely contain the jittery awareness her proximity evoked in him.
“Did you want a cup of coffee?” she asked, stepping out of her heels to stand beside him in her stocking feet. He stared at her blankly, his mind still furiously processing what he wanted.
“Coffee?”
“Yes. Hot, caffeinated beverage,” she elaborated. “Generally brewed?”
He chuckled at her quip but still couldn’t shake off his dark mood.
“I’m good, thanks.”
Her soft brow creased once more. “Are you sure you’re all right? Did anything happen tonight to, I don’t know, upset you? You seem—distant.”
Distant? His inner cynic laughed. Between what happened with Gillian and Leanne’s father and his own lust, which had been threatening his sanity all night, the last thing he was interested in right now was distance.
Right now, his cock wanted nothing more than to be as close as possible. Buried up to the hilt, thrusting and pumping inside her, until they both shattered into an oblivion that would sweep away his doubts, his fears, his seething emotional insecurities. That was what he wanted. All he could think about right now.
“Brandon?” Leanne’s voice broke into his jumbled and chaotic thoughts. “Are you really okay? You seemed on edge when you and Dad came back to the table for the toasts.”
His eyes met hers and he saw the insecurity lurking there, behind the intelligence and the kindness and the dry, clever wit. That someone like her felt insecure around a plastic piranha like Gillian filled him an overwhelming fury. And sadness.
“Nothing happened,” he growled, stalking toward the French doors that, in warmer weather, would open onto her small balcony.
“Oh.” Her voice was small, and he couldn’t see her expression. “I just thought you might want to talk about it, but if you don’t…”
Outside, the streetlights cast pools of yellowish light, marching in a regular pattern along one side of