Love Proof (Laws of Attraction) - By Elizabeth Ruston Page 0,45

moved closer to him, maybe only an inch or two, until her leg bumped against his as they walked. It was better for her balance, she told herself. This way he could hold her more closely and brace her.

When they reached the car, he opened her door and held her hand while she got inside. Then he knelt down and unlaced her boots. He removed one and closed his fingers over her toes, warming them in his hand.

“Joe, I told you, I’m fine—”

“Would you stop arguing with me for once, Henley, and just take it?” he snapped.

Sarah jerked back in surprise, but then let him do what he wanted. Which was to remove her other boot and warm the toes of that foot, too.

“Burke,” Sarah said on a laugh when he came around the car and got in on his side. “You have a really unusual way of getting people to let you help them.”

But Joe wasn’t smiling. “I’m not your enemy, Sarah. And I can take some of this, but not all of it. You need to decide how you want things to be. Until then I think we should keep our distance.”

Eighteen

The drive down the mountain from Snowbird seemed to take three times as long as the drive up, even with gravity in their favor. Sarah stared out the window the whole way. She curled and extended her toes under the warmth of the floor vent, replaying how nice it felt to have Joe’s big, warm hands rubbing them.

Replaying the sensation of his lips on hers.

Then blinking hard to clear the image from her mind, even though it didn’t work.

When they returned to the hotel, Joe asked her if she needed anything, and when she said no, told her good night. Even though there was still plenty of daylight left outside.

He was gone before she remembered he had her key. She stopped by the front desk and showed her I.D. to get another one.

Maybe she didn’t forget he had it, she admitted to herself as she rode the elevator. Maybe she hoped he would still use it.

When she opened the door to her room, she saw that he had: his laptop was gone. Her key lay in its place on the table.

Sarah sank onto the couch.

“You need to decide how you want things to be.”

Making it her problem, not his.

Or, if she wanted to feel generous about it—which she didn’t—giving her all of the power.

He kissed her.

In the midst of everything else, he might have thought she forgot it, or didn’t notice. It had been very quick, after all. But even if Sarah had been as anesthetized as some of those other patients, she felt certain she would have noticed Burke’s mouth on hers for the first time in six years.

And the way he looked at her when he gripped her arms in the parking lot.

And the shock she felt when he explained that everything he’d been doing all week, taking care of her, was his version of an apology.

“What if I don’t want it?”

“Then that’s your choice. I’m just doing what I think I should.”

Damn it, Burke, Sarah thought. Don’t act like you’re the innocent victim here. Like I’m the one being cruel and unreasonable. I was there for you, I would have been there for you, I never would have left your side.

She had played back that image often, seeing him and his brother and father off in the distance at graduation, huddled together all alone. She could have been part of that group, her arms around Joe or holding tightly to his hand, comforting him on what she knew had to be a very hard day. But he didn’t want that, obviously. Although she noticed none of his other girlfriends had been around to fill that void, either.

So what was there to decide now? she wondered. Whether to be polite to him during the next three months of depositions? It wasn’t as if there were anything else on the table. They weren’t lovers anymore, they weren’t even friends. Even her relationship with Mickey Hughes had survived the peculiarities of law school, enough so that they got together for lunch once or twice a year, and Mickey had found her this current job.

Was that what Joe wanted, a few lunches every year? A “Hey, how you doing, how are things, what are you working on these days?” kind of friendship where neither of them ever said what was really on their minds, because then they’d be