Carole Buck - Peachy's Proposal

“You’re saying that being nice disqualifies a man from inclusion on your list of potential, ah, deflowerers,” he clarified.

“I’m saying that Daniel wouldn’t understand my situation.”

“And you think I do?”

“Not anymore.” Peachy glared at him. “Look, Luc. This obviously was a mistake. I’m sorry I said anything to you. Just—just forget about it, all right?”

And with that, she started to pivot away. Reacting purely on instinct, Luc reached out and grabbed her by the arm, halting her in mid-turn.

It was the first time he’d touched Peachy with anything more intense than the most casual kind of affection. He felt her go rigid in response to the contact. Her gaze slewed back to slam into his, then dropped pointedly to his hand. After a taut moment, he opened his fingers and released her.

God, he thought, sucking in a shaky breath as he lowered a nonetoo-steady hand to his side. The potency of his emotions shocked him. My…God.

“Why me?” he demanded harshly. He couldn’t have stopped the words if he’d wanted to. He had to know.

Peachy blinked and edged back slightly. “Wh-what?”

“Why did you ask me to—?” he completed the question with an explicit variation of the gesture she’d made earlier.

There was a long pause. Peachy’s eyes moved back and forth, back and forth. Finally, she seemed to reach some kind of decision. After moistening her lower lip with a darting lick of her tongue she countered flatly, “Do you want the truth?”

He nodded.

“All right.” She swallowed, then cocked her chin with a hint of defiance. “I asked you because I thought you’d make it easy.”

“Easy?”

She nodded. “Do you remember me saying that I only wanted you to do it with me once?”

“Vividly.”

“Well, it seemed to me—I mean, you’ve never made any secret of the fact that you’re not inclined toward making emotional commitments. That you don’t want to be tied down. So I decided, uh, uh—”

“That a one-night stand would be right up my alley?”

“Not in a bad way,” Peachy quickly insisted.

“Oh, of course not.”

But even as he voiced the retort, Luc had to acknowledge the fundamental validity of his tenant’s assessment. He had no desire for a permanent relationship with a woman. He never had. He seriously doubted he ever would. In point of fact, he was supremely skeptical about his ability to sustain one. He’d never hidden that.

Yet for all its accuracy, Luc found Peachy’s reading of his character disturbing. The idea that she perceived him as some kind of…of…disposable stud unnerved him in a way he couldn’t fully explain.

“You’re not the only man I considered,” Peachy said earnestly. “I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about this. My first impulse was to go to the bar at a good hotel, maybe Le Meridien or the Windsor Court, and pick up a nice-looking stranger and let nature take its course.”

“What?”

“You don’t think I could have?”

“For God’s sake, Peachy.” He could barely speak. The scenario she’d sketched was appallingly plausible. “Do you have any concept how dangerous—”

“I’m inexperienced, Luc,” she interrupted, nailing him with a fulminating look. “I’m not an idiot. The hotel bar idea occurred to me while I was still pretty shaken up from the emergency landing. As soon as I got my brains unscrambled, I realized I could never go through with it. So I sat down and wrote out a list of all the eligible men I know. Then I started to eliminate. It was pretty much the same thing, over and over. ‘If I do it with him and it’s awful, he’ll probably be upset and that could get complicated.’ Or, ‘If I do it with him and it’s terrific, he’ll probably want to do it again and that could get complicated, too.’“ She paused, her cheeks flushing. “I ended up with you.”

Luc took a few moments to absorb this remarkable explanation then asked, “What about you?”

“Me?”

“Wouldn’t you be upset if you ‘did it’ and it was awful?”

For the first time, a hint of shyness entered her expression. “Actually…that was the second reason I decided to ask you first.”

Luc frowned, genuinely flummoxed. “What was?”

“I’ve been hearing stories about your love life from the moment I moved into the building. Even the MayWinnies—oh, they tut-tut about your behavior, of course. Which is sort of funny, considering the outrageous things they supposedly did when they were younger. Still, as prim as they pretend to be now, I can tell they get a kick out of having a lady-killer for a landlord. In any case, when I was thinking about who I should ask, I realized that if even a quarter of what’s said about you and women is true, you’d know how to make my first time, uh, well, unawful.”

There was a pause.

“Supposing it isn’t?” Luc finally asked.

“Supposing what isn’t…what?”

“Supposing not even a quarter of what’s said about me and women is true? Supposing it’s all lies?”

Peachy regarded him with disconcerting directness. “If that were the case,” she said slowly, “I think you’d tell me.”

Luc stiffened. No, he thought. She can’t be that naive! She can’t believe—

But she did. He could see it in her lovely, wide-set eyes. For reasons he couldn’t begin to fathom, this woman trusted him to be truthful about a subject that was notorious for inspiring lies.

“Men don’t usually go around puncturing the myths about their sexual prowess, cher, ” he said, conscious of an unfamiliar stirring of protectiveness.

“Not if they’re the ones who’ve been spreading them,” Peachy agreed. “But everything I’ve heard about your prowess comes from other people, Luc. Where they heard it, I don’t know. Except I’m certain it wasn’t from you. Because as far as I can tell, you don’t brag about what you do, how you do it, or whom you do it with. And I…well, I admire that.”

Luc glanced away, his throat tightening. Peachy’s summation of his behavior was very much on target. But if she ascribed his discretion to gallantry, she was sadly mistaken. His first inkling of the true nature of his parents’ marriage had been gleaned from a conversation he’d overheard when he was just six years old. It was the memory of the angry, anguished confusion he’d felt when he’d listened to two supposed friends of his father crudely comparing notes about liaisons with his mother that kept him silent about his sexual affairs. The possibility that some careless comment of his might hurt someone as he’d been hurt was untenable to him.

His thoughts shifted without warning to his first sexual experience. He’d been seduced during his sophomore year of high school by the wife of one of the many men with whom his mother had broken her wedding vows. While the experience had been physically pleasurable, it had left him with more than a few psychological scars.

“Luc?”

Drawing a long, deep breath, he turned his gaze back to Peachy. She’s bound and determined to do it, he reflected. If not with me, then with someone else. And if she does it with someone else—

No! He didn’t even want to think about that scenario!

Luc exhaled in a rush, his mind suddenly latching on to an astonishing idea.

What if…what if he agreed to do what Peachy had asked, then stalled consummation until she came to her senses and called the deal off?

She would come to her senses, he assured himself. Eventually.

He’d meant what he’d said earlier, about facing down death tending to reorder a person’s priorities. What he hadn’t said—but what he knew from personal experience to be true—was that such reorderings were seldom permanent.