The Spark Between Us by Stacy Travis

Chapter Twenty-Four

Braden

The loftabove the tasting room was basically a single room with a slanted ceiling, stone walls, and a king-sized bed. I hadn’t slept at the vineyard since Ellie and I were together, and even then, we only made it out there a couple of times. So the loft had sat unused.

I’d had the forethought to have Janet, who ran the tasting room, give the place a quick cleaning before we arrived. So the sheets were clean, pillows fluffed, and windows cracked to let in the yellow afternoon sun.

Now the sun had long since set, and we sat cross-legged on the bed with four open bottles of wine and shot glasses for tasting. We also had a viciously competitive game of Chutes and Ladders underway.

Sarah wasn’t kidding about liking to win. And although she inherently understood that the game involved no skill whatsoever, it frustrated the hell out of her that she couldn’t use her mental fortitude to change the outcome of a spin of the wheel.

“You can’t stand that you can’t come up with some kind of theory of the universe that explains why you just fell down a chute.” I taunted her only because I was finally in the lead for the first time.

“It’s called gravity and bad luck. That’s the theory.” Her sulking amused me to no end.

“Speaking of theories, tell me about friction stir welding. You changed the subject at dinner.”

“I seem to recall that you kissed me senseless. There was going to be no physics lesson after that.”

“So tell me now. How does it work?”

Sarah looked up at the ceiling, something I noticed she did when she wanted to think something through. She never spoke until she knew exactly what she intended to say. Finally, she nodded. “Okay, imagine two blocks of metal sitting next to each other—copper or aluminum—hard metals. Then imagine a small vibrating needle moving in the space between them. It moves so fast that the friction stirs up the atoms in both pieces of metal, gets them moving until they start exchanging materials with each other. And with enough friction, they start to meld into one.”

I nodded, my eyes fixed on her face, willing her not to look down at the tent in my boxers. But there was no putting one over on her. “Does physics get you hot, fireman?”

“Maybe it’s all the talk about vibrating needles. I couldn’t help thinking the whole friction thing was a metaphor for the things you want me to do to you.” I leaned forward and raked my lips along her neck until they were right below her ear. “And you know how sexy I find your brain.”

Her voice dropped to a sultry whisper. “Well then, I should probably tell you about our powerful lasers. They work to get the atoms moving even faster.”

A second later, I had her on her back, my face inches from her, my hard cock leaving no question about where this was headed. “I want to hear more . . .”

“The lasers are powerful, we’re using them on metals we’ve never been able to fuse before, and stronger, lighter rockets will be shot into space as a result. The end,” she blurted quickly, wrapping her arms around my neck and pulling my face to hers. “Kiss me . . . then make love to me,” she begged.

It was different this time—not the quick wild frenzy of two people who couldn’t get enough—we were slower, more luxurious. This was love making.

It felt real.

And instead of scaring the shit out of me, I let it have me.

I slowly walked myself one step away from the fears that had defined my relationship to other people since the day my dad left us. Slowly. It would take a while. But I knew I wanted to be with her more than I wanted to protect myself.

I wanted her even if it hurt me later.

* * *

We still hadn’t goneto sleep and given that it was four in the morning, we probably wouldn’t, which suited me just fine. Staying up all night giving Sarah orgasms was followed by long conversations about why I should be baking my own dog biscuits and how she planned to train Bella to retrieve the newspaper every morning.

If anything, letting Bella roam the vineyards while we were at dinner did not bode well for future training. My dog was a free spirit.

“So tell me more about your ex,” Sarah said, rolling onto her side to face me and hooking a leg over my hip.

I couldn’t have heard her right. There was no way that after what had just happened between us, she was asking about my former fiancée.

“Sorry?” I tucked a fallen strand of hair behind her ear, readying myself to hear what she’d really asked me.

“Ellie. What was she like?”

“You want to talk about her now?”

Sarah sat up and pulled the sheet up to her chin, effectively cutting off any distractions. I guess she did want to talk. I ran a hand over my face, not particularly wanting to think about Ellie at all, but my affection for Sarah trumped my disgust for Ellie. It trumped everything.

“Okay, well, I guess what I fell for initially was her spirit. She was . . . she always saw the better side of a situation, always looked for the best in people.”

Sarah said nothing at first, and I wondered if she regretted asking the question. She leaned toward me, cradling the side of my face with one of her palms. “Go on.” Her voice was gentle, mimicking the stroke of her hand. “How’d you meet?”

“We met at a bar one night. She’d moved here temporarily to take care of her friend Jane who had breast cancer. Lived in the apartment with her, took her to all her chemo appointments, ran all her errands. Jane was a teacher at the elementary school, so she had lots of people who cared about her but no family to take care of her.”

“Ellie was her person.”

“Yeah. And you know from your dad, chemo wipes you out, so Jane had crashed, and Ellie was climbing the walls. She ended up at the bar near their apartment where I happened to be with a couple guys from work.” I thought back on the memory of that night. It seemed like so much longer than three years ago. And Ellie . . . the Ellie from that night felt like a ghost of someone who’d never really existed.

“We drank too much, talked a lot. I thought we had a connection but looking back . . . maybe it was just the stress she was under looking after Jane and the fact that she didn’t know anyone here.” I hated to think about it now. “Maybe I was the only one invested. Like I said, it was her strength in dealing with a difficult situation and maintaining a positive outlook that attracted me. Probably the same reason she was the right person to help her friend deal with cancer.”

Sarah hadn’t moved, hadn’t shifted her gaze away from me, not for a second. I don’t think she blinked. “What happened with her friend, with cancer?”

This was Sarah, the woman who didn’t want anything bad to happen to anyone. Of course she cared about my ex-fiancée’s friend, who she didn’t know.

I nodded and gently took one of Sarah’s hands that were holding down the sheet and interlaced our fingers. “She’s in remission. We’re still friends. But . . . why do you want to know all this?”

She stared at me like it was obvious. “I just do. It’s your life. I want to know you.”

Shrugging, I continued, telling her how once Jane recovered, Ellie didn’t have as much reason to be here, other than me. “By then we’d gotten engaged, and maybe she felt trapped. I never thought of it that way at the time, but maybe . . . I don’t know if getting engaged was maybe a way to try and hold onto something that wasn’t mine to begin with.”

Sarah reached and put a hand on mine. “You couldn’t know. Someone like that, I know the type. Lightning in a bottle, or that’s what they make you think. I have a younger sister like that—Tatum, she shines like the sun, blond hair and all. She was born looking like an angel—and it took me that longest time to realize she wasn’t perfect. She knew it, but I couldn’t see it. So she pushed me away, so I never would. And you know what? Once I realized she had flaws, it made me love her so much more.”

As I heard her say the words, all I could think was that Ellie hadn’t been that kind of person at all. Everything I’d thought to be true about her was my wishful thinking. She’d never pretended to be as interested in me as I hoped she’d be. She was only with me until she found something better. Looking back, I supposed there were signs, but I chose not to see them. I was blinded by who I thought she was.

But Sarah . . . she really was lightning in a bottle. The irony in the way she described her sister was that she didn’t seem to realize that her sister probably pushed her away in order not to be outshone.

“I guess wanting something doesn’t always make it the right choice. She sounds like she had a lot of good qualities.” She rubbed a hand in circles on my back.

Nothing compared to you.

“I guess not,” I agreed. And that was the problem. The more time I spent with Sarah, the more I wanted her.

I admired her modesty. I admired a lot about her. And despite the rules we’d laid down and the damned good job we’d done so far at keeping to them, I couldn’t help feeling a tugging in my heart. It wanted more.

I had to shut that shit down before someone got hurt. It wasn’t going to be me, not again. And I didn’t want it to be Sarah—she had a life to go back to in Berkeley in a couple months. So there we were.

So far, all the lines had been crossed, but no rules had been broken.

No falling in love.

I needed to make sure I kept it that way.