But he was waiting, and looking so earnest, she couldn’t find it in her to back out now. Not just because her pulse was pounding in her throat or her stomach was doing handsprings at the speed of light.

“I lied,” she began in a voice so low and shaky, she wasn’t even sure he could hear her, “when I told you I wanted a divorce.”

For a moment, it was as if all the air had been sucked out of her tiny Volkswagen bug. Neither of them moved, and Gage held himself so rigid, she wasn’t certain he was still breathing. But she’d already started to tell him the truth, so she might as well finish it.

“A divorce was the last thing I wanted, but you weren’t talking to me, were starting to shut me out, and I didn’t know how to reach you. Nothing else I tried had worked, so I thought maybe demanding a divorce would shock you into realizing how much you’d changed since we got married.”

Her gaze dropped to stare at her hands where they were clasped tightly in her lap, and if possible her voice grew even softer, more pained. “I expected you to say No way in hell and agree to counseling or something to work out our problems… not to nod and move out of the house, then sign the papers without a single argument when they arrived.”

She hadn’t intended to cry, had deemed herself well past the point of breaking down every time she thought about that period of her life and how much it had hurt to not only lose her husband, but to have him walk away as though their marriage was no more important to him than a piece of junk mail or an old pair of shoes. But that didn’t stop tears from gathering at her lashes and spilling down her cheeks.

“Why didn’t you fight for me?” she asked, then turned her head to face him full on. “Why didn’t you fight for us?”

Knit 15

The ache in Jenna’s voice, the sadness on her face, squeezed Gage’s heart and tore it into a million tiny pieces. He would rather take a sucker punch to the ribcage than see that expression on her face.

And he’d rather get kicked in the crotch a thousand times than be the cause of it.

But here he was, the main source of her grief and despair, of the tears pouring down her face.

What could he say? How could he explain that leaving her had been the single hardest thing he’d ever done in his life? That it had ripped his guts out and in many ways left him a shell of a man. Or that he’d had to get blind, stinking drunk before he could bring himself to put his John Hancock on those divorce papers.

He couldn’t. Because if he tried, she’d wonder why he hadn’t stayed instead, hadn’t fought the way he now knew she’d hoped and expected him to, and he couldn’t explain the driving force behind that decision, either.

So he did the only thing he knew he wouldn’t screw up. He hooked a hand around the back of her neck, yanked her forward as far as their seatbelts and the miniscule automobile would allow, and kissed her. With his lips and tongue and body, he tried to tell her what he couldn’t put into words.

Jenna’s nails dug into the muscles of his upper arms and she made small, desperate mewling sounds at the back of her throat. Sounds he answered with low groans of his own.

He shifted, trying to get closer, trying to draw her farther across the seat, but the damn seatbelt dug into his chest, his elbow hit the steering wheel, and the gearshift nearly cut off the circulation in his leg.

With a muffled curse, he pulled back, releasing Jenna-and smacked his head into the roof of the car.

“Fucking damn Volkswagen,” he muttered, breathing heavily and rubbing the sore spots on his thigh and skull at the same time. “Why couldn’t you buy a decent American car instead of this tuna can on wheels? I feel like freaking Frankenstein stuffed into a jelly jar.”

Though her cheeks were still flushed with passion and damp from her tears, the tension of a moment ago seemed to have passed and Jenna’s mouth curved just before she broke out laughing.

“It’s Frankenstein’s monster,” she corrected in typical schoolmarm fashion, “but you’re right, that is sort of what you look like. Minus the bolts in your neck, of course. And this is a perfectly good car,” she added staunchly, defending her bug like a mama dolphin defending her young, “just maybe not for a man the size of a grizzly bear.”

His own lips twisted, and he had no choice but to chuckle along with her. After a minute, he unsnapped his seatbelt and pushed the driver’s-side door open. “So let’s get out of here before I start to cramp up and somebody has to chop off my limbs to get me free.”

Rounding the hood of the car, he waited for her to collect her purse and knitting tote-a dark blue one with a sunflower on the front that she’d made herself-then took her hand as they walked to the house. Gage was glad she was no longer peppering him with questions about his state of mind when they separated, but he could have stood a few more hours of heavy petting in her front seat… even if it made him feel like a horny sardine.

She fitted the key into the lock, then opened the door and preceded him inside. One by one, she flipped on the lights, laying her bags on the table as she made her way to the kitchen.

“Would you like something to drink?” she asked, pulling open the refrigerator door and studying its contents.

Gage didn’t know what he wanted. He wasn’t thirsty, but a couple good stiff shots of Johnny Walker Black might help to numb the prickles of memory stemming to life low in his belly. Memories he didn’t want to think about, and certainly didn’t want to relive.

“No, thanks,” he said, dropping into a straightback chair beside the table and resting his arm along the solid oak surface. He drummed his fingers for a second, then reached almost distractedly for her knitting tote.

A snowball-sized clump of bright purple yarn was sticking out of the top and he grasped it, slowly drawing the length of half-completed boa toward him. She’d completed two or three feet of the thing, but he knew from her burgeoning collection of homemade boas that she tended to like them quite a bit longer.

Despite the number of times he’d seen her wearing them, the number of times he’d unwound them from her neck, handed them to her while she was getting dressed, or simply moved them out of the way, he didn’t think he’d ever taken note of how soft they were. This one felt like silk, and he couldn’t seem to stop rubbing the feathery strands between his big, callous-rough fingertips.

When Jenna appeared beside the table and took a seat across from him, he jerked, then felt his face heat with embarrassment at being so distracted by the texture of a feminine purple boa that he hadn’t heard her approach. She didn’t seem to notice his discomfort, though; or if she did, she ignored it. Instead, she simply leaned back in her chair and took a sip from the small glass of orange juice in her hand.

“Remember the time you tried to teach me to knit?” he asked quietly, surprised when the question popped out of his mouth. He hadn’t intended to ask it, hadn’t even realized he was thinking along those lines.

She chuckled, and the action did amazing things to her breasts.

“Talk about a disaster,” she said with amusement. “I think it took me a full week to untangle all the knots out so I could use the yarn again.”

Rather than being offended or embarrassed by her recollection of his shortcomings, he took it in stride and found himself enjoying the teasing note in her voice. It was reminiscent of the days when they’d been dating or were newly married. The fun times. The happy times. The times before reality had sunk in and tainted every part of their relationship.

“Hey, I warned you I wouldn’t be any good at it.” He lifted his hands in the air, turning them one way and then the other. “These massive paws are meant for manly stuff like chopping wood and working on car engines.”