Joan Hohl - A Man Apart

Hannah was brought back to the present when a thought struck her. “Justin, do you have children of your own?”

Heaving a sigh, he rolled onto his back, spreading his arms wide in surrender. “No, Hannah.” He opened his eyes to look at her, his expression somber. “Angie…my ex-wife, said she wanted to wait a little while before starting a family.” His lips twisted, as if from a sour taste in his mouth. “Before the ‘little while’ was up, she put on her running shoes and sprinted away with another man.” He made a rude, snorting noise. “Would you believe, a traveling computer-software sales rep? Pitiful, huh?”

“I’m sorry,” she said in a subdued tone. “I shouldn’t have pried.”

“No.” Justin moved his head back and forth on the mattress; the pillow had somehow wound up on the floor. The icy look in his eyes had thawed…somewhat. “It’s okay, Hannah, you may ask anything that comes to mind.”

“Did you-” Hannah hesitated, before taking a chance of making him angry, bringing back the frost. “Did you love her very much?”

He managed a slight smile. “We didn’t know each other very well at the beginning. You could say it was a whirlwind thing. But yes, at the time, I loved her.”

Despite his omitting the words very much, Hannah had to fight to control herself from betraying the sharp twinge of pain in her chest. “Are you still in love with her?” It would explain his love-’em-and-leave-’em attitude toward women.

“No.” He stared directly into her eyes, his voice firm. “You want the truth?” he said, not waiting for a reply before continuing, “I realized I wasn’t really in love with her a month after we got married.”

She frowned. “But then…” She broke off in confusion.

Justin moved his shoulders in a shrug. “She was hot, and I was horny.”

Hannah didn’t know quite how to respond to his frank admission, so she circumvented that particular subject. “Have you ever truly been in love?”

“No,” he answered with blunt candor. “Have you?”

Hannah smiled. Turnabout was fair play, she supposed. “No,” she said, equally frank and candid. “But, like you, I thought I was for a time.” Her smile turned into a small grin. “But unlike you, instead of a measly month, I believed that I was in love for almost a full year.”

“So, what happened? That no-orgasm thing?”

Hannah felt her neck and face grow warm. This blushing was getting pretty damned annoying. Her expression must have revealed her feelings, because he grinned in a manner of sheer male hubris. She really couldn’t challenge him on it, for he certainly had cured that thing. Many times.

“Partly,” she admitted, on a sigh. “But that wasn’t the major issue.”

“What!” Justin exploded, jackknifing up to sit facing her. “Was he an idiot…or were you?” As before, often before, he didn’t allow her time to answer. “Not the major issue? If you believed you were in love, I would think it would be the most important issue.”

“Yes, I believe you would,” Hannah said, her tone patient, her silent sigh sad. “Justin, there are more things to a relationship than sex, at least if there’s any hope of the relationship lasting.”

“Yeah, yeah,” he brushed off her scold. “Compatibility, similar likes and all the rest of that jazz. But good sex is a very large component, and great sex even more so.”

Yes, indeedy, Hannah thought, without a trace of humor but with a large amount of disappointment. Justin Grainger definitely was sexually motivated.

She sighed again. “Turned out, we weren’t very compatible,” she explained. “He was altogether career oriented. He ate, drank and slept his career, and it got worse with every move he made up the corporate ladder. There was no time for fun, friends, long, deep conversations.”

“Or even the fun of longer, deeper, lovemaking,” Justin interjected.

Hannah chose to ignore his opinion, then doggedly continued. “Understand, I was recently out of college and devoted to the marketing business I was getting off the ground. But I was often able to leave my business concerns in the office when I locked up for the night.”

“And he couldn’t do that?”

“No.” She shook her head, at the same time wondering why she was bothering to explain all this to him when they obviously weren’t going to be seeing each other again after she returned to Philly and he went back to breed horses in Montana. But she soldiered on, “I didn’t simply quit, you know. I tried to make it work. I even learned to cook, a chore he knew I wasn’t exactly crazy about.”

He laughed.

She bristled. “Well, I never could understand why anyone would put so much time and effort into preparing an elaborate meal for someone to consume in fifteen minutes, leaving the cook to clean up afterward.”

Justin laughed harder. “I’m sorry. I’m not ridiculing you.”

Hannah glared at him. “Then what’s so damn funny?”

“The fact that you’ve put my own feelings about the culinary art so elegantly into words.” He had brought the laughter to a more acceptable grin. “If I want an elaborately concocted meal, complete with fine wine and candles on the table, I’ll go to a fine restaurant and let an expert prepare it.”

“My sentiments exactly,” Hannah concurred, grinning back at him, not for a minute realizing that they were in the midst of the kind of deep conversation she had just complained about being missing from her previous relationship. Maybe that was because she never considered she and Justin ever would be in any kind of relationship…other than the physical one they were briefly conducting.

“So, what do you say we consign whoever-he-was to the dull life he deserves and get on with our own pursuits?” His grin slid into an invitingly sexy smile.

“Which are?” she asked, suddenly aware of them sitting there, naked to the waist, and the thrill of expectation dancing along her exposed spine.

“The dreaded kitchen duty first.” The sexy smile reverted back to a grin. “Then a shower.” He hesitated. “And I think it’s time I stripped the bed and tossed these sheets into the washer.”

“Okay.” Though she readily agreed, Hannah was disappointed. Drat the man and his sensually teasing ways. “I’ll remake the bed.”

“You’re on.” Springing from the bed, he scooped up his crumpled jeans and put them on before reaching for the same sweater he’d worn the day before.

Quickly sliding from the bed, Hannah picked up the robe he had earlier flung aside, and slipped into it, belting it securely, while admiring the back he turned away to gather his clothes.

Justin Grainger was a magnificent specimen, his broad muscular back, his slender waist, the tightness of his butt, the long muscles of his thighs and calves. She sighed. Hell, she even thought he had handsome feet!

Pathetic, she chastised herself. Who the devil ever thought of a male’s feet as handsome?

She did, that’s who, and the realization was pretty damn scary. Hurrying out of the room, Hannah kept telling herself what she was feeling was simply a strong physical attraction, a very strong physical attraction. Nothing more.

Working smoothly together as they had the day before, Hannah and Justin had the kitchen clean in less than twenty minutes.

“Know what?” Justin said to her as she was rinsing out the dish cloth. “I’m hungry.”

Dropping the cloth into the sink, Hannah turned to him and pointed out the obvious. “We just finished clearing away the breakfast things.”

“Yeah, I know,” he agreed, favoring her with that blasted devil smile. “But have you looked at the clock?”

Naturally, Hannah shot a glance at the wall. The clock read 1:44. Unbelievable. She and Justin had finished breakfast somewhere around nine. For some weird reason, knowing the time made her aware of the hollow feeling inside her. She shifted her gaze back to him.